Article 1: Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand— Asymmetries: Women and Men Talking At Cross- purposes.
This article talks about the differences between men and women. In regards to troubles, women have a tendency to take on the issues a man has because she wants to comfort him. A man, on the other hand, wants to express his opinion and simply let it go. When a woman wants something fixed she wants to talk about it and have a basic understanding of …show more content…
These observations were based on the language used based on their gender. They looked at prints from successful lawyers and law professors in hopes to see how they handled female witnesses. This study lasted approximately 2 ½ Years and there were many witnesses observed. They followed researcher Robin Lakoff’s, ten basic speech commands, referring to women’s language, also referred to as “WL”. These commands are hedges, super polite forms, tag questions, speaking in italics, empty adjectives, hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation, lack of sense of humor, and direct quotations (see chart below for examples. They thought they would conclude that these commands would be seen by gender, however, that was not the case. It was seen by being powerless. To prove this, they used three women and three men. The first pair both spoke with a high level of women’s language. The man was an ambulance driver and the woman was a 68 years old and a housewife. The third set was however/more distinguished and had more power therefore less women’s language. He was a police officer and she was a doctor. The second batch of pairs fell between 1 and 3, showing that their jobs did not have high levels of power, but not as low as pair 1. The conclusion drawn was that women who had low levels of women’s language traits had a high status. However, they saw that both genders had traces of WL …show more content…
It was seen by being powerless. To prove this, they used three women and three men. The first pair both spoke with a high level of women’s language. The man was an ambulance driver and the woman was a 68 years old and a housewife. The third set was however/more distinguished and had more power therefore less women’s language. He was a police officer and she was a doctor. The second batch of pairs fell between 1 and 3, showing that their jobs did not have high levels of power, but not as low as pair 1. The conclusion drawn was that women who had low levels of women’s language traits had a high status. However, they saw that both genders had traces of WL and this was because of the amount of power that was held by the individual.
All of these readings were very interesting and I learned about how gender plays a role in language. After studying these articles I have started to listen to the way both males and females talk to see if I could see examples of what these theorists mentioned. There is no clear answer in who talks more, but it can be said that women talk more in private and men talk more publically. Each year gender roles are seen showing lesser and lesser importance with women gaining the same opportunities as men, and their language adapting to conquer public