They Have English Menu: A Study on Women and Men's Use of Malaysian English Features in Food Reviews

Abstract

The generally accepted sociolinguistic finding that women use more standard language than men has not yet been established for non-Western communities. In this study, linguistic gender differences in Malaysia, a non-Western community that has not been previously analyzed, were examined using blogposts. Twenty blogposts by men and women were examined regarding the presence of six language features to find the proportion of non-standard (Malaysian English) and standard (British English) usage. No robust linguistic gender differences were found, although women used 0.5% more standard features. Possible reasons no linguistic gender differences were found include the small number of blogposts researched and the choice of examined language features. Furthermore, very high rates of overall standard usage were found for both women (95.3%) and men (94.8%), implying Malaysians adhere to British English language norms.