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Gender in the Classroom
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Conversational Patterns across Gender, Class, and Ethnicity: Implications for Classroom Discourse
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- Deborah Tannen 3 , 4 ,
- Shari Kendall 3 , 4 &
- Carolyn Temple Adger 3 , 4
Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((LANG,volume 3))
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Tannen (1984) introduces the term “conversational style” to refer to the unique collection of communicative habits that individuals develop — all the ways they say what they mean — influenced by regional and cultural background, ethnicity, class, age, and gender, as well as numerous other influences such as sexual orientation, profession, and personality. According to Tannen, when individuals’ systems for signaling meaning and framing interaction are relatively similar, meaning is likely to be understood more or less as intended. When they are relatively different, speakers’ meaning, interactional intentions, and abilities may be misjudged.
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Tannen, D., Kendall, S., Adger, C.T. (1997). Conversational Patterns across Gender, Class, and Ethnicity: Implications for Classroom Discourse. In: Davies, B., Corson, D. (eds) Oral Discourse and Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4417-9_8
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SECTION ONE Thoughts on Gender Styles in Communication
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Deborah Tannen’s Opinion on Complicated Relations Between the Concepts of Gender and Talkativeness Essay
During a long period of time, researchers intend to find the answer to the question of how much women and men talk in comparison to each other. Furthermore, it is also important to answer the question about the criteria according to which the conclusions should be made (Tannen and Alatis 12).
From this point, the article “Who Does the Talking Here?” which is written by Deborah Tannen and published in the Washington Post in 2007 can be discussed as one more attempt to respond to the developed debates.
In her article, Tannen proposes to discuss the relation between the concepts of gender and talkativeness from the large perspective because these relations are rather complex.
Tannen claims that it is irrelevant to count words spoken by women and men without references to the concrete situations and speakers’ purposes, and although many popular researches are based on the principle of counting spoken words, Tannen’s position seems to be rather persuasive because the author not only provides a range of arguments to support her vision but also discusses the weaknesses of counterarguments in detail.
Tannen starts her article with drawing the audience’s attention to the controversial idea which contradicts with the public’s traditional visions. The author states that a group of researchers found the evidences to support the view that “women and men talk equally” (Tannen par. 1).
Tannen focuses on this research’s conclusion as the basic argument to state the necessity of re-thinking the visions of men and women’s talkativeness. Thus, the author continues presenting her idea while discussing the opinion about the females’ talkativeness which prevailed in the society during a long period of time.
The popular opinion is based on counting the words, as it is in Louann Brizendine’s study, according to which women speak 20,000 words a day, and men speak only 7,000 words a day (Tannen par. 2).
To oppose this idea, Tannen refers to the other researchers’ numbers which are 16,215 words spoken by women during a day and 15,669 words spoken by men (Tannen par. 2).
Paying attention to numbers which cannot appropriately reflect the real situation in the society, Tannen chooses to focus on the other approaches and criteria as more important in comparison with the method of counting the words.
Having stated the impossibility of the other researchers’ approach to discuss the situation with men and women’s talking in detail, Tannen presents clearly her own vision of the problem while asking the questions about the correlation between gender and language.
According to Tannen, “to understand who talks more, you have to ask: What’s the situation? What are the speakers using words for?” (Tannen par. 4). To support the importance of these questions, Tannen provides the vivid example to illustrate the role of the situation for men and women’s talking.
The example of a man who speaks more at the meetings than at home is effective to support the author’s vision of types of talking. Tannen states that women talk more when they want to focus on the people’s personal experience and feelings. This type of talking is the ‘rapport-talk’.
On the contrary, men prefer to provide people with some information, and it is the ‘report-talk’ (Tannen par. 7). The author’s discussion of these types of talking seems to be rather rational because the purposes of females and males’ speaking are explained clearly.
While developing the connection between the situation, purpose, and length of speeches, Tannen provides different real-life examples to support her conclusions.
Thus, it is necessary to pay attention to the purposes of speaking because women are inclined to be more talkative than men at home, when men are inclined to demonstrate their knowledge at work (Speer 23-25).
In her article, Tannen tries to focus on all the aspects of the issue and to discuss all the associated stereotypes. From this point, referring to the research by Campbell and Ayres, Tannen states that “women’s rapport-talk probably explains why many people think women talk more” (Tannen par. 11).
Moreover, people prefer to focus on others’ talking when they speak little (Tannen par. 12). As a result, Tannen leads the reader to understand the fact that in reality, women and men talk equally, but there are more situations when men can concentrate on women’s talkativeness.
In her article, Deborah Tannen builds a strong argument to support her vision of the problem of women and men’s talkativeness. While discussing the importance of gender differences to influence the males and females’ talks, Tannen chooses to focus on the causes for revealing numbers traditionally presented in the scholarly literature.
The author claims that the concentration on counting words cannot provide researchers with the appropriate results. It is important to know when and why women and men speak more.
This information is necessary to conclude about the connection between the concepts of gender and language. As a result, Tannen’s position can be discussed as correlated in a way with the idea stated in the article’s first paragraph according to which women and men talk equally.
Works Cited
Speer, Susan. Gender Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis . USA: Psychology Press, 2005. Print.
Tannen, Deborah. Who Does the Talking Here? 2007. Web.
Tannen, Deborah, and James Alatis. Linguistics, Language, and the Real World: Discourse and Beyond . USA: Georgetown University Press, 2003. Print.
