computer mediated communication

this week's topic was familiar to me cos it's the broad topic that covers my chosen project. so many of the terms used in the lecture-tutorial were understood, and somewhat like a revision (:

we were looking at one of the previous student's project on gender in instant messaging. her survey produced a very surprising result for which females made use of more swear words in msn conversations than males. i had come across this research paper before, so that was no surprise to me. but when i first read the paper, i was indeed surprised that females swore more than males did. isn't it the case, in real life, that males swear more than females? i don't have the statistics to prove it, but my male friends generally make use of more swear words than we female folks do. and some of my male friends have also said before that the swear words always come out more easily when they're angered. some of my female friends launch into a tirade of words whilst others get too angry to even speak. personally, i just came to the conclusion that perhaps this student happened to survey a group of girls who swore a lot.

however, dr deng provided an alternative explanation. the best thing about the explanation was that it was connected to the previous topic that we discussed (face and politeness). he said that perhaps it was because these swear words were a type of positive politeness strategy that these girls used with each other to show that they were close. hmm, never thought of it that way.

but i can see how that's possible! all the people on one's msn list are people who are known by the individual. and more often than not, you'd speak to someone whom you are close to. so it's possible that you're less cautious with the language you use because of the familiarity between the two persons speaking - you know that the other person will not take offense.