Communication Matters (He Said, She Said - Women, Men and Language) by Deborah Tannen PDF

Communication
Matters:
He Said/She Said:
Women, Men, and Language
COURSE GUIDE
Professor Deborah Tannen

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Communication Matters:
He Said/She Said: Women, Men and Language
Georgetown University
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He Said/She Said: Women, Men, and Language

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Course Syllabus
He Said/She Said: Women, Men, and Language
About Your Professor ..............................................................................................................4
Introduction ..............................................................................................................................5
Lecture 1 He Said/She Said: A Framework for Understanding

Conversations Between Women and Men ........................................................6
Lecture 2 The Source of Gender Patterns: Children at Play ..........................................12
Lecture 3 A Cross-Cultural Approach to GenderTalk ......................................................17
Lecture 4 The Role of Opposition in Men's Relationships ..............................................22
Lecture 5 The Role of Talk in Women's Relationships....................................................26
Lecture 6 The Interplay of Power and Connection ..........................................................30
Lecture 7 Ambiguity and Polysemy: Two Keys to Understanding

Language and Gender ....................................................................................35
Lecture 8 Indirectness: Not in So Many Words ..............................................................41
Lecture 9 Talking at Home: Gender in the Family ..........................................................45
Lecture 10 Talking at Work................................................................................................50
Lecture 11 Who Talks More?: Public and Private Speaking ............................................54
Lecture 12 A History of Research on Gender and Language ..........................................59
Lecture 13 Nature/Nurture: The Source of Gender Differences ........................................63
Lecture 14 Conclusion: What Can You Do?......................................................................68
References ............................................................................................................................71
3
About Your Professor
Deborah Tannen
© Linda Farwell
Deborah Tannen holds the distinguished rank of University Professor at Georgetown

University, where she has been on the faculty of the linguistics department since 1979.
Her book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was on The
New York Times best-seller list for nearly four years, including eight months as number
one; has sold more than two million copies; and has been translated into 29 languages.
It was also on best-seller lists in Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, and Hong
Kong. This is the book that brought gender differences in communication style to the
forefront of public awareness. Of her other 18 books, Talking from 9 to 5: Women and
Men at Work was a New York Times business best-seller; The Argument Culture:
Stopping America’s War of Words won the Common Ground book award; and I Only
Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs and Kids When
You’re All Adults, won a Books for a Better Life award. Her books written for scholarly
readers include Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational
Discourse (Cambridge University Press), Gender & Discourse (Oxford University
Press) and Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends (Ablex Publishing).
Professor Tannen is an internationally recognized scholar who has received fellow-
ships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned
Societies, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is Associate Editor of Language in
Society and is on the editorial boards of many other journals. She is also an advisory
editor of the book series Oxford Studies in Gender and Language. She has been
awarded five honorary doctorates, and has been McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at
Princeton University. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California following a term in residence at the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Deborah Tannen is a frequent guest on such news and information shows as 20/20, The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and ABC World
News Tonight as well as such networks as CNN and National Public Radio. She has writ-
ten for most major magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The
Washington Post, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, and The Harvard Business Review.
Dr. Tannen is also a frequent and popular lecturer to business and professional as
well as academic groups. Her audiences have ranged from such major corporations as
Motorola, Chevron, JP Morgan Chase and CapitolOne to a gathering of United States
senators and their spouses.
In addition to her linguistic research and writing, Deborah Tannen has published poet-
ry, short stories, and personal essays. Her first play, “An Act of Devotion,” is included in
The Best American Short Plays: 1993-1994. It was produced, together with her play
“Sisters,” by Horizons Theater in Arlington, Virginia, in 1995.
4
Introduction
When I wrote You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation I didn’t know
that what everyone would respond to most strongly is the question, “Why don’t men like to
stop and ask for directions?” (Before the book was published, no one talked about this
gender difference; as a result of the book, it is now the ubiquitous subject of jokes, car-
toons, skits, greeting cards, and casual conversations.) The answer to this question will be
revealed in the lectures that follow, as it captures the essence of what this course will
address: the patterns that tend to distinguish how men and women use language in their
everyday lives, and the consequences of these differences (as well as similarities) for con-
versations and relationships between women and men.
My goal in this series, in addition to illuminating the patterns of women’s and men’s
uses of language, is to enhance understanding of how language works in everyday life.
I am told by students who have taken my courses that this understanding helps them in
their everyday lives, as every aspect of our lives involves talking to people of the other
sex—in our personal relationships, our families, at work, and in trying to get just about
anything done.
My research on cross-gender communication grew out of my linguistic research on
how people use language in conversation. I was invited to take part in a research pro-
ject organized by a psychologist, Bruce Dorval, that was funded by the Social Science
Research Council. We examined videotapes of children talking to their best friends
across a range of ages. In looking at Dorval’s videotapes, I noticed a pattern of physi-
cal orientation: At every age, girls and women sat face to face and looked directly at
each other when they talked, whereas boys and men sat at angles, or parallel, and
looked around the room. Seeing this pattern span such a range of ages is what
prompted me to think of cross-gender communication as cross-cultural.
Throughout this course, I will be developing this metaphor, drawing on my own origi-
nal research as well as research by others in the fields of linguistics, anthropology,
sociology, education, and psychology. Some of the topics I will explore in these lec-
tures include:
Who talks more, men or women?
Who interrupts more, women or men?
What do women and men tend to talk about?
Who is more "indirect" in saying what we mean?
Why would anyone be indirect in saying what we mean?
Where do these differences come from; how early do they start?
In answering all these and many other questions, I will describe and exemplify pat-
terns in the ways women and men tend to use language in our everyday lives. I’ll
trace these patterns to the way boys and girls use language growing up, and
explore, in some detail, the process by which humans express meaning, accomplish
tasks, and form and manage relationships through language.
—Dr. Deborah Tannen
5
Lecture 1: He Said/She Said:
A Framework for Understanding Conversations Between Women and Men
Before beginning this lecture you may want to …
Make a list of the differences you have noticed in how women and men
tend to use language in daily life.
Introduction:
Recall that key question from the book You Just Don’t Understand: “Why
don’t men like to stop and ask for directions?” By the end of this lecture you
will know the answer. We will approach it by discussing the differences in the
ways men and women speak to each other, and why they often misinterpret
each other’s intentions, even when they perfectly understand the dictionary
definitions of the words spoken. To begin at the beginning, we start with a
discussion of how boys and girls learn to use language in their play. A more
detailed and nuanced discussion will follow in Lecture Two, but in this intro-
duction we have a brief summary.
Consider this ...

