Eat your heart out, David Crystal!
So, apparently college students (at least the ones at American University) are more formal in their IM'ing than previously thought.... and the style appears to be gender-split as well. Huh.
posted by Mike at 9:01 AM
4 Comments:
Interesting! I agree with the author's bemusement with the better spelling in IM than on papers...strange!
Does anybody remember that horrible proto-Nazi book "Geschlecht und Charakter?" The premise was basically that men and women are hard-wired to think, learn, and behave differently from one another. It's a terrible work of pseudo-science. But, now that the President of Harvard University has joined the fray, it seems the "science" of gender distinction is attaining new credibility! Personally, I think such "science" is suspect and tendentious.
I practically dismiss any claims of gender-based intellectual differences upon first sight. I thought, though, that the more general statement, that IM is actually more formal (I know mine is) than "previously thought", was a bit of a jab at some of the material we've read.
This week's Time Magazine has an article on gender and intelligence. Although it seems there is evidence (I hope the study was done using more than 20 people, which was more or less the basis for a groundbreaking discovery on the issue several years ago) that the brains of women and of men work differently, I believe the underrepresentation of women in the sciences is linked to the type of education women receive when they are growing up and to a "glass ceiling" when they are developing their careers either in academia or outside it. Iceland proves my point:"The Iceland Exception: A Land Where Girls Rule in Math" By VIVIENNE WALT
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050307/sciceland.html
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If the underrepresentation of women is due to biological causes how can the President of Harvard University explain the fact that Icelandic teenage girls outperform their male counterparts in math by a difference of 15-30 points but later on are less than a third of college science students?
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