"Män skriver inte om tamponger"
En undersökning om människors bild av skribentens kön
The main purpose of this essay is to identify opinions of masculine and feminine language in a written text. The aim is to examine whether the reader of a text can define the anonymous author?s sex, judging only by elements such as choice of words or sentence structure. Are there any differences between the sexes as they appear in written language, and is the common man able to make this distinction? The essay is based on several studies on people?s ideas on masculine and feminine language, as well as studies on actual differences. Together with my own empiric study, I try to make some overall generalizations about on what people base their assumptions. The study was made with a questionnaire of 6 questions based on a magazine diary, both of which were published on the Internet. The respondents were asked to first read the text and then answer the questions. Of a total 60 people asked to participate, the questionnaire was answered by 33, 17 men and 16 women, between the age of 20?30. The result shows that people had trouble finding the masculine aspects of the text, even though the author of the diary was a man. It is possible that the type of text they were asked to analyze was one usually associated with a feminine author. The subject of the text, choice of words, and the overall gut feeling was the strongest indicators that the author is a woman. Out of 33 people, 28 answered that the author was a woman.