Learning the lingo?: gender, prestige and linguistic adaptation in review communities

Authors:
Libby Hemphill;Jahna Otterbacher
Affiliations:
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, USA;Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Year:
2012

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Abstract

Women and men communicate differently in both face-to-face and computer-mediated environments. We study linguistic patterns considered gendered in reviews contributed to the Internet Movie Database. IMDb has been described as a male-majority community, in which females contribute fewer reviews and enjoy less prestige than males. Analyzing reviews posted by prolific males and females, we hypothesize that females adjust their communication styles to be in sync with their male counterparts. We find evidence that while certain characteristics of "female language" persevere over time (e.g., frequent use of pronouns) others (e.g., hedging) decrease with time. Surprisingly, we also find that males often increase their use of "female" features. Our results indicate, that even when they resemble men's reviews linguistically, women's reviews still enjoy less prestige and smaller audiences.