In “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently”, Deborah Tannen discusses how and why women and men have different talking styles in the classroom. She states that men tend to participate more in the classroom setting because they like having the “center stage” , while women tend to talk more when they are in smaller groups because they like to tell secrets. What is different about men and women according to the article is that men usually bond by exchanging insults, although women usually bond by “talking about troubles.” Different teaching styles can lead to more diverse classroom conversations like how open-ended questions can lead to more participation from women. Tannen decided to do an experiment with her classroom to observe
Deborah Tannen’s essay “But What Do You Mean?” focuses on what she claims are differences between men and women when it comes to social interaction. The essay is sectioned into seven categories, in which she talks about how men and women tend to think and react when it comes to apologizing, criticizing, thanking, fighting, praising, complaining, and joking with others. In general, she seems to promote the idea that women tend to be more polite and refined, considering the feelings of others when conversing and taking everything as a formality. In contrast, men are apparently more blunt, taking a more direct approach with matters and being more unconcerned with how they may affect others. Women tend to automatically apologize and thank others
Each individual conveys their ideas in unique ways. Men and women in particular express themselves in drastically different ways. In “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, experiments with the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen opens her discussion by exploring the beginning stages of learning communication skills and then fast forwards to adulthood. Tannen uses research from sociologists and anthropologists such as Lever, Goodwin, and Eder as well as insight from Walter Ong to add credibility and to create a foundation for her explanation of the causes of classroom dynamics. Tannen expands on this research from cultural and behavioral professionals by creating an experiment in her own classroom to demonstrate that communication skills learned and cemented in younger years, combined with a “ritual opposition” setting, produce classroom dynamics.
o men talk more than women in a classroom setting? In “How Male and Female
Deborah Tannen, who is a professor of linguistics, says in her essay, "How Male And Female Students Use Language Differently", that after she made her book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” that one of the unintended benefits was that she gets to reevaluate her teaching strategies and see how male and females act differently in class. As you read through her essay you can tell that Deborah Tannen wants her readers to think about why males tend to speak more in discussions than females and the reason for this difference in the classroom and also how we can improve the classroom for both men and women.Although Tannen tends to get off topic and doesn 't have much evidence to back up some of her claims, she states
This conversation shows how men and women communicate, but it doesn’t explain everything? Tannen provides us with her theory of genderlect styles to apply this information not only to our professional lives but also our everyday lives.
Deborah Tannen tackled this often glazed over topic in her essay “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently.” The essay primarily focuses around Tannen’s experiences
Tannen seems to think that males are more outspoken than females. She believes that when it
The data on Table 1 shows that the men in the meeting had more turns but there was an exception (woman D) and the men in the meeting generally spoke for longer per turn but again there was an exception (woman B). Additionally men also interrupted more (except for man E), and men were interrupted more except Man E and Man I, therefore there is no significant pattern in terms of which gender was interrupted more.
In her essay, "But What Do You Mean?" Deborah Tannen discusses how men and women 's conversation styles differ in how they communicate with one another. The problem is that men and women have different perspectives. Tannen explains that the "conversation rituals" among women are designed to be polite and sensitive to others, while the "conversation rituals" among men are designed to maintain superiority (328). Tannen explores seven ways in which men and women miscommunicate : apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. Being no fault of either party, conversation strategies between men and women are just naturally different, these miscommunications can make conversation awkward and sometimes can be misunderstood.
In Deborah Tannen’s article “Who Does the Talking Here?” published in The Washington Post on July 15, 2007. Tannen writes about a new study published in the journal Science that has inspired critics around the stereotype that Women do more talking that Man (356). She asserts that those studies are not useful since they focus mainly on counting the number of words that college students use in their daily speech (356). She agrees with an article that surveys 70 studies about the differences in talkativeness in genres, since counting words does not lead to a real difference (357). Tannen declares that to determine who talk more, people must consider how and in what situation each gender uses words (357). She exemplifies the importance of
That’s where I become reluctant to recommend Deborah Tannen’s teaching strategy. Looking back on my public education experience I can think of a lot more exceptions to this description of how boys and girls use language differently than agreements. Again, I’m relying on personal experiences and I can of course also recall instances where men have dominated a classroom discussion. However, for me to say that all boys dominated girls during classroom discussions in Phoenix, AZ during the last stretch of the 20th century or that all girls are reluctant to speak publicly outside of the comfort of their peer group in Honolulu, HI during the beginning of the 21st century would be disingenuous and could probably be attributed to an expectancy bias.
Through her use of the rhetorical devices of personal experience, ethos, and comparison, venerated Georgetown linguistics professor Deborah Tannen persuaded me to concede with her argument that males and females communicate differently in the classroom, as indicated in her 1991 article How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently. In this composition, she emphasizes that because of intersexual differences in utilizing the spoken word in class differently, instructors, including herself, consider reevaluating their teaching strategies. In her case, revising the approach involved building experience through closely monitoring her classes and collaborating with colleagues.
Due to the different ways of expressing politeness and conversational involvement, they may have trouble communicating even if they share the same language. The ‘two cultures' approach proposes that talk between women and men is fraught with potential misunderstanding for much the same reasons that communication across the ethnic groups is (Mary Crawford, Talking Difference On Gender and Language, 1995). Hence, I agree with the point of view of Deborah Tannen. However, "You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation" does not inform readers about the reasons and the consequences of the communication differences between genders. Therefore, this essay will include the above
In order to be able to solve some of the problems associated with gender miscommunications, we should distinguish first between the two different types of communications: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Verbal communication consists of messages expressed by linguistic means such as the use of intonation, the specific words we choose to say, and the way we are saying them. There are differences in females and males usage of language/verbal communication. As we might expect from traditional sex-role stereotypes, girls tend to establish more egalitarian same-sex groups. Girls use friendly groups as a training ground for cooperation. Boys view friendly conversation among their friends as training for verbal aggression. Females are more verbal, use three times more amount of words than males, they are much more descriptive and use more adjectives. Women are less direct in their communication style. As Prof. Tannen showed in one of her research, women are more indirect in answering questions depends on the situation. They answer questions the way they would like to be answered by men, which means more than just a yes/no answer. However, men answer the way they would like to be answered
She studied ethnic groups, which speak the same language using different styles, and found that the effect of gender on communication is miniscule compared to the effect of culture and socialization. In her research, Tannen asserts that the basic uses of conversation by women are to establish and support intimacy; while for men it is to acquire status. These styles and motives for communicating represent different cultural upbringings, and one is not necessarily better than the other. However, she also notes in her findings that men tend to interrupt more and ask questions less. In fact, the female tendency to ask more questions sometimes results in receiving lower grades from male professors who view frequent questioning as proof that a student knows less than her male counter parts.