Linguistic accommodation in online communication: The role of language and gender

Abstract

This study forms part of an ongoing line of research that aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of culture and gender in shaping participation in computer- mediated communication (CMC) environments. The objective of this paper is to determine to what extent female and male participants in online support groups for men and women adapt their linguistic behaviour to that of the other members of the community in their desire for social approval, attractiveness, and integration. By focusing on a diverse sample of adult users of online support groups, we investigate linguistic accommodation at the structural level. Moreover, a comparative discourse analysis between interactions in English and Peninsular Spanish will seek to determine whether this accommodation behaviour, a well-documented phenomenon in English, is common practice in Spanish, where research in the field has not yet been systematically undertaken. In general, the findings show that women converge more to the structure of the forum than men. However, there exist cross-cultural differences in accommodation. The participants writing in Spanish, both men and women, converge more overtly in their use of structural elements than those writing in English. The study on accommodation is complemented by a comparative discourse analysis which reveals that messages posted in women’s fora present an intimate, personal, and emotionally expressive linguistic style which favours ‘rapport’ rather than ‘report’, a tendency already identified by Tannen (1991) in women’s face-to-face conversation