Generalizations about Language and Gender
I am prepping for my linguistics exam and have been reading up on how men and women communicate:
Suzanne Romaine writes in Language and Society, that men tend to challenge one another in conversations, jumping from topic to topic, vying to tell anecdotes about themselves, and do not feel a need to link their own contributions to others, likely ignoring what had been said before and stressing their own point of view. One the other hand, women tend to be more interactional and aim at seeking cooperation, they send out and look for signs of agreement and link what they say to the speech of others, tending to be able to talk about one subject for more than a half an hour.
Women share feelings about themselves and talk about relationships, whereas men rarely talk about themselves or their personal problems.
Some linguists claim that communication between men and women is similar to cross-cultural communication.
Romaine concludes that the different discourse patterns indicates a potential for miscommunication.
Well, duh.
Diplomatic Relations:
I was discussing with a friend (female) the disagreement resolving ways of men versus women. Women seek open talks, trying to see all the angles, and finding a common solution for both sides, whereas men prefer containment and occasionally appeasement (when it comes to females).
Of course, I'm not saying all men in the world are like this, because I haven't met all the men in the world. ;-)
Suzanne Romaine writes in Language and Society, that men tend to challenge one another in conversations, jumping from topic to topic, vying to tell anecdotes about themselves, and do not feel a need to link their own contributions to others, likely ignoring what had been said before and stressing their own point of view. One the other hand, women tend to be more interactional and aim at seeking cooperation, they send out and look for signs of agreement and link what they say to the speech of others, tending to be able to talk about one subject for more than a half an hour.
Women share feelings about themselves and talk about relationships, whereas men rarely talk about themselves or their personal problems.
Some linguists claim that communication between men and women is similar to cross-cultural communication.
Romaine concludes that the different discourse patterns indicates a potential for miscommunication.
Well, duh.
Diplomatic Relations:
I was discussing with a friend (female) the disagreement resolving ways of men versus women. Women seek open talks, trying to see all the angles, and finding a common solution for both sides, whereas men prefer containment and occasionally appeasement (when it comes to females).
Of course, I'm not saying all men in the world are like this, because I haven't met all the men in the world. ;-)
posted by CaliValleyGirl at 10:30 AM
1 Comments:
That's funny! I remember learning about this in one of my soc classes. The teacher didn't like me very much and kept referrig to how I "argued like a man".
Maybe it was because I mocked her.
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