You Just Don T Understand By Deborah Tannen Analysis

Deborah Tannen and William Lutz both discuss the difficulty of communicating. Their point of views may be different, but their conclusion is the same. Men and women have difficulties of communicating. Not because the two genders want to be complicated but simply because we don’t realize how or what we’re doing when it’s happening.

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.

Tannen has unmistakably given a considerable amount of thought about the way children are taught and observe communication. Tannen holds that male and female children are taught to communicate differently as they grow older, which can cause communication problems later in their lives. Children are unquestionably impressionable and girls in particular are taught how and expected to be particularly nurturing and concerned about the state of others. Boys are taught to be tough and strong, and this is where the disconnect occurs. Girls are taught to have an inner state of warmth and concern, and boys are taught to have an inner state that outwardly appears to be somewhat standoffish and disconnected. A child’s actions may gain

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.

Different social, professional and cultural contexts may affect relationships and the way people communicate due to of a lack of understanding or knowledge of one another’s background and culture. This could be through their race, religion, ethnicity or where they come from. Each one of these can have similar or very different ways to communicate. For example

Communication involves more than exchanging words between people. Gestures, postures, facial expressions and even eye contacts are important during communication. Both verbal and nonverbal cues are important during communication and can help a person understand the speaker or listener’s emotions, attitudes or status. Understanding the existence of various cultures is necessary since different cultures have varying ways of communication (Lustig & Koester, 2012). Therefore, a communication style that is perceived as bad by a culture may be good in another culture. Besides, characteristics that may be essential for a particular culture may be quite irrelevant for another. In line with this dissimilarity, individuals need to adapt carefully and understand communication preferences and desires among cultures.

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

The articles “Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why is it Hard for Men and Women to Talk to each other” by Deborah Tannen and “Speaking Different Languages” by John Gray are about how men and women often misunderstand each other which causes conflicts and or arguments. When a woman says something it usually has a deeper meaning, but men are usually more direct when speaking; this leads to conflicts and relationship problems. According to Tannen and Gray, men and women can adjust their thinking to minimize misunderstanding by translating each other’s dialect, by understanding their different ways of listening, and different body languages.

Due to the different ways of expressing politeness and conversational involvement, they may have trouble communicating even if they share the same language. The ‘two cultures' approach proposes that talk between women and men is fraught with potential misunderstanding for much the same reasons that communication across the ethnic groups is (Mary Crawford, Talking Difference On Gender and Language, 1995). Hence, I agree with the point of view of Deborah Tannen. However, "You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation" does not inform readers about the reasons and the consequences of the communication differences between genders. Therefore, this essay will include the above

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.

From reading, a lot of things came into play that I never understood before, such as the two-culture approach and miscommunication. I knew that it was always difficult for males and females to understand each other, but I never realized men have a report talk and women a rapport talk. Although misunderstood, we all learn that it takes time to understand each other, and relationships build as we communicate through conversation, or the process of two or more parties working interactively to create meanings through the exchange of verbal and nonverbal vocalization and

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

Communication had its verbal and nonverbal understandings, but they also have their misunderstandings. Body language has industrialized itself with different types of language that were brought up by the society. Men and women weren’t use to these body languages towards the similar gender. Miscommunication has been a problem when dealing with these differences. Men and women continue to build body languages that only made sense to themselves and not to the opposite gender. Although one defeats the other in a

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.