gender differences

“I’m Sorry”: A comparative study of gender and individual differences in applying apology strategies in YouTube videos

Kristin Nguyen, Luxuan Huang, Vanessa Zhu, Andrea Mata, Shiyun Zhou

In recent years apology videos have become a very popular tactic used by social media influencers in efforts to help restore their online image. This study will compare and contrast the apology strategies used in 3 male and 3 female YouTuber apology videos by investigating the types of linguistic features that are found in both genders. Moreover, we will further explore how the specific apology strategies being used influence the perception that their audiences/supporters have towards these specific Youtubers based on the comment section. The results showed that male Youtubers are more likely to use the “acknowledgement of responsibility” and “promise of forbearance” approach when apologizing while females are more likely to use the “explicit expression of apology” and explanation or account” strategy. Interestingly enough, the videos with the most positive responses came from 2 male and 1 female YouTuber which suggests that, according to their data set, there is a pattern in certain apology strategies that are more effective than others.

Introduction & Background

An increasing number of influencers apologized by publishing YouTube videos as an act to save faces and restore their images in the public’s mind. Previous studies about gender differences in using interpersonal apology strategies categorized apology strategies into 4 categories — explicit expression of apology, explanation or account, acknowledgement of responsibility, and a promise of forbearance, and concluded that women used more explicit apologies than men in interpersonal apologies (Holmes, 1989). However, apology videos are a fairly new phenomenon, and we wonder whether the pattern would also appear in our studies. As a result, we form our topic as a comparison study of gender difference and individual differences in Youtube apology videos in which we would explore the individual YouTuber’s choices of apology strategies and also gender differences based on the categorization mentioned above.

Project Design

To identify how different apology strategies are used by individual YouTubers as well as by each gender, we chose a sample of 6 Youtube apology videos, 3 by females and 3 by males (see Table 1). The criteria for sample choice were based on Karlsson (2020)’s standards, which are 1) made by an independent Youtuber who runs and owns the channel, 2) made originally for Youtube and conducted in English, 3) belong to Beauty, Lifestyle, or Vlogging genre, 4) apologized for racist comments. By choosing videos addressing the same controversy over past racist comments, we minimized the influences of social and cultural contexts.

Following Holmes (1989)’s categorization for apology strategy, we collected the instances from each apology video that fit into the classification. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze each individual video as well as all videos produced by each gender. We mainly employed discourse analysis to conduct the qualitative research when examining each individual Youtuber’s utterances as categorized by the four apology strategies and we also calculated the proportions of each strategy usage as divided by the total instances of apology in individual videos as well as in all videos produced by each gender. Besides, we also took the top 10 comments into account to evaluate how these apology videos were perceived (negative or positive), which then gave us implications of the effects of different combinations of apology strategies.

Results & analysis

A. Individual Differences

A.1. Jenna Marbles – apology video

Jenna Marbles’s apology video (which has been taken down along with her channel by Marbles herself) consisted of four different occurrences that she addressed. Three were ones that people criticized and questioned her about, and one was an issue that she felt she needed to apologize for, despite her claim that no one said anything negative about this issue. Her most used strategy was “explanation or account,” which was 11 times out of the total 22 strategies in her video. She showed regret in her old content and emphasized that when she made those videos, her intention was never to hurt anyone. Although the comments we analyzed were not pulled from the original video, we still believe they reflect the general opinion of her apology. Viewers almost unanimously agreed that her apology for all four instances were genuine, and many users actually displayed sympathy for her. Her apology generated many conversations and discourse about the existence of “cancel culture.” Her least used strategy was “promise of forbearance”; however, this is arguably her most effective strategy. Marbles claimed that she wanted to “be accountable for myself” and that she could not continue being on Youtube. Since the release of the apology, Marbles has not returned to Youtube.

