Gender Differences on Student’s Use of Language on Facebook in Sampoerna School of Education

Abstract

                  Facebook is a platform that has significantly developed in Indonesia. Now it becomes a fast growing medium of communication for the purpose of social interaction at an informal level, and has already become a medium that is a large part of the lives of many people in Indonesia, especially in SSE. Moreover, Facebook as an online medium of communication has a significant sociolinguistic variable which is gender. Therefore, this paper tries to find out the use of language by the students of SSE in Facebook communication. Twenty five students both male and female along with fifty ‘posts’ were observed. The finding showed that fifty posts might classify into six tables which are the loving, hating, ridiculing, encouraging, groaning and confirming. The six tables demonstrate a clear difference in the language used by males and females which underlying expression of aggressiveness versus supportiveness and directive versus negotiable. Then, it leads to a conclusion that language styles in online communication are different because they reflect the different goals of the users. 

Language and Gender

Language, culture and society interact to give different levels of power and recognition in society. The different way boys and girls are socialized has significant results on the way they communicate as adults because this social behavior is carried on into adulthood. In other words, it is consistently reflected in the different social and communicative styles of women and men.

According to Tannen (1995, p. 138), communication isn't as simple as saying what you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, and differs from one person to the next, because using language is a learned behavior. How we talk and listen is deeply influenced by cultural expectations. Women and men are like people who have grown up in two subcultures - they have two broad different styles of speaking and establishing social status.

Herring (2000) argued that the main distinction between the way boys and girls communicate is that girls generally use the language to negotiate closeness to establish intimacy as a basis of friendship or called collaboration-oriented and in comparison, boys generally use language to negotiate their status in the group or called competition-oriented.

The theme of using power to negotiate status by males and cooperation to establish relationship by females is consistently played out throughout adulthood and repeated in the social and linguistic communication at all levels: at home, work, meetings, social occasions, and in personal, casual and formal contacts. Consequently female and male tend to have different habitual ways of saying what they mean.

Facebook
           Facebook is a new mode of social networking that has come as the most popular social networking site in the past few years, especially in the Indonesian context. It thus has developed into a significant platform on which social interaction takes place on the World Wide Web among teenagers. Therefore, it may become a prospective resource for sociolinguistic field since it demonstrates the language that used by male and female which can be analyzed.

Since its creation, Facebook has resulted in a unique new form of language. Facebook is arguably more interesting and innovative than any other Internet-based language communication medium. Online mediums, with numerous features, tend to change language in interesting ways. Furthermore, Facebook is a fast growing medium of communication for the purpose of social interaction at an informal level, and has already become a medium that is a large part of the lives of many teenagers in Indonesia.

This social networking medium works based on the concept of “walls” which is owned by every member of the Facebook community. On the walls, status messages, which refer to messages on many subjects, are posted. This is the text of which the text will be collected from.

This social networking platform can be in overall be considered to be a new mode of communication on the Internet, where users often direct their status messages to either a particular recipient, or to every other user (“friend” who has permission to view his/her wall, or as a mode of self-expression). This function of posting “status messages” is the main focus of this research. It should be noted that other functions which Facebook provides, such as private messages and chats, will not be discussed in the scope of this research study.  

This research aims to analyze the use of language on Facebook by SSE students, considering the variable of gender. This research will measure on the gender differences on language used in Facebook communication.

Methodology

Participants

The participants of the research are fifty SSE students with various ages among 18 – 21 years old. They were chosen randomly from 189 students in SSE. Seventy five percent of them are active users in Facebook who are updating minimum seven status messages each day. Then twenty percent are average users who are updating minimum two status messages each day. While the rest five percent are passive users in Facebook who are updating three until five status messages each week.

Instrument

The instrument used in the research is Facebook posts. The posts were taken randomly from three features of Facebook. First is ‘news feeds’, the homepage of Facebook where all the new status updates and user activities from everyone were posted. Second is‘wall’ where all the status message and user activities of one user were posted. Then the last is ‘comments’, a quick reply for status messages.

Procedure

Firstly, fifty posts from fifty SSE students’ Facebook account are copied and observed. Then, the fifty posts will be analyzed and classified into some classification which will lead to the further indication of the gender differences in Facebook communication.

