Conversational Topic in FB Posts: Highlighting Gender Preferences on Lexical Features

Abstract

Crystal (2005) believed that language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. He stressed that language changes because of the end-users. Hence, this study tried to identify the gender differences in relation to language choice and linguistic features from the official Facebook page of the College of Education, NEUST. All of the posts of the faculty and students from the page from June-October, First Semester, S.Y.2018-2019 were collected. This employed Baustista’s (1997) description of word formation - compounding, acronyming, clipping and innovation. The formation processes revealed that more women university students often use different word processes than male. There was only one word formed under compounding, 48 in acronyming (16 by male and 32 by female); 48 in clipping (22 by males and 26 by females) and 88 in innovations (21 by male and 67 by women). The results apparently revealed that women are fond of using the different word formations than men. It was then recommended to use the power of Social Media Network (SMN) as springboard of language classroom discussion because of the diversity of word formation offered among learners. Since all of the respondents are future educators, it is also recommended that their professors must establish the demarcation about the usage of the linguistic innovation in and outside the classroom, i.e., formal and informal context. Other researchers may dwell on other linguistic aspects of language innovation such as the morphological structure of the newly coined word, blending, functional shifting and other language innovations.