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Sex Lies And Conversation Deborah Tannen Summary

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The article “Sex, Lies, and Conversation” by Deborah Tannen is about how a lack of communication between heterosexual couples is what might be leading to their demise. This article is fairly dated, being published by The Washington Post in June of 1990, which meaning relating it back to todays technological age is hard. Yet this article still brought up some good points about how each gender talks to one another.
Within this article Tannen talks about how a lack of communication leads to divorce within heterosexual couples but she also talks about how each gender talks to someone of the same sex and the differences the two have is. One point that Tannen brings up is the conversational habits of men and women. She notes that women hate it …show more content…

Tannen says in this article that a lack of communication is what is failing in relationships and is also what is leading couples to get a divorce. Now over the 25 year span that this article has been out we have came across many new ways of communicating with people. Which in a sense makes some of Tannen’s arguments not necessarily applicable to todays society. With communication being more modernized, i.e. texting, Facebook, and any other social media, one could say that Tannens arguments can’t really be applied. However if you take a look at what she says it can more then likely be used in conversation. Tannen mentions that for girls, intimacy is the fabric of a relationship (304). Now when texting it is hard to find that intimacy that you get with a face-to-face conversation. Yet sometimes a phone call can be just as intimate. Reaching out to a friend who lives to far away to have a face-to-face conversation can be hard but phone calls have just as much meaning to them. But the thing you are missing here is the body language that you might see. Deborah Tannen says that often women tell men that “You aren’t listening” only to have men protest that they are listening to what women have to say (304). For todays society though texting can be a way of solving problems like this. Men are more likely to get distracted, but with having the physical text in front of them men will be less likely to be considered not listening. Men have the ability to refer back to what she had said and can be fully aware of the conversation. Even if he has a lot of things going on. “Women’s conversational habits are just as frustrating to men as men’s are to women” (Tannen 305). When Tannen mentions this it shows that how we relate as a group. Both men and women’s conversations can be very confusing for us as a whole. But with new age technology we might be able to see what we mean and find a

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Her “us” and “them” is comparing men to women. Tannen uses a sense of “us” when she is identifying women’s clothes and when identifying with language. “Us” categories women. The way a women’s hair looks like, the way a women dresses all show their identity and presumes what the person is like, unlike men, who have standard haircuts, and many things they wear is much limited. “Us” gives a women a sense of belonging.

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The three concepts of interpersonal communication I used above is what I believe it’s easier for me to use. Communication is indeed important for a relationship to work. If avoiding and competing are in your relationship you'll likely end up being like Daniel and Miranda in the movie call “Mrs. Doubtfire.” After a sudden divorce, Daniel disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend time with his children. Even Though it makes him uncomfortable he still does it because all he want is to be with his children.

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Celeste Headlee argues that due to the increasing use of ‘within reach’ technology, we’re losing our ability to converse face-to-face and that opens a brand new door for modern conversation. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, which somewhere along the way we lost balance. We tend to use conversation as a platform to focus more on our own thoughts and feelings rather than it being a place for discussion and understanding. Sometimes, while someone is telling us about their faults and failures, we tend to stop listening and revert back to OUR faults and failures.

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The Truth About Lying When it comes down to it the way you lie and the purpose behind your lies, are dependent on your moral and ethical values as an individual. Whether you are five years old or fifty years old, you have told a lie at some point in your life. Despite the inability of us humans to avoid lying, we all lie for different reasons.

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Author Tannen begins with details behind communication misconceptions, which leads with indirectness. The book was written to provide knowledge on communication to defeat the common barriers in everyday life. She states in the beginning there are two major ways communication tends to advance, smooth or choppy. You meet someone for the first time and conversation continues to flow with lack of effort, or you meet someone and the conversation takes great effort and goes nowhere. The book was written to determine the reasoning behind each.

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“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.

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Tannen illustrates a small talk that gathers men and women. During chatting, one woman is quiet, but her husband is talkative. Finally, the small talk turns out the argument on who is the talker at home. Tannen analyzes men’s and women’s opinions; then she concludes that “although American men tend to talk more than women in public situation, they often talk less at home” (263).

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