Gender Difference in Role-Play : Male and Female Character Language in World of Warcraft

• Main Author: Skoglund, Jeanette
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Mittuniversitetet, Institutionen för humaniora 2009
• Subjects: World of Warcraft; gender; gender differences; chat-logs; mixed-sex conversations; folklinguistic belief; amount of participation; hedges; questions; directives; commands; taboo language; compliments; grammar.; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-8531

In this essay, I have investigated whether players of World of Warcraft change their language to suit the gender of the character they play. I have researched if there are gender differences that correspond to what is defined as male and female language in mixed-sex conversations. Chat-logs, collected during four participant observations, were used for making an analysis based primarily on research by Coates (1993) and Yale (2007). Seven features were selected for analysis: amount of participation, hedges, questions, directives and commands, taboo language, compliments and grammar. It was possible to discover gender differences, but these were not consistent in all areas of research. For example, female characters had a higher contribution than males, as well as a higher use of hedges and tag-questions among males, which contradicts previous research. The lack of consistency might be due to the fact that the participants do not specifically consider all areas as typically female or male, or their unawareness of these tendencies. We also need to consider disagreement in previous gender studies as well as folklinguistic belief. The explanation of the lack of consistent differences may be a more equal relationship between males and females in this context, or due to thepossibility that the participants, who are usually male, make use of their normal male language.