Deborah Tannen's Essay 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.

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.

The typical stereotypes of communication are that women talk more than men, that is not necessarily true. For example, Tannen states, “...another explanation is that men think women talk to much because they hear women talking in situations where men would not: on the telephone; or in social situations with friends, when they are not discussing topics that men find inherently interesting, or; like the couple at the women’s group, at home alone-in other words, in private speaking” (Cooper and MacDonald 11). Men and women have two different conversational styles, different ways of talking. They also have different ideas of what is important and what is not. For example, Tannen points out that the man thought it wasn’t important that his friend was getting married, but the woman had thought that it was important (Cooper and MacDonald 12).

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,

In the essay, “But What Do You Mean?” author and linguistic expert Deborah Tannen argues her feelings on how men and women vary in their use of conversational “rituals.” She states that males have a tendency to use wording to sustain dominance in conversation; however, women seem to take in to account the feelings of others. Tannen identifies seven categories in which men and women differ in communication. First, women use apologies to assure other people. Men can misapprehend these apologies as taking blame rather than as the ritual reassurance that women mean for it to be perceived. This supports what Tannen says in her essay, “But there are times when ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t self-deprecating or even an apology” (Tannen 380). Second, men are more straight-forward when criticizing more than women; women “soften” their criticism with the purpose of sparing the feelings of the person they are criticizing. Third, women often say “thank you” ritualistically, most of the time to equate the two in the conversation. Fourth, men enjoy “verbally sparring” more than women. Because of this difference, women are under the impression that they are usually condemned in a conversation. Fifth, women and men use praise differently. Women tend to expect praise open-heartedly when they are praised. Men, on the other hand, often confuse that not criticizing is praise enough. Sixth, women converse their complications in order to share their experiences; they complain not to solve their

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.

Conversation is a ritual every person must encounter throughout their lives in order to function properly with one another in today’s society. However, every individual has a “different idea about what’s appropriate” when approaching someone in any sort of conversation; that is why we are referred to as individuals (Tannen 327). There are thousands of diverse languages to speak to one another with, in fact that means there are thousands of different ways to offend each other with our words. Within those languages there are several contrasting gestures that can offend any single person, such as the amount of times individuals apologize in one meeting, giving criticism too harshly, or thanking someone so often it does not seem genuine. In the article “What Do You Mean,” Deborah Tannen touches upon apologies, criticism, and thank yous in further detail to explain where individuals go wrong within conversation and how they can fix their actions. Individuals find it satisfying to please others by being polite because it is the ‘right’ thing to do, however like myself others need to stand up for themselves and get directly to the point now in order to avoid conflict later in life.

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

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

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

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