Generic Gender and Language Limits Online

Social cues are important part of language and can help create understanding. The lack of social cues in a computer mediated environment obviously leads to more stressed understanding between parties where “communicators have to work harder to achieve their desired impact and be understood” (Baym, 54). In order to create a more natural, open, or comfortable environment, we have substitutions like emoticons to manufacture expressions & impressions ingrained in face-to-face communication. When there is a lack of cues, people can become disengaged with audience, impersonal, even “depersonalized” (Baym, 54). Anonymity can allow and even protect a person who chooses to be disruptive, volatile, and even abusive. So you end up with people like “flamers,” who perpetuate negativity in communication forums.  The lack of guiding social norms has led to a more volatile and unpredictable environments.  Everyone has their own set of guiding norms, and if one of those people feels like being aggressive and antagonistic, they have that freedom.

Baym stated sometimes identification, such as gender and racial classification, aren’t always directly presented, but can become obvious through our patterns.  Researchers “concluded that gender influences mediated interaction just as it influences unmediated communication” (Baym, 66). Mediated messages provide even more concrete examples to support traditional communication theory. What first struck my memory was Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect Communication Theory, which stressed men and women are of “two distinct cultural dialects.” She outlined some general tendencies in communication patterns. One claim was that “men’s report talk focuses on status and independence; women’s rapport talk seeks human connection.”  Baym cited that in mediated messages, women tend to focus on “relational dimensions of conversation” and men on “informative dimensions” (66). She also wrote that women’s messages tend to include “clarifications, justifications, apologies, and expressions of support” (67). These examples line up with Tannen’s gender theory of women’s focus on rapport, creating relational bonds and connections.

The Gerrand article addressed many of the problems and limitations with current research attempts to quantify language use online. I still don’t understand why the constant desire to classify is important, or what implications it has for the future. Maybe permittance and popularity of more languages could allow for a greater diversity of voices online. But, I think what matters is the content, not the form. Is a dominant cultural ideology necessarily attached to a language? I feel even ESL users can present their cultural values through their writing, no matter the language. The biggest problem I see is simply the isolation of non-English speaking users. These users can still post content, but might have more sparse forums to do so.

I only purposefully encounter any other languages on the internet, with the intent of using them as a source of information, such as definitions or vocabulary. However, these sites are written in English as instruction for an English-speaking audience. I have randomly clicked on links that are written in other languages. This occurs mostly on image-based sites, like Pinterest and Flickr. I don’t search it out, but I happen to click -through to a lot of international posts. Images seem to be a universal language. On Flickr, I often find captions and comments Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Japanese. Sometimes I get frustrated if I can’t read a recipe or craft instructions because they in another alphabet, and click away because that site is not intended for me.

I don’t know if our mediated communication will adapt to grow stronger across cultures or become further segmented. I hope that we will be able to express some universal artifacts of our respective cultures, such as sharing of art and music in order to discover each other, despite language.

 

7 thoughts on “Generic Gender and Language Limits Online

  1. It’s amazing that you click away because you feel that the site is not intended for you. do you think other native speakers feel the same way as you when they get on the internet and everything is in English? What effects would occur if everyone stopped using the internet because of the language barrier?

    • That’s an interesting point; I didn’t think about it that way. I guess I click away because I am searching for something expected. When I find something that doesn’t fit my goal, I have no purpose to use it, and I shift my energy into finding a site that is more suitable for me. Or, if isn’t important, I drop it altogether and start looking at something else.

      I wonder if language barriers could lead to further isolation. This could be especially troubling if they were seeking important information and couldn’t find or understand a suitable site of information. If they couldn’t find it, would they be forced to give up? Would they have to try to seek out information through more difficult means? The internet is supposed to make it easier. It is supposed to provide more universal access to instant information for all, with fewer barriers to entry. But it seems language is a major barrier.

  2. The gender dialects information was interesting to me also. I think it can tend to ruffle feathers anytime a scholar points out that anything falls into a definable pattern along gender lines, but that doesn’t make it untrue. However, with all the hub bub around the recent ND football player having a relationship with a woman online that turned out to be a man, I wonder if their communication logs could be examined to see if there were giveaways in their communication to show that he was really conversing with another man.

  3. You mentioned clicking away from something when it’s in another language. Have you not tried to use a translator and see what it says? I find that fun and exciting because you get to have access to something you might want/need.

  4. You bring up a great point about how we should be less concerned with classifying language use, and more concerned with providing equal content. A lot of my classes have mentioned English as the dominant language, and even as the “global language.” I think we are headed in that direction, and unfortunately it wipes out a great deal of culture. I understand that other cultures want to experience the technology that the Western civilization has to offer, but we are sacrificing the treasured history of some of these small villages.

  5. I have never studied or even heard of Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect Communication Theory, but it sounds like a very interesting piece. I like the idea of men and women having separate and “distinct cultural dialects.” I feel like if someone were to study the text messaging and emails in my life, they would notice an obvious difference in how each gender communicates. I can engage in back and forth, conversational style communication via text messaging with my mom, sister and friends. However, text messaging between my boyfriend, father or brothers are generally regulated to a facts-only style communication. What time they will be somewhere, a question about the price of something, what specifically I want for my birthday,etc. Its an interesting phenomenon and I think it speaks highly of how genders communicate offline as well.
    I appreciate the way you explained the gender differences in computer mediated communication, because in all honesty that was a section of the chapter I had a bit of trouble understanding. I was a little confused as to what exactly Baym was saying, but your explanation made it very clear for me!

  6. I agree, I use the internet and use of other languages to find out specifics, such as a translation. Sometimes on sites, my choice would be InstaGram, you will click on a picture that has hundreds of comments but in a different language. It is alarming to come across this language barrier because it is so foreign to me and so many others. But for non English speakers, I am sure it is quite common.

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