Communication of the Sexes The tongue of a blue whale can weigh as much as an elephant, but there exists a tongue that is far more powerful than that of the blue whale’s tongue, that is the human tongue (Santoso). When utilized properly, the human tongue can accomplish great feats, but if misused can cause a plethora of problem. A certain measure of success in life depends on utilizing communication in a wise way. Debra Tannen, a well-known authority on communication, says men and women communicate in different ways.
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
In Deborah Tannen’s article, “But What Do You Mean?” Tannen exchanges her view on seven topics of a predicament in a communication between both men and women. The seven topics which are apologies, criticism, thank-you’s, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. In this article, Tannen focuses on women mostly as her primary examples, such as giving more examples of women’s misinterpreting and miscommunicating in conversations. However, I believe that her article is too old and that her claims about the ways men and women communicate are too rigid.
“But What Do You Mean” Relating to Society The question, “why do men and women so often communicate badly, if at all?” Has influenced and motivated Tannen. In “But What Do You Mean” by Deborah Tannen, she discusses many areas of difficulty in communication between men and women. Tannen’s purpose was for her readers to understand the importance of communication, she also has identified several ways in which men and women miscommunicate, and she has taught her readers a few things about our society and how it can be improved.
She emphasizes the recognition of “cross-cultural” communication is beneficial to repair the conversational issues (Tannen 264). She proposes couples to improve their relationship by learning differences, adjusting conversational styles, and changing attitude. Learning differences is crucial to couples at the beginning of improvement, which helps couples to achieve mutual acceptance. Ideally, couples change their communication patterns according to their partners’ preference.
Morghan Renfrow Instructor C. Shackelford English 1113, Section 101 1 September 2016 Analysts of “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” An essay written by Deborah Tannen called “How male and females students use language differently”, is describing how they talk and interact with others. The writer presents different studies on how language changes based on a certain person. The essay states that men are more aggressive and talkative, while women are calm and modest about talking about the views they share.
Sex, Lies and Conversation There are many differences between a man and woman, communication is just one difference. Deborah Tannen, a University of California graduate, got her PhD in linguistics at Georgetown University; there she studied the communication between men and women. Tannen has published over one hundred articles and wrote over twenty books, including You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990), which spent almost four years on the New York Times best seller list and was translated into twenty-nine languages. The article Sex, Lies and Conversation appeared in the Washington Post in 1990 and gives insight to how opposite sexes communicate with each other. From an early age we are programed to play and be friends with the same gender as our own.
Cultural barriers prevent communication between people from all around the world, especially between the mothers and the daughters, and not necessarily figuratively. The language barrier between the mothers and the daughters can be symbolic. The lack of understanding and comprehension for one another creates a language barrier between the mothers and the daughters. “These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese.”
Unlike ‘sex’, which typically refers to the biological and physiological differences, gender is a sociological concept that describes the social and cultural constructions that is associated with one’s sex (Giddens & Sutton, 2013, p. 623-667). The constructed (or invented) characteristics that defines gender is an ongoing process that varies between societies and culture and it can change over time. For example, features that are overly masculine in one culture can be seen as feminine in another; however, the relation between the two should not be seen as static. Gender socialization is thought to be a major explanation for gender differences, where children adhere to traditional gender roles from different agencies of socialization. Gender
Now I realized that in order to participate in and study intercultural communication requires us taking consideration of differences in understanding, values and attitudes that people with different culture background. These three factors can decide how to communicate and how to react and interpret messages that you have received. According to ( ), females are more strict with their work in most of culture in the world, they are more likely to
However, the excerpt of her book lacks clarity, has multiple unfair biases, and is filled with many contradictions. The author completely neglects other social factors such as race, class, and ethnicity and their crucial interplay with gender, and treats gender and sex as unidimensional categories and the most significant features of human lives, even though they are not. The book exhibits poor transition between claims, and makes use of anecdotal material/ information to support these claims. Overall, there is a need for comprehensive research to be conducted in the field of cross-cultural communication. Such research should observe human conversation and be sensitive to social factors such as race, class, and ethnicity.
Tannen used her genderlect theory to help bridge that gap by acknowledging and achieving an understanding of the language of each gender. Conversation between men and women can be described like cross-cultural communication. This is the basis of Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand. In an effort to bridge that communication gap between genders, she examined the differences between how and why people communicate.
Introduction Parents play an important role in guiding the development of their child in the early years, before the influence of teachers and peers comes into play (Diem-Wille, 2014). This influence that parents have on their children would naturally affect the child’s perception of gender roles and stereotypes. Following the approach of the Gender-Schema Theory, the child learns about gender in his or her society by observing behaviours of the people around him or her and then classifying the information as characteristic of different genders (Bem, 1983). The family environment and experience would therefore be central to helping the child construct schemas about gender roles since parents’ actions and attitudes are part of the information that the child receives from the environment that is integrated into the schema (McHale, Crouter, & Whiteman, 2003).
A culture, by definition, is a set of shared beliefs within a society; learning how to interact with people from different cultures is important in order to communicate and work with each other. It helps us become understanding of one another and widens our perspective of what the world has to offer. To be able to cross cultural communicate with others, the first step is to be aware that every culture is complex and has its differences. While traveling to new countries and trying to understand each other, there is a large possibility of miscommunication, which can come in the form of misinterpreting messages or body language; therefore, it is crucial to keep an open mind whilst communicating. There are multitudes of factors in various cultures that play a role in decision making, so being aware of the expectations that are influenced by someone’s culture will help you understand their choices.
Cultural identity plays a very vital role in cross cultural communication, people from a particular culture communicate with partners and employees from many different cultures and in this situation every individual strives to keep their cultural and individual identity. According to Gardiner and Kosmitzki, identity is defined as “a person 's self-definition as a separate and distinct individual, including behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes” (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2008, p. 154). Also, Ting-Toomey defines identity as a "reflective self-conception or self-image that we each derive from our family, gender, cultural, ethnic, and individual socialization process"( Ting-Toomey, 2005). Both definitions bring out the generalisation of cultural identity
