Written Communication Oct 2016

Gender/Genre: The Lack of Gendered Register in Texts Requiring Genre Knowledge

Brian N. Larson

Abstract

Some studies have found characteristics of written texts that vary with author gender, echoing popular beliefs about essential gender differences that are reinforced in popular works of some scholarly authors. This article reports a study examining texts ( N = 193) written in the same genre—a legal memorandum—by women and men with similar training in production of this type of discourse—the first year of U.S. law school—and finds no difference between them on the involved–informational dimension of linguistic register developed by Biber. These findings provide quantitative data opposing essentialist narratives of gender difference in communication. This essay considers relevance theory as a framework for understanding the interaction, exhibited in this and previous studies, of genre knowledge and gendered communicative performances.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2016-10-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088316667927
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
genre theory discourse analysis gender and writing
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Yim et al. (2024)
    “I Don’t Feel Like It Is ‘Mine’ at All”: Assessing Wikipedia Editors’ Sense of …
    Written Communication
  2. Larson et al. (2023)
    Reconceiving Argument Schemes as Descriptive and Practically Normative
    Argumentation

References (48) · 1 in this index

  1. 10.1515/text.2003.014
     ↗
  2. Argamon S., Koppel M., Pennebaker J. W., Schler J. (2007). Mining the blogosphere: Age, gender and the variet…
     ↗
  3. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001
     ↗
  4. Bazerman C. (2013)
    A theory of literate action: Literate action
  5. Berkenkotter C. (1995)
    Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: Cognition/culture/power
Show all 48 →
  1. 10.1017/CBO9780511621024
     ↗
  2. 10.1017/CBO9780511519871
     ↗
  3. 10.1017/CBO9780511804489
     ↗
  4. Bird S. (2009)
    Natural language processing with Python
  5. Butler J. (1993)
    Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.”
  6. 10.1002/9780470756942.ch19
     ↗
  7. Castillo M. (2013, December 3). Different brain wiring in men, women could explain gender differences. CBS Ne…
  8. Clary B. G. (2010)
    Successful legal analysis and writing: The fundamentals
  9. 10.1353/par.1999.0001
     ↗
  10. DeFrancisco V. P. (2014)
    Gender in communication: A critical introduction
  11. Eckert P. (2011)
    Language and gender: A reader
  12. 10.1037/a0024338
     ↗
  13. Gray J. (1992)
    Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication & …
  14. Grice H. P. (1989)
    Studies in the way of words
  15. 10.1093/llc/17.4.401
     ↗
  16. Larson B. N. (2016). Gender/genre: Python code Github repository.Github code repository. Retrieved from https…
  17. Larson B. N.
    Corpus of first-year law students’ court memoranda assignments
  18. 10.1016/j.pragma.2011.07.010
     ↗
  19. Maltz D. N. (1982)
    Language and social identity
  20. Matthews P. (2007). Register. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.…
  21. 10.1080/00335638409383686
     ↗
  22. 10.1017/S0954394599112018
     ↗
  23. Quirk R. (1985)
    A comprehensive grammar of the English language
  24. 10.1145/1871985.1871993
     ↗
  25. Reymann M. (2002, June). The textual dimension involved-informational: A corpus-based study (Unpublished mast…
  26. Robb A. (2014, May 14). Women get interrupted more—even by other women. New Republic. Retrieved from https://…
  27. Schmedemann D. A. (2007)
    Synthesis: Legal reading, reasoning, and writing
  28. Searle J. R. (1970)
    Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language
  29. 10.1017/CBO9780511609213
     ↗
  30. 10.1038/42706
     ↗
  31. 10.1177/002194368602300205
     ↗
  32. Sperber D. (1995)
    Relevance: Communication and cognition
  33. 10.1177/002194368802500402
     ↗
  34. 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.021
     ↗
  35. Tannen D. (2001)
    You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation
  36. Tebeaux (1990)
    Toward an Understanding of Gender Differences in Written Business Communication…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  37. Utts J. M. (2006)
    Statistical ideas and methods
  38. 10.1002/pst.334
     ↗
  39. 10.1002/9780470756959.ch27
     ↗
  40. 10.1017/CBO9781139028370
     ↗
  41. Yan X. (2006)
    AAAI spring symposium: Computational approaches to analyzing weblogs
  42. Yus F. (2015, January). Relevance theory online bibliographic service. Retrieved from http://personal.ua.es/f…
  43. Zimmer B. (2012, November 4). How twitter language reveals your gender—or your friends: Social media is givin…
CrossRef global citation count: 5 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Philosophy & Rhetoric Sep 2024
    Where’s the Rhetoric? Imagining a Unified Field ↗
    Joshua Hanan
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism composition theory genre theory discourse analysis cultural rhetorics argument qualitative research quantitative research digital rhetoric social media grammar and mechanics gender and writing disability studies public rhetoric affect and writing body and rhetoric editorial matter
  2. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Jun 2024
    Rhetorical Leadership ↗
    Catherine L. Langford
    rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis feminist rhetorics cultural rhetorics decolonial rhetorics graduate education argument empirical research qualitative research race and writing gender and writing disability studies public rhetoric affect and writing body and rhetoric editorial matter
  3. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Mar 2024
    Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women's Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries ↗
    Cecilia Cerja
    rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis argument literacy studies race and writing gender and writing public rhetoric literary studies
  4. Pedagogy Jan 2024
    The Radical Role of Student Writing in Composition ↗
    Jessica Masterson
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy graduate education teacher development argument collaborative writing professional writing grammar and mechanics literacy studies race and writing gender and writing
  5. The Peer Review Jan 2023
    “Do You Even Know What You Are Doing?”: A Racial Other Professional Writing Tutor’s Counterstory of Imposter Syndrome ↗
    rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis teacher development collaborative writing writing centers peer tutoring professional writing race and writing gender and writing affect and writing body and rhetoric