But What Do You Mean?

In the first excerpt Deborah Tannen wrote “But What Do You Mean?”, she breaks down and classifies the conversational areas where men and women have the most difficulties communication. Tannen’s excerpt is written from a personal point of view, it is written within her daily workplace and based off actions or events she encounters between men and women. Tannen argues that men tend to be more confrontational when communication and women happen to approach confrontation in a subtle way. Men are direct and to the point, while women try to negotiate. In the excerpt Tannen breaks her argument into 7 sperate

In the video lecture presented by Deborah Tannen, He Said, She Said, Tannen emphasizes that men and women grow up in very different social worlds. When boys grow up, they learn that there is often going to be an inequality of force in any conversation. For girls, however, they feel that equality is very important and that it needs to be enforced through sympathy-based bonding. As adults, these different messages behind socialization can often lead to confusion, miscommunication, and, sometimes, hurt feelings. Tannen explores the difficulties of cross-gender communication and how we can overcome them by understanding where these conversational rituals come from. As a reflection on Tannen’s lecture, this paper will analyze how the different developments of boys and girls lead to the different views men and women have on the world. First of all, childhood and friendship is perceived differently by each gender.

In Tannen’s first section, status vs. support, Tannen states that women view talking as a way to receive support, whereas men are

To define these communication conundrums, Tannen discusses “rapport-talk” and “report-talk”. She defines “rapport-talk” as “For most women, the language of conversation is primarily

DBQ: Using specific examples from the documents below, analyze the purposes that rituals and festivals served in traditional

The articles “Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why is it Hard for Men and Women to Talk to each other” by Deborah Tannen and “Speaking Different Languages” by John Gray are about how men and women often misunderstand each other which causes conflicts and or arguments. When a woman says something it usually has a deeper meaning, but men are usually more direct when speaking; this leads to conflicts and relationship problems. According to Tannen and Gray, men and women can adjust their thinking to minimize misunderstanding by translating each other’s dialect, by understanding their different ways of listening, and different body languages.

Deborah Tannen’s essay “But What Do You Mean?” focuses on what she claims are differences between men and women when it comes to social interaction. The essay is sectioned into seven categories, in which she talks about how men and women tend to think and react when it comes to apologizing, criticizing, thanking, fighting, praising, complaining, and joking with others. In general, she seems to promote the idea that women tend to be more polite and refined, considering the feelings of others when conversing and taking everything as a formality. In contrast, men are apparently more blunt, taking a more direct approach with matters and being more unconcerned with how they may affect others. Women tend to automatically apologize and thank others

Within the essay, “But What Do You Mean?”, author Deborah Tannen explains several main areas of miscommunication between men and women. Within her article, she goes section-by-section comparing men and women’s preferred style of communication. She concludes that while men and women may communicate differently, neither are wrong. To address this concern, she suggests using language both parties can understand. On the other hand, in William Lutz article, “The World of Doublespeak,” he takes a different approach to language discrepancies. Lutz introduces the idea of doublespeak as inherently negative. He starts by proceeding to discuss types of doublespeak subcategory-by-subcategory. Within his subcategories, he gives various real-world examples from various aspects of communication. The conclusion Lutz resolves to claims that doublespeak impedes communication, and thus should be eliminated. Overall, despite both authors exploring aspects of language the tone, categorization, and conclusions are different.

In the essay Sex, Lies, and Conversation Deborah Tannen focuses on the differences and lack of communication between men and women though observations. She came to the conclusion that men were not lacking in their listening, but they were however listening in a different way than the women did. On the other hand, men aren’t the only people that have terrible communication skills. In many ways, these differences between the two genders can cause major conflict when not understood by the opposite side. A few examples of lack of communication may be when women don’t decide where they would like to eat, men who walk away from an argument rather than talking it out, and their decision making processes.

The article, “But What Do You Mean?”, explains in general how men and women act differently and how it has effects on each individual. The quote, “When both parties share blame, it’s a mutual face-saving device. But if one person, usually the woman, utters frequent apologies and the other doesn’t, she ends up looking as if she’s taking the blame for mishaps that aren’t her fault. When she’s only partially to blame, she looks entirely in the wrong. ” explains the one of the behaviours of women. Women usually apologises as a way of showing the friendliness between them but it 's seemed as a weakness among men. Women also take half the blame to show the mutual situation but the opposite gender tends to see it in a different. “When I 'm with men, wit it cleverness seems inappropriate (or) lost! so I don 't bother.” also verifies that the behaviours between women and men are different as well as the humours. Men use insults as a way to appreciate the other person while women take it as an aggressive way of presenting the idea. Because the way men and women act is different or the way they feel is different, it can get difficult to communicate between men and women. What we should do is to be

Male and female differ in their use of communication because their reasons for communicating are different. Men

Communication between males and females has always been somewhat complicated. Because we are arguing that males and females have different cultures we wanted to take a look at what some of these differences might be. According to our research the inherent differences between male and female culture are the different roles that society holds for them and the ways these roles lead to different communication styles. The stereotypes that men and women grow up with affect the types of ways in which they communicate. We first wanted to take a look at how they specifically differ while men and women are arguing or having normal conversations. We also looked at the different types of networks that men and women

As Tannen addresses also, “I’m sorry isn’t self-deprecating, or even an apology; it’s an automatic way of keeping both speakers on equal footing.” Why does a woman always feel the need to be equal with her counter-partner?

There exists a disparity in the communication phenomenon between men and women. This disparity according to scholars can be attributed to the male dominance in the society today and relationship tensions between couples. A study on cross-sex conversations showed that, when men and women engage in a friendly conversation, they do so as equals but they do not play the same roles in the communication. Women tend to ask more questions and likely to utter utterances that encourage responses from the other speaker. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to interrupt their partner’s conversations and make direct opinions and facts to control or dominate the conversation. Thus, the communication phenomenon between men and women is strikingly distinct.

Deborah Tannen is the author of the book You Just Don't Understand where she analyzes the different meanings of communication between men and women. Her research shows that women and men use the same words and phrases and yet can interpret and react to those same words and phrases differently. Tannen compares the two sexes to find men use their conversation as a type of competition or to preserve their independence. For example, men talk about their knowledge regarding sports, cars, women, exc. Meanwhile, women try to foster intimacy through communication. For instance, women often talk and relate on a personal level. Throughout Tannen's book she uses "cross-cultural communication" to describe the differences between the language of