A number of studies have looked at differences in language between genders in literature, but what can computers really tell us about this

O'Sullivan, James

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Title Computing differences in language between male and female authorsAuthor(s) O'Sullivan, JamesEditor(s) Carroll, JimPublication date 2017-10-19Original citation O'Sullivan, James (2017) 'Computing differences in language betweenmale and female authors', RTÉ Brainstorm, 19 October.Type of publication Contribution to newspaper/magazineLink to publisher'sversionhttps://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/913307-computing-differences-in-language-between-male-and-female-authors/Access to the full text of the published version may require asubscription.Rights © 2017 RTÉ Brainstorm; James O’Sullivan. This article is madeavailable under a "No Derivatives" Creative Commons licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/Item downloadedfromhttp://hdl.handle.net/10468/4929Downloaded on 2018-08-23T19:11:17Zrte.ieComputing differences in languagebetween male and female authorsJames O'Sullivan6-7 minutesUpdated / Thursday, 19 Oct 2017 11:51"Many of the words favoured by our female authors are family-oriented, but they also favour interactive terms"It’s a fact that female authors still battle with stereotypes. Thegender bias revealed in an analysis of some 10,000 bookreviews by Andrew Piper and Richard Jean So is sufficientevidence of such assertions. As far as reviewers for The NewYork Times and Sunday Book Review are concerned,"women write about family, men write about war". Computing differences in language between male and female authors about:reader?url=https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/...1 of 5 20/10/2017, 14:04The results of this study are damning. Reviewers favourterms like "husband", "marriage", and "beauty" whendescribing female books, "theory" and "argument" whencritiquing men. Piper and So conclude that 19th centuryattitudes have endured, that women "are still being defined bytheir ‘sentimental’ traits and a love of writing about "maternal"issues, while men are most often being defined by theirattention to matters of science and the state".Are these findings reflective of enduring social predispositionsaround representations of gender, or do they emerge out ofvisible trends across literary style? Are reviewers writingdifferently about men and women because men and womenwrite differently? Modernist women showed the greatest variance in wordchoice, suggesting that female authors were the greatestcontributors to the rampant experimentation at its heightThis very proposition is dangerous in itself because thequestion "do men and women write differently?" is itselfbased on an assumption of difference. Nonetheless, it is aquestion which scholars have been asking for some time and,in recent years, there has been a rising interest in this topicamongst stylometrists, literary scholars who examine styleusing computational methods. In 2008, David L. Hoover, one of the stylometry’s pioneers,used what he calls Craig Zeta (named for its inventor, HughCraig) to compare male and female poets. A Zeta analysisproduces lists of words distinct to a group of texts, relative tothe comparative set. In other words, Hoover’s study produceda list of words favoured by male authors, and typicallyComputing differences in language between male and female authors about:reader?url=https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/...2 of 5 20/10/2017, 14:04avoided by female writers, as well as those words favouredby female authors that were avoided by males. In his findings, Hoover points to the "almost stereotypical"words used by both groups: female authors write about"children" and "mirrors", their male counterparts about "beer"and "lust". Hoover’s study is largely illustrative, a fragmentwithin a broader essay designed to outline the potential ofsuch methods. A comprehensive dedicated study was latercompleted by Jan Rybicki, who traced authorial styles fromthe 18th to the 21st century which demonstrated that gendersignals have become less discernible. In a Humanities where computer-assisted methods arebecoming increasingly prominent, the role of the human hasnever been more importantMy colleague, Sean G. Weidman, suggested that we use aset of 236 novel-length texts written by 54 authors toreassess and expand upon these previous studies. Workswere drawn from three literary epochs: Victorian, modern andcontemporary. In many respects, our Zeta analyses supportHoover’s findings and the resulting wordlists reveal thematicconsistencies that one might consider "stereotypical". Computing differences in language between male and female authors about:reader?url=https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/...3 of 5 20/10/2017, 14:04However, there are nuances to be considered. Piper and Soshow that book reviewers still see women as writing about"family" and that they "obsess over love of themselves (‘me’)".Yes, many of the words favoured by our female authors arefamily-oriented, but they also favour interactive terms, moreselfless language that we consider holds more of an externalfocus. Our study also demonstrates that pronoun usage amongstfemale authors increases over time. The use of "me" and "I"are not indicative of an "obsession with themselves", butrepresent post-Victorian efforts by women writers toinvigorate the feminist project through literature. It is also aneffort to carve out a space for under-represented voices andstories and marginalised styles. Are reviewers writing differently about men and womenbecause men and women write differently? Interestingly, modernist women showed the greatest variancein word choice, suggesting that female authors were thegreatest contributors to the rampant experimentation of theepoch at its height. One could view these results as thequantification of literary feminism, which found its voiceduring the modern era, before emerging as a stronger stylisticforce within contemporary writing.But studies like these beg the question: what can computersreally tell us about gendered language? As a method, Zeta isan inherently dichotomous technique – that is, it is designedto produce variance – and it will always detect differencesbetween two sets of texts. Computing differences in language between male and female authors about:reader?url=https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/...4 of 5 20/10/2017, 14:04Consequentially, the significance of findings depends greatlyon the ways in which the test sets are constructed. Using it tocompare male and female authors transposes dangeroussocial oppositions with statistically-valid results.Furthermore, computer-assisted methods of this sort omitmuch context. Women may well be writing about "children"and "mirrors", but in what respect? As with any of act ofdistant reading, a set of distinct words can be readilymisinterpreted. The responsibility is on the critic to ensure thelegitimacy of subjective comparisons and literaryinterpretations. In a Humanities where computer-assistedmethods are becoming increasingly prominent, the role of thehuman has never been more important.Computing differences in language between male and female authors about:reader?url=https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2017/1018/...5 of 5 20/10/2017, 14:04

Computing differences in language between male and female authors

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Computing differences in language between male and female authors

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