Gender Conversations Between Anderson And Leaper

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

While reading “Gender,” an essay by Jack Halberstam, the topic of sexism was brought to the forefront of my mind. It has been brought up more often in conversation in the modern era, issues such as how a few cruel insults pertain to female reproductive anatomy and, in a sense, degrade females and ultimately identify them, as well as femininity, as inherently “bad”. Such a thought stemmed from how Halberstam touches on the “problematic stabilization of the meaning of ‘women’ and ‘female’”: meaning there is no room for argument when it comes to your gender—you’re either a girl or not. You either fit into a strict mold, or you do not.

Gender is a topic that not many people are educated on. When people think of gender, they think of boy and girl, people usually think of a girl having a vagina, and a boy having a penis. Many people have their thoughts on how each sex should behave which would be giving people gender roles, girls should play with Barbie dolls, and boys should play with trucks. There is more to gender than just the vagina and penis, In “Understanding The Complexities of Gender”, Sam Killermann talks about the distinct pieces that also comes with gender, like gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex. When people think of gender, the only part people think of is the biological sex.

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

There are many variables in interpersonal communication; sex and gender, race and ethnicity, age and social class, just to name a few. The variables in which were most present in

In “Man to Man, Woman to Woman”, M. Sherman and A. Hass explain the problem of male –female communication through the research. They passed a questionnaire to 160 women and 110 men asking them that how often they talk about the topic listed on the questionnaire with friends of the same sex. From the responses of the questionnaire, they wrote this article. They said that the men reported talking about sports, current events, music, whereas women reported talking about relationship problems, health, family, reproductive concerns, weight, food, and clothing. They come up with the conclusions that both men and women don’t have to adopt other’s style, but they have to recognize and respect other’s style. Well, it seems like Sherman’s and Hass’s article can really tell us accurate information than that of Maynard’s article. “Man to Man, Woman to Woman” is based on the majority view and not one person’s view like “His Talk, Her Talk”. “Man to Man, Woman to Woman” is based on the survey, so the newlyweds would be able to understand better because now-a-days people like data from research, they like exact numbers. Moreover, the survey done by Hass and Sherman leads us to the conclusion that the difference in topics is not so damaging to intimate male-female relationships as are the differences in the style and function of conversation. J. Maynard’s data are merely based on her own life experiences. Some people may not believe in one person’s

Drawing on Joan Scott's "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" and on Alice Kessler-Harris's "Just price, Free Market and the Value of Women", the following questions will be answered, How has the 'equality' of women and men been expressed according to both Scott and Kessler-Harris? Why 'gender' has become a "useful category of historical analysis" for historians? How different (other) historians view 'gender'? What are Kessler-Harris's views on the "equality," "comparable worth" and "equal pay?" Lastly, the importance of the two articles will be highlighted as it relates to the contribution to gender studies.

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.

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

Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my

interactions performed by people on a daily basis; gender is not merely a concept, but an

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.

The site I chose for observing non-verbal communication was a coffee shop that I go to frequently to study. This coffee shop is located in the center of town, is adjacent to a bus terminal, a community college’s satellite campus and close to office buildings. This coffee shop is always busy with a diverse group of patrons from students, businessmen and women, and elderly couples and friends. After observing several potential duos, I decided on two females who I started observing as they approached the coffee shop. Both women appeared to be in their mid twenties. They were walking side-by-side, arms linked and both looking straight ahead as they entered the coffee shop. One woman had brunette hair, which was styled and shoulder length. She was dressed all in black, with black leggings, top and black boots. She had a silver necklace and black purse. The other woman had short blonde, tussled hair. She too was dressed all in black; black pants, shoes and a black t-shirt. She was also carrying a backpack. The blonde appeared to have some visual disability as she was carrying a cane and using it to gauge the whereabouts of tables and counters. Her right eyelid drooped down and appeared almost closed while the left eye was open. They stopped briefly at a square table in the middle of the coffee shop, right by the door so the blonde could get her wallet from her backpack. From here they proceeded to the ordering counter, where the brunette stayed close by the blonde,

She studied ethnic groups, which speak the same language using different styles, and found that the effect of gender on communication is miniscule compared to the effect of culture and socialization. In her research, Tannen asserts that the basic uses of conversation by women are to establish and support intimacy; while for men it is to acquire status. These styles and motives for communicating represent different cultural upbringings, and one is not necessarily better than the other. However, she also notes in her findings that men tend to interrupt more and ask questions less. In fact, the female tendency to ask more questions sometimes results in receiving lower grades from male professors who view frequent questioning as proof that a student knows less than her male counter parts.

In 1990 Judith Butler first published her book Gender Troubles, where she questions gender roles. Butler theorizes that gender, as in male and female, is a type of societal/gender colonialism created to keep people who do not fall within the gender roles from being part of the mainstream society. In her 1999 preface, in which she addresses the impact her book had in the decade since its original publication, Butler expresses the concern she had with the “heterosexual assumption in feminist literary theory (61).” Butler utilizes the works of other feminist philosophers to further demonstrate the inconsistency, and disconnect between fighting for women rights and fighting for human rights. Judith Butler makes an interesting argument on the failure to recognize the spectrum of gender, however, she makes a compelling argument on the use of language perpetuating a patriarchal society.