You just don't understand or Are you listening to me?

Genderlect Theory – Deborah Tannen

Tannen believes that the best way to describe communication between the genders is in a cross-cultural format. Women use rapport talk to establish meaningful connection with others, while men use report talk to gain status in relation to others. Because women and men use language differently, Tannen suggests they are speaking different dialects, or genderlects. The goal of genderlect theory is to acknowledge and appreciate the language of the opposite sex and achieve mutual respect and understanding. (Semiotic and socio-cultural traditions) Genderlect theory is evaluated on the back of this page.

Tenet	Clarification
Why We Communicate: Women seek connection, men seek status.	Women engage in communication to build and maintain relationships with others. By contrast, men are more likely to engage in talk only when it makes them look good, strong, competitive, or independent.
Style of Communicating: Women use rapport talk, men use report talk.	Women express emotions, share personal feelings, relate stories, and listen empathically (rapport talk). Men engage in competitive joking and assertive speech that wins control of the conversation (report talk).
Language: We speak the same language, but each gender has its own dialect.	Each gender has its own set of vocabulary and preferred topics, and they use spoken language differently: men talk to get things done (instrumental approach); women talk to interact with others (relational approach).
Goal of Genderlect Theory: Mutual respect and understanding.	In contrast to feminist viewpoints that criticize men for inferior communication that represses women, Genderlect Theory simply identifies the differences between us and encourages us to acknowledge and accept the communicative culture of the other.

Here is Debra talking about it

• Women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative, whereas
• Men - swear more, don't talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more.

Robin Lakoff, in 1975, published an influential account of women's language. This was the book Language and Woman's Place. In a related article, Woman's language, she published a set of basic assumptions about what marks out the language of women. Among these are claims that women:

• Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”,and so on.
• Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't mind”.
• Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
• Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words - so, very, quite.
• Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
• Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
• Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
• Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colours, men for sports.
• Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty. For example, “What school do you attend? Eton College?”
• Use “wh-” imperatives: (such as, “Why don't you open the door?”)
• Speak less frequently
• Overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I Think that...”)
• Apologize more: (for instance, “I'm sorry, but I think that...”)
• Use modal constructions: (such as can, would, should, ought - “Should we turn up the heat?”)
• Avoid coarse language or expletives
• Use indirect commands and requests: (for example, “My, isn't it cold in here?” - really a request to turn the heat on or close a window)
• Use more intensifiers: especially so and very (for instance, “I am so glad you came!”)
• Lack a sense of humour: women do not tell jokes well and often don't understand the punch line of jokes.

Here are some pop culture examples 

But is it all possible? From The Guardian yesterday.

How well do we spot gender? Try it for yourself with Gender Spotting (Scroll about halfway down)

Here is another quiz about gender and language. 

Some pop culture references

 

Journal for next week based on this week's discussion

• How do these patterns reflect our socialization?
• How do they reflect our society’s preference for certain god and goddess archetypes over others?
• How might an evolutionary biologist explain them?

You will need to watch the Debra video to understand!