Explain how men and woman use language differently. In order to understand how men and women use language differently, we must first understand the stereotypes in which society have created. As speakers of the English language, we are subject to grouping individuals based on characteristics and stereotypes made by society. Gender is one of those that is subject to the scrutiny of society. Researchers such as Lakoff and Wardhaugh have expressed the idea that men and woman use language differently.
This can be demonstrated by the children’s well-known nursery rhyme ‘what are boys made off?’ which gives way to the notion that gender is constructed by language and societal norms is. The rhyme plays on the stereotypes that people believe boys and girls fit into. “What are boys made of? Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails What are girls made of? Sugar and spice and all things nice”
(Coltrane and Adams 2008:169) On closer inspection, the phrase holds the idea that boys will play outside in the wilderness. This playing on the idea that men occupy a social space outside the domain of the household. Whereas ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ connotes the idea that girls are sweet. The words ‘sugar and spice’ may hint at the idea that girls have specific roles to play such as cooking and keeping things ‘nice’. It may also play on the idea of ingredients in a jar and the preservation of those ingredients. Thus leading to the notion that women are precious and need to be
In our world there are so people that are being overrated, from their skin color, to how they talk or to where they came from or the way they walk, everything from what people wear to where people come from and their ethnic background. These people are looked down on from the rest of society for just being themselves and doing only what they know to do. For some, it’s wrong if others do not act just like them and they put them down for it. Stereotypes can be described someone of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other groups. You can see that language, gender, and culture (class and race) does relate to power because men’s have more power than women’s, the way you speak, your
Did you know, “men and women talk differently because they are raised in something like two different cultures: a male culture from which young men learn to speak like men and a female culture in which young women learn to speak like women?”(Cooper and MacDonald 9). Well, not actually from two separate cultures, but the idea of men and women being opposites as pointed out in the opening. Deborah Tannen has made her theory that a male culture and female culture each exist, very popular with the human population and has written an extensive book on her theory.
“Sex Differences” is an essay written by a professor of linguistics named Ronald Macaulay. In the essay, he pointed out that there were no gender differences regarding to language development. He talked about various stereotypes about how men and women speak. He also explains in depth about how social environment made an impact on the talking between men and women. He also concluded that those linguists who still believe in that theory only continue to do so even if what they found in their research is not statistically significant. In many ways, Macaulay’s essay is persuasive. Through this essay, one would agree with him that there is no different form of language in which women and men speak.
Although many are unaware, a rigid and relentless culture of outdated, and misguidedly created gender roles, act as an unofficial supreme law of land, and dictate how our society functions, and who it functions for. The strict structure of gender roles mandates how we behave, how we appear to ourselves and to others, and how we linguistically communicate, all of which play an immensely important role in our society. Even at the young age of four, children have acquired the social competence to declare whether a specific toy is marketed towards boys, or marketed towards girls, just by the outwards appearance alone; and while theses characteristics are not necessarily harmful or hurtful to the child at four years old, they can potentially turn adverse and inimical, causing harm to others in both physical, and emotional fashions. The wide spread concept and belief in gender roles has continuously through time been protested and thought of as a broken mold, and with a close analysis of the book Lord of the Flies, author William Golding, subtly, yet progressively, proves this notion through his intricate and convoluted method of storytelling.
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
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.
As the age old saying goes, “Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. The conflicting views of men and women have been questioned for centuries, noting how men and women differ in emotion, affection, and communication.
Nature vs. Nurture? The debate has obsessed the minds of psychologists and philosophers for many years, each arguing their idea is the right way. ABC aired a TV documentary "Boys and Girls are Different" hosted by John Stossel to show some of the leading feminists ideas and their opponents thoughts.
This is seen in two ways; the first is interpersonal interactions, and the second is representations of men and women in that are embedded in form and content of language. For example Cameron (1992) found that women are referred to by their first name as well as terms of endearment such as ‘love’ and ‘dear’. It shows that language and representations are closely linked and that language holds representation of ideas in clichés, epithets etc. It has also been represented that a women’s experience is systematically devalued in comparison to that of the male norm. Weitz (2003) has highlighted that throughout history women’s bodies have centrally affected the structures within which women live. Females are described as passive, for example Mother Nature. Objects such as cars and boats are mostly deemed female and temperamental and are also dominated by males. English language reflects the power that men have historically held in many areas of life. The sexist language against women shows them in lower social and economic status. An example of this is nouns ending in ‘ess’ e.g. waitress, stewardess, these are then seen as less significant than their male equivalents. This also applies to the suffix ‘ette’ this is giving feminine status to objects such as cigarette, this shows inferiority. Some studies have shown that individuals who do not believe in traditional sex stereotypical roles are less likely to write an educational essay using sexist language (McMinn, Lindsay,
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,
An incredibly sensitive subject that has only been silently amplified in the 21st century, is the topic of Sex, Gender, and Women vs. Men. We're living in the time of tiny cellular devices and electric cars, yet with all these technological advances, when it comes to gender equality it almost feels like we've been going around in a ridiculous merry-go-round.
According to Deborah Tannen, a linguistic professor of Georgetown University, men and women talk differently and sometimes it might be very complex as she stated that many coupes 'grew in diverse cultures.' Men consider communication as a primary language of 'report.' They feel more
From a very early age, males and females are taught different linguistic practices. For example, communicative behaviors that are considered acceptable for boys may be considered completely inappropriate for girls.