A.2. Tana Mongeau – apology video

Tana Mongeau is a “storytime-centric creator. To preface this particular analysis, she was already well-known for embellishing some of her stories. It is interesting to note that her credibility was already questionable before the apology was released. This apology was in regard to her younger self using the N-word and to her reaction to another creator (iDubbbz) heavily criticizing her for this. Looking at the numerical data of her strategy usage, “explicit expression of apology” and “explanation or account” are nearly equal, with 11 times for the former and 13 times for the latter. However, 17 out of the 22 minutes in run time consisted of her explaining her logic of why she used to believe the Nword was acceptable to use and why she reacted aggressively towards iDubbbz. It was important to take into account the runtime and to consider that the number of times she used “explanation or account” alone does not fully reflect the implications of this strategy. She often repeated her explanations with slight variation in syntax but the overall lexical meaning was retained; she explained she was always “running away” or “hiding from my problems.” When there were “explicit expression of apology,” Mongeau also frequently berated her own image and character along with the explicit expression, such as “I’m sorry I was so fucking stupid.” Her apology had a significant negative reaction from her the audience, and many did not find her apology to be sincere or authentic.

A.3 Laura Lee – apology video

Laura Lee apologized for retweeting with racist comments in the year 2012. In her apology video, she applied explicit expression of apology 10 times, explanation or account 12 times, acknowledgement of responsibility 9 times, and a promise of forbearance 3 times. Laura used explanation or account most (p=35%) and explicit expression of apology (p=29%). Laura’s accounts or explanations were supposed to express remorse or clearly present the context of the event, but she ended up shifting blame. Laura’s strategy was to shift the responsibility to the younger her by reiterating the time when the retweet event took place was “six years ago” when she was “stupid and ignorant”. In terms of explicit expression of apology, Laura expressed her apology 10 times to different target audiences. She used “sorry” 8 times out of 10 and only said “apology” 2 times in the video which set an informal tone to her video. Overall, Laura’s apology video was like an interpersonal talk to her subscribers. Thus, even after editing, the apology video was not logical and seemed that she did not plan ahead and the use of sorry instead of a more formal term “apology” fit with this general tone.

A.4. Pewdiepie – apology video

From our pool of samples, Pewdiepie (Felix Kjellberg) had the shortest video where the run time was under two minutes. He has over 100 million subscribers, and he made the apology video in order to address and apologize for his use of the N-word during a livestream. He used all strategies a total of only six times. He only explicitly apologized for hurting and offending viewers once, and his most used strategy was “promises of forbearance.” He explained he had used the slur in the heat of the moment but that it was ultimately an inexcusable action. He placed focus on his own need to be accountable for his character and what he planned to do moving forward. His video was extremely concise compared to our other samples, and viewers seemed to react positively towards his apology. In general, most viewers commented and judged that his apology was genuine. It is also interesting to note that his comment section had many users comparing aspects about his apology to other apologies, especially that of Laura Lee’s and Tana Mongeau’s.

A.5. Shane Dawson – apology video

Shane Dawson made an apology video for doing blackface and saying the n-word in past racist YouTube videos. In his video, 80 instances counted as apology strategies, Shane mostly used “explicit expression of apology” (p = 37.5%) and “explanation or account” (p = 37.5%). “Acknowledge of responsibility” made up 15% of his apology, followed by 10% of “a promise of forbearance”. Specifically, the way Shane used “explicit expression of apology” mainly focused on expressing his regret (N = 26) through informal offers of apology “I’m sorry” which indicates Shane’s intention to resonate with his audiences. By repeating “I’m sorry” with the lowering of pitch, Shane reinforces his remorse and desperation. In terms of how Shane explained his wrong-doing, he frequently used –“funny” and “joke[s]” — to define his past mistakes. Moreover, he shifted to a higher pitch to imitate what the young Shane thought. However, this voice-shifting may not contribute to the apology but create the impression that Shane was trying to disassociate from the then-self and shift the blame. Shane also addressed himself from a third-person perspective, such as “I can’t even…see this white fucking guy do blackface.” The way he referred to himself may strengthen the impression that he was shifting the blame. The Youtuber did not frequently employ “acknowledgement of responsibility” and “a promise of forbearance”. Shane accepted the blame mostly and hardly offered a repair. Shane’s promises are also quite general and vague, such as his use of the demonstrative pronoun “that” in “I would never talk about that now”, which does not specify the action or mindset he would change.

