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Title Euphemistic Strategies of Male and Female Facebook Users: A Sociocognitive Study

Author(s) NIDA TARIQ

Abstract Language is susceptible to the influence of social media in general and Facebook in particular. Facebook provides an interactive environment for modelling and socio cognition of its users with respect to behavior, thoughts, ideas and language. The influence of Facebook in terms of language strategies such as euphemism is different for both the genders since males and females tend to use Facebook distinctively and their languages are also known to be different from each other. The present study attempted to explore this impact of Facebook on the language strategies of its users with regards to euphemism. A sample of 120 Undergraduate students comprising 60 boys and 60 girls from two institutes at Mardan was chosen for the study. The sample had 60 Facebook users and 60 non-users. Concepts from Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory were used to explore and explain the impact of Facebook on its users. The comparative analysis of users with non-users of Facebook showed the impact of Facebook with respect to various aspects of socio cognition. Findings showed that Facebook users were more euphemistic than non-users. They had a more enriched vocabulary which helped them formulate more eloquent euphemistic strategies than the non-users of Facebook. They were found to be more aware of euphemism in that they showed better recognition and knowledge of euphemism. They had higher aptitudes with respect to the use of euphemism and used greater variety of euphemistic strategies as compared to the non-users. The impact of Facebook was further compared for male and female users to find out how gender fits in sociocognitive theorization. The Female users were seen to undergo greater observational learning than males which validated their higher aptitude with regards to euphemism than male users. Female users also had higher outcome expectancies than male users. However, despite their higher aptitude than male users, female users had lower self-efficacies than male users. The findings thus showed that Facebook influences both the genders in a different way in terms of developing their outcome expectancies, aptitudes and observational learning patterns. The study can be extended further by future researchers using the same framework to study euphemism on social media other than Facebook or by including participants from other age groups and cultures.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-11-24

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