- Instrumental: Language used to fulfil a need on the part of the speaker. Directly concerned with obtaining food, drink and comfort.


- Regulatory: Language used to influence the behaviour of others. Concerned with persuading / commanding / requesting other people to do things you want.


- Interactional: Language used to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction. Concerned with the phatic dimension of talk.


- Personal: Language used to express the personal preferences and identity of the speaker. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Here I am!’ function – announcing oneself to the world.


- Representational: Language used to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting information.


- Heuristic: Language used to learn and explore the environment. Child uses language to learn; this may be questions and answers, or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children’s play.


- Imaginative: Language used to explore the imagination. May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds, or may arise from storytelling.

I am interested in looking at the difference in male and female language through the use of technology and if there are any significant differences.

I will collect 10 messages from two boys and two girls picked at random through Facebook messenger and will then pick every third message to avoid bias and so I do not choose data that will support or disprove my hypothesis.

There may be limitations to my chosen data as two men and two women are not representative of the entire population who would use this form of social media.

Mix modality

Emoticons

Non standard English

Non standard punctuation

Images/ videos

Slang

To measure my data I will analyse and count the above techniques and compare if one gender uses more of these than another and analyse the possibilities why this would be.