Sexual Dimorphism in Language, and the Gender Shift Hypothesis of Homosexuality

Abstract

Psychological sex differences have been studied scientifically for more than a century, yet linguists still debate about the existence, magnitude, and causes of such differences in language use. Advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shown the importance of sex and sexual orientation for various psychobehavioural traits, but the extent to which such differences manifest in language use is largely unexplored. Using computerised text analysis (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC 2015), this study found substantial psycholinguistic sexual dimorphism in a large corpus of English-language novels (n = 304) by heterosexual authors. The psycholinguistic sex differences largely aligned with known psychological sex differences, such as empathising–systemising, people–things orientation, and men’s more pronounced spatial cognitive styles and abilities. Furthermore, consistent with predictions from cognitive neuroscience, novels (n = 158) by lesbian authors showed minor signs of psycholinguistic masculinisation, while novels (n = 167) by homosexual men had a female-typical psycholinguistic pattern, supporting the gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality. The findings on this large corpus of 66.9 million words indicate how psychological group differences based on sex and sexual orientation manifest in language use in two centuries of literary art.

Author gender and text characteristics in contemporary Swedish fiction

“…For female-authored text there was an opposite tendency, in line with grammatical expectations, with higher frequencies for verbs and pronouns. These observations can be seen as supporting the 'people/things theory', which holds that women are more interested in people and men in things (Luoto, 2021;Thelwall et al, 2019), since discourse about what people do and how they interact often refer repeatedly to them by means of single pronouns.…”

“…According to Park et al (2016: 7) 'the most strongly female-linked topics included words describing positive emotions'. Other studies have seen the same tendency using LIWC, for emotions generally (Newman et al, 2008), for both positive and negative emotions (Bamman et al, 2014;Schler et al, 2006), for positive emotions only (Schwartz et al, 2013), or for positive emotions more strongly (Luoto, 2021). An emotional inclination in female authors has also been attested for French (Argamon et al, 2009) and Dutch literature (Koolen, 2018), in the latter case for positive emotions.…”

“…An often reported difference between female and male language use is the higher fraction of (personal) pronouns in the former. This has been seen several times for English data (Argamon et al, 2007;Bamman et al, 2014;Luoto, 2021;Newman et al, 2008;Otterbacher, 2013;Schler et al, 2006;Schwartz et al, 2013;Van der Vegt and Kleinberg, 2020). This tendency has also attested for 11 out of 13 European languages (Johannsen, et al, 2015) and for literature in French (Argamon et al, 2009) and in Dutch (Koolen, 2018).…”

“…They found several grammatical features which are indicative of either gender for more than half of the languages. Scholars have also investigated gendered language use in fiction-only corpora in several languages, e.g., French (Argamon et al, 2009), English (Luoto, 2021), and Dutch (Koolen, 2018).…”

“…Whereas ‘linguists tend to view sex differences in language use as caused by social stereotypes, researcher bias […], or gender roles’ (Luoto, 2021: 2), and thereby regard gender from the ‘nurture’ position, there are also scholars, including, as we saw above, ‘the first generation of feminist literary critics’ (Armstrong, 2006: 103), who approach gender and language from the ‘nature’ position. One source of inspiration for research aiming at biology-based models is that ‘[a]dvances in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary science have increased our knowledge of mammalian sexual differentiation of the brain and how this process creates sex differences […] in various psychobehavioural traits in humans […], but the way in which such differences may be reflected in language use is not well known’ (Luoto, 2021: 1). A study by Mascaro et al (2018: 1) provided ‘preliminary evidence’ that higher testosterone levels in men ‘may influence social behavior by increasing frequency of words related to aggression, sexuality, and status, and that it may alter the quality of interactions with an intimate partner by amplifying emotions via swearing’.…”