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JSONYou Just Don't Understand!: Men and Women In Conversation
My scavengings from Deborah Tannen's book
Keywords | Text | Date | ID |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control | "The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate." Deborah Tannen, 18 | 08/07/07 | 8323 |
| Power / Communication / Men / Women / Conversations | Tannen: Many men engage the world as individuals "in a hierarchical social order in which [they are] either one-up or one-down." but many women engage the world "as [individuals] in a network of connections. In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support" | 08/07/07 | 8324 |
| Communication / Power / Relationships | "[T]here is always a paradox entailed in offering or giving help. Insofar as it serves the needs of the one helped, it is a generous move that shows caring and builds rapport. But insofar as it is asymmetrical, giving help puts one person in a superior position with respect to the other." -Tannen, p. 32 "[G]iving advice is asymmetrical. It frames the advice giver as more knowledgeable, more reasonable, more in control -- in a word, one-up. And this contributes to [a] distancing effect." (53) | 08/08/07 | 8325 |
| Communication / Concept / Relationships | Tannen: metamessages (as in Bateson) *frame* a conversation ... they "let you know how to interpret what someone is saying by identifying the activity that is going on" "At the same time, they let you know what position the speaker is assuming in the activity, and what position you are being assigned." "Sociologist Erving Goffman uses the term *alignment* to express this aspect of framing. If you put me down, you are taking a superior alignment with respect to me." | 08/08/07 | 8326 |
| Conversations / Communication / Information / Power / Reality | Tannen: "Much-- even most --meaning in conversation does no reside in he words spoken at all, but is filled in by the person listening. Each of us decides whether we think others are speaking in the spirit of differing status or symmetrical connection." Individuals make these interpretations based on "the hearer's own focus, concerns, and habits" | 08/08/07 | 8327 |
| Communication / Power / Men / Women / Relationships | studies of children's play have revealed that "The chief commodity that is bartered in the boys' hierarchical world is status, and the way to achieve and maintain status is to give orders and get others to follow them ... [whereas] the chief commodity that is bartered in the girls' community is intimacy." (Tannen) | 08/08/07 | 8328 |
| Communication / Men / Women | "Women show concern by following up someone else's statement of trouble by questioning her about it." By contrast: "[w]hen men try to reassure women by telling them that their situation is not so bleak, the women hear their feelings being belittled or discounted." Tannen, 59 | 08/08/07 | 8331 |
| Communication / Men / Women | Telling a woman that a problem can be easily fixed implies (to a woman hearer) that "she [has] no right to feel bad about it." Also: "Telling about a problem is [experienced by women as] a bid for an expression of understanding ... [T]roubles talk is intended to reinforce rapport by sending the meta-message 'We're the same; you're not alone.' Women are frustrated when they not only don't get this reinforcement but, quite the opposite, feel distanced by the advice, which seems to send the metamessage 'We're not the same. You have the problems; I have the solutions.'" Tannen, 52-3 | 08/08/07 | 8332 |
| Communication / Men | Men will, at times, try to argue one another out of the way they feel "By telling [another man] that his feelings are unjustified and incomprehenisble, [a male speaker] is not implying that he doesn't care. He clearly means to comfort his friend" Tannen, 57 | 08/08/07 | 8333 |
| Communication / Conversations / Culture | Tannen (227): "[F]ar more cultures in the world use elaborate systems of indirectness than value directness. Only modern Western societies place a priority on direct communication" | 09/18/07 | 9635 |
| Women / Conversations | Jacqueline Sachs' research "found that girls used more than twice as many tag questions as boys." David and Robert Siegler found that people could guess the gender of a speaker based on the tag question variable Tag questions: "statements with little questions added onto the end, as in 'It's a nice day, isn't it?'" (Tannen 228) | 09/18/07 | 9647 |
| Men / Women / Knowledge / Conversations / Perception | Patricia Hayes Bradley: tag questions and disclaimers cause study subjects to judge women "as less intelligent and knowledgeable *than men who also used them*" similarly, women who do not give support for arguments are judged as less intelligent and knowledgeable than men who also do not give support for their own arguments Tannen: "[I]t is not the ways of talking that are having the effect so much as people's attitudes towards women and men." (228) | 09/18/07 | 9659 |
| Power / Conversations | Tannen: "[A]ccepting an apology is arguably quite rude. From the point of view of connection, an apology should be matched. And from the perspective of status, an apology should be deflected. In this view, a person who apologizes takes a one-down position, and accepting the apology restores balance." (234) | 09/18/07 | 9671 |
