Fascinating sociolinguistic analysis of gender differences (and political affiliations) in language use online. Guilty as charged. So why do women use emoticons and exclamation points more often than men? I do it to convey context in place of body language. If you can’t see my face, how do you know if I’m serious, flippant, or just kidding. Do men not care if they are misunderstood?
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madame scientist's not-so-mad musings 
Are you trolling or are you really looking for an answer? (emoticons)
Flippantly, men don’t care if they are misunderstood. We know women think we’re wrong no matter what, so it doesn’t much matter. ( more emoticons )
If a man says something in a forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?
Well, Phil Calvin , it’s a good thing you interjected (emoticons) or I would have been mortally offended (trolling, indeed!). Seriously, I won’t fall for your flippant explanation (more emoticons). It’s more deep seated than that. If women (or men) can figure it out, there would be more gender equality in the workplace..which is what I care about. Exclamation.
🙂
I read the article more closely, and I’m not impressed. Yes, men and women use different language. And if you look for triggers you can determine who’s who. But they didn’t impress me with their accuracy.
Your point about the use of emoticons to aid understanding is taken. Men probably look at emoticons like they look at crying. Yes, tears do aid in conveying a feeling of hurt, anger, despair. But men aren’t going to cry in public. And some men are not going to type a smiley if their life depended on it. Does it lead to miscommunication? Yes.
A similar experiment could be done with the use of “u”, “gud”, “shud”, and “wud”. No way would I ever type those in email, sms or on G+. For me, it’s an immediate red-flag that means “IDIOT”. That’s a result of my cultural frame of reference (age, nationality, etc) I know, but it’s not changing. I’m too old. 😉
For these investigators, if someone types “gud” instead of good, it would correlate highly with South Asian.