Investigating Language on Twitter - A2 Mini Investigation

Investigating Language on Twitter - A2 Mini Investigation

Introduction

I have chosen to focus on how gender affects language as my specialised topic area in this investigation, and in order to study this I put together a hypothesis. My hypothesis for this investigation is 'I think that men are more likely to show dominance than women in their twitter posts.' I have chosen to focus on particular feature areas such as how men and women use language features to show male dominance and female language deficiency in their tweets. I am going to focus on imperatives, multi-modal tweets, uncertainty features, empty adjectives and abbreviations and quantify them to see which sex used which features more. I would also focus on how the male and female participant used co-operative or competitive language however this would be harder to evaluate as they are not communicating to a particular speaker in a conversation thread. I also wanted to see how this would link to Robin Lakoff's deficit model and how the amount of empty adjectives and uncertainty features would show how women's language is deficient and this could link to how male speakers tend to be more dominant.

Methodology

When constructing this investigation I decided to pick two celebrities and systematically select 5 tweets from each. We did this by choosing every fifth tweet on their feed and chose celebrities so it was unbiased rather than using someone we knew personally and this could affect how we interpret the results. We also picked random celebrities so it was not biased and opinions could not affect what we analysed from the data. One benefit of using data from twitter is that we don't have to ask for consent as the celebrities who have posted these tweets are essentially allowing their information to be used as they have posted it publicly. However one limitation with our data that we collected is that it is only a very small pool of data and therefore we are unable to generalise this data to males and females in general as it is not fully representative.

Analysis

We found that Taylor (female) showed a higher amount of empty adjectives and uncertainty features than Zac (male). However Zac used a higher amount of multi-modal tweets (pictures and words), but also imperatives and abbreviations. From these results we could suggest that men are much less descriptive and more concise with their language in their tweets whereas women are much more expressive with words and describe something in more detail. This is proved as 4 out of 5 of Zacs tweets were multi-modal which incorporated pictures and words. We could also suggest that men are more dominant due to their higher amount of imperatives. However, one of Zac's tweets was an anomaly because due to my pragmatic understanding the tweet was song lyrics, however it uses the uncertainty feature 'like', but I don't know whether to consider it as his language use as he didn't put it in quote marks. We also considered the average number of features per tweet and didn't count 'retweets' as they were not written by the celebrity themselves and therefore cannot evaluate their language use. Taylor uses 'SO MUCH' in one of her tweets and this was a dilemma because both of these words are individual uncertainty features, and we can't decide to count them as one uncertainrt feature or two, as they are used in a phrase and work together.

Conclusion and Evaluation

There are massive limitations in this investigation as the data pool is very small and limiting as tghere was only 10 tweets. However, the data proves hypothesis as female uses more uncertainty features and empty adjectives however the male uses more multi-modal tweets, imperatives and abbreviations, which could prove male dominance in language. 

How is Gender shown in a conversation between Ricki and Vicki from Geordie Shore? How could we compare this with other data?

How is Gender shown in a conversation between Ricki and Vicki from Geordie Shore? How could we compare this with other data?

Key: I= Interviewer, R= Ricci, V= Vicki

R and V: [laughs]
I: will we be seeing a geordie wedding this season (.) or coming up?
V: (1) no (.) we're not um (.) I think we'll (.) in (.) oh (.)
R: you lost for words babe?
V: | [laughs]         |
R: | is she feeling | alright?
V: I'm not lost for words I'm just tryna work out how to | put it |
R:                                                                                      | yeah  | ok
V: shut up!
R: I can't believe this like
V: |we don't have a wedding |
R: | when she's on camera     | this never happens

