Deborah Tannen Equal Discrimination Rhetorical Analysis

Throughout a person’s lifetime, they are like to have faced inequality. Whether it is inequality for race, gender or beliefs, inequality is certainly inedible. In the “Equal Discrimination” passage, Deborah Tannen describes a problem in which gender is not a factor. However, in the “Unequal Remedies” passage, Tannen explains why the remedy to the problem is a gender issue. These passages go into detail on why a speaker struggles to bring their message across the audience. She claims on how there is a clear biased towards men when it revolves around leadership/speaking roles. Through careful study, the less masculine the speaker’s tone is the more likely they will lose their message towards the audience. Tannen describes a problem, in which …show more content…
Men that give speeches have rather masculine presents on their conversational style by taking more command. By speaking louder, longer, and more self-assertion fits a better model of leadership. Most men have similar mannerisms when speaking such as more hand gesture making the appearance of being more open or going into detail on his beliefs/messages since it reasserts himself to the audience. Meanwhile a woman that does so may seems odd or foreign to an onlooker, giving the message that she is either too emotional or too emotionless. A woman that adapts her style to a position of authority that she achieves or to which she aspires compromises herself as well as her message. When two people have the same ideas or opinions, it is commonplace for the male or masculine of the two to be chosen. This despite their expertise or knowledge on the subject. There is a clear appeal to seem more assertive to analysis and discuss an issue, but due to the lack of respect for the speaker it makes it a bigger struggle to drag across the message. This is not an issue for women, but the human race as a whole. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Although this message emphasizes racial issues, it is more of a people issue. We as a society jump to conclusions and rush towards ideas of a person before they have the time to prove themselves to the audience of who they are. It is important that one day, we focus on the content of the speech rather than the speaker’s mannerism and gender. Society as a whole as seen much improvement over the last century, but there is still much more improvement in the future. The first step is to set aside your biased or personal beliefs and take into consideration the content and message brought across by the speaker (whether female or