In her essay titled “It Begins at the Beginning”, professor of linguistics Deborah Tannen describes how girls’ and boys’ communication and language patterns differ from an early age. Tannen’s essay, which is adapted from her book titled You Just Don’t Understand, she states that in the world of communication boys and girls have vast differences, which makes itself apparent in the way that they play. The author backs this up with two explanations. First, is that people not only talk to boys and girls differently, but also accept different ways of talking from them. Second, children learn communication not only from their parents but also from their peers, and there are major differences in the way boys and girls play together and speak to each other. Tannen does a great job linking the differences in communication and her points do feed into and support one another. She argues that boys play with a hierarchal structure and often play games that have winners and losers, while girls tend to play in small groups doing activities that do not have winners or losers. However, beyond statements and description there was very little evidence to back either of these. I also found myself …show more content…
curious about the age groups she is writing about. While I do not disagree that there are social and communicative differences between boys and girls, I also value data and evidence. For example, ABC news conducted an experiment with the help of researcher Campbell Leacher of the University of California. They made lemonade with salt instead of sugar and fed it to boys and girls and recorded their reactions to the foul tasting lemonade. In summary the boys reacted honestly (“It tastes terrible”), while the girls reacted politely (“It’s good”). According to Leacher, The boys reacted just as he expected they would, because, he said, "Boys are allowed to talk back to their parents more than girls are, to assert their will more." Many researchers and child development experts believe these differences are due to socialization, or the way parents and society treat boys versus girls.
In fact in the mid 1970’s, a researcher by the name of Phyliss Katz designed what is now known as the baby X experiment. She brought adults into a room with a baby dressed in a yellow suit. The room had 3 toys in it: a doll, a football and a sex neutral toy. Some adults were told the baby’s name was “Mary” and some adults were told the baby’s name was “Johnny”. When the adults thought they were playing with a “girl” they presented the baby with the doll and when they thought they were playing with a “boy” they presented the football to the baby. Interestingly, this experiment was duplicated in the 1980’s with the same
result. In this same ABC news segment, Georgetown Professor Deborah Tannen was interviewed and stated that each sex would benefit by adopting some of the opposite sex's traits. "For the men," Tannen said, "it might mean backing off, toning down or just saying a few words to show that you're cognizant of the other person's feelings," and women, she said, could work on being "more explicit in what they think and what they want and what they expect of the other person." While Tannen did an excellent job describing gender differences in play and language used, I believe the essay would have much more validity and weight to it with evidence and data to back up the descriptions. In reading Tannen’s essay I found myself asking more questions about the subject than understanding the answer. In note including research, I felt the essay was not as effective as it could have been.
In the story, “But What Do You Mean” by Deborah Tannen she talks about men and women having different ways of seeing things. Some of the things she talks about I believe in while the other things I believe that these things aren’t true. In the text it talks about many different things. It says women apologize to much while men don’t, women cannot take criticism as well as men, women say thank you to much where men don’t say thank-you enough, women and men don’t fight the same, women and men have different habits in regard to giving praise, women and men don’t compliment the same, and finally men can take jokes better than women.
In her article “But What Do You Mean” Deborah Tannen, claims that there is a huge difference in the style of communicating between men and women. Tannen breaks these down into seven different categories; apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. With each of these she compares men to women by explaining the common misconceptions that each of the genders do. The different style of communication can cause some problems at the workplace and even affect the environment. The different styles of communication has been around forever and almost becomes a “ritual”(299). Tannen is effective with mainly women and not men. She is primarily successful with women due to the fact that her tone targets women, also the organization
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” as the famous saying of John Gray goes. It is believed men and women are nothing alike in almost every aspect. In Deborah Tannen’s essay “Gender in the classroom: Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” she focused on how men and women differ when it comes to communicating, with emphasis on how it effects to how men and women behave in the classroom.
According to Tannen, differences in childhood can impact individual’s communication with each other in relationships. At a young age, children tend to play with other children who are the same gender as them. Both groups of genders have different ways of building a friendship. Tannen says that “Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets” (276). It is important for girls to share secrets to get closer to one another and to have a mutual understanding unlike boys whose bonds are “based
In recent years, gender differences have already been one of the most controversial issues in various research. As an important communication tool of mankind, language is inevitably involved in controversies. However, Rachel Rafelman, a Canadian journalist and the author of “The Party Line” express her thought and opinion in her essay. She not only have some great points on what and how women and men are likely to talk, but also have different points on the talking environment. She comes up with facts and fit real and particle examples in her essay to make it understood. Whereas, Ronald Macaulay, a professor of linguistics and the author of “Sex Difference” uses words of novels to argue and promotes them as a cause of reinforce to men’s and women’s stereotypes in his essay. He argues through his whole as rebuttal and gives some examples to oppose the preconceived notion of sex differences. Over all, both Rafelman and Macaulay are the good writer but Rafelman is having upper to prove her essay better organized using her tones as per requirement.
