Miscommunication Deborah Tannen Summary

According to Deborah Tannen, she argued that similar miscommunication occurs all the time between women and men. Tannen defined genderlect “as the belief that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior way of speaking” (Tannen pg., 433). In other words, discussion of men and women are not accurate and immoral, and as she mentioned inferior or superior, but overall just different. To get a better understanding of this, Tannen gave examples in which she quoted “women seek human connection, whereas men are concerned mainly with status” (Tannen pg. 433). Indicating that women tend to find that interaction when talking to the opposite sex, while men just want

to talk, meaning that it doesn’t matter whether or not there is a connection. However, as Tannen mention it may also be because men are not as open as women.
When reading this article, I kept nodding my head up and down, as in me agreeing with what was being said throughout the whole article. Tannen categorizes each term to explain the different types of feminine styles and masculine style there is, which I completely agreed with. I did realize that when interacting with men they do avoid personal disclosure, in other words they speak less when being in private conversation and not wanting to open up about private things. Not only that but what I never pay close attention to is that men do tend to tell lots of stories, which it is true, because my guy friends always have a new story to tell. Also, they would be more interesting in talking about sports than to actually discussed personal issues to someone. From personally experience, I do tend to be more indirect when communicating because I am very deceiving, while my guy friends tend to be more direct when communicating with me.