Gender-Based Communication

[woodtick]

I found this article absolutely fascinating and informative and promised a friend of mine that I would post it. I think this reveals a lot about male-female cultures in respect to communication. I loved it when we discussed it in my sociology class.

Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, recently wrote a fascinating and widely praised book called You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990), which deals with the complexities of communication between the sexes. Drawing upon a distinguished research career, Tannen presents vivid examples of how women and men are socialized to relate and dialog with others in such pronouncedly different ways that the two sexes often stumble in their efforts to connect. In various public lectures as well as in her book, Tannen maintains that the sexes are, in a very real sense, communicating from the perspective of two different cultures.

Tannen contends that men use language to convey information, to achieve status in a group, to challenge others, and to keep from getting pushed around. Women, on the other hand, use language to achieve and share intimacy with others, to promote closeness and equality in a group, and to prevent others from pushing them away. Stated another way, men often grow up thinking that people will try to push them around if given a chance, and thus often enter into conversations concerned about who is one-up and who is one down. From this perspective, communication becomes something of a contest in which a man endeavors to avoid being put in a one-down position.

Tannen illustrates this point with the example of a man whose wife has requested that he do some specific task around the house: rather than complying with her request immediately, he might wait and let some time pass before responding, so it will not appear that he is being told what to do. In contrast, women are not typically socialized to use language as a defensive weapon to avoid being dominated or controlled. Rather, their concern is often to use dialog as a way to get close to another-and as a way to judge how close or distant they are from a valued partner.

Tannen has some particularly enlightening things to say about women and men engaging in what she calls troubles talk:

Women and men are both frustrated by the other's way of responding to their expression of troubles. And they are further hurt by the other's frustration. If women resent men's tendency to offer solutions to problems, men complain about women's refusal to take action to solve the problems they complain about. Since men see themselves as problem solvers, a complaint or a trouble is a challenge to their ability to think of a solution, just as a woman presenting a broken bicycle or stalling car poses a challenge to their ingenuity in fixing it. But whereas many women appreciate help in fixing mechanical equipment, few are inclined to appreciate help in "fixing" emotional troubles.

A woman may talk about her problems to foster a sense of rapport and to achieve a feeling of "I am not alone". What she wants is a response that says, "I understand; I have been there too." For a woman, "trouble talk is intended to reinforce rapport by sending the message 'we're the same; you're not alone'" Such a response would put both communicators on an equal footing, thus allowing intimacy to be built around equality. However, when a man responds with advice when his partner is only looking for understanding, his response frames him "as more knowledgeable, more reasonable, more in control-in a word, one-up. And this contributes to the distancing effect."
Tannen tells women to minimize this relationship-eroding influence by telling their male partners that when dealing with emotional troubles, they do not want solutions, just someone to listen.

Other key gender differences in communication styles discussed by Tannen include women's inclinations to think a relationship is working if both partners continue to talk about it, contrasted with men's tendencies to think things are okay if they do not need to keep talking about their relationship; women using face-to-face eye contact during dialog more than men; and men's propensities to clam up at home, a place where they feel free not to talk (no need to keep their edge in a competitive, one-up world), as opposed to women's tendencies to open up in the comfort of home, where they feel free to talk.

Tannen stresses that the first step in improving communication is understanding and accepting that there are systematic gender differences in communication styles, and that is not a question of one style being more right or wrong than the other. Tannen reports that many people have indicated to her that once they came to understand these differences in how sexes use language, they were better able to put their problems of communication with the other sex in a manageable context-and often arrive at solutions to seemingly unresolvable predicaments.

[best]

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

That is a good book with the same info worded a little different. Also being a book, it has more then just one page, so it gives great examples of solutions as well.

[journeygal]

Women, on the other hand, use language to achieve and share intimacy with others, to promote closeness and equality in a group, and to prevent others from pushing them away.

I definitely do this and Jack definitely tries to offer solutions.

Very interesting article. Thanks for printing it.

[bikewench]

Hey Woodtick...

Some really good points in there. I'll have to read it a couple of times to digest it properly and think of the problem areas where this applies to the males in my life... ; )

[woodtick]

Many of the points brought up were issues that I dealt with. My ex-wife drove me nuts! It was torture to have to listen to her sometimes. She would come home from work and talk about all the crummy things going on in her office and my only reaction was to offer her solutions. When she didn't take action and would come home angry with the same troubles day after day it would just kill me. I should probably read the book and understand it even better. In fact I think I have to if I'm ever going to have a healthy marriage.

[smoke gets in my eyes]

Ohmigod. Dino is a woman.

[Gabe]

Smoke,
:LMAO

[McKrazy]

Originally Posted by smoke gets in my eyes

Ohmigod. Dino is a woman.

this made me laugh. Sooooooo often I have looked at our marriage and tried to use all the useful information about genders only to realize we simply don't fit those molds. I have to check between my legs.... yes, I APPEAR to be female, but.... anyway it's still useful if I just reverse it all. LOL

[journeygal]

Originally Posted by McTired

I have to check between my legs.... yes, I APPEAR to be female, but....

:LMAO