Result

The fifty posts that have been copied from fifty SSE students’ Facebook account are classified into six classifications which are loving, hating, encouraging, ridiculing, confirming and groaning.  The six classifications were represented in the tables below.

Loving
Male	Female
Dah lama otak dan hati ini menggu saat saat seperti sekarang, tapi kenapa sekarang??? OMG... (AP, 19)	Sangat membutuhkan kunci. Bukan kunci untuk membuka lemari, Namun kunci untuk membuka hati. :) (IS, 20)
Gak nahaaan liat dia senyum!! (RF, 21)	Seneng lho punya banyak temen, terlebih lagi punya temen kayak..... kamu :) (AA, 20)

Hating
Male	Female
Kebodohan gue yang paling besar adalah gue terlalu perduli sama org lain, even tuh org ga perduli sama dirinya sendiri!! *kuota sabar habis (AI, 21)	bohong terus, g ush ngomong aja ke aq sampe bsa ngomong yang jujur. (AS, 20)
Lu manfaatin gue ya! Ok! (RS, 19)	Tega…. (KH, 18)
Gw ENEK sm lu..!! F*** (RP, 19)	Tau gini mending gw kerja sendiri deh.. (KT, 19)
gx suka tugas KELOMPOK. (EZ,  20)	Beginikah cara kau memperlakukan orang yang telah menyayangimu… (GF, 19)
tipe kya lu berdua mana bisa fokus dlm 2 hal sekaligus? b*llsh*t abis itu mah.. (JS, 21)	Capek gw sebenrnya lu giniin mulu.. (KL, 19)

                                                           

Ridiculing
Male	Female
makanya klo ngebayangin jangan yg gampang2.. jadi ga siap kan! #soktau haha (BF, 19)	Makanya kalo punya gigi jangan dipager hehe.. (NG, 19)
tugas men, jangan kya si MZ lu.. (JD, 21)	Susah sih kalo punya kulit bersinar hahaha.. (KP, 21)
lagi heboh hasil SNMPTN ya..?? bagi yang ketrima, selamat datang di dunia perkuliahan, dan selamat menderita...!! #ketawa setan :D (RA, 19)
haha lo belom pernah ngalamin pengalaman kya gini kan! (AH. M. 18)

Encouraging
Male	Female
movie mam..semngt...!!! hahah (FA, 19)	ayo.kapan mau syuting dan menyeleseikan tugas kita,,,,,,,, (HT, 20)
Hampir beres Project ITLM n TPTLM...ayo group Logarithms, kita tuntaskan projek ini!!! (DA, 18)	Ayo mulai bekerja dengan data dari Shanza n Umar... hohohoho... (FW, 20)
SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SANGAT SETUUUJUUUUUU! :) (WP, 21)	Memang benar... sepertinya akan menghadapi medan yang lebih terjal, licin, berbatu ... ah percaya saja sama Yang Menciptakan Medan... (FK, 20)
GALIIIII, qta harus rapat, gua g sabar mau ke tempat yang menonjol itu lagii ... (AO, 20)	semangat! hwaiting! ujian calculus hari ini kita pst bisa! ^^  (SY, 20)
ayo...ayo semangat Math 2010... ITLM and TPTLM Project,,, abisin!!!haha (DL, 18)	Dear Calculus, pagi ini aku dan teman2 yang lain mau berkawan denganmu selamanya. Kita jadi teman baik ya mulai hari ini dan selamnya. mencoba untuk saling mengerti kesusahan shabat itu penting. Mari berkawan..... :D (ES, 20)
Hampir beres Project ITLM n TPTLM...ayo group Logarithms, kita tuntaskan projek ini!!! (DK, 18)	Dear Calculus, pagi ini aku dan teman2 yang lain mau berkawan denganmu selamanya. Kita jadi teman baik ya mulai hari ini dan selamnya. mencoba untuk saling mengerti kesusahan shabat itu penting. Mari berkawan..... :D (ED, 20)
	berbagi dengan sahabat anak jalanan membuat gue untuk terus bersyukur..:) (MS, 20)
	Thanks Ya Allah... Semoga aku bisa semakin memperbaiki diri,,,Bukannya merusak diri karena satu masalah... Satu pelajaran lagi yang bisa ku ambil untuk menuntunku ke anak tangga selanjutnya... \(^^)/ *SUKSES* (SS, 19)
	2 selesai, tinggal 1 lagi...:) alhamdulillah... ( SB, 19)
	Ayo kita ke salon khusus cewek, kita creambath abis gosong ujian ehehe... (KP, 21)