1. What frustrates you most in conversations with speakers of the other
sex?
2. Do you resist stopping and asking directions when you are uncertain of
the way?
3. Does your answer to (2) depend on the circumstances, who else is
present, or any other factors?
1) He said/she said
a) Why don’t men like to ask for directions?
i) Ways of speaking that are typical of men and women.
ii) If we can observe the language patterns of men and women, we
can enhance our understanding of language and human behavior,
in general.
b) Almost anything in life involves conversation.
c) Professor’s experiment involving pairs of best friends talking to each other.
i) Physical orientation of the boys and girls when talking was striking.
ii) Men avoid looking directly at each other; women assume they are
disengaged, but assumptions can be wrong.
d) Conversational styles based on gender.
LECTURE ONE
i) Who talks more? Who interrupts more? What do they talk about?
ii) Who is more indirect in saying what they mean? Why would any-
one be indirect in saying what he or she means?
6
iii) Where do these differences come from?
iv) How early do they start?
e) In answering these questions, examples will be used to demonstrate the
patterns of conversations used by men and women to express meaning.
i) Culture: ways of talking and ways of behaving that we learn as
children growing up in a given environment.
f) The role of language in social relationships.
g) All examples used come from actual interactions that people took part in.
i) This method has the advantage of examining real and natural con-
versations—hermeneutic approach.
ii) Differs from the methods of clinical psychologists including self-
report.
(1) Linguists prefer to observe how people actually speak rather
than take people’s word for how they think they speak.
h) Cases and interpretations approach.
i) Especially appealing because of Dr. Tannen’s background in
English.
ii) Analyzes transcribed conversation much like a work of verbal art.
2) Linguistics, the science of language
a) Also similar to literary criticism in the interpretative process.
3) Summary of the way boys and girls play and communicate
a) A girl has a best friend and spends a lot of time talking and telling
secrets to her best friend.
b) Girls downplay status among themselves.
c) Girls tend to make suggestions rather than give orders.
d) Boys play in larger groups and are very active.
e) The high-status boys and low-status boys are very noticeable; bullying
can occur.
f) The high-status boy who gives direct orders and makes them stick will
be seen as a leader.
i) High-status boys will use language to keep them in center stage.
ii) Other boys will attempt to challenge them with language.
4) We carry these habits into our adult life
a) Boys and girls have different sensitivities.
i) Girls become sensitive to being left out and not being let in on a
secret.
ii) Boys are sensitive to any notion of being put down or pushed
around—it impinges on their independence.
(1) The next lecture will go into more detail about this.
7
5) Often said that girls are more sensitive than boys, but we’re all sensi-
tive—for example between a woman and a man
a) Man just getting back in town from a business trip tells his wife that he’s
meeting with an old friend who was only going to be in town that night.
b) His wife, long anticipating his arrival, was hurt by this and had
assumed they would have dinner.
c) She tells her husband that she would prefer if he talked to her about it
in advance.
d) He says that he can’t let his friend know that he has to ask permission
from his wife.
i) Her perspective was “We’re a team, we’re connected to each
other.” By not discussing the change in plans he is rejecting her,
leaving her out, and pushing her away.
ii) His perspective was that he’s not free to do what he needs to do,
that he has to ask permission, as if his wife is more like his mother.
7) Different sensitivities are related to various themes within the relation-
ship and can explain a number of frustrations within our daily lives
a) One common example is this—the woman complains ‘we don’t com-
municate;’ the man says ‘yes we do, I tell you everything.’
b) For her, communication means telling each other everything that’s
going on because talking is the glue of the relationship.
c) For him, communication means if there’s a problem then they’ll talk
about it, but only if there’s a problem.
d) Another example—a woman tells a man about a problem, and the man
starts to tell her how to solve the problem.
i) She’s annoyed that he is telling her how to solve it, as opposed to
listening and showing concern.
ii) He’s annoyed that she wants to talk about the problem without
wanting to do anything about it.
(1) Again for women, talk is the glue that holds together the rela-
tionship and just listening means that someone cares.
(2) Men just don’t do this kind of talk; so, it is assumed that she
wouldn’t be talking about it unless she wants a solution.
iii) These same things hold true in the example of why men don’t ask
for directions.
iv) Once got a letter from a female physician who received a poor
review from her male supervisor because she asked so many
questions, and he assumed that she just didn’t know as much.
v) The rest of the men in the program didn’t ask questions, but she
LECTURE ONE
felt it was most likely because they didn’t want to acknowledge

their ignorance, an inhibition not shared by the woman.
e) To understand the logic behind a whole range of ways of speaking,
taking into account that the other person may be speaking in a way
8
that uses language differently than you might use it.
f) Caveats include the following
i) None of the patterns between women and men are clear
dichotomies.
(1) Patterns are "associated" with men or women, as opposed to
being a “female” or “male” style.
ii) Study results never indicate all or nothing regarding the percent-
age of subjects.
iii) There are many factors that affect our language patterns
besides gender.
(1) Ethnicity, regional background, social class, age, profession,
sexual orientation, place in the sibling constellation, individual
personality.
iv) A pattern is not a norm.
(1) Nothing wrong with the many women and men that don’t fit
that norm.
v) It’s better to acknowledge the patterns that exist rather than deny-
ing the differences in order to feel that we can make changes.
vi) The paradox of cross-cultural communication
(1) The example of the American-Indian woman attending law
school and fitting into the groups that were already there.
(2) It’s important to address the differences that really are there.
8) How can understanding gender patterns actually help in real life?
a) Example of woman and man compromising during their conversations.
b) No one wants to change when they’re told that what they’re doing is
wrong when they know there is a good reason they’re doing it.
c) People can be extremely creative at working out solutions once they
understand the patterns that are leading to the problem.
NEXT LECTURE:
In Lecture Two, we’ll be looking at the patterns of how men and women use
language in the ways children learn to use language growing up.
9
LECTURE ONE
10
NOTES
FOR
FORGREATER
GREATERUNDERSTANDING
UNDERSTANDING
Questions and Essays

1. Think of two specific interactions in which you could identify the gender dif-
ferences described in this lecture. How did they influence the interaction,
and/or the relationship?
2. Why do many men resist asking directions or other forms of help?
3. Return to the list you made of differences you have noticed in how women
and men tend to use language, and of what frustrates you most in conver-
sations with speakers of the other sex. Has your perspective changed?
Suggested Reading
Tannen, Deborah. Chapters 1-3. You Just Don't Understand: Women and
Men in Conversation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.
Other Books of Interest

Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. Language and Gender.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Lakoff, Robin. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row,
1975.
Tannen, Deborah. Gender & Discourse. Cambridge: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
11
Lecture Two: The Source of Gender Patterns: Children at Play

Watch children at play, paying special attention to pairs or groups of girls and
boys. Take notes on your observations: what games did they play? What did
they talk about? Were there any conflicts? How were they resolved?
Introduction:
We can trace patterns that tend to characterize women and men to the ways
boys and girls use language growing up. In this lecture, I will delve more
deeply into the sources of differences in men’s and women’s conversational
styles by examining how children use language in their play.
Consider this ...

1. What types of games do boys play?
2. What types of games do girls play?
3. How do girls and boys use language in their play?
1) Boys and girls and friendship

a) The seeds of the conversational styles that we develop as adults are
planted when we’re kids playing with other kids of the same sex.
b) Girls create friendship through talking, and they gauge friendships by
closeness.
c) For boys, activities are central, and they gauge friendships by loyalty.
2) Video-taped example of boys hitting balls up to the sky, trying to top
each other in their boasts about the height of the ball
a) It’s been said boys are competitive and girls are cooperative, but this
isn’t quite true.
b) Competing is a kind of fun for the boys, and they’re still cooperative in
their conversation.
c) Playful competition is a conversational pattern or ritual.
d) The video helped mothers understand their young boys.
3) Video-taped example of girls talking about contact lenses, and exult-
ing that they are the "same"
a) Girls reinforce their friendship by talking about being on equal ground.
LECTURE TWO
b) Has helped fathers understand their little girls

