TITLE: GENDER POLITENESS AND NETIQUETTE; A CRITICAL STUDY ON FACEBOOK
Technology and human being today are inseparable. Human beings live each day depending on technology. Technology is indeed the creation of human beings but they end up depending on their own creation. Technology is good for human being in their daily lives in order for them to lead a life that revolves around the usage of technology in a good way. Computers are one of the many technologies created by human beings. Computers are an essential tool for every individual in this world regardless of age and status. The internet on the other hand has been and still is one of the most important sources of information in the whole world because of its ability to search for anything if not everything that is needed.
The internet houses millions of websites that helps people to look for information and to interact with one another. Human beings need to communicate with each other to live. The internet is one of the best ways to interact without the fuss. Someone from Malaysia can easily interact with someone from a different country and not have to wait months or even hours to speak with the person intended. Facebook as the whole world knows it is the leading social network for people from around the world to stay connected and interact with each other. People update their daily life routines on Facebook and they even express themselves well enough on Facebook. Man and woman, boys and girls even children have Facebook accounts regardless of age and occupation. This is where the interest to study Facebook as a language corpus comes in.
This paper is written in order to study the language corpus used on Facebook based on the statuses that are updated by Facebook users. The statuses are studied and classified under the category of gender because it shows the social behavior of the person itself and not because of their sex. The scope of study comes under their politeness in using language either in Malay or
English and their netiquette when posting their statuses on Facebook. The subjects are randomly chosen with 10 each from the male and female users. The scope of this study will include the analysis of the statuses and listing them under the heading of politeness and netiquette where the outcomes of the analysis will determine whether the male or female users are politer than the other and ethical during their posting of their statuses.
This study will list down the findings that are found in the discussion and discuss briefly on why the results that are attained turn out to be the way they are based on the characteristics of politeness and the netiquette that is given. The results of this study will be concluded based on the findings and this is to determine whether gender plays a role in the statuses that are updated or whether gender is directly related with the results of politeness and netiquette that are achieved. The study will then conclude whether it is safe to say that a certain gender can be stereotypically judged or generalized with the result attained from the study.
Gender, Netiquette and Politeness
There are three types of key words or main points that will be focus and discuss in our research, which are; gender, netiquette and politeness. It is important to know the meaning of all of this key words in order to get a better understanding of this study. Firstly, gender is a set of characteristics differentiate between male and female. In fact, it is also a relation between men and women, in both perceptual and material way. Furthermore, gender is more refers to socially and behaviourally rather than biologically which led to the determined characteristics categorized as masculine and feminine. Basically, this is means that, the meaning of gender seems to be seen in a bigger scope. However, in our research, we will use the term gender as to found out whether men or women shows the most polite way in a written conversation, such as through Facebook. In addition, it is also to study either men or women follows the code of ethics in using the internet.
The second important keyword is called netiquette. The word netiquette essentially has been in use since 1988. It is actually a contraction of network etiquette or internet etiquette and it is an etiquette guideline for posting messages to online services and specifically internet newsgroups; social site such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, blogs and others. In other words, netiquette is basically, rules and regulations in using the internet. In addition, the goal of netiquette is to create a pleasant internet experience for every internet users. Furthermore, there are many rules in netiquette such as the rule of sending (email, posting in Facebook or other social sites and so on), the rules of replying and forwarding, the rules to maintain civility in conversations, not to misuse a person’s identity background, not to use vulgar words, to avoid racism and so on. However, in accordance to our research, we will specifically use netiquette as one of the methods to found out either males or females shows a lot more politeness in written conversation, and more particularly a conversation through using the internet social site such as Facebook.
Finally, politeness is another important key word in our research or study. Politeness means the application of good manners of etiquette toward others; as in speech, behaviour or so on. Furthermore, the specific goal of politeness is to produce a great and comfortable environment for all people; no matter either through face-to-face communications, through internet or other medium. Politeness can be divided into two which are positive politeness and negative politeness. Positive politeness point of view is to seek a positive relationship between peoples. In fact, it is use to make the hearer feel good about himself or anything that related to him. A speaker is showing positive politeness if he or she conveys more statements of solidarity, friendship, compliments and others, in any conversations. As for an example, in a statement such as ‘Hello dear, how are you?’, ‘Wow, you look amazing!’ and so on.
