Page 70 - Effective Communication Skills by Dalton Kehoe

In her book You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen popularized her
research on the effects of gender on the style of and the intentions behind our
talk. Boys grow up in a world that takes hierarchy and control for granted.
There’s always some boy bigger and more demanding than you in the world
who’s trying to push you around. As children, boys learn to use physical
actions rather than words to display emotions and get what they want.

When boys mature, they use talk to do the same things. They resist
responding directly to a request for service to avoid feeling in a one-down
position relative to the asker. When speaking as adults, men present facts,
ideas, and arguments in discussion, particularly with other men, to establish
their autonomy relative to each other. They compete to get the À oor in
discussion, to have their say, and to maintain their independence. And in
general, whether competing with other men or women, men think of talk as a
tool to accomplish things—to give information, give advice, solve problems,
or take a stand on an issue.

Let’s compare men’s report talk to what Tannen calls rapport talk for women.
Unlike boys, girls develop in a world of relationships where talk is used to
discover how close or distant another person is from you. Instead of larger
Lecture 20: Communication, Gender, and Culture
competitive games, young girls tend to engage in smaller, more cooperative
activities with other girls, so getting along is important. And unlike for men,
who think of words as tools to take action, for women the rituals of speech,
including feelings talk, are used to make connections before taking action.

At least to get a conversation started, women talk about personal experiences
and feelings to build relationships and sustain them throughout the
discussion. As a result, women take turns in speaking and generally overlap
only to show support for another idea, not to take the À oor away. Women
are more likely than men to ask questions if they don’t know something and
to use speech rituals to show connection rather than competition. They also
tend to use more tag questions to implicitly seek agreement and more verbal
and nonverbal encouragers while listening to others.

Here are some general steps you can take to avoid the “mystery of the
obvious” struggle in gender talk. Give up the assumption that we all speak
the same language so the other should understand without any extra effort

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