Penntext/PDF available

In this article, Herring discusses her research into both asynchronous communication via discussion list and synchronous communication via IRC in which women were subject to harassment and demeaning characterizations by men.  In both instances, the result was that the affected women fell silent or complied with the male behavioral normatives.  I think it is important to note the forums chosen, as there may have been some issues inherent to the discussion which should be considered above and beyond the linguistic patterns. The discussion list was Paglia-L, a group dedicated to discuss the writings of the cultural theorist Camille Paglia, who is often referred to as an "anti-feminist feminist" and who often generates polemical discussions among women as often as in mixed company.  The IRC channel was #india which is primarily composed of expatriates from India living in English-speaking countries, and as such, specific Indian cultural patterns may have also influenced the speech found on that channel.  What is most useful to me from this essay is how Herring defines harassment online, shows examples of its resistance and escalation, and finally shows how the female participants accommodate or conform to the degrading situation.  If these examples can be extended across the internet, it would indicate that male-female communication suffers from similar breakdowns as those that can occur on the job or in any face-to-face situation where harassment may surface and as such, that we have a long way to go to address gender equality online.

 

Penntext/PDF available

Soukup's study focuses upon two chatrooms - one sports-related and male-dominated, and the other female-based and female-dominated.  His results support the ideas cited by Tannen and others in linguistic studies of discourse, in that the male chatters were more aggressive, argumentative, and power-seeking than the female chatters.  It's unclear to me whether the results can be viewed as reliable or representative, since there may be an inherent social context to a sports-related chatroom/bulletin board that goes above and beyond being merely a male-dominant community.  For example, Soukup cites the fact that the sports-related chatroom essentially turned into a locker room replete with profane and sexist language, including sexual put-downs and challenges between male chatters.  He goes on to note that when male chatters entered the chatroom of the female-based community, that there was frequent inappropriate behavior such that groups of male chatters would take-over the room with sexist remarks or propositioning of the female members. 

 

Penntext/PDF available

In this essay, Frederick examines the question of whether computer-mediated communication is truly a democratic utopia where feminist values can flourish.  By studying data from 2 newsgroups, alt.feminism and soc.feminism, she demonstrates that discrimination and exclusion/hostility can continue to occur, even in a supposedly inclusive and politically feminist context.  She concentrates on the ethos of the newsgroups as the basis for constructing either a welcoming or distancing communication arena.  My interest in this article stems from this notion of ethos because I think that it a highly influencing factor which combines with inherent linguistic features of women's speech to produce a speech community.  I believe that any future discussions of the social structure of online communication must address ethos as well as linguistic differences in order to prevent factionalization or balkanization of men and women online, much as one might approach a dialog about multiculturalism and the internet.

In this text, Coates and Cameron attempt to address in a quantitative way how sociolinguistic differences are found between men's and women's speech.  While the research does not include online communication, it does show grounded empirical studies of women in their own speech communities such as among British Black women and women in mining communities in Wales.  They go on to address gender differences in communication "style" above and beyond format, and delve into examples of gossip, tag questions, and shop talk as female or male speech.  In all cases, the authors attempt to challenge prior academic research and offer new perspectives on the task of analyzing speech on gender lines, as in the example of Swann's "Talk Control: an Illustration From the Classroom of Problems in Analyzing Male Dominance of Conversation."

In this compilation of essays edited by Jones, the central theme is about how the internet is a virtual culture of its own and how that culture can be described in sociological terms.  Of particular interest to me for fan related discourse is Watson's study of the Phish.net fan community, which describes an online fan base of 50K+ members and their interactions.  Shaw discusses gender and sexual orientation and internet communities in his essay "Gay Men and Computer Communication: A Discourse of Sex and Identity in Cyberspace", which although does not related to women's speech, does deal with issues of communication and constructed identity.  Later in the volume, Dietrich takes on gender and internet journals in their construction of a body politic.  Finally, Zickmund addresses the problem of internet hate speech or "cyberhate" and how "the other" is defined online.

While I am not dealing with the subject of "cyberrape" as we read about LambdaMOO in the class assignment, if anyone is interested, Richard MacKinnon has a chapter in this volume titled "Punishing the Persona: Correctional Strategies for the Virtual Offender" which further discusses the rape and subsequent punishment of online offenders at LambdaMOO and elsewhere.

This text consists of three sections regarding women's use of the internet.  Part One deals with the definition of gender as part of a user's identity on the net, in particular for internet gamers (Paasonen) and female professionals (Dorer)  The second part concerns how women are addresses as consumers of the internet and networks, with examples from online communities like Oprah.Com (Cooks/Paredes/Scharrer) and other women's websites (Gustafson).  Part Three gives examples of everyday uses of the internet for bringing girls and women together, and also discusses the problems and strategies inherent for lesbians online (Poster).  Finally, the fourth and last part talks about gender and new media in the contexts of the school, politics, and television viewing.  This looks to be a very interesting text from a sociological perspective which can supplement the other linguistic texts in the bibliography.

Robin Lakoff is one of the so-called "first generation" of linguists to look at women's speech as being quantitatively different from men's speech, and also one of the first generation of feminists to look towards linguistics as a scientific study to which to prove inherent sexism in language.  Although this text is dated (1975), it does serve as a key cited secondary reference for many of the articles published recently about gender and discourse.  Even other linguists who go on to refute Lakoff's dichotomies continue to cite her work regularly.  For my purposes, I may choose to quote from part 2 of her book "Why Women are Ladies" which deals with forms of politeness and how women specifically express politeness in speech, topics which I feel are still relevant today on the internet.