Gender Differences In Communication Gender Differences in Communication Every race, culture, civilization, and society on this planet shares two things in common: the presence of both the male and female sex, and the need to communicate between the two. The subject of gender differences appears to have engaged peoples curiosity for as long as people have been writing down their thoughts, from as far back as the writing of the creation of Adam and Eve, to its current popular expression in books such as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. The assertion that men and women communicate in different ways, about different things, and for different reasons seems to go un-argued and is accepted as true by a vast majority of Americans. It is the reason why we communicate differently that conjures up quite a bit of debate and conversational turmoil. One of the most traditional hypothesis is the one John Gray wrote about in his book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which essentially points to differences in brain structure, hormones, and socialization as the cause of such an enormous gender gap in communication.
But that was then and this is now, scientists throughout the world are working to learn more about gender differences in communication, and much has been discovered since the days of Mars & Venus. One such research team is that of Canary and Hause of the Communication Quarterly. In their study, they conclude that the previous 50 years of research on sex differences in communications, such as that of John Gray, brought about no conclusive findings for such differences. The researcher’s analyses of their findings provided evidence for an expectation of small differences due to sex: approximately 1% of variance, concluding that the effects found were due mostly to society and culture. Deborah Tannen, a leading scholar of communication, also shares this view of gender and communication.
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.
The theory that differences are fabricated early in a childs life and are not biological doesnt account for everything. David Cohen, in his article regarding Tannens findings points out a mystery in the connections she made. Since women are primarily responsible for child-rearing and therefore disproportionately responsible for teaching the species to speak, when is it that boys learn to speak in the male style? From a very early age, males and females are taught different linguistic practices. For example, communicative behaviors that are considered acceptable for boys may be considered completely inappropriate for girls. Whereas a boy might be permitted to use rough language, a girl in the same situation might be reminded to use her manners and be lady-like The research on women and language shows that women experience linguistic discrimination in two ways: in the way they are taught to use language, and in the way general language usage treats them. So, for example, women reflect their role in the social order by using tag questions, qualifiers, and fillers to soften what they have to say.
Women exhibit their subordinate status through avoiding direct and threatening communication. While in recent years this gap has narrowed, our society retains a tendency to imply that maleness, after all, is the standard for normalcy. This unwritten standard society uses to judge people dates back thousands of years and is clearly depicted in the quotes of some of the most famous people in history. Aristotle described women as a deformity, a misbegotten male, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that god should not have created women, craniologists of the nineteenth century argued that women’s smaller heads justified their subordinate position in society, and Freud believed women had little sense of justice, the list goes on. The history of male supremacy in communication and life is unfortunate, but it is past, what does the future hold? Only the media will tell.
Mass mediated messages offer the most contemporary, powerful, technological and influential strategies for shaping cultural reality. The beauty, diet, and advertising industries are the most obvious, and the best researched examples of contemporary, self-conscious myth-makers who control cultural concepts and acceptable images of gender. These industries set the standard for true masculinity and femininity, offering the law on what is male and what is female behavior. As we begin the twenty first century we enter a world of rules and regulations, a world where what we say and do is controlled by cultural stereo-types, some age old, some contemporary, and some that are deciding factors in how we live our lives. Through recent research we have learned that gender differences in communication are not something that we are born with, theyre not due to differences in brain matter, and theyre certainly not due to the two sexes being from different planets.
We are who we are and we communicate how we communicate because it is what society and culture demand of us. Although this sounds like a simple difference that can easily be resolved you might be surprised; disregarding everything youve ever learned about the difference between boys and girls is a mighty big task. Speech and Communications.
