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Deborah Tannen Can T We Talk Analysis

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Deborah Tannen is a researcher on the social interactions between people. In her essays “Sex, Lies, and Conversations” and “Can’t We Talk?” Tannen addresses the conversational habits of men and women to analyze their interactions, looking for where problems in relationships begin. The two essays are similar because of their theme, diction, and tone.

In Deborah Tannen’s “Sex, Lies, and Conversation,” Tannen uses personal stories and scientific research to support her claim that conversational misunderstandings between men and women stem from how each gender views conversation. Tannen states that because men and women interact in groups primarily composed of their respective genders during childhood, misunderstandings between the genders are a result of conversational differences as children (Tannen 424). Tannen’s theme throughout the piece is that neither gender is right or wrong in misunderstandings, but rather the differences in how each gender views the other’s conversational habits are the …show more content…

Tannen states that men are more likely to address, fix, and move on from a problem, whereas women are more likely to be sympathetic and helpful on an emotional level. Tannen believes men and women have misunderstandings because of their different approaches to conversation, making misunderstandings misinterpretations, rather than “right or wrong” scenarios. Tannen uses rhetorical phrases to explore the intricacies of conversation more in depth. Tannen also uses the phrases, “how” and “why,” to probe further into scenarios of conversations (Tannen). Tannen’s usage of stories create the tone of “Can’t We Talk?”, by making Tannen’s tone informative yet uncomplicated. Tannen’s piece analyzes how men and women differ in their conversational skills, and how most instances of miscommunication are because of these

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Of all the 70 scientific studies Tannen could have chosen to talk about, the number of which she releases later in her paper, her choice of these two serves to demonstrate how biased and varied in results the scientific studies on this topic have been in the past. This helps Tannen justify the need for her article on the subject as it gives reason to why the issue on which gender speaks more still has not yet been resolved. Later in her essay, Tannen uses the results of a survey done by Campbell Leaper and Melanie Ayres on the results of 70 studies published in scientific journals several times. Her first use of their results follows her statements on the studies talked about earlier in this paper, noting that they “found that counting words yielded no consistent differences”. She then goes on to say, “Campbell and Ayres note that many studies find women doing more ‘affiliative

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“Between the Sexes, a Great Divide” written by Anna Quindlen, is an essay that talks about the differences between men and women, and how they see the world. She tells about her belief that boys and girls are just different and see the world in different ways, and have always been different. She gives us an image of a middle school dance where the differences can be seen the easiest because of the ‘great divide’ that occurs at all of these events throughout time. She thinks that the divide happens “not because of big differences among us, but because of the small ones” (165). Eventually, both boys and girls will have to come together as a pair and cooperate to live in this world normally.

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Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is a popular author in the United States of America. Mostly of her focus in her articles and books is on the expression of interpersonal relationships in contentious interaction. Tannen became well known after her book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was published. However, this was not her only claim to fame. Along with this book, she also wrote many other essays and articles including the popular article “Marked Women, Unmarked Men.”

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She descripts the biggest areas of difficulty in communication between women and men. In the world, male or female, we all have the same basic human needs to be understood by others for communicate. In the essay “But What

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Socio-linguist Deborah Tannen demonstrates how men and women communicate differently in her essay “Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?” In her observations of communication styles, she discusses the way in which men and women communicate leads them to conflict because they have different understanding of their partners’ role. She also explains male and female communication differences not only cause ineffective conversation, but also push couples into a dilemma in their relationship; however, as men and women better understand the differences, their relationship improves. In the first part of her essay, Tannen discusses men and women do not have enough effective communication, which damages their marriage.

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Anyhow, is important to know that the missing piece of a relationship is communication, and understand that men and women are different. Although Tannen, in Sex, Lies, and Conversation, states that communication manners vary from men and women, causing conflict; however, Judy Brady,

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With this view, her final conclusion that the issue of miscommunication between men and women emerges from our lack of familiarity with gender specific styles of communication is founded on biased, fictional information. The anecdotal nature of most of the material that Deborah Tannen uses is another area of weakness for her work. She uses her personal stories and individually conducted experiments to make sweeping generalizations. For instance, that women talk too much, women build relations, and that men do not overlap, or interrupt, while communicating and are good at the written English.

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