As for negative politeness, it seeks to make a request less infringing. It is concern on the hearer’s negative face and also to avoid the imposition on the hearer. In negative politeness, a speaker uses a lot of hedges, tag question and so on in order to respect the hearer. For example, they use statements such as ‘We regret to inform you’, ‘If you don’t mind..’ and so on. Nevertheless, based on our research, we will be focusing on seeing the politeness and its relation with gender. Overall, in conclusion, it is important to understand the meaning of all of these key words in order to fully conduct a great research and most certainly a reliable result.
Literature Review
There are few articles that we found to be helpful for our research, which concerns with gender politeness and netiquette in Facebook. The first article is entitled “‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping up with’ People? Motives and Uses of Facebook” (Joinson, A.N, 2008). This article is primarily discuss about the functions of the famous social networking site nowadays, which is Facebook, and it investigates the uses of Facebook, and the enjoyment that the users achieved by using Facebook. Joinson mentioned that there are several gratifications of the use of Facebook, such as, social connection, shared identities, social surfing and status updating, and so on. In terms of gender and the gratifications of using Facebook, Joinson found out that females scored higher scale than males in most of the gratifications such as in social connection and status updating. Here we can conclude that females are more frequently visit the Facebook rather than males. At the end of the discussion, Joinson pointed out that the applications of Facebook is social in nature, such as; comparing oneself with others, asking questions to ‘friends’, viewing people from one’s neighborhood and much more. Similarly, if the goal of using Facebook is to meet new people, making one’s profile more open, so that the users could view each other’s profiles, which leads to the increasing chances of an interaction.
The second article is entitled "Gender Difference in CMC:Findings and Implications".(Herring,S.C, 2000). This paper studies on gender and politeness and also their relations to text based Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). According to Herring, text-only CMC is less revealing of personal information than face-to-face communication.Also, in the CMC which takes place in discussion lists and newsgroups on the Internet, males are more likely to post longer messages, begin and close discussions in mixed-sex groups, assert opinions strongly as "facts", use rough language,including insults and using vulgar words. In contrast, females tend to post relatively short messages, and more likely to qualify and justify their assertions, apologize, express support of others. In terms of politeness in CMC, women are more likely to thank, appreciate and apologize, and to be upset by violations of politeness, which means, famales are strict in obeying the netiquette or the ethics of using the Internet. In contrast, men generally appear to be less concerned with politeness, such as criticisms and insults and also violating online rules of conduct.
Last but not least, the third article is entitled “Face-Time: The Construction of Identity on Facebook”. (Kelly, F.L, 2007). This article discovers on how Facebook is used by users’ to construct or perform their identity and also the Facebook etiquette, risks and user rules. Kelly argued that in Facebook is not different than other forms of communication in many ways. In face-to-face communication, a person can receive immediate feedback from the audience and make adjustments to what they want to say or produce while in CMC, a person does not have that immediate feedback to make adjustments. Also, in CMC such as Facebook, the decisions about performances or what a user want to produce or say have to be made with a much larger audience in user’s mind. In short, Kelly says that Facebook’s structure allows the expression of identity in very specific ways, however, it might also limits other expressions as users tend to control what they want to produce or what they want to say.
Table 1: Status Updating Based on Gender
Male | Female
|
1) My best friend is married. i just got a job(thank God). i just need to get a room for myself to rent. for now, i just want a BB. Can it be like that? | Please don't mind me go away...lalala~...^^
|
2) What a Luck!!!!... Every DOG has his day... Quite True.. Is'nt it? LAMO | i. am. so. bored. please. kidnap. me. |
3) just had early lunch. woke up this morning still feeling angry, distraught and bitter. damn la. | I seriously hate these kinda games but too bad I've been dared to post this!
