4。2。 Topic selection 10

4。3。 The use of emoticon 11

4。4。 Language use 12

4。4。1。The use of intensifiers 12

4。4。2。The use of auxiliary words that indicate mood 12

4。4。3。The use of online buzzwords 13

4。5。 The length of microblog 14

5。 Causes of gender differences 15

5。1。 Psychological causes 15

5。2。 Social and Cultural causes 15

6。 Discussion and conclusion 17

Reference 18

1。 Introduction

This thesis starts with an introduction including the motivation, general description and outline of the thesis。

1。1。 The motivation of the study 源Y于U优I尔O论P文W网wwW.yOueRw.com 原文+QQ75201-8766

Microblog is the newest form of CMC (computer-mediated communication) that provides users with a convenient and concise type of communication which creates a way to post and share information about activities, thoughts and emotions timely within 140 characters, sometimes even with pictures, music or video links。 The most popular microblogging service overseas is Twitter while the substitutes in China are Sina Microblog and Tencent Microblog。 According to the research from Semiocast, Twitter had 500 million users all over the world in July, 2012。 As the 36th report of CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) shows, netizens have reached 668 million while monthly active users of Sina Microblog were 212 million until September 30th, 2015 according to the annual report of Sina Microblog。 Among them, 17-year-olds to 33-year-olds are the main group that accounts for 83% of the whole users。

As microblog fulfills a need as a faster-paced form of communication, our life has been profoundly affected by blogosphere。 People refresh their microblogs and tweet microblogs at any time and any place。 Besides the popularity of using microblogs still rise up。 These can partly explain why abundances of scholars have done researches on microblogs。 However, most of these studies focus on the perspectives of origin, development, applications, functions, influence, etc。 Few studies have explored microblogs from the perspective of linguistics, let alone gender differences in language use。 Fortunately, some studies about blog have been conducted from the perspective of linguistics, especially in western countries (Huffaker& Clavert, 2005; Nowson, 2006; Qian& Scott, 2007; Muratore, 2008, etc。)。 Later such studies have been conducted in China and some theses have explored the relationship between the gender and language in blog。 Zhou Yan (2007) studied gender differences in blogs through the analysis of word frequency and discourse。 Bi Cuicui (2009) talked about gender differences in weblog language use from a theoretical perspective in terms of sociolinguistics with quantitative and qualitative analysis。 Not until the year of 2011, Shi Mengjiao (2011) analyzed the gender differences on microblog using 50 original samples within the same specific topic from the perspective of sociolinguistics。 

1。2。 The general description of the study