Gender-linked differences in the use of emotion-related vocabulary in EFL students' written discourse

Abstract

The present study explores the relationship between gender and the use of emotion vocabulary in a sample of male and female 4th year EFL university students. To do so, a descriptive quantitative study was conducted over 40 reflective essays produced by the students. The results show the presence of some small gender differences related to the higher frequency of use of emotion lemmas and, additionally, a more psychological orientation in the display of emotion lemmas by females. Moreover, a comparative analysis of emotion vocabulary use was performed between a group of native speakers of English and the EFL students. The results indicate that the EFL students produced comparatively less emotion lemmas than the native English sample; however, no gender differences between the participants were observed in this comparison. The findings suggest that individual psychological features and vocabulary size are more relevant factors in emotion vocabulary use than gender.