Sociolinguistics and CMC

Over a month with no posts! Woe!

Here are a couple of things I've been storing up the past few days.

1. New Pew Internet and American Life study on gender differences in internet use:

How Women and Men Use the Internet: Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. Men like the internet for the experiences it offers, while women like it for the human connections it promotes.

Pew director Lee Rainie and BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin spoke with NPR's Talk of the Nation yesterday about the report. Another guest, a performer in the play Defending the Caveman, explained the differences with a hunter-gatherer metaphor of internet use. As in, women are gatherers, gathering contacts and communiques, whereas men are hunters, seeking out facts and information. The metaphor seems a bit shaky to me, but whatever. His foundation seems to be:

In principle, internet users have high regard for the internet as a tool of communication; 85% of both men and women say they consider the internet to be a good way to interact or communicate with others in their everyday lives.7 But similarities end there. Men and women differ in their modes of online communication, in what they communicate about, and in how much they value their online communications.

That's a bold claim, there, for some pretty close-to-being-similar differences. For instance, while women are more likely to email than men (94%-W v. 88%-M), men and women are about equally as likely to IM (42%-M v. 39%-W), send greetings (41%-M v. 44%-W), or text message (33%-M v. 37%-W) [none of those latter three differences are statistically significant]. Now this is sort of interesting, given that women are said to seek more highly interactional or "involved" communication, which you'd think would be fostered by IM, not email. So I suppose this is just saying that women are communicating more in general - though men are slightly more likeley to use chat rooms (24%-M v. 20%-W), and more likely to use internet phone (9%-M v. 5%-W), so hmm. There are more detailed findings about the kinds of email and so forth - check it out.

2. Text messaging in the Washington Post

Life and Romance in 160 Characters or Less: Brevity Gains New Meaning as Popularity of Cell Phone Text Messaging Soars

Another article about text messages and their use to flirt, facilitate dates, and (gasp!) break up. Some interesting comments about speed:

The brevity of a text message gives it a certain poetic beauty, said Washington resident Erik Lung, 34. As in enigmatic haiku, there is lots of space for reading between lines, particularly in an early-stage romance.
"You can send a quick little message saying you're thinking of her," the operations research analyst said. Then "you start paying attention not only to what the message says, but you care about the response time." There's a meta-message: The shorter the response time, the more she cares.

And about language:

Now, text messaging -- like its older cousin instant messaging -- is giving rise to a new, electronic written culture that is truncating all of that [reflection, contemplation. - ed.]. A text message sent via mobile phone is usually confined to 160 characters or less and takes several seconds to send. To accommodate this short form, language is acquiring acronyms -- "H8" (hate), "iluvu" (I love you) and "ruok" (are you okay) -- that allow text messages and other instant messages to relay information about life's mundane details as well as its emotional brambles.
...
Messaging alters language and composition style, said Tom Keeney, director of messaging for T-Mobile USA. Slang has gotten more detailed and sophisticated, making it possible to say more on a tiny canvas, much like poetry, he said. "It's almost like letters gave way to postcards. It was a way to say something on the go."

Nothing too heavy here, but always nice to see normal people interviewed about their thoughts on these technologies.

As *I* (though not necessarily anyone else) would write in a text message: Hap New Yr!