Deborah Tannen How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently Summary

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

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.

Tannen says that another colleague that read her book, told her that he took “for granted the best way to deal with student 's comments is to challenge them”(Tannen para. 10) He noticed that the females in his class were quiet. He decided to begin class with an open discussion instead, he found more women began to speak up and women liked this better but men liked this less. The reason for this was men liked being challenged and most women thought of it as a public humiliation.

Theme: Education, especially for women, is a valued aspect men desire women to not take part in. However, having the privilege of being more knowledgeable than others can led to segregating others, ultimately corrupting yourself.

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

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

In her essay, "But What Do You Mean?" Deborah Tannen discusses how men and women 's conversation styles differ in how they communicate with one another. The problem is that men and women have different perspectives. Tannen explains that the "conversation rituals" among women are designed to be polite and sensitive to others, while the "conversation rituals" among men are designed to maintain superiority (328). Tannen explores seven ways in which men and women miscommunicate : apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. Being no fault of either party, conversation strategies between men and women are just naturally different, these miscommunications can make conversation awkward and sometimes can be misunderstood.

To begin, Tannen’s article shows a primarily positive tone. She maintains a casual tone as she compares the dissimilarities between men and women’s communicative interactions. To further exemplify, Tannen first gives an example of either a male or a female encounter and then contrasts it with comparative words such as “but” or “while.” She uses language to divide but not exalt one language preference in greater esteem than the other. In her passage regarding apologizing,

Each individual conveys their ideas in unique ways. Men and women in particular express themselves in drastically different ways. In “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, experiments with the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen opens her discussion by exploring the beginning stages of learning communication skills and then fast forwards to adulthood. Tannen uses research from sociologists and anthropologists such as Lever, Goodwin, and Eder as well as insight from Walter Ong to add credibility and to create a foundation for her explanation of the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen expands on this research from cultural and behavioral professionals by creating an experiment in her own classroom to demonstrate that communication skills learned and cemented in younger years, combined with a “ritual opposition” setting, produce classroom dynamics.

In Deborah Tannen’s article, “But What Do You Mean?” she enumerates seven different ways that women and men tend to have a kind of struggle. Tannen discusses how the men and women have different ways of speaking. The seven main differences are classified and divided into: apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. First, men don’t correctly interpret apologies; they often implicate blame with apology, synonymous with putting oneself down. On the other hand, women apologize to calm other people. Second, criticism from men is straight and without a filter; women do not go as hard in their criticisms in order to not destroy that people feelings. Third, most of women use “thanks” automatically; it is easy for them to express their gratitude, although for men it doesn’t work like that. Fourth, during discussion of ideas, men would go as tough and merciless as they can, arguing every opinion or idea in the strongest terms. On the other hand, women would take that arguing as a personal attack. Fifth, men believe that the fact of saying nothing is a way to praise, while women every time they think they have done a good job, praise is expected. Sixth, men interpret complaints as a way to request the solution of a problem; women complain in order to sympathize and feel sorry for other people. Seventh and last, the sense of humor is also different. Sometimes women can view men’s jokes as being offensive. Men’s humor consists more of

Muted group theory was introduced by Cheris Kramarae. This theory is the idea that in the English language, men seem to have power over women when it comes to the right to be able to talk and say what they want to say. This is because men, who Kramarae believes are the dominant group, have formulated different words and norms. This leaves women feeling left out and constrained in what they can and cannot say. Deborah Tannen on the other hand, deals with Genderlect theory and the idea that male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication. Tannen strongly believes that men and women have different ways of communicating. Both Kramarae and Tannen deal with very valuable theories that have similarities and differences to them.

When you read the title, “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” you may think that the article is about the way female and male students talk to one another. Deborah Tannen’s article is actually about how female and male students participate during class; from raising hands to just plainly speaking out loud. Tannen is a teacher but she states “the furthest thing from my mind was my teaching strategies,” (Tannen 369) considering how female and male students participate in class differently. Since Tannen had recently only focused on female and male language through conversation in her article “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” she decides to focus on her own class and the way her students participate

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

This process involves acting out what we believe to be society’s perception of what it means to be masculine or feminine (West and Zimmerman, 1987). The initiation before a man and woman begin dancing together is perhaps the clearest example of individuals ‘doing gender’. In this space, men are almost exclusively responsible for initiating conversation or some sort of physical interaction. The idea that men must be aggressive and women must be passive only reaffirms our gender stereotypes. This relationship is even more evident in fraternities, as there seems to bee an even wider range in terms of what is deemed to be appropriate behavior (Boswell and Spade, 1996).

The data on Table 1 shows that the men in the meeting had more turns but there was an exception (woman D) and the men in the meeting generally spoke for longer per turn but again there was an exception (woman B). Additionally men also interrupted more (except for man E), and men were interrupted more except Man E and Man I, therefore there is no significant pattern in terms of which gender was interrupted more.