Gender Communication in a Computer-Mediated Context

Gender communication, an area of focus in the mass communication interdisciplinary field, is one that has continued to grow and expand since its inception. The mid 1970's thrust this communication focus into the research limelight with Lakoff's (1975) work on gendered language use. Since then, research in this area has matured to offer not only important theoretical implications of and for gender communication, but also practical ways in which gender communication may be understood. Gender communication studies aim to answer questions about how men and women communicate and started initially with studies focused on gender communication in the traditional face-to-face setting. The field has since grown and shifted from that initial focus to study the gender communication interactions that occur in a variety of communication settings. An example of this is the focus of this study; gender communication in the cyber world.