Copyright by Patrick Schultz 2017 The Dissertation Committee for Patrick Schultz Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Gender Variation in Writing: Analyzing Online Dating Ads Committee: Lars Hinrichs, Supervisor Mary E Blockley Katrin Erk Jacqueline M Henkel Gender Variation in Writing: Analyzing Online Dating Ads by Patrick Schultz, BA, MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2017 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family: my parents Susanne and Christoph, my little sisters Fiona, Alison, and Catriona, my grandmothers Erika Fritz and Marianne Schultz, and my godmother Barbara Wittemann. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge my dissertation supervisor, Lars Hinrichs, without whose feedback and ideas this project would not have been possible. Thank you for your support throughout this process. I wish to thank my committee members, Mary Blockley, Jacqueline Henkel, and Katrin Erk, who were more than generous with their expertise and time. Thank you for serving on my committee. I would also like to thank everyone at the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, especially program coordinator Will Burdette, for kindly letting me use their lab facilities and equipment. Many thanks to all of you! v Gender Variation in Writing: Analyzing Online Dating Ads Patrick Schultz, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Lars Hinrichs This dissertation presents a study of gendered language variation and linguistic indexicality in computer-mediated communication. A two-pronged approach combining the analysis of language production in a corpus of 103,000 English-language online dating ads with a language perception study (891 participants) is taken towards identifying the usage patterns and social meanings of nine features of e-grammar (Herring 2012). The indexicalities of features exhibiting gendered patterns in production as well as perception, emoticons (e.g. : ) ) and prosodic items (e.g. haha), are discussed in light of their linguistic and social context. Drawing on empirical research on American gender ideologies, the study argues that they index characteristics such as friendliness and emotional expressiveness, both stereotypically associated with women. In an instance of indirect indexicality (Ochs 1992), they are then linked to femininity in this type of computer-mediated communication. In production, the same features exhibit a strong audience effect (Bell 1984): women, for instance, use them more frequently in ads directed at other women. Throughout the analysis, the study makes use of and illustrates use cases for computational tools such as machine learning algorithms or automatic part-of-speech tagging in sociolinguistic research. At the same time, it attempts to strike a balance vi between a quantitative, data-driven approach and the nuanced analysis of gender identities and linguistic indexicality in the performance of gendered identities. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................... xi List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Study Outline .................................................................................................................... 1 1.3. Background ........................................................................................................................ 2 1.3.1. Computational sociolinguistics ....................................................................... 2 1.3.2 Language and gender ......................................................................................... 5 1.3.4. Contribution ................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: Language and Gender Research ................................................................................. 8 2.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 8 2.2. Early Studies ..................................................................................................................... 9 2.3. Gender in Quantitative Sociolinguistics ...................................................................11 2.3.1. Labov’s “Gender Paradox” .............................................................................12 2.3.2. Resolving the gender paradox ......................................................................19 2.3.3. Gender in quantitative sociolinguistics: summary ..................................25 2.3.4. Alternative approaches ...................................................................................26 2.3.5. Problems with the gender model in quantitative sociolinguistics .......28 2.4. Gender and Language as Social Practice ..................................................................31 2.4.1. Eckert: ‘The whole woman’ ...........................................................................31 2.4.2. Eckert & McConnell-Ginet: ‘Think Practically, Look Locally’ ............34 2.4.3. Recent Research ...............................................................................................38 2.5. Lakoffian Language and Gender Studies ..................................................................44 2.5.1. The dominance model .....................................................................................45 2.5.2. The difference model .......................................................................................46 2.5.3. Linguistic representation of women ............................................................47 2.6. Gender Variation in Writing .......................................................................................48 2.7. Implications for this Study ...........................................................................................52 Chapter 3: Production ......................................................................................................................54 3. 1. The Research Question ................................................................................................54 viii 3.1.1. Previous Research .......................................................................................................55 3. 2. The Dataset ....................................................................................................................59 3.3. Method ..............................................................................................................................63 3.3.1. Feature extraction ...........................................................................................64 3.3.2. Discovery ...........................................................................................................81 3.3.3. Analysis ..............................................................................................................93 3.4. Results ............................................................................................................................ 110 Chapter 4: Perception .................................................................................................................... 112 4.1. The Research Question .............................................................................................. 113 4.1.1. Previous literature ........................................................................................ 114 4.2. Method ........................................................................................................................... 118 4.2.1 Creating the questionnaire .......................................................................... 120 4.2.2. Creating the control stimulus .................................................................... 124 4.2.3. Creating treatment stimuli ......................................................................... 126 4.2.4. Method evaluation ........................................................................................ 127 4.3. Results ............................................................................................................................ 128 4.3.1 Results control stimulus ............................................................................... 129 4.3.2. Results treatment stimuli ............................................................................ 130 4.3.3. Controlling for genre ................................................................................... 130 4.3.2. Participant meta-commentary on gender-linked features .................. 139 4.3.3. Dynamics of perceived author gender and perceived author attributes142 4.3.4. Summary .................................................................................................................... 147 Chapter 5: Conclusion ..................................................................................................................