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IvyPanda . (2020) 'Deborah Tannen’s Opinion on Complicated Relations Between the Concepts of Gender and Talkativeness'. 21 May.
IvyPanda . 2020. "Deborah Tannen’s Opinion on Complicated Relations Between the Concepts of Gender and Talkativeness." May 21, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/deborah-tannens-opinion-on-complicated-relations-between-the-concepts-of-gender-and-talkativeness-essay/.
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IvyPanda . "Deborah Tannen’s Opinion on Complicated Relations Between the Concepts of Gender and Talkativeness." May 21, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/deborah-tannens-opinion-on-complicated-relations-between-the-concepts-of-gender-and-talkativeness-essay/.
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IMAGES
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COMMENTS
The theory views communication between men and women through a humanistic and scientific approach (Tannen, 1990). The core of Tannen's theory is the idea that women focus on inclusion and support ...
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. "Introduction," Gender and Discourse, by Deborah Tannen, 3-17. Oxford University Press, 1994. Associate Editor's Foreword. "Female-Male Differences in Conversational Interaction" by Lynette Hirshman, Language in Society 23:3 (1994): 428-430.
difficulty than men with cross-sex communication. The Complex Model of Gender Communication An alternative to the Tannen gender model is a more complex, multidimensional gender model. This model proposes that individual differences within the sexes explain more variance in important consequent variables such as inferences about cooperation and
Oxford University Press, 1996. Gender and Discourse gathers together six of Tannen's scholarly articles, including her last and previously unpublished essay in which language and gender are seen as "sex-class linked" (that is, specific ways of speaking are associated with the class of women and the class of men rather than necessarily with individual men and women).
Tannen states that the most important point to consider in studying and learning about gender specific speech styles is that gender distinctions are built into language. Each person's life is a series of conversations, and simply by understanding and using the words of our language, we all absorb and pass on different, asymmetrical assumptions ...
(Tannen 1982a, 1982b, 1984b), and exploring the relationship be tween conversational and literary discourse (Tannen 1989).3 My work on gender-related differences in conversational style is a natu ral development of my earlier research and writing on subcultural differences in conversational style. Thus, my approach to gender
Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than three years (in cloth and paper) and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years an internationally known and highly respected scholar in the field of ...
Abstract. Gendered conversation styles and their impacts are discussed by the sociolinguist Deborah Tannen in three books for non-specialized audiences. 1 Her general approach is shown in the first book with respect to various cultural differences, while the other two books focus on gendered conversational styles, i.e., "genderlects" ( YJ ...
The author of the best-selling You Just Don't Understand, Deborah Tannen, has collected twelve papers about gender-related patterns in conversational interaction. The theoretical thrust of the collection, like that of Tannen's own work, is anthropological and sociolinguistic: female and male styles are approached as different "cultural" practice.
Genderlect Styles. of Deborah Tannen. "Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication.". 1. This simple statement is the basic premise of Deborah Tannen's. You Just Don't Understand, a book that seeks to explain why men and women often talk past each other. Tannen is a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, and her ...
This volume explores the relationship between gender and language through the analysis of discourse in interaction. Some chapters compare the discourse of females and males; others analyze interaction among females. All the analytic chapters both provide model analysis of conversational interaction and make significant theoretical contributions to the literature on gender and language. The ...
Gender and discourse. D. Tannen. Published 1994. Linguistics. Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than three years (in cloth and paper) and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when ...
However, Gray's basic thesis — that . ... Gender communication is a eld in its infancy: who knows what we will know in twenty ... Tannen's Japanese students, however, pointed out that it ...
Tannen, Deborah. "Gender in the Classroom". The Princeton Anthology of Writing: Favorite Pieces by the Ferris/McGraw Writers at Princeton University , edited by John McPhee and Carol Rigolot, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 126-130.
How does theory shape the way we analyze discourse and gender? This article responds to a critical review of Deborah Tannen's Gender and Discourse, and argues that different theoretical perspectives can lead to different interpretations and evaluations of the same data. The article also discusses the role of stereotypes in discourse analysis and the need for reflexivity and dialogue among ...
Tannen's thesis is that many communication problems that arise between men and women are the result of the differing expectations and habits that surround conversation in each sex. Create a free account to view solutions
Tannen (1984) introduces the term "conversational style" to refer to the unique collection of communicative habits that individuals develop — all the ways they say what they mean — influenced by regional and cultural background, ethnicity, class, age, and gender, as well as numerous other influences such as sexual orientation, profession, and personality.
Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American author and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Best known as the author of You Just Don't Understand, she has been a McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences following a term in residence at the Institute for ...
Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely ...
For my senior thesis in college I researched characteristics of gendered speech styles. Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand: ... Men's and women's styles are so different that she considers cross-gender communication cross-cultural. Men and women, she says, have been socialized to use language in different ways for different reasons
From this point, the article "Who Does the Talking Here?" which is written by Deborah Tannen and published in the Washington Post in 2007 can be discussed as one more attempt to respond to the developed debates.. In her article, Tannen proposes to discuss the relation between the concepts of gender and talkativeness from the large perspective because these relations are rather complex.
New York: Avon Books. Summary: Tannen outlines differences in conversational styles between the genders. She claims that many of issues and tensions between gender are a result of not necessarily gender differences but rather differences in conversational styles of each gender. Chapter 1: Women and Men Talking on the Job.