c) Explains the notion that girls are “goody-goody.”
12
d) Adult women have commented: "my women friends don’t let me be dif-
ferent."
4) Story by an employee at the Discovery Center (a public play area for
children)
a) Observed girls and boys negotiating the use of instruments in a
conga-line.
b) Girls devised ways of convincing a peer to trade the desired instru-
ment through conversation.
c) Boys tended to simply take the desired instruments with the use of force.
5) Toys ‘R’ Us example
a) A girl tried to talk her mother into buying a toy saying it would also be
good for the mother.
i) Talking up the idea of mutual benefit for both parties involved.
b) A boy tried to talk his mother into buying a toy saying all the other
boys had them.
i) Competition lies at the heart of this tactic.
6) Everyday example of adult man and woman driving in a car and want-
ing to stop for a drink
a) Woman asks man, who simply declines.
b) Woman becomes annoyed because she actually wanted to stop.
c) Man is annoyed because he feels she is playing games; she should’ve
just said that she wanted to stop.
i) Woman expected a negotiation to reach a consensus on whether
they should stop, trying to take his preferences into account.
(1) Assumes that a verbal negotiation is the best conversational
strategy.
ii) Man would’ve been willing had she only told him directly from the
very start—and mistakenly thinks the stopping is the point, rather
than the negotiation.
(1) Assumes that a verbal negotiation starts specifically by throw-
ing out an idea and negotiating from there.
d) Example of how this applies in the workplace.
7) Caveats
a) Emphasis on the idea that there is no value judgement and nothing
wrong with acknowledging status.
b) Many cultures assume that a sense of hierarchy is a good thing and
can be positive.
i) Example of Japanese students demonstrates the unity of hierarchy
which runs counter to the idea of hierarchy as distancing.
ii) Research by Ron Scollon shows that sometimes closeness can
be viewed as inherently negative.
8) The role of talk in women’s relationships and the role of action in
men’s relationships
a) Student’s example of friends hanging out at a party seemed to back up
stereotypes.
i) Girls were talking on the couch about the party.
ii) Boys wrestled with each other on the floor.
(1) Stereotype: something you believe in without any observation
to justify it.
b) We’ve demonstrated here the importance of the language patterns.
NEXT LECTURE:
In the next lecture, we’ll be going over some classic examples of the kinds of
frustrations that men and women encounter growing up and how that plays
out later in life.
LECTURE TWO
14
NOTES
15
FORGREATER
FOR GREATERUNDERSTANDING
UNDERSTANDING
Questions and Essays
1. Do the patterns of play outlined in this lecture describe your own experi-
ence as a child?
2. If you recall conflicts with your playmates, how were they resolved?
3. Can you see correspondences between these childhood experiences
and your current relationships with friends, family, or colleagues at
work?
Exercises
1. If you have children, to what extent do their patterns of play correspond

to those described?
2. Engage children (your own or others’) in conversation about their friend-
ships and favored activities. To what extent are the patterns described
reflected in their responses?
3. Observe pairs or groups of children and of adults playing sports. How
do their forms of play and use of language in play correspond to the pat-
terns described in this lecture?
Books of Interest
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. He-said-she-said: Talk as Social Organization

Among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Articles of Interest
Cook-Gumperz, Jenny. 1995. “Reproducing the Discourse of Mothering:

How Gendered Talk Makes Gendered Lives.” Gender Articulated:
Language and the Socially Constructed Self, ed. by Kira Hall and Mary
Bucholtz, 401-419. New York and London: Routledge.
Kyratzis, Amy. 1999. “Narrative Identity: Preschoolers’ Self-Construction
Through Narrative in Same-Sex Friendship Group Dramatic Play.”
Narrative Inquiry 9:2. 427-455.
Sheldon, Amy. 1990. “Pickle Fights: Gendered Talk in Preschool Disputes.”
Discourse Processes 13:1. 5-31. Reprinted in Gender and Conversational
LECTURE TWO
Interaction, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 83-109. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
16
Lecture Three: A Cross-Cultural Approach to GenderTalk

Recall a specific conversation you had with someone of the other sex. Write
all you remember about it.
Introduction:
In this lecture I go more deeply into the notion of “conversational ritual,” and
into the mechanisms by which women’s and men’s conversational rituals
work in negotiating human relationships. I introduce terms and concepts from
the field of interactional sociolinguistics in order to go beyond the description
of surface patterns in understanding women’s and men’s uses of language,
as well as their frustrations in talking to each other.
Consider this ...

1. What most frustrates you in conversations with intimates of the other sex?
2. If your intimate relations are with same-sex partners, do you recognize
patterns nonetheless?
3. What is the most unfair or unwarranted accusation that someone of the
other sex has made toward you?
1) Examples from everyday life which show how common frustrations in

communication grow out of differing conversational styles
a) Example from call-in talk show involving a male caller saying how
things worked well in his household because he and his spouse
agreed that he was the boss.
i) Demonstrates his assumption that both people can’t be totally
equal, someone has to be one-up.
b) Differences between caller’s and host’s assumptions capture the con-
fusions that can come up.
2) Other examples
a) The story about riding in a taxi with the driver who purports to commu-
nicate very well with his spouse.
i) He doesn’t understand why she wants to talk about her brother’s
troubles.
(1) She thinks talk is called for, and her brother’s trouble is a
handy topic.
(2) He thinks he is being asked to give advice to her brother.
ii) The result is that he doesn’t answer her question at all.
17
3) The complaint from men that women nag
a) Why are only women called nags?
b) A result of conversational rituals common among men and women.
c) A woman begins with the assumption that they’re both on equal footing.
d) Men are automatically sensitive to the idea of being pushed around.
i) He wants to avoid the impression that he’s doing what he’s told
because she told him to do it.
e) He wants to do it eventually in his own way which results in it being
put off.
f) She thinks she hasn’t made it clear how much she wants him to do it.
g) It turns into a vicious cycle between the two which only compounds
the problem.
h) Anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s concept "complementary schismogen-
esis"
i) Two people with opposite styles end up with exaggerated forms of
their style in reaction to each other.
4) Dr. Tannen’s examples involving her parents
a) Car trip plans and the discussion of the particulars.
i) Her father made a decision.
ii) Her mother wanted to discuss and negotiate.
b) Father’s injured arm:
i) Mother is offended by the fact that he hadn’t told her it had been
hurt for a week; she assumes that if you’re close you tell each
other everything—feels like she’s being pushed away, left out.
ii) Father thought he was being protective of his wife, and he
doesn’t want her to worry.
iii) He’s also worried that she’ll tell a bunch of people about the
arm injury.
(1) She thinks it’s appropriate to talk to her friends about
personal details of her life; he feels that the injury might
be seen as a sign of weakness.
iv) We tend to think of our own style of speaking as a reaction to
the other person’s style which is absolute.
v) Each of us thinks of the other person as the prime mover in a
conversation.
(1) It’s a two-way street though, with each person reacting
LECTURE THREE
to the other.
5) Example of woman having a benign lump removed from her breast
a) She tells her girlfriends that she is upset by the scar, and they
empathize with her.
18
b) Her husband’s reaction is to tell her that she can get plastic surgery to
fix this.
i) She’s offended, but he thinks he’s just helping her by coming up
with a solution.
ii) They’re both reacting to each other.
6) Example of a woman and man coming home after work
a) She starts by telling him how her day was in great detail.
b) In response to her inquiry, he gives a simple, succinct answer: "it was
fine, same ol’ rat-race."
c) Later, they go out to dinner with friends, and he regales the group with
anecdotes about his day.
d) She feels left out; he should’ve told her before he told a group of
strangers.
i) To her, the opportunity to talk to her husband in a relaxed way after a
long day of being careful what she says, reinforces their intimacy.
ii) To him, he has been talking all day to make sure that people respect
him, to maintain his status, to make sure he’s not ignored, but now,
he’s home and has nothing to prove and doesn’t need to talk.
iii) Home is a place where she begins to open up and talk and where
he can shut down, relax, and not talk.
e) So, why does he talk about these things when they’re out among
friends?
i) Like boys at play, he feels he has to use talk to negotiate his sta-
tus in the group; he’s re-casting the trouble at work into a full-
blown amusing story.
(1) He doesn’t think to do this for his wife since he doesn’t have
the same need to win her over.
f) A disagreement between spouses over something like politics in a larger
group.
i) Women are less likely to disagree and try to gently negotiate it
when they do.
ii) Men are more likely to baldly disagree and declare their indepen-
dence of thought.
iii) The value of agreement vs. disagreement can be very different.
iv) This can make women feel betrayed, whereas men may feel its
simply a different point of view.
7) We’re using ways of talking that have been learned over time
a) There are a number of factors, but language patterns learned in our
childhood play a large role.
b) If we can understand the language patterns and communication rituals
behind our differences, then we’ll have a better understanding of what
causes conflicts between close partners.
19
i) These frustrations can be especially hurtful.
ii) Understanding the causes provides options for avoiding or resolv-
ing conflicts.
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will focus on the role of opposition in men’s relationships and
the sources and logic behind it.
LECTURE THREE
20
FOR
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
Consider
1. What is a conversational ritual?
2. How does complementary schismogenesis work?
3. How can common arguments be traced to conversational rituals typical
of women and men?
Exercises
1. Recall the personal conversation that frustrated you in the past which
you described. Could it be described in terms of conversational rituals?
What is the logic behind the conversational ritual that previously frustrat-
ed you? How could both parties speak differently to avoid frustration in
the future?
2. For a day note the times you find your friends and co-workers communicat-
ing in gender-related ways.
3. Watch a television show from the ’50s that features family relationships
(Ozzie & Harriet, Leave It to Beaver). Then watch a modern family sitcom
such as Everybody Loves Raymond. How have the depictions of family
communication changed?
Books of Interest
Coates, Jennifer. Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of
Gender Differences in Language. (2nd edition). New York: Longman
Publishing Group, 1995.
Tannen, Deborah. Gender & Discourse. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press. 1994.
Maltz, Daniel N., and Ruth A. Borker. 1982. “A Cultural Approach to Male-
Female Miscommunication.” Language and Social Identity, ed. by John J.
Gumperz, 196-216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tannen, Deborah. 1995. “The Sex-Class Linked Framing of Talk at Work.”
Gender & Discourse, 195-221. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press.
Pritchard, C. Ruth. 1993. “Supportive Devices in Language and Para-
language in the Achievement of Affiliation in Troubles Talk.” Australian
Review of Applied Linguistics 16:1. 57-70.
21
Lecture Four: The Role of Opposition in Men's Relationships

