There are always people out there who would claim that men and women write inherently different types of fiction/language/whatever. The latest such is V.S. Naipaul. I have always been sceptical of the claim and I find it absurd that a well respected author like Naipaul, who has spent his writing life tackling another form of marginalisation, would spout such nonsense.
Anyway. Here is a test. I'd be interested to hear what you get, as a semi-scientific sampling of the reading public (please let me know if you get something right because you recognise the passage).
Anyway. Here is a test. I'd be interested to hear what you get, as a semi-scientific sampling of the reading public (please let me know if you get something right because you recognise the passage).
The results of this test don't really prove or disprove Naipaul's claim. He never said that any differences in the writing of male and female authors are blatant, and if subtle nuances of gender are present in writing, the inability of the reading public to decipher them doesn't disprove their existence. Furthermore, small samples like the passages in this test obviously make it more difficult to distinguish gender, considering the proposition that male and female authors are different on some fundamental level does not mean that the language they use is necessarily dissimilar, but that they perceive the world around them in different ways, and therefore write about their perceptions in different ways. A couple of sentences is certainly not enough to get an accurate sense of an author's writing.
Sex and writing
03/06/2011 03:45:43 PM
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This test simply reinforced a completely different opinion of mine.
03/06/2011 04:07:26 PM
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Literature reflects society. Welcome to the age of text messaging *NM*
03/06/2011 06:08:53 PM
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Oh, gender roles. You so pervasive. Do MTF authors write like men or women? IT IS A MYSTERY *NM*
03/06/2011 09:30:13 PM
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These results don't prove Naipaul wrong
30/06/2011 07:58:39 PM
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