                                   

Groaning
Male	Female
Sumpah pegel -..- (AW, 20)	otak terbagi-bagi untuk : proposal RM, ujian TPG, essay LAD, analisis LC . seandainya bisa membelah diri =,=" (AE, 19)
mau ngebaaaaaaaaaaaand... T_T (DM, 19)	tadi siang pening karena tadi malem g tidur.sekarang karrena kebanyakan tidur.hm....... (HA, 20)
Lupa makan... =.= pantesan pusing.. hoalah.. *deritaassign**nt T_T (DN, 19)	”Miris dengan keadaan iman sendiri”... (SS, 19)
siapa bilang ga masuk sama dengan ga kerja? butek ni kepala gw! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (BG, 20)	Ternyata semuanya jauh lebih buruk dari yang ku bayangkan... Astagfirrullahhalazim... Perubahan yang sungguh menurun drastis !!! :( :( :( (AB, 18)
woi operator bbm, jangan terlalu sering pending doang... (UD, 22)	selalu kaya gini, udah adem, panas lagi.. ada aja penyebabnya.. (AG, 18)
dilema tingkat tinggi. ah! (PP, 19)	ya tugas, kapan engkau berhenti menyita waktu istirahatku?? (HI, 20)
busyet dah, puncak macet bnget (UN, 22)	rasanya putus ma pacar pas ujian akhir itu kaya kecebur ke kolam jus mengkudu busuk trus dipaksa makan udang sebaskom sama algojo yang dandan gaya bencong......!! =.=" (RA, 19)

                                   

Confirming
Male	Female
unie kitty....kmu blon kirim file-nya ke aku y? (AN, 20)	kami dh krim email bgian kmi..tlg dicheck juga linknya buat tambhan..thanks (AD, 20)
thnk dk, ud confirm. (YT, 23)	Aduh, maaf banget ya baru di confirm...n_n . Salam kenal ya...makasih udah request. (AN, 23)
Hey, sms blm dblez, knal ga ma tu orang? gw mles nerima yg strange2.. (JK, 21)	Dear kawan, check email kalian ya.....Thanks (NF, 20)
gausa di approve deh bang,, gue juga ga penah contact" an ama dia (ER, 19)	Kawan , kapan ya kita tuntasin ept bagian kita? dikumpulin hari selasa kan? jadi kayaknya ngerjainnya mesti weekend ini deh, kalo ga besok, sabtu ato minggu? (SD, 20)
ul...bsok gw krumah lw,lw ada dirumah ga?? (AD, 22)	aul gmna? dah better blum say?btw ethicsnya uda ap blum say.... (NY, 20)

Discussion

            Referring to the findings above, there is a clear difference in the language used by males and females which underlying expression of aggressiveness versus supportiveness and directive versus negotiable. This analysis supported by the theory of Herring (2000) in the male/aggressive and female/supportive dichotomy theory. As indicated in the loving table, the way male expressing their love is straight and very explicit while female expressing their love implicitly. It may cause by many factors such as the courage of the person and the level of their love relationship. In the next table which is the hating table, it indicated the 'Aggressive' expressions recorded in the posts are mostly written by male. Moreover, posts by male often used many exclamations which considered aggressive. Male are also using swearword that we find in the third and fifth expression in the hating table. Compare to the female post that indicated using self-reflection in expressing their hate. In the ridiculing table, male used far more openly aggressive language, including direct personal attacks and over sarcastic while female posts ridicule someone in an open way, so it’s not considered as personal ridicule. Then, in the encourage table, the most significant part is the numbers of the man posts in encouraging table are 45% less than female posts. Furthermore, the supportive language used by female is well composed compare to the male posts. Next, is the groaning table which is not really showed some significant difference except the length of each male posts are shorter than female posts. The last table is the confirming table which significantly indicated the directive of male posts and the negotiable of female posts. Both of them are clearly represented by the first, second and fifth posts in the confirming table.