Read chapter six, “Boys Will Be Boys” in Deborah Tannen's The Argument
Culture.
Introduction:
In the last lecture, I explained the concept of conversational ritual and
described a ritual, “troubles talk,” that typifies many women’s conversations
with those they are close to, which many men don’t recognize or understand.
In this lecture, I describe a conversational ritual common among men which
many women don’t recognize or understand. The technical term that I use for
this conversational ritual is “agonism” — using fighting or opposition to
accomplish something that is not literally a fight.
Consider this ...
1. If you make a point, and someone argues against it, does that seem to
you like a friendly form of engagement or a hostile attack?
2. If someone argues against a point you are making, does this spark you
to think more clearly, or make it harder for you to think clearly and
articulate your point of view?
3. Do you ever “play devil’s advocate” or refrain from expressing dis-
agreement openly?
1) Role of Opposition in Men's Relationships

a) How do boys and men use opposition, aggression, and fighting as a way
of doing things that are not literally about opposition or fighting?
b) We’ll also look at an example of girls fighting to see the differences.
c) Anecdote about playing with the children’s toy, A Barrel of Monkeys.
i) A mother recalls she had linked the monkeys in a chain. Her little boy
instantly picked good guys and bad guys and had them fight.
d) Dr. Tannen observed children playing at an outdoor picnic area..
i) A little boy bouncing around grabbed a girl, and she cried.
ii) He did the same thing with a boy who shoved him, and they eventu-
ally started tussling in a playful manner.
LECTURE FOUR
iii) The boys ultimately take the aggressive move as a friendly action.
iv) Girls don’t take to this tactic.
(1) Boys are described by the girls as too rough, distracting, and
not nice.
22
(2) Girls are often described by boys as crying all the time, and
easily hurt.
2) Linguist Amy Sheldon has looked at this phenomenon
a) Observed both boys and girls vying to play with the same toy.
i) Boys engage in brief, physical fights, and one boy wins out, getting to
play with a toy phone.
ii) Girls engage in long, complicated negotiation over toys.
(1) Just as possessive as boys but it plays out verbally, not physi-
cally.
(2) Eventually one girl, mad at the other, tells her she can’t come to
her birthday party—example of exclusion.
b) Observations at a daycare center.
c) Girls very creative in splitting a pickle, involving a third person in
compromise.
d) Boys fighting over a pickle also form an alliance. However, it came down
to physical force at the end.
3) Why do boys play this way, what’s the logic, where’s the fun in it?
a) College students playing the wooden block game Jenga.
i) They each built structures and then threw blocks to knock them over;
the one girl didn’t like this part of it and didn’t participate.
ii) The boys liked destroying the other’s structures, even though that
meant their structures would be destroyed—rooted in their childhood.
b) Agonism: using a war-like format to accomplish goals, not literally.
i) Many men believe arguing helps clarify the issue at stake and is
productive.
ii) Many women don’t like arguing, and they feel it often is counterpro-
ductive.
iii) This can be a problem in a classroom setting when arguments are
encouraged.
c) Playful insults and teasing:
i) Many examples of differences in uses of and attitudes toward teasing
and friendly insults.
ii) Men and women often see playful insults differently.
(1) Fraternity pledges being insulted as part of a “ritual, habitual
bitching;” girl who is present doesn’t understand this.
d) Girl from a black neighborhood found that her argumentative nature was
off-putting for a lot of girls who weren’t familiar with it.
i) Girls can use opposition as a way of being friendly, but it’s more
common among boys.
23
4) Trial lawyer, Christopher Darden, gives an example of fraternity hazing
from his own experience in college
a) Many of the rituals seem unduly harsh to outsiders.
b) Darden believes that he needed to subjugate himself to get close to the
brothers in the fraternity.
c) Through hazing, he developed lifetime friends who saw him at his weak-
est and most vulnerable.
i) This perhaps isn’t all that different from girls doing troubles talk in
which they expose themselves completely to become closer.
LECTURE FOUR
24
FOR
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Consider
1. What is “agonism” and how does it play out in boys’ play and men’s
conversation?
2. What role do ethnic, geographic, and cultural background, play in ago-
nistic rituals?
3. How does understanding agonism explain why the presence of a
woman can change the tone of interaction among men?
Exercises
1. Observe a group of boys or men of any age in a public setting. Do you

notice any agonistic ways of talking or relating to each other?
2. Think back to interactions you recall with male friends or relatives. Did
agonism play a role? What role did it play?
3. Do you enjoy agonistic conversational rituals such as playing devil’s
advocate or teasing those you feel close to? How do others react?
Suggested Reading
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words.
New York: Random House, 1999.
Books of Interest
Coates, Jennifer. Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities. Malden,

MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Johnson, Sally, and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, eds. Language and Masculinity.
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997.
Ong, Walter J. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. (out-of-print).
25
Lecture Five: The Role of Talk in Women's Relationships

Watch Divorce American Style and notice the communication styles.
Introduction:
In the opening scene of the movie, Divorce American Style, Dick van Dyke is
saying to his wife Debbie Reynolds, “What do you mean, we don’t communi-
cate? I tell you everything that’s on my mind,” and she counters “You do not.”
How can two people—people who are married to each other—have such dif-
ferent views of the state of communication between them? Like the taxi driver
and his wife that I mentioned in Lecture Three, the characters played by Dick
van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds had different definitions of “communication.”
In this lecture, we analyze in detail actual transcripts of tape-recorded or
video-taped conversations that took place among family members in order to
better understand the role of talk in women’s close relationships.
Consider this ...

