Psychological sex differences have been studied scientifically for more than a century, yet linguists still debate about the existence, magnitude, and causes of such differences in language use. Advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shown the importance of sex and sexual orientation for various psychobehavioural traits, but the extent to which such differences manifest in language use is largely unexplored. Using computerised text analysis (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC2015), this study found substantial psycholinguistic sexual dimorphism in a large corpus of English-language novels (n = 304) by heterosexual authors. Furthermore, consistent with predictions from cognitive neuroscience, novels (n = 158) by lesbian authors showed minor signs of psycholinguistic masculinisation, while novels (n = 167) by homosexual men had a female-typical psycholinguistic pattern, supporting the gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality. The findings on this large corpus of 66.9 million words indicate how psychological group differences based on sex and sexual orientation manifest in language use in two centuries of literary art.

中文翻译：

---

语言中的性别二态性和同性恋的性别转移假说

心理性别差异已经被科学地研究了一个多世纪，但是语言学家仍在争论这种语言使用差异的存在，程度和原因。心理学和认知神经科学的进步表明，性别和性取向对各种心理行为特征具有重要意义，但是在语言使用方面所表现出的差异在很大程度上尚待探索。使用计算机文本分析（语言查询和字数统计：LIWC2015），该研究发现异性恋作家在大型英语小说集（n = 304）中存在实质性的心理语言性二态性。此外，与认知神经科学的预测一致，女同性恋作家的小说（n = 158）显示出心理语言男性化的轻微迹象，而同性恋男子的小说（n = 167）具有女性典型的心理语言学模式，支持同性恋的性别转移假说。在这个庞大的6690万个单词的语料库中的发现表明，在两个世纪的文学艺术中，基于性别和性取向的心理群体差异如何在语言使用中体现出来。