http://tags.library.upenn.edu/tag/internet+chatroom+speech+feminist PennTags Feed http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/1106 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/1106 <p>Krolokke begins her essay by recapping recent research in gender and language in cyberspace, including the role of &quot;grrrls&quot; who specifically resist male domination.&nbsp; She then describes her study of 5 MSN channels of Internet Relay Chat (IRC): gay chat, lesbian chat, transgender/transsexual chat, politics2000 chat, and African-American chat for what she calls &quot;playful chat&quot;.&nbsp; She analyzes the transcribed speech for 4 types of language play: abbreviations, paralinguistic cues, hybrid language, and insulting speech. Krolokke uses performance theory to explain gender play online such that she considers &quot;linguistic gender&quot; to mean performing a speech pattern that follows social and cultural expectations or stereotypes associated with the speech of that gender.&nbsp;She explains that in some cases, &nbsp;&quot;IRC provides a space for participants to play out their most convincing performances of parodic linguistic identities.&quot;&nbsp; As such, she provides an argument away from earlier linguists who argued about the inherent differences in male/female communication and towards later &quot;third wave&quot; linguists who see all communication and all contexts as marked for gender, not the speaker him or herself.<a name="abstract" /></p>