The bestselling self-help books, such as "Men are from mars, women are from Venus" explain to their readers that there are fundamental differences between men and women, which determine the contrast in how both sexes speak. The author, John Gray uses the metaphor of the two planets and suggests that when men and women were united on Earth, they all suffered from 'selective amnesia'. As a consequence, "both the Martians and Venusians forgot that they were from different planets and were supposed to be different" , which resulted in gender conflict deriving from misunderstanding of intentions. Other authors of popular self-help books prefer less metaphorical theories and explain gender differences in language through evolution and biological characteristics of the sexes. However, modern sociolinguistics attempt to undermine these radical statements by approaching the question analytically drawing on evidence from the fields of anthropology, discourse analysis, dialectology, ethnography and social psychology to investigate whether women's and men's communication differs to the extent described in psychology books and what are the factors that could contribute to the development of what is known to be sex-preferential language patterns . From the linguistic point of view, It could be argued that the question itself imposes pre-conceptions of the gendered talk as it assumes that speakers are divided in two groups called "women" and "men"' and that because those groups unarguably differ, the language they use is shaped by their sex characteristics. In exploring the question whether women and men speak differently, it is necessary to focus on considering the notion of the andocentric approach to gender, the concept of 'acquiring' ...
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... women speak. However, while Gray states that need a translator to help them with communication, Cameron claims that the differences in how men and women express themselves are minor and do not affect understanding of the opposite sex. The key contrast in the approaches undertaken by Gray and the feminists is why those discrepancies exist. According to Gray, the concept of the two sexes is a reason of its own for the intersexual communication. On the other hand, sociolinguists have proved that the notion of "performing gender" through language is key to understanding the great extent of sexism, stereotyping and incompetent guesses hidden in the popular self-help books, which promote the view that men and women come from different planets and thus create the unjust society, in which women occupy the role of the 'second sex' as opposed to men, who are the 'norm'.
“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.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
... women speak and the type language they use would be dependent on their comfort level in a certain situation. Women and men commination and speak varies as per situation. In spite of the differences, we should not pay much attention on them. “Men and women are simply people and that what have in common is more important the la difference”. Emphasizing the gender differences only extend the gap between men and women and create more discrimination.
...ation of men and women to the reader; we accept the cliché’s and gender-roles as the collective standard.
Something that has made an acceleration to several arguments is gender communication (Oluwagbemi-Jacob 225). The gender
“Love is magical, and it can last, if we remember our differences” (Gray 14). Gender communication differences are very complex, yet somewhat remarkable. Dr. John Gray explains that it is as if men and women come from different planets. Unfortunately, many times men and women forget that they are supposed to be different (10). In addition to the biological natural differences between males and females, society treats and values each gender very differently, all of which plays a big part in how they communicate (Papadopoulos 2). Dr. Gray states, “When you remember that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, everything can be explained” (10). If a man and woman do not take the time to understand, respect, and become aware of their differences,
The construction of gender is based on the division of humanity to man and woman. This is impossible ontologically speaking; because the humans are not divided, thus gender is merely an imaginary realm. It only exist in the language exercises, and the way that cultural products are conceived in them. This essay is a preliminary attempt to offer an analysis of ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’ by Wittig and ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir holds on the language usage contribution to the creation of genders and the imagined femininity.
In the article, Women Get Interrupted More—Even By Other Women, Robb depicts the sexism towards talking to women in comparison to men. With the aid of the research done by Adrienne Hancock and Benjamin Rubin, the author exposes the truth that, on average, women are interrupted more often even by the same sex, despite the fact that women are "more elaborate in their language". This article held my interest, it was to the point, but with enough details to not generate questions on the integrity. I enjoyed this article as I believe this discriminatory situation, especially in professional settings, is something women should not tolerate, and I am glad this was brought to attention, to hopefully alter the behaviour of people. I noticed immediately
Communication is an essential part of human life. People perceive things in a different way because of ethnic background differences, attitudes and beliefs, etc. These differences may affect our ability to communicate with our counterpart. Therefore, it is necessary to keep our mind open so that we can reduce the risk of communication breakdown. Men and women are different as everyone knows that. However, their differences are no just physiological and anatomical. Recent researches have concluded that there are remarkable differences between the two genders in the way their brains process information, language, emotion, cognition etc. Scientists have discovered the differences in the way men and women carry out mental functions like judging speed, estimating time, spatial visualization and positioning, mental calculation. Men and women are strikingly different not only in these tasks but also in the way their brains process language. This could account for the reason why there are overwhelmingly more male mathematicians, pilots, mechanical engineers, race car drivers and space scientists than females. On the other hand, there are areas in which women outperform men. Women are naturally endowed with better communication and verbal abilities. They are also effective than men in some of the tasks like emotional empathy, establishing human relations, carrying out pre-planned tasks and creative expressions (Kimura 1999).
Some linguists, as Lanser notes, have argued that there is a woman's language or discourse of the powerless 'speech that is polite, emotional, enthusiastic, gossipy, talkative, uncertain dull and chatty' in contrast to men's speech or powerful speech. We may not agree that women's speech is essentially like this, but The Yellow Wallpaper suggests that there is certainly a particular way that men expect women to speak and behave. As Ford notes 'There can be no doubt that the narrator dwells in the middle of a Patriarchy ' ( Gilman , 1997, p. 309) She is living in 'ancestral halls', has just given birth to a baby boy and is...
relationship problems between men and women because of the fundamental psychological differences between them. The author represents men and women from two different planets. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. This book also states the difference of values of men's and
Wood, J. T. (2011). Gendered Verbal Communication. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture (10th ed., pp. 118-137). Boston, MA: Cengage.
...terpretation of language. “Women and men sometimes perceive the same messages to have different meanings” (Torppa). Everybody has seen the affects of this difference in interpretation in society. It is the reason why there are more women at Celine Dion Concerts, and why there are more men attend heavy metal concerts.
They creates a stigmatized definition of what it means to be male and female. These stereotypical roles given to us from birth, often create gender inequality causing both males and females to struggle from gender disproportion. Unfortunately this is difficult to eliminate as they have been socially constructed into our societies. Although over the years these roles have been changing due to the awareness, media and many laws and protests, there is still the need for a self-identity and equality among both males and females. Blasco (2010) suggests that in order for us to move towards improvement, we cannot view males and females as complete opposite.