Differenze di genere tra studenti nel linguaggio usato nelle e-mail

This research examines gender differences in the linguistic style of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in e-mail exchanges. The gender salience of the context was varied by modifying the recipient of the e-mail (male or female) and the assigned topic of discussion (feminine, masculine and neutral). Participants comprised 485 (197F) university students who exchanged e-mails with a fictitious correspondent in the 12 experimental conditions of the design, obtained by crossing the gender of the two correspondents (sender and recipient) with three topics. Results show that women use fewer words, and that kinder and more tentative and emotional language is used when a woman writes to a man and viceversa. In addition, regardless of the recipient, women are more tentative when writing about a ‘masculine’ topic, and men are more tentative when writing about a ‘feminine’ topic. Interestingly, men use more emotional language when writing to a woman on a ‘masculine’ topic. The paper also considers whether the differences observed in English can be found in the Italian language.