1. How would you define “good communication”?
2. Give specific examples of conversations that show good or
poor communication.
3. What part does gender play in the examples you gave?
1) The Role of Talk in Women's Relationships

a) The scene from the movie, Divorce American Style, demonstrates that
men and women often have different understandings of “communication”.
b) Women often value self-revealing conversations to feel close to others.
i) Some women, after they are married, find their friendships suffer
because they don’t have "boyfriend problems" to talk to their
friends about.
2) Research project involving four families recording all their conversa-
tions for a week
a) Married woman asking her single adult brother how things are going
with his girlfriend.
i) He keeps responding with minimal answers to her searching
questions.
LECTURE FIVE
3) Example from 1999 PBS documentary "An American Love Story"

a) A pre-teen girl waiting for a boy who doesn’t show up, refuses to tell
her mother about her feelings.
i) Instead the girl tells her best friend.
26
4) 1973 PBS documentary, An American Family
a) Husband tries to reassure wife that she shouldn’t be distressed that
her older teenage daughter isn’t talking as much to her.
b) The wife is upset that the daughter is confiding more in the father.
c) The husband emphasizes the independence he gains by his children
growing up and being able to live on their own.
d) The wife says she’s upset because she felt that they were so close.
i) Complementary schismogenesis perhaps applies here—the more the
wife says she is bothered that they don’t talk to her, the more the
husband says that it doesn’t bother him at all, and in fact, he’s glad.
5) Example from the video-taped 10th grade friends from lecture one
a) Boy who is concerned because a girl said he has a drinking problem.
b) His friend dismisses this, saying he’s funny when he’s “off his butt.”
i) For men, dismissing friends’ concerns is a way of making them
feel better.
ii) If a friend were to empathize with him and express sympathy, it
would probably make the man feel worse.
6) Robert Bly gave the example of a man who broke his leg skiing
a) Appreciated sympathy from women at first, but then, he became
annoyed by it.
b) Another man tells his wife that he is having a mid-life crisis, and his
wife says she is having one, too.
i) He reacts with indignation; he feels she is intruding on his person-
al experience.
7) The film White Men Can’t Jump provides an example of the absurdity
of thinking that women only want sympathy not real solutions, when
taken too far
a) The request for glass of water is a joke and comes from Dr. Tannen’s
experience, as recounted in an interview.
8) In this lecture, we’ve laid out the role of talk in establishing connec-
tion and intimacy in friendships for women.
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will give a more nuanced and deeper analysis of the use of
language to balance the needs for power and closeness in our relationships.
27
LECTURE FIVE
28
NOTES
FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. Did any of the conversational transcripts in this lecture sound familiar to

you?
2. What specific conversations did they call to mind?
3. What were the gender patterns in those conversations?
Exercises
1. Watch a television show or movie that concerns mothers and daughters.

Do you see the patterns described in this lecture?
2. Watch a television show or movie that concerns fathers and their children
or mothers and sons. How do the patterns compare and contrast?
3. For a week, keep notes on the conversations you have that either comfort
or frustrate you. Do any of them reflect patterns discussed in this lecture?
Books of Interest
Coates, Jennifer. Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends.

New York: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
Films to Watch
Divorce American Style. Columbia Tristar, 1967.
Eckert, Penelope. 1993. “Cooperative Competition in Adolescent ‘Girl-Talk’.”

Gender and Conversational Interaction, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 32-61.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Eder, Donna. “Building Cohesion Through Collaborative Narration.” Social
Psychology Quarterly 51:3. 225-235. 1988.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. “Collaborative Opposition Among Latina
Adolescents.” Reinventing identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse, ed.
by Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton, 273-292. New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
29
Lecture Six: The Interplay of Power and Connection

Read chapter seven, “Talking Up Close: Status and Connection,” in
Deborah Tannen’s Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work.
Introduction:
In this lecture, we’ll bring together two threads: What really is the relationship
between language and gender? And how do gender patterns dovetail with the
dynamics of power and connection?
Consider this ...

1. Does telling problems to others result in closeness or vulnerability or
both?
2. Think of a range of people you know, and ask yourself to what
extent there are differences in power and in closeness in your rela-
tionship to them.
3. When relationships become closer, do they also entail more or less
negotiation of power?
1) Introduction to The Grid

a) The relationship between language and gender and the way it dove-
tails with the dynamics of power and connection,
i) We often interpret people as either making a "power play" or "just
trying to get close."
ii) It is often both.
b) A woman doing troubles-talk, and a man giving advice.
i) Earlier I’ve written that if the goal of troubles talk is to establish
closeness or connection, giving advice does just the opposite
because it sets up a hierarchy.
(1) Equality is associated with closeness and solidarity.
(2) Hierarchy is associated with power and distance.
c) Came to believe that this is too simple, and we can see the more com-
plex nature of these relationships by conceptualizing it on a grid.
i) We must always take into account what the power relationship is
between us, and how close we want to be.
LECTURE SIX
ii) Differences in assumptions about hierarchy and closeness exist

across cultures.
iii) Siblings may be very close, but there are always status differ-
ences due to age hierarchies.
30
hierarchy
closeness distance
equality
(1) Grandparents and grandchildren—hierarchical but also

extremely close.
2) How does this play out in other ways especially when gender is
thrown in?
a) Display and alignment:
i) Display: you talk in a certain way because you want to make a cer-
tain impression.
(1) It’s not manipulative; it’s simply awareness.
ii) Alignment: a way you associate yourself with a certain identity or
group.
b) So we then ask, how is an interaction between men and women being
framed?
i) Frances Lee Smith, a linguist, observed men and women training
to be preachers.
(1) All of the men and one of the women tended to foreground
their own authority by putting themselves on record as inter-
preters of the text.
(2) Another woman spoke as if she was telling a story to a group
of children.
(a) She’s not asserting her own authority on record.
(3) Another woman spoke and told the story in a kind of literary
register.
(a) She’s speaking with authority but isn’t putting it on record.
ii) These examples demonstrate that the majority of the women cre-
ate different alignments between them and their listeners and tend
to downplay their authority.
c) A study by Elisabeth Kuhn looked at female and male professors and
how they talked on their first day.
i) The men tended to foreground their authority.
(1) "I’ve planned midterms, I’m making the assignments."
ii) Women are not as likely to take a stance that puts their authority
on record.
31
(1) A woman says "We’re gonna talk about the requirements.”
d) Indexing gender—people assume stances that are associated in a
given culture with male or female.
e) What do we make of people who talk in ways associated with the other
gender?
f ) Gay men and lesbians: Are they intentionally trying to index the other
gender, or are they just acting in a way that they think is appropriate?
g) Donna Williams is an autistic author who has written a number of
books explaining what it’s like to live with autism.
h) In Somebody Somewhere, Williams explains that she functioned by
assuming the role of two persons or characters, one male (Willie) and
one female (Carol).
ii) Her “characters” were stereotypical of each gender.
iii) As Carol, she frequently smiles.
3) Importance of smiles in indexing gender
a) Erving Goffman: "Smiles function as ritualistic mollifiers, signaling that
nothing agonistic is intended or invited, that the meaning of the other’s
act has been understood and found acceptable…"
i) These smiles seem more the offering of an inferior than a superior.
(1) In cross-sex encounters in society, women smile more than
men.
(2) Women don’t consciously intend to be submissive, they’re
just being pleasant.
ii) A woman attorney in another study says she’s been so successful
because she smiles a lot, and doesn’t put on any airs.
(1) Men are seen as goofy or "off" if they smile too much.
4) An all-woman office in another case study
a) The highest-ranking woman is telling a story to two women, when a
lowest-ranking woman enters the room. The other three compliment
her on her clothing.
i) Though it is casual conversation, we can see that it creates a con-
nection by talking about clothes.
(1) Everything goes according to status; the high-ranking woman
sets the tone and evaluates the lowest-ranking woman’s
clothes.
b) In the most fleeting conversations everyday, we’re constantly balanc-
ing our desires to find the right amount of closeness and distance, as
well as reflecting the status of our relationship.
LECTURE SIX
i) It’s not a matter of either status or connection.
32
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will show how we integrate these dynamics of status and
connection while also creating our gender persons at the same time.
33
Questions
1. Describe the power/connection grid.