Analysis

Due to the nature of this interview, we can tell that Vicki is trying to conceal some information about the next series, as the purpose of this interview is to encourage viewers to watch the new upcoming series of Geordie Shore, without giving too much information away. This factor could affect the significant amount of uncertainty features that Vicki uses as she is reluctant to use her speech as freely as possible, rather than just applying Robin Lakoff's 'Deficit Model' with women's language. She uses false starts; hesitations including 1 second pauses and micropauses; and fillers, such as 'um' and 'oh' as seen in the extract above. This is interesting as it supports Robin Lakoff's theory as she suggested that these features made women's language deficient as they were unnecessary in conversation. I also noticed that Ricci, the male speaker interrupts several times throughout the interview, and from the extract above, he interrupts three times consecutively while Vicki doesn't interrupt at all. This supports Zimmerman and West's theory as they suggested men interrupted much more frequently  than women and this was as a result of their dominance. I can also tell that there is a relationship between the speakers from their informal register as they laugh a lot with each other and Vicki also tells him to 'shut up' however we can tell from the context and the way he reacts to her, that it is a light-hearted joke. However after she says this, he flouts the maxim of relevance as he shifts the agenda back to what he was talking about before. You could suggest that this shows his dominance and power of him being able to shift the agenda, but she also does the same by carrying on to talk about the wedding in a competitive way. Ricci says 'I can't believe this like' and Vicki says, 'we don't have a wedding' which also flouts the maxim of relevance and juxtaposes with stereotypes of language and gender that men are usually more competitive and women are more cooperative.

In order to compare this conversation with other data collected first-hand, I could interview and record one-on-one mixed gender conversation, preferably a couple who are familiar with each other, by introducing a topic or debate. This way we could analyse how features of their language support or contradict gender theory and compare it with this interview with Vicki and Ricci to see whether the gender roles coincide in both interviews. However, to limit external variables that could affect the ability to establish cause and effect, we would have to choose two Geordie speakers, because regional dialect could really influence the language features used and this could be a factor to affect their language rather than gender being the influencing factor. I would also use a couple who are in a relationship or close friends because if the couple did not know each other this could affect how they speak to each other as they are likely to be more polite. If I were to use this as my data for an investigation I could title it 'How does gender affect the way couples speak in mixed gender conversations when presented with a particular topic of conversation?' to study different language features in relation to gender stereotypes.

Romantic Fiction Piece

Weakness and Strength

Weakness placed her delicate fingertips along his medium complexioned skin. She felt broad, strong shoulders and a firm chest. She breathed in considerably, allowing all of the salty, crisp air to fulfil her lungs, and her pulse to take over her fragile heart. She felt his too, on the left side of his chest, steady but intense.
This moment was like no other, a blanket of the ocean cascading up the shore wrapping around their feet, the sound relaxing their ears like a lullaby. The silent sun was glistening on the water at sunset, and glowing towards their very presence, creating a silhouette of two figures behind them on the velvety, pale-pink sand.
Strength ran his large, masculine hands through her hairline slowly and delicately, as if he was touching a feather, and carried his hand towards the back of her neck. He held the back of her head in the crease of her neck and Weakness felt her pulse quicken. She already felt something extraordinary after knowing him just a few weeks. He pulled her slightly closer so their chests were pressed together and he looked into her mesmerising jade-green eyes. She looked back into his, crystals of hazel and dark ocean-blue coruscating in the evening light, more beautiful than hers, she thought. She felt a lump of nervousness in her chest as she wanted to make an impression on him, as he had already done with her, but she had no idea how he felt anyway and she needn't worry about that now. This moment is all that counts.
He moved his chin ever so slightly, pressed his forehead lightly onto hers, and closed his eyes. He took a small breath and Weakness felt her pulse now racing. He then turned his chin. He looked at her one last time. Then placed his rounded lips upon hers as he held her face. He kissed her with passion and amorous. Weakness felt a feeling she had never felt before, it was indescribable.  Her body felt delicate and fragile, as he grabbed her waist strongly and lifted her up in the air towards him. This all felt so surreal. She could not comprehend how she felt like this. Strength placed her back on the sand, kissed her forehead lightly and walked up away from the beach. She watched his dark, curled hair sway in the sunset as he walked away, and his bronzed, dampened skin as he took one glance back at her.

An introduction to Language and Gender - with relevant theories.

Language and Gender

Robin Lakoff (1975) studied and published an account of women's language. From his research he set some assumptions and claims about women's language. Lakoff suggested that women use super-polite terms and forms of phrases whereas men do not tend to as much. He also suggested that women speak much less frequently and use hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation which is also apparent is the extract. I am going to look at how this is shown in an extract from a Mills and Boon romantic novel:

# Please note I have removed descriptions outside of the dialogue to purely focus on language used #

Male: I don'y suppose you took time to eat dinner, either. 