There is undeniably a gender differences on students’ use of language on Facebook in SSE. Male are tend to post in an aggressive and directive way, while female tend to be far more supportive and negotiable in their posts.

The reason seems lies very much in the different approach taken by women and men towards this new electronic technology. It is congruent with the socialization and integration of males and females into society. Men apparently see the opportunity provided by this technology as a chance to easily gaining valuable information by being a directive and show some power by being aggressive and sarcastic, while women apparently view this technology as an opportunity to nurture existing relationships and even develop new ones by being more supportive and gaining valuable information politely by being negotiable. In conclusion, language styles in online communication are different because they reflect the different goals of the users.

References

Poynton, C. (1989). Language and Gender: Making the Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wardhaugh, R. (1986). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Tannen, D. (1991). How to Close the Communication Gap between Men and Women, downloaded in July 2^nd 2011 from,

http://www.iteslj.org/Articles/tannenhtwx

Herring, S.C. (2000) "Gender differences in CMC: Findings and implications". Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Journal, downloaded in July 2^nd 2011 from, http://www.cpsr.org/issues/womenintech/herring/view?searchterm=herring

Herring, S.C. (ed.) 1996. Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Google “Stupidifies” Us?

“When we are googling, we have saved our time in finishing our paper, essay or even research since Google helps us a lot. However, did Google’s help spoil us?

This first question is not about a technical or policy issue on the Internet or even how people use the Internet, but an unsupported risk to human intelligence and methods of inquiry. Usually, questions about how technologies affect our learning or practice really concern our values and how we choose technologies, not the technology itself. And that's the basis on which I address such questions. I am not saying technology is neutral, but that it is created, adopted, and developed over time in a dialog with people's desires.

I respect the questions posed by Nicholas Carr in his Atlantic article although it's hard to take such worries seriously when he suggests that even the typewriter could impoverish writing and would like to relieve his concerns. The question is all about people's choices. If we value introspection as a road to insight, if we believe that long experience with issues contributes to good judgment on those issues, if we (in short) want knowledge that search engines don't give us, we'll maintain our depth of thinking and Google will only enhance it.

What search engines do is provide more information, which we can use either to become amateurs (Carr's worry) or to boost our knowledge around the edges and do fact-checking while we rely mostly on information we've gained in more vigorous ways for our core analyses. Google frees the time we used to spend pulling together the last 10% of facts we need to complete our research. I read Carr's article when The Atlantic first published it, but I used a Google search to pull it back up and review it before writing this response. That’s why, Google is my friend J

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Mobile Learning, Is It Applicable?

“Mobile e-learning will go away. There is always the latest thing in e-learning that everyone must do. One of my least favorite of these is mobile e-learning. E-learning will not happen, at least not seriously, on mobile phones.

Why not? Because it takes time to learn something. You have to really understand a situation. You have to practice a skill. You have to consider alternatives. You have to create deliverables. At least you do for the e-learning that I build. This takes time—a lot of time. It was seriously suggested recently in a full year all day every day course I was building, that we needed to make it available on mobile phones. I don’t know about you, but staring at mobile phone for an hour makes my eyes hurt. Try doing it all day for a year. It makes no sense.

We don’t learn anything instantly. Real learning is not done on a train or a bus. The kinds of courses that can be delivered that way will be shown to not be particularly useful.“

That was a quote from Mr. Schank article about technology in education.

At the first we may think that he’s wrong, and that can be expected from me as I am someone who’s passionate about the subject of mLearning. But then I dissected his quote and realized that he’s right to say that mobile learning will not happen the same way it does with real eLearning. That’s true, and mLearning is not supposed to be like eLearning. Mobile devices are not the venue for deep, broad learning, at least not as a single source for that learning (i.e. they can be part of a deeper, longer process of learning, but they are not a great place for that type of learning by themselves).

Mobile learning is often best as an extension to that core knowledge that you learn in a classroom or a good eLearning course. Mobile learning also has the potential to allow someone to access the information from those courses at any time because of the ubiquitous nature and portability of mobile devices.

