Gender And Communication Analysis

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.

Deborah Tannen, who is a professor of linguistics, says in her essay, "How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently", that after she made her book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” that one of the unintended benefits was that she gets to reevaluate her teaching strategies and see how male and females act differently in class. As you read through her essay you can tell that Deborah Tannen wants her readers to think about why males tend to speak more in discussions than females and the reason for this difference in the classroom and also how we can improve the classroom for both men and women.Although Tannen tends to get off topic and doesn 't have much evidence to back up some of her claims, she states

Another interesting statement I would like to bring to the surface is Alvarez writes in her book that “boys are born men but girls turn into women” (72). This made me think of the BBC YouTube clip we watched in class. Within this video a mother, father, and daughter are getting prepared for their daughters sweet fifteen. One of the first things I recognized in this film was that the father a male was speaking about and for the females when they were in the same room as them listening to what he had to say. This is a problem in itself as the male voices his and silences the women, in addition, he is speaking on a subject that he does not even fully understand, women. For arguments sake a women would never speak about a man and what it means to be one. This power dynamic within this family is troubling and shows the dominance of one gender over

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.

As children grow up, they learn how to communicate in various ways. One learns when and who to share his or her troubles with, how to bond with fellow classmates, and how to express feelings by using language. Tannen states that “many women bond by talking about troubles, and many men bond by exchanging playful insults and put-downs” (Tannen 215). . Tannen's research in “You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” shows that the differences between the communication patterns of men and women go beyond social occasions, and appear to be in the basic forms of the opposite sex. “Men use communication to maintain independence, while women talk to maintain intimacy (Morrison 1). Female students often find that males like to hide their feelings and speak undemonstrative outside the classroom

How one communicates is also influenced by gender. Studies show that ones sex can place a person in a gender role expectation. Women and Men communicate differently and because sexual identity is defined through same sex parent or role model, women and men can get into gender role expectations. These expectations influence their perception attitudes and behavior that will result in a communication style. This early self-concept can effect each one's interpersonal relations. Women for instance are much-attached human beings they have very early identification with their mothers, and this can cause an on going pattern of role expectation. It can lead to interpersonal communication skills that are very nurturing and understanding. Women are not threatened by intimacy and communicating at a close range with people. Similarly, men also have an early identification process not with their mother, but their fathers. Men tend to be fairly reserved, and quite. Men are most comfortable when there is a level of separation. This male role will contribute to the communication processes and it can cause communication to

Kinzel and Solnit both aimed their articles at the male population to point out an issue that is usually swept under the rug. A man being the intended audience strongly affects the argument because they are the ones that the authors have a problem with. They want to get their point across but need to do it in a way that does not anger the reader. Kinzel shows her great understanding of the issue by talking about how women are capable of this type of attitude. She even describes her behavior in situations like this “I’ve always called it “lecture mode,” and I even have this habit where I take a deep, semi-dramatic breath before it shifts on, and I begin, on the exhale, with, “Well--” I always begin with “Well--” and I always conclude with, “Does that make sense?” (Kinzel). By acknowledging this male readers are more receptive to her message and more likely to be open minded.

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

This causes women to become more vocal. Tannen suggests that status affects many different ways in which men communicate and raises several different examples. One area she found was that men tell more stories and jokes than women. She suggests that they are not doing this to be funny but instead do it to again to negotiate status. They often tell stories in which they are the heroes and act alone to overcome obstacles. While women use storytelling to gain support from her personal networks. They use their stories that, if they are the subject of, contain her doing something foolish to put her at the same level as the listener. In this way women are not concerned with status as with relating and gaining support. Men and women also differ when they are listening. While women tend to use eye contact and head nods to let the speaker know that she is listening. Men often do not use these techniques because they suggest agreement with the speaker. Women also a technique which Tannen calls cooperative overlap. This happens sometimes when women start to speak before the other person finishers speaking. They usually do this to agree and show support for what the speaker is saying. Women see cooperative overlap as a way to continue the conversation while men see it as a competitive ploy to gain control of that conversation. In this way communication again is not made clear, men are annoyed because they believe that

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.

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.

How one communicates is also influenced by gender. Studies show that ones sex can place a person in a gender role expectation. Women and Men communicate differently and because sexual identity is defined through same sex parent or role model, women and men can get into gender role expectations. These expectations influence their perception attitudes and behavior that will result in a communication style. This early self-concept can effect each one's interpersonal relations. Women for instance are much-attached human beings they have very early identification with their mothers, and this can cause an on going pattern of role expectation. It can lead to interpersonal

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.

Every race, culture, civilization, and society on this planet shares two things in common: the presence of both the male and female sex, and the need to communicate between the two. "The subject of gender differences appears to have engaged peoples’ curiosity for as long as people have been writing down their thoughts, from as far back as the writing of the creation of Adam and Eve, to its current popular expression in books such as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."