Studies have shown that women are the ones who rely on social media the most. And thanks to the ubiquity that Facebook and Twitter offers, younger women are developing a new way to communicate their hidden aggressions.
According to Deborah Cameron, a linguistics professor at Oxford, this generation of teen girls who grew up with texting, chatting and tweeting tend to have less time to deliberate their words. The result is that even the politest and chatty of them can sound pretty aggressive online. Cameron explains why to Newser:
If you're sending text messages all the time, you're having conversations that are like shorthand,' she added. ‘To any outsider, there aren't those pleasantries that there were when you wrote a letter to someone. It's not intentional... curtness tends to be short, sharp and to the point. But it's a fine line between being curt or aggressive and being straightforward."
She makes a point to note that despite the aggression, ladies online are still keeping their language relatively civil and that hard-core swearing is still most associated with adolescent and young adult, working class males. This is great news since society tends to shrug off 'girls' language, when they in fact are ahead on the curve when it comes to linguistic innovations. The professor also says that we can expect the way girls speak will soon rub off on everyone else. So don't be surprise if you're boss texts you to pick up his cup of coffee at Starbucks before signing off with a "KTHXBYE".
