Communication And Gender Differences Between Men And Women

Deborah Tannen and William Lutz both discuss the difficulty of communicating. Their point of views may be different, but their conclusion is the same. Men and women have difficulties of communicating. Not because the two genders want to be complicated but simply because we don’t realize how or what we’re doing when it’s happening.

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.

The methods in which men and women communicate are eminently different. This being so, their external state is an indicator of their inner state, but men and women have different external states to express themselves. This is especially evident among children and individuals in relationships, and altered between a couple who tries to adjust their behavior. Deborah Tannen, the author of “Sex, Lies, and Conversation,” argues that boys are girls are taught to have a differ inner state, that males and females usually have the same inner state but express them differently when communicating, and that individuals in romantic relationships can alter the way they present their outer state to represent their inner state in a way their partner can relate to.

Deborah Tannen’s case study entitled “Can’t We Talk?” is the most relevant reading that I have ever done for any class. It relates to a problem that every person regardless of age, race or sex, will have to face many times in his or her lifetime. The problem is that men and women communicate differently and these differences can often lead to conflict. This case study is very informative because it helps to clarify the thought process of each sex. That said this reading leaves the reader somewhat unfulfilled because Tannen does not offer a solution to the problem.

She found that at every age, girls and women faced each other directly. On the other side of things, she noticed that at every age, boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room. Tannen demonstrates this when she gives the example of a woman in college who was frustrated because every time she would try and talk to her boyfriend he would lay down and put his arm over his face. This signaled that he was taking a nap, but he insisted that it was the only way he could listen without being distracted. Tannen follows by saying, “I believe these systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk between men and women like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the attraction and pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enterprise”. She backs her claim by discussing a research she discovered in an issue of American Psychologist. The research revealed that children’s development is most influenced by the social structure of peer interactions. The research later showed boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and their sex-separate groups have different organizational structures and interactive

This article by Deborah Tannen, written in 1990, addresses the differences between the communication styles of men and women and some of the ensuing problems that arise from these divergent behaviors. The article asserts "that although men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage" (p. 474). Research indicates that a majority of women state a lack of communication as the reason for seeking divorce as compared to only a few of the men. With the divorce rate at 50 percent the author says there is a "virtual epidemic of failed conversation" (p. 474) in America.

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.

Men and women view things very differently, and they socialize differently. It is often hard to straighten out misunderstandings because each one feels that his or her logic is the correct logic. “adult men and women struggling to communicate often sound like children.” (Tannen 441) The author convinces us of her argument by using scenerios between men and women.

Due to the different ways of expressing politeness and conversational involvement, they may have trouble communicating even if they share the same language. The ‘two cultures' approach proposes that talk between women and men is fraught with potential misunderstanding for much the same reasons that communication across the ethnic groups is (Mary Crawford, Talking Difference On Gender and Language, 1995). Hence, I agree with the point of view of Deborah Tannen. However, "You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation" does not inform readers about the reasons and the consequences of the communication differences between genders. Therefore, this essay will include the above

In order to be able to solve some of the problems associated with gender miscommunications, we should distinguish first between the two different types of communications: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Verbal communication consists of messages expressed by linguistic means such as the use of intonation, the specific words we choose to say, and the way we are saying them. There are differences in females and males usage of language/verbal communication. As we might expect from traditional sex-role stereotypes, girls tend to establish more egalitarian same-sex groups. Girls use friendly groups as a training ground for cooperation. Boys view friendly conversation among their friends as training for verbal aggression. Females are more verbal, use three times more amount of words than males, they are much more descriptive and use more adjectives. Women are less direct in their communication style. As Prof. Tannen showed in one of her research, women are more indirect in answering questions depends on the situation. They answer questions the way they would like to be answered by men, which means more than just a yes/no answer. However, men answer the way they would like to be answered

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

Gender roles were created and are learned by individuals early on to reinforce gender. As a result, feminine and masculine language is present in our communication and labels words as either masculine or feminine as a result of the gender roles they are characteristic of. There are many aspects of communication, power, duration, depth, body language, emotion, that all depict males and females a certain way. Studies have found that males are more powerful in verbal and non-verbal communication for their use of space and dismissive behaviour.

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.

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.

It is a well-known fact that men and women have vastly different styles of nearly everything, communication not excluded. Women tend to be more talkative and emotional whereas men are usually reserved and not quite as open with their emotions. Many differences indeed exist between the spoken language of males and females. What about body language? Nonverbal cues are often difficult to notice and even harder to understand. Some people may not even realize when they are communicating in this sense. Like the spoken word, nonverbal communication usually varies between males and females, depending on relationships, environments, and circumstances. Learning why different genders communicate in this manner, the various ways in which they do this,