A.6. Gabriel Zamora – apology video

Gabriel Zamora, an influencer with over 800 thousand subscribers, made an apology video for racist tweets he has posted in the past. By analyzing his apology video the data set above reveals that his most used strategies were “acknowledgement of responsibility” (p = 45%) and “explicit expression of apology” (32%). That being said, conclusions could be made towards the fact that those specific strategies are what contributed to bringing a positive light to his image because he is not just ignoring what he did, rather he is owning up to his mistakes and not making any excuses for himself. He recognizes his ignorance and explicitly states taking full accountability for it repeatedly throughout his video. Interestingly, he consistently used the phrase “truly sorry” 4/7 times he used the word “sorry”…“and for that i’m truly sorry…“the fact that i wasn’t [a positive creator] im truly sorry…” I believe his way of using it allowed for a greater expression of the extent to how regretful he actually was. Gabriel occasionally combined his strategies with “explanation or account,” his third most used (p = 13%) in efforts to disclose his true intentions…“i’m not a malicious person, i’ve never gone out of my way to try to bash someone in a racial way or in just a petty way in that sense.” Lastly, Gabriels usage in “promise of forbearance,” he promises his supporters/audience that he has educated himself and continues to do so. He also takes it upon himself to spread more awareness on the history behind the n-word by linking two educational videos about it in the description of the video. Although this seemed to be his least used strategy (p = 9%), the videos he linked helped boost his reputation by showing his audience that actions speak louder than words and he is moving towards the right direction to prove his growth.

B. Gender Differences

In Table 8, we calculated the ratio of each apology strategy usage by gender and came to the following realizations:

The Frequency of Apologies: The result seems to buttress the theory that females were more likely to present explicit expressions of apology (Holmes,1989). However, as an evitable part of an apology video, the percentage of male and female using this approach is relatively close. From this point of view, gender seems to merely exert an influence on the linguistic differences of these stances (Stubbs, 2001).
Explanation or Account: Based on the data collections, females seem undoubtedly offer more verbal explanations or accounts than males. While most of the explanation or account for females is recounting the emotions, their apology video became longer and more complex. Females seem to include more verbal statements of concluding the whole controversial incident than males frequently may be less willing to use affirmative words to go over the account (Bennet, 2008). Overall, explanation or account drew huge linguistic differences between how males and females approach their apology.
Acknowledge of responsibility: Males present more acknowledgment of responsibility than females from the final data set. Gender differences in this stance are evident that males seem more likely to recognize their faults of actions. The mythological consideration for some females is vague. In Laura Lee’s video, she uses the denial strategies to shift the responsibility (Benoit, 2008), hence leading to an adverse audience reaction. In comparison, males seem more willing to acknowledge responsibility and re-evaluate the prior self who committed the transgression.
Promise of forbearance: Males perform more promise of forbearance than females. As usually the last part of an apology video, the promise of forbearance is crucial to provide the major idea of remedy to the transgression. Males seem more likely to provide corrective action and repair in the collecting data (Benoit, 2008). However, the overall proportion of promise of forbearance seems to appear identical for two genders without looking at the data of Shane Dawson who used this strategy the least. Hence a concrete conclusion is hard to draw from these 6 limited cases.

Discussion & Conclusion

The discussion on individual differences and gender differences are presented above. This section dedicated to looking at the audience’s overall comments reaction as outlined in Table 9, only Pewdiepie, Gabriel Zamora, and Jenna Marbles received a positive response. They all have different focuses on their strategies. Pewdiepie addressed most in the promise of forbearance, Gabriel Zamora focused on Acknowledge of responsibility and Jenna Marbles spent most of her video approaching explanation and account. Which might indicate promise of forbearance, acknowledgement of responsibility and explanation and account are more effective strategies. The overall conclusion is females are more likely to approach explanation and the frequency of apologies while males approach acknowledgement of responsibility and promise of forbearance strategies. However, all these conclusions just came from the limited 6 data sets and in a broader view, after excluding the extreme cases, most of the data appear to be identical between both genders (Holmes 1989). A key implication for this research is the importance of not only considering the difference in gender while looking at the apology videos, but also by looking at the approaches taken by different people on a larger view. The analysis and data for this paper might provide a good sample for further future studies of linguistics features in gender differences and apologies approaches.