| Men / Women / Conversations | "[M]ale-female conversations are more like men's conversations than they are like women's. So when women and men talk to each other, both make adjustments, but the women make more. Women are at a disadvantage in mixed-sex groups, because they have had less practice in conducting conversation the way it is being conducted in these groups." Tannen, 237 | 09/18/07 | 9683 |
| Men / Women / Power / Perception | Tannen, 240: "Whatever a man does to enhance his authority also enhances his masculinity. But if a woman adapts her style to a position of authority that she has achieved or to which she aspires, she risks compromising her femininity, in the eyes of others." | 09/18/07 | 9695 |
| Language / Power / To Read | Michael Geis' "The Language of Politics" | 09/18/07 | 9707 |
| Women / Conversation | Tannen, 274: "For ... women and girls, agreeing and being the same are ways to create rapport. Excelling, being different, and fighting are threats to rapport." Boys "[buy] rapport, too, but they buy it with a different currency." | 09/18/07 | 9719 |
| Men / Control / Love | Erving Goffman: "[M]ale domination is a very special kind, a domination that can be carried right into the gentlest, most loving moment without apparently causing strain -- indeed, these moments can hardly be conceived of apart from these asymmetries." quoted by Tannen, 287 | 09/18/07 | 9731 |
| Gift Economy | hxaro is the !Kung tradition of cooperative gift-giving; moka is the New Guinean competitive gift-giving tradition (more similar to potlatch battles) see Tannen, 295-6 | 09/18/07 | 9743 |
| Men / Conversations / Information | Tannen's "report-talk" -- the exchange of non-personal information, is a set of "exchanges" that "negotiate men's friendships [and] working relationships." | 09/18/07 | 9755 |
| Conversations / Men / Women / Power | In university faculty meetings (studied by Barbara and Gene Eakins), men consistently speak more often "and, without exception, spoke for a longer time. ... [T]he women's longest turns were still shorter than the men's shortest turns." (75) Similarly, conversations between peers (in any environment) can turn into lectures, another situation in which "the alignment in which women and men find themselves arrayed is asymmetical." (125) "Women and men fall into this unequal pattern so often because of the differences in their interactional habits. Since women seek to build rapport, they are inclined to play down their expertise rather than display it [whereas] men value the position of center stage and the feeling of knowing more" (125) Note the studies of psychologist H. M. Leet-Pellegrini, who studies whether gender or expertise would determine who was a more "dominant" speaker "[M]en experts talked more than women experts" (127) and expert women were supportive (not dominant) towards nonexpert ment, with "[o]bservers often [rating] the male nonexpert as more dominant than the female expert." "One of the reasons men's talk to women frequently turns into lecturing is *because* women listen attentively and do not interrupt with challenges, sidetracks, or matching information." (144) | 09/21/07 | 10669 |
| Conversation / Relationships / Power / Knowledge | Tannen: "For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. Emphasis is placed on displaying similarities and matching experiences. ... For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order. This is done by exhibiting knowledge and skill, and by holding center stage through verbal performance such as storytelling, joking, or imparting information." (77) | 09/21/07 | 10681 |
| Information / Men / Women / Conversations | Tannen: "To [men], talk is for information ... But for [women], talk is for interaction." (81) Note than Tannen amends this in the new Afterword: "[W]omen and men are both interested in information -- only different kinds. ... [Men's] report-talk is about *impersonal* information whereas rapport-talk is about *personal* information." (303) | 09/21/07 | 10693 |
| Conversations / Men / Women / Power | Tannen 95: When "men do all the talking at meetings," they may be assuming that "others are as free as they are to take the floor. In this sense, men's speaking out freely can be seen as evidence that they assume women are at the same level of status" but Tannen aptly points out "a woman who is not accustomed to speaking up in groups is *not* as free as [a man] is to do so ... bring admitted as an equal is not in itself assurance of equal opportunity, if one is not accustomed to playing the game the way it is being played." | 09/21/07 | 10705 |
| Men / Women / Reality / Experience / Information / Logic / Relationships | Tannen: women have a tendency to engage in "making sense of the world as a ... private endeavor -- observing and integrating [their] personal experience and drawing connections to the experience of others" Men, by contrast, tend to treat the world as a "more public endeavor" and tend to rely on outside information or "devising arguments by rules of formal logic" (92) | 09/21/07 | 10717 |
| Poetry / Oral Tradition | Greek laments -- "spontaneous, ritualized, oral poems" a similar "lament tradition" has emerged in Bali see folklorist Anna Caravelli or anthropologist Joel Kuipers | 09/21/07 | 10729 |
| Men / Conversations / Suffering | Tannen 101: "[When a man] makes reference to a difficult personal situation [to friends], it will likely be minimal and vague ('It's been rough')." | 09/21/07 | 10741 |
| Art of the Essay / Rumor | a piece of landmark journalism: 1963's "A Death in Emergency Room One," by Jimmy Breslin this piece described the last moments of JFK's life but also looked at telling details to create verisimilitude -- to create "a pleasurable sense of involvement" (Tannen compares it to a sort of gossip) | 09/21/07 | 10799 |
