Conversations in Male Genderlect in Young Adult Fiction: Their Effect on Reading Motivation

Abstract

A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that eighth grade young adults would indicate greater motivation to read books with accurate representation of conversations in male genderlect, with genderlect being defined as “a set of linguistic features that characterizes language production of a socially defined gender category (typically woman/girl and man/boy)” (Johnson, 2009). Fifty-six eighth grade volunteers--29 female and 27 male--were presented with five excerpts from young adult novels that contained conversations in male genderlect. These excerpts were paired with the same conversation re-written in Standard English. Subjects were asked to indicate which seemed more like a book they would like to read--the male genderlect version or the Standard English version. The hypothesis was not supported.