References

Benoit, W. L. (2008). Image restoration theory. The International Encyclopedia of Communication.

Bennet, S. (2008). Gender and apologies: Exploring offended females’ perceptions of apologies from males and females. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/127

Cheng, M. (n.d.). The Stance of Personal Public Apology. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA11/papersandcommentaries/96/?utm_source=scholar.uwindsor.ca%2Fossaarchive%2FOSSA11%2Fpapersandcommentaries%2F96

Gabriel Zamora. (2018, Aug. 21). My Truth. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWnmPEHzRrk&list=PLsuhXm2zs07IwijVL8Mkm4EnPab78F7TC&index=8

Holmes, J. (1989). Sex Differences and Apologies: One Aspect of Communicative Competence1. Applied Linguistics, 10(2), 194-213. doi:10.1093/applin/10.2.194

Jenna Marbles. (2020, July 2). Jenna Marbles Apology. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=679d-SQfWLk

Karlsson, G. (2020). The YouTube Apology： analysing the image repair strategies and emotional labour of saying sorry online. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1483089/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Laura Lee. (2018, Aug. 20). Laura Lee apology video with original captions. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYVmWxitVSQ&t=182s

Leppänen, S., Møller, J., Nørreby, T., Stæhrc, A., & Kytölä, S. (2015). Authenticity, normativity and social media. Discourse, Context and Media, 8, p. 1-5

Maclachlan, A. (2013). Gender and Public Apology. Transitional Justice Review, 1-21. doi:10.5206/tjr.2013.1.2.6

Pewdiepie. (2017, Sep. 12). My Response. [Video]. YouTube. My Response (Pewdiepie)

Shane Dawson. (2020, June 26). Taking Accountability. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ardRp2x0D_E

Smith, N. (2008). I was wrong: The meanings of apologies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tana Mongeau. (2017, Feb. 17). An Apology. [Video]. YouTube. https:/ /youtu.be/Fazh9Lm1kDE

apology strategies, apology YouTube videos, gender, gender differences, sociolinguistics

Heroines in K-Dramas are Now Changing: How and Why?

Sociolinguistics

Dowon Yoon

When we think of K-Dramas, we can easily think of the Cinderella story: a poor heroine meets an extremely rich hero and becomes a modern princess. A famous screenwriter named Eunsook Kim always fascinates numerous viewers by entertainingly telling this kind of story. When I looked into her most famous works, Lovers in Paris (2004) and Goblin (2016), I discovered that the speech patterns of heroines have changed over time even though the setting of the Cinderella story remains the same. I analyzed dialogues from two dramas, and the analysis showed that a heroine from recent drama Goblin speaks in a more dominant way than a heroine from the older drama Lovers in Pairs. It shows that Kim reflects the change in women’s speech behavior in her script. This reflection is very important because it is a mirror of the time which demonstrate the change in women’s speech behavior in the real world.

Different social roles for males and females create different essential ways of thinking, and eventually, they lead to the difference in pronunciation, sentence constructions, and many other linguistic components. According to Lakoff (2004), the speech patterns of men are naturally more dominant than women. Based on women’s usage of tag questions to get confirmation and assurance by male’s opinion, he argues that women are subordinate to men during the conversation. On top of the theory of Lakoff, Men and women are expected to use a different style of language in Korean culture. For instance, because of the influence of patriarchal culture, females use more polite language than males, but the expectation towards femininity underlies behind it.