2. What are “alignment” and “footing” and how do they work in
conversation?
3. How do the power/connection grid and the concepts of “alignment” and
“footing” account for the relationship of language to gender?
Exercises
1. Go back over the conversations presented in this lecture and see what
other patterns you can discern that reflect power, connection, or the
interplay of the two.
2. Go back over the conversations again and ask how they would strike
you if you changed the gender of the speakers.
3. If you feel comfortable doing so, record conversations at work or at
home. If you do not wish to tape-record, simply write down as many
conversations as you can recall as soon as possible after they took
place. Then perform the same analysis on these conversations that you
did in (1) and (2).
Recommended Reading
Tannen, Deborah, ed. Framing in Discourse. Cambridge: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Foster, Michele. 1995. “Are You With Me?: Power and Solidarity in the Dis-
course of African American Women.” Gender Articulated: Language and
the Socially Constructed Self, ed. by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz, 329-
350. New York and London: Routledge.
Book of Interest
Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: HarperCollins

Publishers, 1990. (available through Barnes & Noble's out-of-print network).
LECTURE SIX
34
Lecture Seven: Ambiguity and Polysemy:
Two Keys to Understanding Language and Gender

Think of people or conversations that really bug you. Is your irritation a
reaction to too much closeness (i.e. intrusion) or too much hierarchy (i.e.
put-downs). Could it be both?
Introduction:
In this lecture, I build on the hierarchy/connection grid and uncover yet more
subtlety in the kinds of language that researchers have described as typifying
women and men. I’ll strike a note of caution that will help elucidate not only
how men and women use language, but how language works in all interac-
tion. I’m going to show that language is inherently ambiguous: the same
words can convey different or even opposite meanings. Language is also
polysemous: it can convey more than one meaning at the same time; in fact,
it does so more often than not. Because of the ambiguity and polysemy of all
language, the ways of speaking that have been identified with women or with
men, are also often used by speakers of the other sex. Furthermore, the
interactive goals that are accomplished by those ways of speaking can in turn
be ambiguous and polysemous with regard to hierarchy and connection.
Consider this ...

1. Do you believe a really good conversation is one in which only one
voice is heard at a time?
2. Do you believe a really good conversation is one in which more than
one voice is heard at least some of the time?
3. Is finishing someone else’s sentences a sign of rapport or an
intrusion?
1) Ambiguity and Polysemy

a) We’ll be building on the closeness-hierarchy grid to how language
works in everyday interaction.
b) Language can be ambiguous and also polysemous (it can convey
more than one meaning at once).
i) All the ways of speaking that we’ve covered can be found in both
genders.
ii) Among the many meanings that the same words can communi-
cate are connection and hierarchy.
c) Girls use language that helps them feel the same as the person they’re
talking to.
35
i) Example of the little girl in a mixed race family wants them all to be
the same
d) Sameness isn’t always a positive thing.
i) Example of a man and woman talking about not sleeping very well
(man feels belittled, woman just trying to empathize when she
says the same thing).
e) We’ll be showing examples of how language is ambiguous and poly-
semous.
i) An examination of verbal aggression, interruption, silence versus
volubility, and indirectness.
2) Difference between boys and girls using aggression
a) Boys talk about fights as negative, but it’s still something that binds
them if they’re on the same team; it’s inevitable.
b) Girls talk about how dangerous fights are, and they affirm their friend-
ship by agreeing that they don’t fight.
c) In the video-tapes I studied, the boys teased and were aggressive
towards each other.
i) Picking a fight is the way that boys often initiate amicable play.
d) In a study by Linda Hughes, girls playing four-square reasoned that
they were eliminating players in the game so they could allow other
friends into the game—a sort of "nice-mean."
i) Much of the girls’ talk is devoted to allying with another girl in
opposition to a third girl who wasn’t present.
(1) Same evidence behind the books coming out about girls who
are mean.
(2) We can’t correlate verbal aggression simply with hierarchy
and we can’t correlate verbal cooperation simply with the
connection dimension.
ii) Confirms that verbal aggression is ambiguous and polysemous.
3) Interruption
a) One of the earliest findings, in the differences between men and
women and how they use language, was the finding that men interrupt
women more.
i) Has been used to show how men dominate women in
conversation.
ii) Case study by Candace West showed that female doctors were
more often interrupted by male patients than vice-versa.
b) Survey of research by James and Clark showed no significant differ-
LECTURE SEVEN
ences; in all-men vs. all-women groups, the women were shown to

interrupt more, in general.
i) Most important finding emphasized the need to distinguish linguis-
tic strategies by their interactional purpose.
36
c) New York conversational style as opposed to California style.
i) New York—high involvement; California—high considerateness.
ii) New Yorkers frequently talked along with someone to exhibit
enthusiastic listenership.
(1) Californians thought they were being interrupted when New
Yorkers did this, and the Californians stopped, so it became
an interruption.
iii) New Yorkers tend to speak all at once but not exactly interrupt
each other.
(1) We can’t go by our surface impression that we’re being inter-
rupted, and we shouldn’t always assume that when a man
interrupts a woman he has set out to dominate her.
iv) We cannot automatically leap from a way of speaking to an inter-
pretation of an intention.
(1) Again, talking can be ambiguous and polysemous.
d) An example from a woman who says that every time she tries to tell a
story, he takes over and tells it for me.
i) Due to the husband’s geographic and ethnic background, he
would talk along with her to show his closeness to her.
4) Silence and volubility
a) One way that an individual can be dominated is to be prevented from
speaking.
b) But silence can also be used as a power play as seen in the novel
Fear of Flying.
i) Silence can only be an effective weapon when the other person is
pleading for talk.
c) Example of black great-grandmother not telling a white doctor what
was wrong with her injured knee.
i) Silence here is a reaction to hierarchy.
d) Silence between two people can either show great rapport or a lack of
rapport.
5) Indirectness
a) Two benefits: defensiveness and rapport.
b) The birthday present routine—we want to get something, but we don’t
want to ask for it; one must also be careful as to what they hint at.
c) Researchers have claimed that women use indirectness because they
feel as if they don’t have the power to ask for it directly.
i) In a hypothetical courtroom role-playing experiment, Conley,
O’Barr and Lind found that low-status witnesses used indirectness
usually associated with women.
ii) Those who role-played lawyers and judges used more direct lan-
guage that is normally associated with men.
37
iii) They describe these differences as not male-female but rather
powerful-powerless.
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will look more closely at indirectness and the crucial role it
plays in both male and female conversations.
LECTURE SEVEN
38
NOTES
39
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. Define “ambiguity” and “polysemy” as they apply to language.

2. How do linguistic ambiguity and polysemy relate to language and gender?
3. Would you describe your own conversational style as “high-involvement”
or “high-considerateness?” Why?
Exercises
1. When you talk to someone you feel close to and trust, try adjusting your
conversational style: Begin speaking more quickly or more slowly than
usual; push yourself to interrupt or leave more pause before you speak;
talk more or less than usual; be more direct or indirect. See what effect
this has on your conversation. Then explain what you did and ask the
other person for their impressions.
2. Think back on any conversation you can recall where you were sure you
understood the other person’s intentions. Try to imagine that their inten-
tions were the opposite in terms of power or connection, or that what you
interpreted on one continuum was actually intended on the other. If you
know the person well enough, discuss this with them
.
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1993. “Speaking for Another in Sociolinguistic Interviews:

Alignments, Identities, and Frames.” Framing in Discourse, ed. by Deborah
Tannen, 231-263. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tannen, Deborah. 1994. “The Relativity of Linguistic Strategies: Rethinking
Power and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance. Gender & Discourse,
19-52. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Tannen, Deborah. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends.

