Stereotypes and Gender Identity in Italian and Chilean Chat Line Rooms

This work is an attempt to analyze how men and women communicate gender identity by using stereotypical traits in a chat line environment, through quantitative and qualitative data. In Study 1 (Coding & Counting Approach, Herring, 2004), 80 same-sex conversations (40 men and 40 women; 40 Italians and 40 Chileans), carried out in public chatrooms were analyzed using some Project H-Codebook categories and the X². The categories taken into consideration were: Firstper, Opinion, Apology, Question, Emoticon, Emodevice, Coalition_1, Coalition_2, Fact, Action, Challenge, Flame, Status, Style. The results showed no significant differences between women and men in the use of these categories, except for Flame (p<0.001). We used the Conversational Analysis method in Study 2 to examine conversational dynamics which chatters use to co-construct their identity. Qualitative results have emphasized the existence of specific gender related mechanisms, thereby making it possible to understand the construction of online subjectivity through relationships. Our results suggest that there is an opportunity to investigate communicative style through both quantitative and qualitative differences.

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