However, by comparing two different K-Dramas, Lovers in Paris (2004) and Goblin (2016), I observed that a heroine Euntak from the Goblin has dominant speech style just like men while a heroine Taeyoung from the Lovers in Paris still uses the traditional subordinate speech style of women. This is important because the change of speech patterns of two heroines may reflects women from the real world also use the dominant speech style in today’s society and the differences between men and women’s speech behavior may reduced in these days.

To demonstrate that the differences between dominant speech style of men and subordinate speech style of women are now reduced in these days, I compared and contrasted dialogues of Taeyoung from Lovers in Paris (2004) and Euntak from Goblin (2016). They are in a similar situation where they both had to depend on extremely wealthy heroes, so it is very interesting to see the difference in their speech behavior.

By comparing two dialogues, I realized that Taeyoung tends to be interrupted by the hero during a conversation, while Euntak tends to interrupt the hero more. According to Sohn (2006), interruptions and overlappings can be a signal of power since they are primarily viewed as impolite behavior and “powerful people are more likely to feel warranted to interrupt powerless people than vice versa.” In the dialogue from episode 2 of Lovers in Paris, Giju, the rich hero in this drama, comes to Taeyoung’s house as a surprise after they meet at the bar by coincidence (Korean in bold italics):

In this dialogue, they do not communicate with each other, but just says what they want to say. In this unilateral conversation, Giju simply conveys what he wants to do and does not pay attention to what Taeyoung says as he interrupts while she is still talking at line 2. He is very dominant and leads the whole situation by almost demanding her to head out for a cafe. Meanwhile, Taeyoung is completely and helplessly led by Giju in the conversation as Giju keeps brings up what she did not expect at all. Lines 3 and 5, she reacts by saying, “Huh?” and “What?”, which shows that she is very surprised by what Giju brings up and the only thing that she can do is reacting to it. Although Giju interrupts her and even tries to take her outside her house, she never interrupts him and asks what he is going to talk about nor try to continue what she was going to say.

However, if we look into the dialogue of Angel of Death and Euntak in Goblin, we can observe that the heroine Euntak is not subordinate to the male character like Taeyoung in Lovers in Paris. In this conversation, Euntak meets the Angel of Death while she is with the Goblin, the rich hero in this drama. Euntak is scared of the Angel because she thinks that the angel came to take her to the afterlife.’

In this dialogue, Euntak interrupts the angel and leads the conversation by asking back to him at line 4. Even in the situation where her life is threatened, she bravely stands against the angel. Although she was with the Goblin, she did not depend on him. According to Sohn (2006), women tend to avoid interruptions and overlapping. In other words, Euntak’s speech style is dominant just like traditional men.

Through comparing two dialogues, we found an interesting change in the usage of interruptions by heroines, which shows that Eunsook Kim made a change in the speech behavior of heroines; they used to have the subordinate speech style, but they now use more dominant speech style. In the script, she may reflect that women’s speech behavior has changed over time. Whether her dramas are a mirror of the time or viewers get influenced by her drama, it is worth looking back at our speech behavior and think about which speech style we want to use for our daily conversation.

References

Kim, E. (Writer), & Lee, E. (Director). (2016). Chapter 2 [Television series episode]. Goblin. Seoul: tvN.

Kim, E. (Writer), & Shin, W. (Director). (2004). Chapter 2 [Television series episode]. In Moon, J. (Executive producer), Lovers in Paris. Seoul: SBS.

Lakoff, R. (2004). Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries. Oxford University Press.