Norwood, NJ: Ablex,1984.
LECTURE SEVEN
40
Lecture Eight: Indirectness
Not in So Many Words

Write down the last conversation you had, regardless of how fleeting or
insignificant it was. Imagine you are trying to explain this conversation to a per-
son from another planet who knows nothing about our society. How many
assumptions went unstated but were necessary to understand the conversation?
Introduction:
In this lecture, I’ll delve more deeply into the question of indirectness—mean-
ing something other than what the words themselves say—and how this
works in the ways women and men tend to use language.
Consider this ...

1. How would you define “indirectness”?
2. Discuss your impressions of the relationships among directness, hon-
esty, bluntness, rudeness, indirectness, manipulativeness, and other
related concepts.
1) Indirectness
a) We’ll be looking at indirectness in men’s and women’s conversational
routines.
b) Examples submitted by male and female students—can you guess the
gender of the storyteller?
i) Story involving a student studying in a bedroom in an apartment
who shouts at his roommates who are talking loudly while watch-
ing the ballgame on TV in the living room. They shout back and
forth, but eventually, the TV volume is lowered. (Male)
ii) Story involving roommates making dinner and sharing it with a
roommate who asked indirect questions to determine who would
wash dishes. (Female)
c) Women tend to be more indirect than men in telling others what to do.
i) Example of snow-shoveling anecdote which illuminates the differ-
ence in understanding of an indirect request.
ii) Another example involving a secretary who is indirect.
iii) These cases demonstrate that women are often more indirect, espe-
cially when there is a need to communicate something negative.
d) However, sometimes men are more indirect.
(i) Military example of indirectness, which is a result of the rigid hier-
archy in place.
41
ii) Man talking about a personal relationship dynamic of "getting
torched" as an indirect way of indicating he’d had it happen to
himself personally.
iii) Men’s reluctance to apologize.
(1) Story of man forgetting to mail a letter for his wife and not
apologizing.
(a) Both say ‘what’s the big deal’ and see the lack of apolo-
gy in different ways.
(b) For her, the apology shows that you care; for him, the
apology is a kind of public degradation ritual.
(2) The classic example of sending flowers in the place of an
apology and other indirect methods.
2) Making the world safe for indirectness
a) Indirectness can sometimes be effective.
i) A man says "I apologize for everything," which is both direct and
indirect—and humorous.
b) The example in the movie The Kid.
i) The character portrayed by Bruce Willis goes back to his childhood
with his 8-year-old self and forces his former bully to apologize.
(1) Forcing someone to apologize makes them feel as if they
have to grovel.
c) Some men who have learned to apologize often find that it is a "magic
bullet" in helping smooth over communication conflicts.
3) Indirectness is a fundamental part of human communication
a) We’re too sophisticated to always spell out exactly what we mean in
so many words.
i) We’re all code-talkers and use gestures and turns of phrase to
communicate effectively.
b) Returning to the first examples, we see that all of the characters use
indirect communication to convey meaning.
c) Americans, in particular, tend to view directness as honesty, and indi-
rectness as manipulative.
i) In fact, indirectness can be an efficient way of talking since we’re
all experienced communicators.
d) The hope is that everyone will learn to accept and respect other peo-
ple’s habits of using indirectness.
LECTURE EIGHT
NEXT LECTURE:
These patterns will come up again in the next lecture when we focus on lan-
guage and gender in the family.
42
NOTES
43
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. In what ways do women and men tend to use indirectness differently?

2. What reasons can you think of for using indirectness? Could you put
these reasons under the headings of defensiveness or rapport?
3. Is indirectness a sign of weakness, of strength, or both?
Exercises
1. Think of four examples of situations in which you felt it was important to

be either indirect or direct. What was the outcome? How would the out-
come have differed if you had chosen the other approach?
2. Reread the examples from this chapter. Which ways of speaking strike
you as obviously preferable, and why?
3. Read these examples to friends and family members. Which ways of
speaking strike them as obviously preferable, and why? Do you notice
any gender patterns in their responses?
Suggested Reading
Morgan, Marcyliena. “Conversational Signifying: Grammar and Indirectness

Among African American Women.” Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Elinor
Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A Thompson, 405-434. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996.
Tannen, Deborah. Chapter 3: “Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?:
Indirectness at Work,” Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work.
New York, Quill, 1994.
Other Book of Interest

Tannen, Deborah. That's Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style
Makes or Breaks Relationships. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987.
LECTURE EIGHT
44
Lecture Nine: Talking at Home—Gender in the Family

Read Chapter five in Deborah Tannen's I Only Say This Because I Love You.
Introduction:
The family is a microcosm of gender relations. In order to understand talk in
the family, we have to first understand gender patterns in talk. And the family
is the training ground on which we learn to inhabit, express, and manipulate
the patterns of behavior, the ways of talking, that are associated with gender.
In this lecture, we’ll examine how gender patterns emerge as family members
negotiate the dynamics of power and connection. It brings together my work on
gender with my work on family interaction, as laid out in my book I Only Say
This Because I Love You. We’ll also introduce a concept that is crucial for all
communication but which has special power in the family—what Dr. Tannen
calls “metamessages.”
Consider this ...

1. What is your ideal way of relaxing or reuniting at the end of a work day?
2. Do you typically ask “How was your day”? What kind of reply do you
expect?
3. How do you typically answer the question, “How was your day”? Have
you ever encountered criticism for such a response?
1) Talking at Home: Gender in the Family

a) Revisiting the observations made of the earlier family.
b) We look at how gender patterns emerge as parents balance the
dynamics of power and connection.
c) ‘Metamessages,’ from anthropologist Gregory Bateson, refers to two
levels of meaning in what we say.
i) What it says about the relationship that we say these words in this
way at this time—our emotions are usually reacting to the
metamessages.
ii) The meaning of metamessages comes from the way something is
said, the fact that it’s said, and meanings already on our mind
from previous conversations.
iii) An example of this is a woman who points out salmon that her
husband might like on a menu after he has already chosen steak,
which leads to an argument.
(1) The metamessage he heard was that she’s trying to control him.
(2) The metamessage she felt she was giving was that she
45
cares about him and is worried about his health.
2) Dynamic between connection and control
a) Researchers have focused more on the control or power aspect.
b) We will contend that conflicts can also take place within the connection
or intimacy realm.
i) Example of woman asking a man where his coat was on a cold day.
(1) Showing concern from her standpoint was perceived as
being too motherly from his view.
3) Mother dynamic
a) Hildred Geertz gives Javanese examples of children using the familiar
form of language until they’re older when they shift to respect and adult-
hood forms of language.
i) Except mothers continue to be talked to in the familiar form of
language.
b) Americans don’t have familiar and formal ways of language, but they
do have different ways of talking to someone depending on the
amount of respect.
i) Ervin-Tripp, O’Connor and Rosenberg tape-recorded conversations
of families and looked at “control acts”: language used when some-
one wants to get someone else to do something.
(1) Older people gave control acts in a more bold way, and
younger people were more deferent. However, when talking
to the mother the kids weren’t deferent.
(2) Is this because the mother isn’t respected as much or
because kids feel closer to their mother? It’s probably a bit
of both.
ii) A study by Ochs and Taylor at UCLA video-taped conversations of a
family at the dinner table.
(1) Mother tells the children to tell their father what they did in
school that day. The father then judges but is never judged him-
self since he usually doesn’t talk about his day.
(2) A ritual called "Father Knows Best" develops.
(3) When Mother tells the kids to tell Father what happened in
school that day, she’s trying to involve the father.
(a) Therefore, “Father Knows Best” can be seen as the result
of a gender difference.
c) Case study by Tannen and Shari Kendall involving young couples who
were committed to raising children equally sharing responsibility.
LECTURE NINE
i) The ways in which they talked, however, tended to align the fathers
as the main breadwinners and the mothers as the main caretakers.
d) One young couple, in particular, bears out the importance of metames-
sages in this.
46
i) They shared a bank account, but money for food was said to come
out of his salary.
ii) Their schedule of taking care of the kids during the week—each of
them took off one day to take sole care of the child.
iii) A particular instance occurred where the mother ventriloquizes the
daughter in explaining to the father why the daughter misses her.
(1) By ventriloquizing, she is teaching the child to understand her
own feelings and to express herself in words not tears, and she
is also teaching the father how to better negotiate this in the
future, and trying to bind them all together as a family—she’s
the caretaker.
(a) Another couple in a similar situation had the mother align-
ing with the father rather than the child.
(2) Father is also using metamessages in trying to get close to his
daughter and her point of view while still maintaining parental
roles of authority.
e) The family is a microcosm of gender relationships, and it is here where
we first learn gender patterns in our communication.
i) A scene in an Israeli documentary showing a father agonizing over
how to make up with his daughter exhibits this.
ii) Mothers tend to become "communication central" in a family, and
fathers begin relying on the mother for that.
(1) Difference talking on the phone with both parents and with just
the father.
f) The family is a training ground where we learn to express and manipulate
the patterns of talk that become our tools for getting things done in the
rest of our lives.
i) Those patterns are all associated with gender.
NEXT LECTURE:
In the next lecture, we’ll see how these gender patterns play out when we talk to
each other at work.
47
LECTURE NINE
48
NOTES
FOR
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. Define “message” and “metamessage.”

