A team of researchers led by Priyanka Joshi examined the degree to which men and women relied on “communicative abstraction” to verbally convey their ideas and emotions. Communicative abstraction, according to the researchers, reflects the tendency of people to use “abstract speech that focuses on the broader picture and (_26_) purpose of action rather than concrete speech focusing on details and the means of (_27_) action.” Interestingly, they found that men were far more likely to speak in the abstract than were women.

To arrive at this (_28_), the researchers examined the linguistic (语言的) patterns of men and women in over 600,000 blog posts written on websites. To do this, the researchers computed abstractness ratings for (_29_) 40,000 commonly used words in the English language. Words considered to be concrete could be easily visualized, such as “table” or “chair”. Words that were more (_30_) to visualize, for example, “justice” or “morality” were considered to be more abstract. They found that men used (_31_) more abstract language in their blog posts.

What is the (_32_) of this effect? The researchers suggest that power differences between the genders — that is, men having more power in society — might be a key determinant (决定因素). For instance, in a follow-up study conducted with a sample of 300 students, the researchers (_33_) power dynamics in an interpersonal setting to see if this would influence communicative abstraction. They found that participants in a high-power interviewer role were more likely to give abstract descriptions of behaviors than were participants in a low-power interviewee role. This suggests that communicating more abstractly does not reflect a (_34_) tendency of men or women but rather (_35_) within specific contexts.