Sohn, H. (2006). Korean Language in Culture And Society. University of Hawaii Press.

gender differences, Media, Speech Style

I Am Who You Are Not: Insults in Films

Bilingualism

Anthony Waller, Avery Robinson, Nicole Rasmussen, Jun Jie Li

Creativity and complexity are not often two factors that are considered when we insult; we typically go to our personal shelf of offensive phrases and let our selections do their damage. When we look at high school oriented films, however, we see that insults are a means of identity negotiation and employ creative and complex techniques that serve to compound the effect and project a strategic process of identity projection and negotiation. In this article, we will be examining how films act as a social mirror by reflecting a description of contemporary teenage culture. Specifically, we will be considering two factors that we believe to have had a significant impact on the motivation of portrayals: gender and time. Looking at several classic selections that spans the decades of the 80’s through the 00’s, we utilized a nexus and inductive approach in isolating specific linguistic elements of insults that appear most salient to our research. We conducted a series of comparative analyses of creativity and complexity parameters and extrapolated a loose correlation between gendered insults and the passage of time. From there, we will be discussing some implications of this correlation and how insulting is a process of identity prioritization and constructivism through self-isolation.

Introduction: How We Offend

For our research, we will be investigating the depiction of insults in teenagers as portrayed in films of high school settings from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Specifically, we want to take a look at how the complexity and creativity, as defined below, of insult formation are expressed across gender boundaries, and how the mechanism of that formation has evolved over the decades. Based on our preliminary observations, we are expecting to see depictions of greater structural complexity and communicative creativity in females characters over males. We also believe that there will be an inverse proportional relationship between the integration of elaboration in insult formation and the time period.

Background

Film can often provide valuable insights into how an era sees itself (Kalinak, 2010). Its choices shed light on realities and stereotypes, and insults and derogatory language natural entry points for analysis. Insults and derogatory language have two important, interdependent functions: the attack and distancing of the other and the defense and reassertion of the self. Teenagers are at a critical stage of self-discovery, and these functions offer insight into their views of self (Goffman, 1971). Choices in insult delivery will show the teenager’s prioritization in their identity expression, therefore by analyzing teenagers’ conspicuous insult expression, we can learn a great deal of what adults think of their successors.

The basis of our first hypothesis rests on Lakoff’s features of women’s speech. According to Lakoff, women are expected to use super-polite forms e.g. indirect language or euphemisms, and avoid swear words (Mooney & Evans, 2015). Therefore, if women want to insult someone, they would need to be more creative in order to get their point across while still adhering to the conventions of what is acceptable for women to say.

Our reasoning for predicting a general decline in complexity and creativity as we get closer to the current time is due to the improvement in technology and the emergence of “text speak,” “meme culture,” and the general notion that teenage speech has become more coded and somewhat less markedly intelligent (Brinkley, 2013, Dijk, 2016). Teenagers have found ways to say more with a lot less and to make a greater use of the referential creativity (see below).

Methods: Nexus and Induction

For our research, we will be utilizing a nexus and inductive approach; we will be drawing conclusions based on data and observations that we make in teenage films. Below we have six films, two from each of the three decades of our research parameter, that we believe will be illustrative of the teenage perception:

1980’s: The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

1990’s: Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You

2000’s: Mean Girls, The Princess Diaries

As we watch these films, we will be observing and taking notes of specific instances of derogatory language use by teenagers, as well as creativity and complexity levels. One way we have found to quantify these measures is to check if an insult actually contains an insult or a derogatory word, or whether it contains a series of words, reliant on references and word plays, constructed to make an insult. Additionally, we will analyze word choices in terms of commonality of use, with the thought in mind that less common words constitute a more creative insult. Once we have our data on creative versus non-creative insults, we will be able to form a ratio. We will compare the ratio between men and women in the movies, between the different decades, and between men and women differences in different decades. Further methods of analysis will include measurements of length, as well as comparisons of the types of references made across our parameters. As we have mentioned previously, we predict that insult use is more creative among women, and that insult use has become less creative since the 1980s.

Definitions / Parameters

Complexity: a function of length, diction, syntax.

Length: number of words in an insult or an insult group

Diction: word choice (common/uncommon)

Syntax: construction; whether the insult is formed in a non-declarative, complex way

Creativity: a measure of tone, reference, and blatant insult word choice

Tone: insults delivered through the use of tone or body language

Reference: use of references that are contextually significant in making the meaning of an insult apparent. This can fall into two main categories:

Cultural: An appeal to cultural, epistemic domains, such as arts and history, that are predominantly apparent to the individuals.