Mobile learning at its’ best conforms to the learner’s lifestyle in a way that traditional classroom learning and eLearning titles just can’t. So while a learner is building a base of knowledge in a traditional setting, mobile learning can act as an extension to that, allowing the learner to practice certain tasks and recall important concepts at the point of need or simply to brush up on skills.

I don’t think mobile learning will or should ever come in the form of large multi-hour courses. But I do think that mobile learning has its’ place and I do think that Mobile Learning is gaining strength not because it’s another learning technology trend, but because it has real promise and shows real potential to help learners. 

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Social Relations: Online vs Offline

Have you ever heard that someone who is “hyperactive” (read: exist) in social networking often revealed as a “standard” (read: normal) or even ignorant person in the real life?

Some people worry about losing touch with friends and family if they too focus on social networking. Then, I personally don’t worry about that problem. I think we'll continue to honor the human needs that have been hard-wired into us over the millions of years of evolution. I do think technologies ranging from email to social networks can help us make new friends and collaborate over long distances.

However, I do worry that social norms aren't keeping up with technology. For instance, it's hard to turn down a "friend" request on a social network, particularly from someone you know, and even harder to "unfriend" someone. We've got to learn that these things are OK to do. And we have to be able to partition our groups of contacts as we do in real life (College, Family, Best friends etc.). More sophisticated social networks will probably evolve to reflect our real relationships more closely, but people have to take the lead and refuse to let technical options determine how they conduct their relationships. Therefore, we are recommended to use social networking as long as we become the controller of our own relationship and not become controlled by the social networking.

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Wikipedia: Reliability in Collaboration

“Remember, since you’re doing an academic writing especially on research, you are not allowed to use Wikipedia as one of your citation or references!” Have you ever heard those sentences? Yes! I guarantee that if you’re a scholars or learners that sentence is familiar. Then , what’s wrong with Wikipedia? Why it is restricted or discredited?

     Long time ago, BW (Before Wikipedia), most people either went to the library or collected expensive hardbound copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Walles and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia officially. The two were working on an online encyclopedia using only expert-written articles called Nupedia, and found the process to be extremely slow. One of the employees on the encyclopedia suggested using the new wiki technology to create a “feeder” of information to the project. Soon the wiki articles overtook the Nupedia work. Then, Wales and Sanger decided to create Wikipedia to distinguish between the expert-written Nupedia and the open sourced, public driven, collaborative edited Wikipedia. Since its inception, the question of whether the site is a reliable resource or not has been debated. Therefore, since it is debatable, some of college and university choose to warn students not to use Wikipedia as a reference or citation.

     Moreover, as Wikipedia uses a collaborative editing process, questions of the sites reliability will be raised. Nonetheless, the site continues to grow. Again, according to their own website, Wikipedia has now more than “15 million freely useable articles in over two hundred languages worldwide, and content from a million registered user accounts and countless anonymous contributors.” As of the date of the publication of this article, Wikipedia has now more than 3.333 million English language articles. And as the site grows, attitudes toward the reliable and usefulness of the encyclopedia has changed. In 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article written by Cathy Davidson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Duke University, in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used to teach students about the concepts of reliability and credibility.

     It could be argued that by Wikipedia highlighting the above articles they are guilty of self-referencing. Nonetheless, there is a general consensus forming on to how one should use Wikipedia as a resource. Most educators agree, Wikipedia can be an extremely useful tool. However, when reading Wikipedia, one should always check the sources cited in the article. Wikipedia articles are useful in providing general background on the subject you are studying. Moreover, as you can see when you’re looking for some information in the search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing, you’ll find that Wikipedia is positioned in the first line, on the top of the search result, for almost every kind of information! Wikipedia is affordable resources.

     And so, in regards to Wikipedia’s reliability, it can be argued that the site is reliable in providing researchers and students a guiding light, or a “starting point,” into the subject. But, because of its collaborative editing process, Wikipedia should not be considered a carefully vetted source, unless you are writing about the Wikipedia (organization) itself. Then, directly quoting the site and its founders just might be appropriate. After all, who would know the history of Wikipedia better than Wikipedia? :D