Experimental Study of Gender Effects on Language Use in College Students' Email to Faculty.

Anecdotal reports have arisen regarding gender bias in electronic communication on college campuses. In an experiment designed to test language use in different gender contexts, participants were asked to compose an email to a professor whose gender had been experimentally manipulated. Female students, but not male students, displayed lower politeness, higher directness, and lower formality when writing to female faculty than when writing to male faculty. Results are consistent with the possibility of internalized sexism. Gender differences in language use are apparent across ages (Leaper & Smith, 2004) and settings (Newman, Groom, Handelman, & Pennebaker, 2008). Usage develops within specific language contexts. What, when, how, and with whom one communicates is learned as a function of individual experiences and expectations. Gender differences in language usage have also been found across various linguistic levels (i.e. phonological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic) and linguistic units (i.e. words, phrases, discourse). While much has been learned about gender differences in language use (Leaper, 2014), ever-changing contexts create a moving target. Electronic communication, for example, provides a relatively new environment for honing language use. College faculty have anecdotally noted that students might be inclined to address faculty of different genders with varying degrees of professional salutation (Patton, 2012), but an effective experimental examination of the phenomenon has not yet occurred. Knupsky and Nagy-Bell (2011) conducted an experiment with a small sample of female students and with "inadequate" manipulation of recipient gender; their failure to find an effect for professor gender on email language use may have been related to low power and ineffective manipulation of the gender variable. Initially a novel tool requiring specialized guidance (Duran, Kelly, & Keaton, 2005; Hassini, 2006), email has become an essential medium for communication between students and faculty. Now accessible on wired desktops, wireless laptops, tablets, and phones, email yet suffers from being an asynchronous and highly decontextualized medium for communication; thus, the potential is raised for miscommunication in email between students and faculty--groups with differing power, expectations, and perceptions. The consequences of email miscommunication are intensified by the power imbalance and the special needs of students in the college setting. Poor message quality can negatively impact relationship building (Wilson, 2005) and potential for persuasive efforts (Stephens, Houser, & Cowan, 2009). That is, malcommunication in email may cause students to not get needs met. Common complaints from faculty include concerns about the lack of professionalism in email from students (Aguilar-Roca, Williams, Warrior, & O'Dowd, 2009). Professionalism in email may be understood through the language variables: politeness, directness, and formality. Politeness in email is inferred from the presence and nature of salutations; as noted above, anecdotal reports suggest that female faculty might be subject to a lower level of politeness (Patton, 2012). Directness pertains to the language frame chosen for the email's purpose, ranging from cautious/deferential (indirect) to blunt/demanding (direct). Formality is evident in a lack of spelling and grammar errors (Stephens et al., 2009); respect for the recipient and positive impression management are consistent with carefully edited writing. The purpose of this study was to examine gender bias in email communication from college students to faculty. Gender of the faculty target of communication was experimentally manipulated, with the expectation that students may exhibit differing degrees of politeness, directness, and formality in composing messages to male and female faculty. Students' gender identification was measured, so that potential interactions between student gender and faculty gender could be explored. …