Social: An appeal to social norms, an attempted outing of the individual from the social hierarchy from an identity perspective.

Presence of blatant insult word: whether one insults with a pre-established jab or creates the pointedness themselves.

Results: Correlations

Our data from the 1980s is from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club. The combined data from the two films tells us that the average word length per female insult is 5.71, and for males is 12.54. 46% of the insults were syntactically significant, and only 5.6% of those which were syntactically significant were from females. Social and cultural references were 19% and 14%, respectively, with females contributing 0% to both categories. 14% of the insults included uncommon and notable lexicon, but again with 0% contribution from females. In 5% of the data we saw insults delivered through tone, all attributed to male insults.

Our data from the 1990s films Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You were 64% female. The average word length for a female-given insult is 8.84 words, and for males it was 8.54 words. 46% of the insults given were syntactically significant, and 78% of these are attributed to females. Only 15% of insulted included uncommon word choice, and about 44% of these were given by women. In regards to references, females made up around 80% of all cultural referenced insults, 50% of socially referenced insults. 27% of the insults were delivered through the use of tone, and 88% of those were female-delivered.

Our data from the 2000s derives from Mean Girls and Princess Diaries. From these films, 94% of the insults were from females. The average female word length was 6.45, and the average male word length is 9. 46% of the total insults were syntactically significant, and 93% of those were from women. In regards to references, 6% of the insults included cultural references and 13% included social references; all of these are attributed to females. 21% of the insults contained uncommon word choice, 93% from females. In regards to insults delivered through tone, 15% of the total insults employed this method and 80% is due to females. Finally, 66% of the insults contained an actual insult word, with 95% of that being from females.

Figure 1: Direct Insults and Derogatory Words Over Time.

Our data from the 80s show us that males employed much more complex and creative insults than females at the time. Going into the 90s, the trend shifts, and the majority of our data point to women being a bit more creative and complex in their insult use than their male counterparts. Finally, in the 2000s, we see a drastic change in our results with women demonstrating much higher levels of insult creativity and complexity than men. We were off from our original predictions. We see from our data that insults, among females, increased in complexity and creativity. Additionally, we do not see a decrease in general creativity as we moved through the decades.

Figure 2: Breakdown of Derogatory Techniques Across Decades – Syntax, Diction, Structure, Cultural and Social References.

Discussion and conclusions: Why We Offend

First, from a pragmatic perspective, why do teenagers feel the need to beat around the bush in insults? At first glance it seems rather counterintuitive, but as we have seen, they serve important linguistic functions. For one, creative and complex insults can inflict a greater amount of damage by constructing a vehicle in which the insult can be delivered in more deceptive and cognitively disorienting way. It can also be viewed as a “flex” of intellectual superiority, or as a way to make the insult less refutable, as a retort would necessitate an equal level of craftsmanship (Goffman, 1971).

But why do we insult? What do we have to gain in insulting others? From our observations, it appears to be a practice of identity projection, of a more aggressive degree, because it is forceful definition of the self via an equally forceful definition of the other. In other words, along the same line of “who am I if not myself?,” it appears that the teenage response is merely “I am not you.” This seems to suggest that identity is only salient, or more radically, only existent, through expression and a process of negotiation and prioritization with the other. Insults serve as a way to categorize and define oneself against others (Marsden, 2009).

References

Brinkley, A., & McGraw-Hill Education (Firm). (2013). American history : Connecting with the past (Twelve edition, Updated. Updated AP ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Dijk, C. V. (2016). The Influence of Texting Language on Grammar and Executive Functions in Primary School Children. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816572/

Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books.

Kalinak, K. M. (2010). Film music a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA.

Marsden, E. (2009). What the Fuck? An Analysis of Swearing in Casual Conversation. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/3871040/What_the_Fuck_An_Analysis_of_Swearing_in_Casual_Conversation

Mooney & Evans (2015) Language and Gender. In Language, Society and Power (pp. 108-131). London: Routledge.

gender differences, insults, Media, Norms