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Text is gendered: the role of letter case

DOI:10.1007/s11002-021-09556-w
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Aekyoung Kim
Aekyoung Kim
Aekyoung Kim
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Sam J Maglio at University of Toronto
Sam J Maglio
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Abstract and Figures

This research investigates the association between letter case and perception of gender. We propose that referents are judged as more feminine (vs. masculine) when their names are written with lowercase (vs. uppercase) letters. This effect emerges independent of differences in the size in which the letters appear and cannot be fully explained by differences in angularity. We further identify that evaluations of feminine (vs. masculine) objects become more favorable upon presenting their names in lowercase (vs. uppercase) letters. This association between gender and letter case is more pronounced for referents with a clear gender identity (e.g., fragrances and not vacuums). By first identifying and then exploring consequences of the novel link between letter case and gender, the present investigation contributes to research on linguistics, inference, and conceptual associations while also providing insights as to how to construct communication tools most effectively.
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Text is gendered: the role of letter case
Aekyoung Kim
1
&Sam J. Maglio
2
Accepted: 3 January 2021 /
#The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
This research investigates the association between letter case and perception of gender.
We propose that referents are judged as more feminine (vs. masculine) when their
names are written with lowercase (vs. uppercase) letters. This effect emerges indepen-
dent of differences in the size in which the letters appear and cannot be fully explained
by differences in angularity. We further identify that evaluations of feminine (vs.
masculine) objects become more favorable upon presenting their names in lowercase
(vs. uppercase) letters. This association between gender and letter case is more pro-
nounced for referents with a clear gender identity (e.g., fragrances and not vacuums).
By first identifying and then exploring consequences of the novel link between letter
case and gender, the present investigation contributes to research on linguistics,
inference, and conceptual associations while also providing insights as to how to
construct communication tools most effectively.
Keywords Language .Gender .Letter case .Conceptual metaphor
1 Introduction
Communications via printed words are comprised of alphabetical characters, which can be
presented as lowercase or uppercase letters. In marketing contexts, brands often name
themselves using only lowercase (e.g., amazon, intel, pepsi, ups, accenture, ebay, adidas,
hp., mastercard, salesforce) or uppercase letters (e.g., SAMSUNG, IBM, IKEA, DHL,
GUCCI, SONY, VISA, NETFLIX, LEGO; see Interbrand best global brand 2018). Its
name is often the very first thing consumers learn about brands, making brand name letter
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-021-09556-w
*Aekyoung Kim
aekyoung.kim@sydney.edu.au
1
Marketing Department, The University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney, Sydney,
Australia
2
Departments of Management and Psychology, Rotman School of Management, University of
Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Canada
Published online: 19 January 2021
Marketing Letters (2021) 32:179–190
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... The belief that language can construct identities, including gender, serves as the foundation for feminist critical discourse analysis. Thus, gender is constructed, which means that gender is constructed in discourse both socially and individually (MacLeod & McArthur, 2019;Cheong, 2020;Kim & Maglio, 2021). So much so that feminist critical discourse analysis believes that discourse is always empowering. ...
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... For example, Lowe and Haws (2017) find that sound pitch can influence perceptions of product size, so that lower pitch is associated with larger products and higher pitch is associated with smaller products. Relatedly, exploring the way brand names are written, Kim and Maglio (2021) found that, reflecting inner stereotypes, consumers associate upper case letters with masculine attributes, and lower-case letters with feminine attributes. Pogacar et al. (2015 show that people have subconscious preference for sounds that occur more frequently in top brand names (like S or E), which may also suggest the opposite effect, that the frequency of certain sounds in top brands could reflect phonetic preferences. ...
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