Analysis Of But What Do You Mean By Deborah Tannen

In the article, “But What Do You Mean?”, author Deborah Tannen discusses what she has observed to be differences in ways that women and men communicate. She concludes by stating that neither communication style in incorrect, however, to alleviate miscommunication women and men should use language that is understood by both parties. While I do not disagree with Tannen’s observations, I find some flaws with her solution. As recent brain studies have shown, women and men are not significantly different, to the point where I speculate that the different socialization of women and men as children breeds the stylistic communication variances Tannen defines. While limiting one’s speech to common language may work in a pinch, there is a long-term solution …show more content…
While I found myself agreeing with aspects of Tannen 's article, but I found myself contradicting her. I recognized the behaviors she described in many friends and acquaintance I know of various gender identities. The world has become more progressive, and I find the differences closing with each new generation. Young women and men are not acting parallel to their predecessors. However, a lot of this progression is still limited socially, especially on social media. One interesting concept I have recognized falls back into Tannen’s category of “jokes.” With social media at an all-time high, there are many examples of my generation’s humor. One specific example comes from a new trend where celebrities read mean tweets about themselves. While some of them truly are mean, there are some that are not. In the case of a person who tweeted: “oscar isaac is a brooklyn hipster piece of s**t and im going to fight him," this tweet is not a mean tweet. Instead, this tweet indicates that this person greatly enjoys Oscar Isaac as an actor and more than likely shows an attraction to him, and admiration. While on the surface, a tweet such as this seems decisively hostile to the generations before the millennials. But to a significant number of millennials, the meaning is clearly not hostile. An experience akin to the previous example is another tweet directed toward actor John Krasinski. The tweet read: “your face is so stupid i hate you." Again, in actuality, this tweet means “I find you very attractive.” This form of insult-as-a-positive goes beyond older generations understanding of insults. The celebrities and the employees tasked to select the mean tweets possess an unfamiliarity with this form of joking and complimenting, conversely affecting their ability to decipher the lack of antagonistic content. The insult itself is a joke, but the meaning is a