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These results don't prove Naipaul wrong Corwin Send a noteboard - 30/06/2011 07:58:39 PM
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).


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.
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Sex and writing - 03/06/2011 03:45:43 PM 1418 Views
This test simply reinforced a completely different opinion of mine. - 03/06/2011 04:07:26 PM 873 Views
Literature reflects society. Welcome to the age of text messaging *NM* - 03/06/2011 06:08:53 PM 411 Views
Agreed. *NM* - 03/06/2011 10:14:05 PM 376 Views
I really disliked those excerpts as well - 04/06/2011 02:10:36 AM 822 Views
5/10. Exactly as chance would predict. *NM* - 22/06/2011 11:27:25 AM 390 Views
6/10 - 03/06/2011 04:34:19 PM 795 Views
9/10: Not bad, but you're no Sir Vidia - 03/06/2011 04:56:08 PM 998 Views
6/10! *NM* - 03/06/2011 06:06:09 PM 384 Views
7/10. - 03/06/2011 07:15:44 PM 915 Views
6/10. Would be 7/10 but I thought #10 was a trick question. *NM* - 03/06/2011 07:17:51 PM 380 Views
8/10, but that is really largely luck if you ask me. - 03/06/2011 07:45:07 PM 905 Views
7/10 - 03/06/2011 09:52:40 PM 844 Views
5/10 I was guessing on all of them though. - 03/06/2011 11:19:09 PM 815 Views
8/10 - 04/06/2011 12:54:02 AM 844 Views
Guessed all the way through. 2/10 - 04/06/2011 04:06:08 AM 758 Views
9/10, but that doesn't mean a thing... - 04/06/2011 08:06:00 AM 844 Views
I also got 4 out of 10 - 04/06/2011 02:17:50 PM 878 Views
At the same time? - 06/06/2011 04:54:09 PM 852 Views
7/10 *NM* - 22/06/2011 08:49:07 PM 411 Views
These results don't prove Naipaul wrong - 30/06/2011 07:58:39 PM 966 Views

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