| Attention / Relationships | Tannen: "The noticing of details shows caring and creates involvement. Men, however, often find women's involvement in details irritating. Because women are concerned first and foremost with establishing intimacy, they value the telling of details." (115) This is the "who said what?" problem Tannen describes a familiar-sounding case of a woman growing frustrated by having to prompt her husband with prompts like "What did she say? What did he say?" (116) | 09/21/07 | 10924 |
| Women / Men / Psychology / Conversation | Tannen: "In a sense, the values of therapy are those more typically associated with women's ways of talking than with men's. This may be why a study showed that among inexperienced therapists, women do better than men. ... Eventually, perhaps, men therapists-- and men in therapy --learn to talk like women." (121) | 09/21/07 | 10936 |
| Relationships / Power | Tannen on dependence: "Dependence is an asymmetrical involvement: One person needs the other, but not vice versa, so the needy person is one-down." By contrast, "Interdependence is symmetrical: Both parties rely on each other, so neither is one-up or one-down." (131) | 09/21/07 | 10948 |
| Humor / Power | Tannen: "Making others laugh gives you a fleeting power over them: As linguist Wallace Chafe points out, at the moment of laughter, a person is temporarily disabled." (140) | 09/21/07 | 10960 |
| Relationships / Ritual / Conflict | Tannen discusses the "ritualized" nature of "friendly aggression" women tend to indulge in ritualized aggression less frequently (see Walter Ong's Fighting For Life), and so "women are inclined to misinterpret and be puzzled by the adversativeness [Ong's concept] of many men's ways of speaking" (150) | 09/21/07 | 11006 |
| Science / Nature / Men | Evelyn Fox Keller suggests that science's tendency towards "dominating and controlling nature" is "essentially masculine in spirit" (Tannen's summary, 70) | 09/21/07 | 11018 |
| Conversation / Relationships | Tannen: In conversation, "providing solutions to minor problems" is beside the point, but it also "cuts short the conversation, which *is* the point. If one problem is solved, then another must be found, to keep the intimate conversation going." (102) | 09/21/07 | 11030 |
| Conversations / Relationships / Power | Tannen (summarizing researcher Jacqueline Sachs) learns that girls avoid commands by making proposals, using phrases like "Let's" ("let's sit down and use it"), "We gonna," "We could," "Maybe," and "We gotta" (153) "[T]hese proposals, in addition to avoiding confrontation or telling others what to do, are creative ways of keeping the girls equal in status." (155) | 09/21/07 | 11042 |
| Conversations / Children / Conflict | Tannen: Italian children have a tradition of heated debate-- in Italian, it is referred to as "discussione." It is difficult for Americans to perceive it as anything other than "arguing" (160) | 09/21/07 | 11054 |
| Women / Collaboration / Conflict | "If boys and men often use opposition to establish connections, girls and women can use apparent cooperation and affiliation to be competitive and critical." (171) They can "enact competition within a framework of cooperation" | 09/21/07 | 11099 |
| Relationships / Power / Conversation | Tannen: "All forms of rapport can [also] be used to undercut. Showing elaborate concern for other's feelings can frame you as the social worker who has it all together, and them as your patients." (173) | 09/21/07 | 11111 |
| Men / Women / Conversation / Narrative / Community / Conflict | Barbara Johnstone studied "fifty-eight conversational narratives" and learned that "the women's stories tend to be about community, while the men's tend to be about contest." see more, Tannen 177 | 09/21/07 | 11123 |
| Game / Relationships | scholar Janet Lever, in her studies of the games played by young women, found that non-competitive games can be used to gauge popularity Tannen's summary: "[One] game [discussed] is fun because it manipulates and plays off the commodity that is important to girls -- the strength of their affiliations -- just as the boys' games play off their valued commodity-- skill. The girls' game is an experiment in shifting alliances." (180-181) | 09/21/07 | 11135 |
| Men / Women / Conversations | Tannen: "[O]ne of the most widely cited findings to emerge from research on gender and language is that men interrupt women." (188) | 09/21/07 | 11147 |
| Conversations | Interruption is complicated because of interplay between "high involvement" and "high considerateness" styles "High considerateness" speakers expect longer pauses between speaking turns; "high involvement" speakers will detect these pauses and speak to fill in an uncomfortable silence Tannen, 196 See also "cooperative overlappers" (203) | 09/21/07 | 11159 |
| Conversations / Culture | Tannen: in "many cultures in the world ... talking together is valued in casual conversation. This seems to be the norm in more parts of the world than the northern European norm of one-speaker-speaks-at-a-time." Karl Reisman observed "contrapuntal conversations" in Antigua, but also see Hawaii, Thai, Japan, Italy Also, all-women's groups in North America (see folklorist Susan Kalcik's studies, or Deborah James and Janice Drakich) -- they have a tendency towards "cooperative overlap," a particular style of interruption (202-3) | 09/21/07 | 11171 |