Female: I... had something earlier. On the plane.

... Male: Plastic food. 

Female: I don't know what concern it is of yours. 

Male: None. 

This extract shows that when the female speaker, Jill, is still trying to be fairly closed and tying not to let her guard down, but also seems to be getting rather irritated with him, as he is interrogating her with questions she may not want to answer if she does not know the man very well. She may not really care what he thinks of her, but she still uses the more polite form of 'I don't know what concern it is of yours' rather than the more bald, on-record form of perhaps 'It's none of your business'. Instead she uses negative face because it almost seems like that is how she is used to acting, with a lack of confidence due to established and identified gender roles of the man being seen as more dominant, and therefore she may not want to disregard this and lose respect from the man himself. This example proves Lakoff''s suggestion that women use more polite forms of language.

Zimmerman and West (1975) studied into the idea of a difference and dominance theory in language. They carried out a study and recorded 31 segments of conversation between men and women, they found that in 11 conversations, men interrupted 46 times and women only twice. This study helped to put forward their theory of dominance, as men are much more likely to interrupt, they tend to be more dominant in conversation and certainly have more air time. 

This is a short transcript at home, at meal-time on a Sunday:

# Vertical lines show overlap in conversation #

Female 1: Everyone! Dinner's ready!

Female 2: Oh this looks lovely darling, did you put oregano in it?

Female 1: Yes I did Mum, | tell me if it needs some more though.

Male 1:                               |Which one's mine?

Female 1: It's that one, Sven.

This small extract demonstrates how men have a tendency to interrupt much more often than women. I find this interesting because I don't know if it's because they have more power or dominance or whether its just a conversational habit that men usually develop. Either way, this example demonstrates how men are more likly to interrupt which leads to a particular dominance of their air-time in conversation.

Pamela Fishman (1983) developed a theory as regards to interaction: 'the work women do' theory. She suggested that conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, because of the way men respond and react to women's utterances, or don't respond. Fishman also claimed that in mixed-sex langauge interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women. 

This is another extract from a Mills and Boon romantic novel to prove this theory:

# Please note I have removed descriptions outside of the dialogue to purely focus on language used #

Female 1: Thank you

Male 1: I might have saved your life, you know.

Female 1: How?

Male 1: You could have drowned.

Female 1: Not very likely. I had no intention of swimming.

Male 1: You can't trust the tides here. Even this close to the shore, the waves are capable pf jerking your feet out from under you. You might easily have been swept out to sea.

This again represents how a male speaker dominates the conversation through air-time. As it is a dialogue and there are no other speakers in the conversation, they take part in fair turn-taking, however he is speaking for much longer than her and always attempts to set and shift the agenda, which represents power and dominance in the conversation which could be associated with stereotypical male gender roles.

Grice's Maxims - Applied to the Teacher and Student Text

Grice's Maxims - Teacher and Student Text

Quote from the text:

Teacher: Right. Well the "winter" stands for society that is er priggish and . (looks at Alex, who is toying with his pen) What does "winter" stand for, Alex?

Alex: (smiles) What if I don't answer?

Analysis

Alex deliberately flouts the maxim of relevance in this text, by answering a question from his teacher which he is obliged to answer, with a following question. This interrogates his teacher by challenging her instrumental power and dominance in the classroom, and almost battles for status in order to look more powerful in front of his classmates. This actually results in any influential power that the teacher may or may not have, being taken away from her in a competitive way. From the contextual information we can understand that the teacher is going to have a strong personal (role) power according to Wareing's types of power. However we can tell particularly in this text that that power is questioned when Alex challenges her and tries to gain some influential power by defying the rule of relevance in Grice's Maxims. Although his reply is still weakly linked to the previous conversation, as it is about answering the question, he still does not answer it and shifts the agenda of the conversation, which is usually seen in powerful roles. This gives him more social power, according to Wareing's types of power, due to the affect that flouting the rule had on the dynamics of power roles in the classroom.

