Mini Investigation into Text Messages

My hypothesis I wanted to test was if there was any significant differences in the way females and males text and if these differences were stereotypical ones such as females are more likely to send emoticons. One conversation I collected was a group chat between 5 girls and 5 boys all either 16 or 17 who attended the same college. One of the main gender differences in text messages is that girls are more likely to text people to organise plans which means girls are more likely to use interrogatives. However, research suggests that guys are more likely to text due to boredom with use of more declaratives and exclamatory sentence moods.

From my data I found some evidence which both proves some differences but refutes others. 4 out of my 5 conversations I collected all started with an interrogative and all but one of these questions were asked by the girls. However, there are differences in the way boys and girls open the conversation even if both open with a question. One girl opened with "guys !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we need to meet up :) ... what are people doing ? :)". In this particular text message, the sender uses tree different sentence moods; an exclamatory, an imperative and then an interrogative. The over use of exclamation marks is said to be a stereotypical text technique that women usually use to convey their urgency in a text message. The use of more than one exclamation mark could be because she wants everyone to read it recognise that it is something important about what she has to say. It could also be another way to open up a message rather than saying "hey" as research suggests in text messages, less people open in a way they would do when talking face to face with that person. Another reason could be that it reflects the sender's personality and she is that enthusiastic in person and she is just conveying that in a text. Also, the imperative used could be a mitigated imperative because the emoticon of a smiley face could act as a quicker or more intimate way of replacing "please" or "thank you" in a mitigated imperative. This contrasts when one of the boys opened a conversation with "So whos intown atm?", apart from the lack of an apostrophe, a forgotten space between "intown" and the acronym "atm", this text message uses quite standard English and the changes could be because he was rushing the text and didn't see the point in proof reading because the receivers would understand what he way saying.

Another quote I found interesting was from another one of the boys from my data. He was trying to convince some of the other boys to go to town by telling them to bring their skateboards so they can do "some sweet street shit". The use of the taboo language in this context is used to entertain the audience and persuade them to go to town with them. Also, the repetition of the "s" sound called a caesura and is effectively used because it sounds funny. This also proves some other gender theories about text messages which is that males are more likely to swear in texts than females.