Week 27 - learning about how men and women use language

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.  Is that true or is it all bollocks?  In the context of intimate relationships I haven't got a clue, I've not been in enough to really know the pitfalls and the perils of love but I do know that as a general rule, from experience, men and women are from different species, dare I say it, different planets.....oh right.  Yep, of course its true.

One way in which it is ever-presently true, is the way that men and women talk and communicate.  We are weird - all of us, women think that about men and men think that about women.  Why on earth are we so different when we all come from the same parents, backgrounds, schools, religions, cities and worlds?  

Well, there are some interesting ways of looking at it and I found these out at a talk called "He Said, She Said" at the Royal Society at the British Academy.  Jane Garvey from Women's Hour on Radio 4 hosted Professor Deborah Tannen from Georgetown University, a linguistic specialist who has written a number of New York Times bestselling books on gender language and how men and women communicate.  Honestly, it was fascinating.

What is it about us that we don't just say what we mean?  We think in terms of our intentions, but often the outcomes of our conversations are shaped by differing conversational styles and that is what Deborah began by talking about.  

Well, it all starts right at the beginning when we begin our world of socialising at school.  Generally, girls play with girls and boys play with boys and the worlds are different.  Deborah told us about a study she was involved with about how best friends talk to each other from age 5 all the way up to 15. She was surprised by the non-verbal patterns that she saw.  She played us some of the video and it was quite incredible. Girls, at every single age sit opposite each other and maintain eye contact while they talk to one another.  Boys will always sit at angles and not look at one another whilst speaking.  I'm sure many girls reading this have complained in the past about men not making eye contact whilst talking, or even that they are not listening to them.

Typically little girls have best friends (who are girls) and they tend to talk a lot to one another and traditionally tell each other secrets.  They will whisper in their ears.  Its a very girlie thing to do but boys would never do that.  With boys, its all about the activity and the chat comes as a secondary.   

For girls, the best friend is the focus of their lives and they all want to be like each other - there is no competition to see who is boss and so therefore, girls tend to not want to play with bossy girls who tell each other what to do. (Now there's a lesson I could have done with 25 years ago!!)

Boys are different, they play in large groups and the boy's best friend is who he fools around with the most.  Boys do talk but they tend to talk to negotiate their status, i.e. who is the leader and follower of the groups.  With boys its all about trying to get attention, telling jokes and who is better.  Girls are all about who is in and who is out whereas boys are all about who are the leaders.  Girls are often upset at being left out of things, but boys are more sensitive to being pushed around and put down.  So what we see as a result from our childhood is that different sensitivities develop.  Obviously all of this needs to be prefaced by saying that not everyone is like this and there are generalisations to be made.

But it is interesting hearing all of these trends that happen with boys and girls when they are young.  So more examples are that during childhood boys like to constantly outdo one another, whereas girls like to be the same i.e. "yes me too, I am the same" or "yes me too, I have that doll" etc etc.  That then tells us why women have a sensitivity to one another.  Even as we're older when we tell our girlfriends our problems, we have a habit of saying something like "yes that has happened to me" - its an understanding.

So what we learn is that men's talk tends to focus on hierarchy - competition for relative power - whereas women's tends to focus on connection - relative closeness or distance.  But all conversations, and all relationships, reflect a combination of hierarchy and connection.  The two are not mutually exclusive but inextricably intertwined.  All of us aspire to be powerful, and we all want to connect with others.  Women's and men's conversational styles are simply different ways of reaching the same goal.

So to demonstrate, Deborah gave us some interesting examples of differing conversations that she has encountered.  Two women colleagues are talking. One of them had asked the other to speak at a convention but the colleague is telling her that she is not very well right now but that if she really needs her to come and speak she absolutely will.  The other woman totally understands what is being said here and tells her colleague "no, don't worry, stay at home and get well".

Then Deborah tells us a similar scenario that she heard about from a female friend who had the same situation with her boss who was a man.  He had asked her to do a talk at some sort of committee for him but she was drowning with so many things to do and said to him "I don't think I can take one more thing at the moment but if you really need me to do it, I will".  So the man said "yes if you could, I do need you to do it".  Of course, the woman was totally put out by this and asked Deborah why he did that when she very clearly invited him to let her off the hook and trusted him that he could hear her saying no.  Deborah told us of course that she told her friend "no" and that he heard her say that she would do if he really needed her to.  His ritual style was different to hers consequently she didn't get what she wanted.

Deborah went on to give us lots more real life examples of how different men and women are in the way they communicate with each other.   She kept coming back to the idea of connection vs hierarchy and really it comes down to understanding how different people are.  Its like when two people are having a conversation and one person ends up talking over the other.  This might not necessarily mean they are wanting to take over, it might just be their way of showing that they are listening.  People have different rituals and when you accept and understand them, you will have better conversations with people.

One final example that I quite liked as it made me laugh and I identified with, was a situation Deborah was told when a man and wife are in a car going down the motorway and the wife says to the husband "would you like to stop for a drink?" and the husband says "no".   The woman got frustrated as she wanted him to say something like "I don't know, would you like to stop for a drink" and then they could discuss it.  From her point of view him saying no is like him saying "I don't care what you want" whereas her asking the question is her thinking about what he wants.  She didn't have the opportunity for discussion as he shut it right down immediately.  But this is a perfect example of what happens when conversational styles are different.

So, what do we gauge from all of this?  Well, I think its quite clear that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.  Deborah really highlighted just how easy it is for men and women to use language differently considering how they start to communicate during their early years of childhood.  There is no one right way to communicate and we all need to realise that to have better communication in our relationships.   Everyone is different and when we accept and are aware of one another, we will all have much more rewarding relationships, both with ourselves and others.