Language and Power Question

Language and Power

Language and Power Question Plan

·         Overview – Use ‘because’ and ‘although’. Evaluate context, Barrister has more instrumental power due to nature of the court, Mr Niel has less instrumental power. Power asymmetry, why? How? Barrister sets agenda due to personal (role) power. Non-fluency features indicate natural, spontaneous speech where power roles could be more natural as people are not thinking about what they are saying as much. However could suggest that Barrister has planned questions before and may be displaying more power due to preparation

·         Paragraph 1 – Mr Neil tries to use influential power to battle for status in order to not make himself look stupid and avoid face threatening acts (FTAs), because he laughs, and also interrupts on two occasions. Cooperative or competitive overlap? He also does so in order to look respectable, so that he doesn’t look guilty.

 

Barrister uses emphasis which patronises the witness, ‘so many times Mr Neil’, ‘two and two together’ and ‘police’ which he has thought about carefully so that the people listening recognise the emphasised lexis which may give negative conceptions of Mr Neil and make him look guilty. Tries to achieve ultimate goal, for Mr Neil to be found guilty. Uses repetition of personal pronoun ‘you’ to make Mr Neil feel intimidated and impeded upon. Barrister displays influential power by use of language as well as displaying instrumental power.

 

Language and Power Answer

Because of the nature of the court setting, there is an obvious differentiation of the power roles between the barrister and Mr Niel. The barrister has much more instrumental power due to his status in court, and Mr Niel has much less instrumental power as he is the one being questioned. However this does not take away the fact that Mr Niel may or may not display some influential power, based on his answers to persuade or influence the judge's view on his guilty position. The relationship between the two, displays obvious power asymmetry because the barrister uses leading questions like "when er you had er (.) done something to the gate he wanted you to repair a gate?", because in fact he knows that is the case but he is trying to get Mr Niel to admit that is true in order to make him look guilty in front of the court. The barrister also sets the agenda by asking the questions, which is using Wareing's types of power, personal power. This uses his role to display how he is more powerful and therefore the less powerful participant, Mr Niel, must answer to him.

The non-fluency features by both of the participants can be interpreted in different ways, as of course it indicates natural, spontaneous speech which we recognise from the context siutation, but also that Mr Niel pauses a lot before speaking, as he is almost being imposed upon by being asked questions and this can be seen as a Face Threatening Act (FTA) as it flouts Goffman's face needs. In contrast, we could question why the barrister uses more non-fluency features such as pauses and fillers, as it is likely that he would have prepared his questions beforehand, and this is why he has more of an advantage when it comes to displaying power. But however does not explain why he uses more non-fluency features, and so I would suggest that it could purely be due to his idiolect or the fact that he has pressure on himself to ask the right questions and make Mr Niel look guilty.

There are several occasions when Mr Niel uses influential power to battle for status in order to make himself seem truthful and honest and perhaps to avoid FTA's. He laughs after he is asked a question by the barrister and follows with "that's not true no", and this bald, on record way of replying to the barrister coincides with Brown and Levinsons politeness strategies, and gives a straight answer and also shows that he doesn't really care what the barrister thinks of him. Mr Niel also interrupts on two occasions, when the barrister says "you can't remember whether they came to see you or not?" he interrupts and says "I don't think they did no". This could be seen as competitive overlap as he may be trying to gain power and get his point across, but however I think it could be more of a co-operative overlap, because he may have not realised that the barrister was going to continue talking.

The barrister uses emphasis on regularly when interrogating Mr Niel, which can be seen as a tool to patronise him. He uses it when saying "so many times Mr Niel", "two and two together" and "police". He carefully selects the lexis or phrases to emphasise in order to trigger ideas in the audience's mind that could have negative connotations assosciated with Mr Niel's guilt. The barrister does so in order to achieve his ultimate goal, for Mr Niel to be found guilty, and so these techniques are used along with use of influential power that he has, due to his choice of lexis like "suspected" and "incident" in order to influence the judge's opinion. He also combines this with his personal power to create a strong powerful role, which contributes towards Fairclough's unequal encounter theory, as he shows he is the most dominant participant and furthermore more superior to Mr Niel.

