Abstract: This study focuses on the feminine language style widely used on the Internet by the younger generation in China at the present time and investigates the attitudes of 211 university students with respect to three emails employing different levels of feminine Internet language: minimally feminine Internet language (MiL), moderately feminine Internet language (MoL) and highly feminine Internet language (HiL). The results show that the informants held positive attitudes towards HiL, especially in terms of solidarity, whereas MiL was evaluated comparatively highly in terms of status. The social variable of gender had no impact on the positive evaluation of HiL, which provides grounds for suggesting that the younger Chinese generation is likely to accept and adopt feminine style Internet language, regardless of their own gender.
Keywords: attitude, email, feminine, Internet language, gender, status, solidarity