I read this really interesting article on the Reuters Health site today:

E-mail style depends upon gender of recipient
By Anne Harding

NEW YORK, May 04 (Reuters Health) - Our communication style has more to do with who we are talking to than who we are, New Zealand researchers suggest.

Language experts say women and men have their own gender-specific communication styles. Past studies have found that women tend to speak in a more "female" way when they talk with other women, and men speak in a more "male" way when they are hanging out with the guys.

But when men and women converse, these language differences are less pronounced, as each person in the conversation adapts to the others' styles.

To see whether such language patterns extend to e-mail conversations, Rob Thomson and colleagues from the University of Otago in Dunedin recruited 22 psychology students and had them correspond by e-mail with a "net pal" over a 2-week period. Each participant had two pals, one female and one male. Both pals were actually one of the researchers, who communicated in a gender-specific way.

Past research has suggested that when writing e-mails, women tend to use intensive adverbs like "very" and "really," hedges such as "sort of" or "somewhat," and modals such as "would" and "could," according to co-author Tamar Murachver.

Studies also show that women typically refer to emotion, use personal information, apologize and make self-derogatory comments more frequently than men do. Men do all of these things less frequently, and are also more likely to express opinions and use insults, according to Murachver.

But in this study, the research team found that, regardless of their own sex, the students used "male" language when communicating with their male pal, and "female" language with their female pal.

"The most remarkable aspect of this study is that the participants' gender had very little to do with gendered speech," the authors write in a recent issue of Psychological Science.

In another experiment, Thomson and colleagues developed four different "net pal" personalities. One had a female name and e-mailed in a female style, one had a male name and used a male style, and two more e-mailed in a gender style different from their name.

Again, the students accommodated their style to that of their correspondents, but this accommodation was weaker when they corresponded with a person who used a gender style that did not match his or her name.

"Our take on it is that people were less sure how to behave towards someone showing an inconsistency between gender label and gendered language style," Murachver told Reuters Health.

The authors conclude that "it is erroneous to assume that the language a person uses in same-sex conversation is the 'natural' style for that person. Each person is capable of using a range of styles, depending on whom he or she is talking to...The study serves as a reminder that although biological sex might be stable, socially constructed categories, such as gender, are less so."

SOURCE: Psychological Science 2001;12:171-175.