Grouping Written Texts - 24.02.15

Grouping Written Texts

Texts A, C and F all share similar effective uses of a lexical field in their text. However texts A and F are strong inclusions as they have similar, strong and apparent uses of a lexical field, and text C is a weaker inclusion as it uses a less apparent and weaker lexical field. In text A, it is a description of a granola-snacks as a product packaging anduses its lexical field to persuade customers to buy their product, as the themes of 'taste' are reifnorced throughout the small amount of text that is given. It uses lexis like 'sweet' and 'fruity-tasting', 'satisfying' and 'sweetened' to evoke these feelings of taste to the reader, but also it uses repition as a alternative technique to link to the lexical field and further develop the recognition of 'taste'. It uses 'great tasting food', 'Taste the Difference', 'taste tested' and 'fruity-tasting' to continually bring the idea to the readers attention that it truly is a great-tasting and quality product. Similarly in text C, the lexical field is also taste, however it lies mainly on graphology to get the message accross. It also is a weak inclusion to this grouping as the lexical field is not as apparent as this product packaging lacks a description of the product itself. The lexical choices such as 'nature valley' gives connotatios of an active, healthy lifestyle, but also the rich, organic tastes of nature. It also uses 'crunchy' so that readers can get an idea of the texture of the product and 'canadian maple syrup' so that consumers can imagine this product in their minds which could encourage and persuade them to buy it. However, in text F, a strong lexical field of war is used, and effectively uses these ideas blended well throughout the text which continually underpins the ideas of war and uses that to describe the contrasting event of piecing a puzzle together. It uses lexis 'like 'rounded up', 'segregated', 'struggle' and 'revolution', which are an effective use of strong and powerful nouns together to form this lexical field. In this case, the lexical field is used to entertain the reader as the seriousness and devastations that are associated with war, will evoke these feelings in the reader but when they realise the true meaning of the writing, and that it is simply based on the struggles of two people comstructing a cardboard puzzle, of what I would assume, it can be found quite humourous.

Texts B and E use contrasting uses of sibilance and consonance, which are two devices to emphasise the particular phonemes in a sentence for effect. In text B, sibilance is strongly and significantly used to describe an appealing beach holiday in the Maldives. This text, similar to text C, also mainly relies on graphology to represent the main ideas of the advert as the picture of the beautiful beach says it all about this holiday. It evokes feelings of relaxation and calmness. It uses lexis like 'swim', 'ninety-seven sustainably chic...' 'spin', 'bespoke', 'surf' and 'famous waves', to create a desirable and paradisiacal effect, which furthermore persuades the readers to go on this holiday. This use of sibilance also creates a relaxing tone, which reflects and mirrors what the holdiday will actually be like, so the reader can get a small insight as to what it might be like before they go. In contrast, text E uses consonance also to persuade, however it uses the phoneme device differently as it uses the repeated 'f' sound. It says 'foundation infallible', 'brush-perfect finish', 'foundation fingers' which similarly evokes an idea of beauty in the reader and makes them think they will have 'perfect finish' skin like the beautiful model on this advertisement if they also use this foundation. However, I think it may be also trying to reach out to a target audience perhaps to people who are quite busy and maybe do not have a lot of time on their hands, and so with this 'brush-perfect finish', they dont need to spend a lot of time with different brushes trying to perfect their makeup look when they don't have much time, because this foundation already offers that, and reinforces these ideas with consonance.

Texts D and F both have similar purposes to entertain, and are both strong inclusions as it is both of their primary purposes. Text D uses an extended metaphor which is the use of zoomorphism to describe their hungry self. The writer uses 'a baby lion is growling', and builds up feelings of fear and anxiety about the line but actually uses this effectively to describe how hungry they are. This is a clear device to enteratin the reader because they have to try harder to work out what is really going on in the text and furthermore the reader may enjoy reading the text more if its more challenging to work out. Text D also uses powerful nouns and verbs to describe how they are feeling in their apparent situation, it uses 'growling', 'lion', and 'moment will last forever', which conveys the strong feelings of the character towards the lion which contrasts at the end of the text and this also entertains the reader as it could be seen as humourous or witty. In text F, it similarly uses an analogy which uses war to represent the construction of a puzzle. Again, the reader will only realise the true meaning of the text until the end and therefore they have to try harder to work out what it means, and this again is a clever device to entertain the reader. It also, similar to text D, uses strong verbs and nouns to make the clear ideas of war understood to the reader. It uses 'segregated', 'pieces', 'restricted' and 'attacks' and this clearly passes on these thoughts in the readers mind, but also creates a punchy, wittiness as it is very clever how the writer has used these powerful words to describe the piecing of a puzzle.