Chapter Five Gendered Verbal Communication

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize feelings and judge which feelings are appropriate for a given situation.

What is it that makes a woman a woman, or what makes a man a man? Deborah Tannen, author and Ph.D. of linguistics, investigates this question within the essay, “There Is No Unmarked Woman.” An excerpt from a larger publication, “Talking from 9 to 5,” written in 1994, “There Is No Unmarked Woman” is an effective examination of the social injustice as to why the state of womanhood is “marked” while the state of manhood is “unmarked”, and what this means for each sex. The book itself is a result of real-life research about the conversational

“Sex Differences” is an essay written by a professor of linguistics named Ronald Macaulay. In the essay, he pointed out that there were no gender differences regarding to language development. He talked about various stereotypes about how men and women speak. He also explains in depth about how social environment made an impact on the talking between men and women. He also concluded that those linguists who still believe in that theory only continue to do so even if what they found in their research is not statistically significant. In many ways, Macaulay’s essay is persuasive. Through this essay, one would agree with him that there is no different form of language in which women and men speak.

Tannen (1994) suggests that the two sexes have very different modes of communication, and she suggests that in fact, communication between man and woman should be viewed as inter-cultural communication. She also has given set of differentiations: (1) Men live in a world of hierarchy; women live in a world of connection. (2) Men require individuality and freedom; women require intimacy and familiarity. (3) Men live in a world of action; women live in a world of feeling.(p,67) The issue Tannen tries to address is that sometimes women and men don’t understand each other because they come from different cultures. These findings on gender stereotypes offer a great help to them for understanding each other and thus enhance their relationship. Women

Years later McConnell-Ginet (1989, as cited in McConnell-Ginet, 2011) began to study about language and gender in which it focused on speeches of men and women. Later in 2002, in investigating the characterisation of men and women in language, a study has been conducted that covered the sexism in language (Weatherall, 2002). Thus, the foundation of this research is based on the study of language and gender and its effect on

Alleen Pace Nilsen began a study of Sexism in American English after returning from a two-year stay in Kabul, Afghanistan. Trying to avoid social issues in her research, Nilsen used the dictionary, as her main source and guide, making note-cards on every entry that seemed to tell something about male and female. She soon discovered that language and society go hand and hand. Furthermore, that the language a culture uses is evident in its values and beliefs. Amore careful look at the English language revealed three main points that Alleen Nilsen elaborates more on.

In the fourth session, Kristen Keen talks about gendered language choices and how they affect how people relate in the society. Power based violence and the tendency of blaming victims has been on the rise in the society. The theme of the session is “She’s such a slut! Analyzing our gendered language choices and their impact”. Kristen Keen agrees that there is an increasing gendered language that has both negative and positive connotations and can either have positive or negative effects on how people relate.

Deborah Tannen’s article of How Male and Female Students Use of Language Differently was taken about her colleague when he decided to do a class experiment. The way he went about it was quite interesting to the students. How men seem to dominate more when they talk. Women tend to back off when the conversation might keep going and going in a classroom. Most small groups help quiet people talk more.

Men and Women communicate very differently, the way your family communicate might affect you and so might your ethnicity. In “How Male and Female Students use Language Differently” Tannen explains how males and females have different conversational styles. She also talks about ethnicity and gender being a factor in the way people communicate. In my case these two factors play a huge role in my way of communicating and also in my family’s way of communicating.

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

In response to what we have discussed thus far in Interpersonal Communication, I would like to further explore the idea of gender in the interpersonal communication arena. As was said in class, ”gender influences cultural perspectives.” Gender also influences how we view ourselves in society. On the flip side, I’ve seen how society can mold the way we label ourselves in terms of gender.

In the process of going through an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter training program, one cannot help but notice a substantial gender gap. For every fifteen females, there are (perhaps) one or two males. Research has suggested that females make up around 85% of the ASL interpreting field (RID, 2014). Does this significate gender differential have an effect on clientele message? This paper hopes to explore that precise question. Through the course of this paper, I will uncover the differences in communication styles between males and females. Additionally, I conducted a survey of interpreters as well as clients in order to gain insight into the possible effects this differential has on clientele. The online qualitative survey allowed me to compare and contrast responses from a small sample of interpreters and clients. The most significant information I gathered related to awareness. Interpreters, it seems, are aware that their gender impacts the client’s message and are taking steps to remedy that. I plan to explore some of these potential solutions within this paper.

This is seen in two ways; the first is interpersonal interactions, and the second is representations of men and women in that are embedded in form and content of language. For example Cameron (1992) found that women are referred to by their first name as well as terms of endearment such as ‘love’ and ‘dear’. It shows that language and representations are closely linked and that language holds representation of ideas in clichés, epithets etc. It has also been represented that a women’s experience is systematically devalued in comparison to that of the male norm. Weitz (2003) has highlighted that throughout history women’s bodies have centrally affected the structures within which women live. Females are described as passive, for example Mother Nature. Objects such as cars and boats are mostly deemed female and temperamental and are also dominated by males. English language reflects the power that men have historically held in many areas of life. The sexist language against women shows them in lower social and economic status. An example of this is nouns ending in ‘ess’ e.g. waitress, stewardess, these are then seen as less significant than their male equivalents. This also applies to the suffix ‘ette’ this is giving feminine status to objects such as cigarette, this shows inferiority. Some studies have shown that individuals who do not believe in traditional sex stereotypical roles are less likely to write an educational essay using sexist language (McMinn, Lindsay,

During spring and summer of 201 I underwent a six month internship in the information services department of a major company in my country Botswana. The company , Botswana power corporation is the sole producer and distributor of electricity in Botswana. As a company with branches all over the country it is easy to understand why communication would be crucial to the day to day operations of this company as a whole. For the sake of clarity however I’m going to limit the focus of this paper to the Information servives departmentin which I worked.

From a very early age, males and females are taught different linguistic practices. For example, communicative behaviors that are considered acceptable for boys may be considered completely inappropriate for girls.