Please be honest okie! ^^
I modified it a bit :P |
4) so many things happening this week... can someone shoot me | Damn. Feeling so cold and lonely tonight... sighs~ |
5) hey2 people, my phone takda bateri, so its not that i forgot or avoiding u but i just cant turn on my fucking phone! | dh la. nak tegur terus tak jadi coz u decided u wanted to become an ass. anggap je la dh ak lupa. im tired of feeling like this. |
6) To ..... are you free monday morning? We need to discuss about both assignments 2 and 3... | shud I block mr.ex????hampeh! he adds me again and again even i denied it several times. Not that I hate him.I just want to forget him and the past. Berambos... |
7) dear God, please let me firm in whatever i do in the future, remind me always where i belong. i sure do hope that things will go on my way or the best way that You think is good for me. | Jam cm sial.
Bad bad bad day |
8) Selamat Tengah Hari =) | why do you have to lie if u don't love her? just tell her the truth. so that she can leave u easily. stop being selfish or claiming "Í care for you" is totally bullshit |
9) thank you so much! thank you for "enlightening" me that bowling is not a sport. why? because one will not sweat when bowl. thank you. now i know. you are so right. you will always be right in everything you do and say. what a role model! *imagine me saying all this in a sarcastic and annoying voice* | nightline is over lets wait for morning news. shall we. |
10) sorry god for everything. | will You marry me? |
From the table above, we found out that the male subjects show a lot more usage of positive politeness than the females. Some of the words which show the positive politeness used by male subjects are; ‘sorry’, ‘dear’, ‘selamat’, ‘thank you’, the tag question, which to confirm something such as ‘isn’t it?’ and so on. Apart from that, based on our research also, if the males show higher usage of positive words, the females tend to differ. Female subjects rather used more negative words such as ‘bullshit’, ‘ass’, ‘damn’ and so on. However, even though the female subjects used lesser positive words compared to male subjects, they also somehow used some positive words such as ‘will you’, ‘shall we’ and others.
Based on our observation, there are reasons of why male subjects are more polite than female subjects. First, we assumed that male tend to be more straightforward in their face-to-face communication rather than female. They express their feelings of anger without hiding anything from the people they are interacting with. Thus, this is the reason why male used a lot of positive words in Facebook. It is because, when they being straightforward, they seem to not have grudge on others and they don’t have anger in them which does not lead to use anything that seems vulgar in Facebook. Also, male subjects might want to prove to others that there are good manners in them by scheming what they write.
In contrast, female are more likely to hide their feelings in the face-to-face communication. It is basically their nature to take care and being much more understanding on other’s feelings. This might be one of the reasons why they expressed their feeling on Facebook. They tend to throw out their anger and when they are angry, all the unnecessary words are produced.
In terms of netiquette, which concerns with ethics in Internet, we found out that female subjects tend to violate the netiquette by intentionally talk about someone else and did not respect other’s privacy. In one of the examples above, such as;
“shud I block mr.ex????hampeh! he adds me again and again even i denied it several times. Not that I hate him.I just want to forget him and the past. Berambos...”
This female subject seems to disregard the code of ethics in using the internet because she was talking about something unpleasant about another person. On the contrary, male subjects show more respect by following the ethics in using the Internet; which is, most of them only express things that only relate to them, not others. They also like to post things that are important and of their interest.For example;
“dear God, please let me firm in whatever i do in the future, remind me always where i belong. i sure do hope that things will go on my way or the best way that You think is good for me.”
To conclude this discussion, we can clearly see that the male subjects show more politeness and even follow the netiquette rather than female subjects.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, although most of previous researches prove that female users are politer in a conversation either face-to-face or written; it differs from the result of this study. It is proven otherwise through the data that we have collected. As a result, we compared and discovered that men are actually politer than women in written interaction. Furthermore, based on our research, we also found out that the male subjects also do not breach the ethical use of the internet. They adhere to the netiquette even though they are not aware of it. In fact, they only write on matters that only concerns themselves and not others.
References
Herring,S.C. (2000). Gender Differences in CMC: Findings and Implications.Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility.18(1). Retrieved from:
http://cpsr.org/issues/womenintech/herring/
Joinson, A.N. (2008).‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping up with’ People? Motives and Uses
of Facebook.Online Social Networks.(n.a), 1027-1036.
Kelly, F.L. (2007). Face-Time: The Construction of Identity on Facebook. (Honors dissertation,
Miami University). Retrieved from:
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Kelley%20Faith.pdf?muhonors1178214020
