Chat one:
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In the first chat, students often found it easy to determine who was male
and who was female, but their basis for these decisions had more to do
with the content of the "speaker's" response to the material than the language
he/she responded with due the nature of the material under discussion.
For example, a woman might write, "Well, it's true, guys ALWAYS talk over
us!" or a man might write, "If you think I'm talking too much, then you
should say something. I don't think most men MEAN to lecture women."
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In spite of this, some students were incorrectly identified -- some women
were identified as male by their classmates, and a few men as women (this
was much more rare). In cases where a woman was misidentified, the
reasons given were that the speaker was forceful and authoritative in her
expression on the chatroom, spoke often, and challenged classmates' ideas
more. For those few men who were misidentified, the reasons given
were that the speaker contributed rarely, showed tendencies toward "keeping
the peace" between sides, and expressed uncertainty in responses.
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Further, because it was their first chatroom experience, students did tend
to associate the color nicknames with particular genders. They expected
the student with the nickname "Pink," for example, to be a woman, and so
for those gendered colors (any shades of pink or blue), students were more
aware of when their expectations about gender were not fulfilled.
This meant that if Pink was a female student, but one who spoke forcefully,
students were far more likely to say Pink was male than they were for a
forcefully-expressive woman student whose nickname was Purple because they
unconsciously expected Pink to be feminized.
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Chat two:
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Overwhelmingly, students found this "experiment" far more difficult than
the first one. Not only did they find themselves paying more attention
to what was being discussed rather than how it was being discussed due
the difficulty of the readings under discussion, but they also noted that
only those whose language use was most "typical" of a particular gender
style were notable. In other words, most of the students seemed to
"sound" about the same and there were only a few students who deviated
from that norm enough to make their patterns of language use register with
their classmates.
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Also, students found they paid very little attention to the "literal" meaning
of the nicknames this time. In fact, some students didn't know what
a "drake" was (or some of the other animal names), and so that nickname
signified nothing to them in any case.
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At the end of class, when students were asked to guess who was male or
female, only a few students were willing to stick their necks out, and
then only on a few of the more "obvious" participants. Again, some
students were misidentified but in almost all cases it was women being
misidentified as men, for the same reasons given above.
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Chat three:
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When students were allowed to choose their nickname/gender, very few male
students chose a female nickname (perhaps three out of the 175 students
who participated in these classes over a two-year period), but quite a
few women chose male characters as nicknames.
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Of those few men who chose female nicknames, none of them attempted to
"impersonate" a female speaking style in an attempt to fool their classmates.
Some of the women who chose male nicknames did try consciously to "act"
male.
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Those male students who chose female nicknames but did not change their
language patterns were quickly identified as male. It seems as if
when the nickname is female, and the language patterns are not female,
that discrepancy is almost immediately noted by most of the participants.
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On the other hand, those women who tried to "impersonate" men were for
the most part successful -- they were often identified as men at the end
of class, and were triumphant about their ability to "pull off" their impersonation.
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Some female students with female nicknames also consciously tired to "act"
male; they were also often identified as male. These results would
seem to support some feminist theorists' claims that women learn from an
early age to adapt to male language patterns in order to be "heard," and
are far more skillful at this "ventriloquism" than men.
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Overall, however, the results were inconclusive. Many students could
not say for sure whether any given classmate was male or female by the
way he/she talked in the chatroom. Those who "stuck out" were those
who were most extreme in their language patterns.
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Based on the results of these experiments, students could construct arguments
for or against the importance of acknowledging gender patterns in language,
or for or against the possible impact of anonymous modes of discussion
on society. As it turned out, there was not one "right" answer.
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