Facebook vs. Face-to-Face Discourse in English: A Gender-Based Study of Conversational Styles

The study highlights the major differences between Face-to-face and Facebook conversations while considering the gender-based patterns in the respective conversational styles.The authors have used an open-ended questionnaire to conduct qualitative research to make it possible. The sample consisted of 12 people aged 18-25 from different universities in Pakistan who used Facebook daily. The study finds out that face-to-face conversations are the preferred mode of conversation mainly by women as being on Facebook gives them a degree of lenience which face-to-face conversations lack. The comfortable environment on Facebook makes it more comfortable for them to be more expressive. Facebook has broken the cross-gender barriers and has made people aware that having cross-gender conversations while staying within a limit is possible, and society is slowly accepting it. The study has far-reaching implications for social media researchers as they can have further research probes into socio-cognitive dimensions of the issue from a behavioural science perspective.