There are many expectations on the way males and females are suppose to talk. As a baby and toddler one’s parents wants them to talk
A dominant debate in current psychological research is one on gender development. Psychologists try to understand relative importance of social and cognitive factors. Various theories are brought up in this field and in this essay two of the most standard theory in this field are going to be explained. The theories covered in this essay relate to aspects of children’s thinking that are central to their gender development. This will include, Kohlberg‘s theory of gender development (1966) and Bandura‘s theory of social cognitive development (1986). Theories like these help psychologists understand how and in which way children understand behaviour and which leads them to do so.
Tannen observed that communication begins with children. While a child grows they learn to speak from their parents and peers. Boy and girls may grow up within the same household but learn to communicate differently with each other. In groups children often play with the same sex: i.e. girls with girls, boys with boys. Although Tannen did a study on communication between men and women, she started with the interactions and communication of children. Her study concludes boys tend to play outside within large groups usually playing: sports, army, or cops and robbers. One boy in the group tends to take control, over the rest of the members, making him the leader. Meanwhile, girls play in smaller groups or pairs playing: house or dolls. This type of playing gives girls equality to ensure they will make a best friend. Tannen points out boys style of communication is more competitive arguing over who is the winner opposed to who is the loser, while the girls are less competitive by trying to make suggestions and compromise with others.
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 share. These networks also differ and as do the reasonings for their formation. Although we do not think that men and women need to change their cultures to effectively communicate, we do think that better communication is possible. One of the researchers we took a look at was Deborah Tannen. According to Tannen the reason that men and women do not communicate well is that men and women use language differently. Women take the attitude that conversation is to explore solutions to common problems while men concern themselves more with getting information and hard data from conversation. Tannen states that what women look for in communication is human connection, while men consider status to be most important. They are looking for independence and are constantly looking for higher accomplishments. Intimacy threatens this independence, so men have a tendency to avoid it. One of the old sayings about women is that they talk more than men. It turns out that it is not necessarily true. Women seem to talk more in private conversations than do men. Women do not generally have a fear of intimacy and therefore are much more open with one another during private conversations. It is more difficult for women to use this type of communication style in the public arena. In that case it is men that do most of the talking. Tannen ultimately argues that men use communication as a weapon. They use long explanations to command attention from who it is they are speaking to. They use it to convey information and to ultimately gain agreement. Tannen suggests that through even simple conversation men are continually protecting their status. She sugg...
If there is anything I have learned after joining the military, it would have to be the ability to pick up on my superior’s indirect cues. However, I did find it quite interesting reading that subordinates generally are more indirect with their superiors, such as in the case of the pilots and co-pilots presented within Deborah Tannen’s writing. For me at least, being quite direct without losing politeness or respect for the individual being spoken to seems to be quick and efficient, rather than having to drag out conversation longer than need be. While I don’t mean to sound boring, I do feel that being direct can paint clearer pictures or present situations in a brighter light for clarified understanding. Though it is true that my superiors
Mostly the difference is due to nature and not habit or bringing up. The different ways that their brains tend to be wired is what makes them communicate differently. Female brains are good at verbal tasks and males’ brains are better adapted for mathematical and visual-spatial tasks. Men give preference to action whereas women prefer talking. To say that women and men fundamentally differ when it comes to communicating is nothing but a false belief. But still, such myths have taken their roots firmly in workplaces. A call center manager once told he prefers to hire females since he wanted someone who could interact with people in a better way. Baron-Cohen wrote that female brains are better suited to jobs of counsellors, therapists, social workers and facilitators whereas men do best as engineers, bankers or lawyers etc. This is because jobs for female brains use the capacity for communication and empathy. According to the Myth of Mars and Venus, there is a difference in the use of language for communication between both genders. Some claims about communication difference by this myth are that communication and language matter to women more compared to men, men talk less than women, men are less verbally skilled compared to women, goal of men to use language is about getting the things done but women consider making connections and links with people, facts are covered more in men’s talk whereas women talk regarding f...
Deborah Tannen is a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, and her research specialty is conversational style. Based on her observations, she states, “for males, conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around; you use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy; talk is the essenc...
There have been several discussions that address the differences between male and female language use. These discussions all began with Lakoff’s controversial essays from 1975 that first introduced the concept of “women’s language.” (O’Barr et al 1980) Since Lakoff’s essays, other linguists have sought to address the issue of how gender affects language. O’Barr and Atkins use Lakoff’s information ab...
Our capacity as human beings to acquire and express complex methods of communication has been one of the biggest driving forces of humanity’s success. These complex linguistic systems are what we know as language. Language gives us a method of expressing concepts, emotions, and ideas in a varied way which sets us apart from all other animals. Language and gender is an area of sociolinguistics and related fields which attempt to define the differences in language related to gender, and what the inferences of these differences may be.
Wardhaugh states different social norms defining the standards of being men or women, which has a profound influence on the language behavior shown by different genders. In other words, both men and women should possess the ability to show either masculinity or feminity through the language they use. When this ability overlaps with the other gender, however, one might be considered as as outsider of their own gender. He then lists the main differences between males and femals with the connection with language: genetic differences, social differences (e.g. various roles people take within a certain society), and linguistic differences (e.g. speech style and word choice). Doing so, he gives readers an indepth idea about how gender differences link to various language behaviors. He further explains how these differences are possibly created and constructed in society. Wardhaugh also examines a few common gender stereotypes, such as women talk more than men, and proves most of the stereotypes are wrong.