Where is the gender in gendered language?

The purpose of these studies was to examine how women and men react and acc ommodate to gender-preferential language in e-mail messages. In Experiment 1, participants wrote message to two assigned "netpals." These netpals were actually one of the experimenters. For each participant, one netpal used f emale-preferential language and the other used male-preferential language. Analyses revealed that the netpals' language style, and not the participant s' gender, predicted the language used by participants in their e-mail repl ies. Female and male participants used the gender-preferential language tha t matched the language used by their netpals. In Experiment 2, the gender l abels and languages styles of netpals were independently manipulated. As be fore, linguistic style had the greatest impact on participants' language us e. These results have implications for how people think about gendered beha vior, and highlight how gendered language is constructed in social interact ion.