Nested, Place and Relational Multiple Social Identities among Latinx and White College Students in California, USA

Aghop Der-Karabetian*, Mark Lopez, Melissa Oseguera and Michelle Alfaro

Nested, Place and Relational Multiple Social Identities among Latinx and White College Students in California, USA.

The findings with regard to causality and analytic language are on the surface paradoxical: the content of the captions of high-status celebrities were more likely to include facts and,
perhaps, their own stories, as language with causation may reflect personal experiences. Thus, the manner in which they wrote their captioning was different from that of low-status celebrities and
men. The latter used analytical language, which typically includes articles and prepositions, termed “function” words.  As Jordan and colleagues note, these linguistic mechanisms reflect a simplification and unpacking of more complicated ideas. Thus, low-status persons and men communicated analytically, perhaps omitting personal experiences.

Pennebaker and colleagues have shown that men use more prepositions and articles across several types of writing, and our data confirm that men provided more simplification of their
ideas on the captions, as measured through analytical language. Low-status celebrities did the same, which may also provide a reason why their words-per-sentence were high. While low-status celebrities and men used more words, the content of captions from high-status celebrities may have been more complex because they have sufficient followers to retain attention, regardless of the complexity of their content. Do men and women of varying status caption their visual presentation differently, and is their visual presentation different? Perhaps their pictures differentially mirror their content, helping us to understand further how people communicate what is on their minds.

Our findings support previous findings with regard to sex and language, and also shed light on how status may mitigate sex-linked language effects. Sex and status contribute to the language used in
captioning Instagram posts, perhaps based on the likelihood that an audience will read complex content from high-status celebrities and women, with more concrete language seen in lower-status persons whose followers may not wade through complicated ideas. Regardless of content, women’s captions were more polite.

Soc Behav Res Pract Open J. 2019; 4(1): 8-14. doi: 10.17140/SBRPOJ-4-115

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