2. How does the interplay of power and connection show up in family
conversations?
3. How does the “how was your day?” routine reflect family gendertalk?
Exercises
1. Does your family do the “how was your day” ritual at dinner? How does
each family member respond?
2. Recall a recent argument. Did it revolve around messages or metames-
sages or both?
3. Watch a TV or film representation of family interaction. How do gender
patterns, metamessages, and the polysemy of power and connection
play out?
Suggested Reading
Tannen, Deborah. I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your
Parents, Partner, Sibs and Kids When You're All Adults. New York:
Random House Publishing Group, 2002.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and

Socialization in Family Discourse. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc., 1997. (out-of-print).
Geertz, Hildred. The Javanese Family: A Study of Kinship and Socialization.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1989
Verenne, Herve, with Paul Byers and Clifford Hill. Ambiguous Harmony:
Family Talk and Culture in America, Vol. 44. Stanford, CA: Greenwood
Publishing Group, 1992.
49
Lecture Ten: Talking at Work

View Deborah Tannen's video Talking 9 to 5.
Introduction:
In this lecture, I’ll look more closely at how gender patterns in ways of speak-
ing affect what happens at work. As I put it in the original subtitle of my book,
Talking from 9 to 5: Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, What Gets Done,
and Who Gets Ahead.
Many of the patterns I have described in previous lectures have particular
impact at work because ways of speaking are the basis for decisions that
affect your work life: getting recognition, raises, job assignments, promotions,
and so on.
Consider this ...

1. Recall bosses or coworkers you particularly liked or disliked.
2. Recall what is was you liked or disliked about them.
3. What role did ways of talking play in these impressions?
1) Talking at Work
a) We often think about our troubles at work as involving our boss or our
co-workers, but it’s often based in gendered language patterns.
i) My extended research observing office interaction demonstrates
many things; for instance, how we evaluate each other is often based
on how we talk.
(1) A woman who had a decision to make often began by asking
what others thought. She was seen as not confident enough
to make decisions herself.
(2) A woman asked a man to make some changes in a report
but began by praising much of it. When the report came back
unchanged, it emerged that he viewed her praise as the main
point.
ii) Apologizing comes into play here.
(1) Women are frequently being told to not apologize so much.
(2) Men often don’t apologize enough.
LECTURE TEN
(3) Conversational rituals depend on both people doing their

part, and it’s frequently the case that women who apologized
in certain instances, expected men to return it.
50
iii) An example of a woman who was highly regarded by her peers and
immediate boss but given a low ranking by her boss’ boss.
(1) It was observed that she tended to say sorry fairly often.
b) When asked about why individuals were not promoted or not hired, it was
often stated that women seemed to lack confidence and that men
appeared arrogant.
i) This most likely is the result of men and women following conversa-
tional rituals expected of their gender.
ii) We all need to be aware that our ways of talking give certain
impressions.
2) Observations from office environments on the way people tell others to
do something
a) Different examples of men giving orders, some direct, some indirect.
b) Different examples of women giving orders, much more indirect, but more
importantly, more verbose, rising intonation, etc.
c) Anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s term "double bind."
i) Double bind: If women talk in a way associated with women, giving
orders in an indirect, even apologetic way, then they’re liked but seen
as perhaps incompetent. If they give orders in a way associated with
men, they are respected but not well liked.
ii) If a man talks in ways associated with women, he may be seen as
ineffective, but it’s not a double bind.
(1) If he begins talking more assertively, he’s getting closer to how
a person in authority is expected to talk at work, which is similar
to how a man is expected to talk.
iii) If a woman talks in ways associated with men, she’s seen as too
aggressive and gives a negative impression.
d) Women were more likely to be deferent when talking to subordinates;
whereas, men were more likely to be deferent when talking to superiors.
i) These conclusions reinforce the patterns we’ve already observed
between the genders as children.
ii) A ritual among women that men tend to take too literally: the strategy
of taking into account the other person’s feelings, being apologetic,
and being indirect.
iii) A ritual among men that women tend to take too literally is ritual
opposition or agonism.
e) Small talk in the office:
i) If a woman talks about another woman’s clothing, it is usually a
compliment.
ii) If a man comments on another man’s clothing, it is usually a play-
ful insult.
iii) The double bind of cross-cultural communication can come into
51
play here between the genders.
(1) Example of guy getting in trouble whether he treated a girl
the same or different than the other guys.
iv) A man following ritual opposition and playing devil’s advocate with a
woman was taken literally, and the woman backed off, even though
the guy may have intended to show respect for the idea.
NEXT LECTURE:
We talk about things we can do at work to address these issues, and we
explore the relationship between talking in public and talking in private.
LECTURE TEN
52
FOR
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. Why is a working knowledge of gender-based communication styles
important in the workplace?
2. When people step out of the role in a particular pattern of communication
how does this affect their co-workers? Their supervisor?
Exercises
1. Think of situations at work where you were frustrated by others. Could

conversational style differences have played a role?
2. How often do you say “I’m sorry”? How many different meanings and
uses does this expression have?
3. Do you frequently play devil’s advocate? How do others respond? How
do you respond when others criticize and poke holes in your argument?
Do you enjoy the resulting verbal jarring or just back off?
Kendall, Shari. “Creating Gendered Demeanors of Authority at Work and at

Home.” The Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and
Miriam Meyerhoff, 600-623. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Books of Interest
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Second Shift. New York: Ballantine. 1989.
Tannen, Deborah. Talking from 9 to5: Women and Men at Work. New York:
HarperCollins.
Videos
Talking 9 to 5. Tannen, Deborah.
53
Lecture Eleven: Who Talks More?
Public and Private Speaking

Read one or more memoirs of women in public life, such as
Madeleine Kunin’s Living a Political Life.
Introduction:
In this lecture, we address two related issues: one is the question of who talks
more, women or men? The second is the issue of public and private speaking:
the very different domains of using language in personal relationships, such as
at home or with close friends, in comparison to using language in public dis-
course, such as at meetings, in sermons, and in political speeches.
Consider this ...
1. Did you speak a lot or a little in class as a student?

2. Do you talk a lot or a little one on one with your family or closest
friends?
3. Do you frequently keep a group of friends spellbound by telling jokes
or funny stories? Compare your answers to these three questions.
1) Public and Private Speaking

a) Two related issues
i) Who talks more, men or women?
ii) The difference between public and private speaking.
(1) The distinction between the two isn’t that clear, and it can
help us understand the first issue.
b) Stereotype of women talking more.
i) Common sayings and jokes about women talking.
ii) Yet, linguistic studies in the field actually show that men speak
more often and longer than women.
iii) One must look at the topics being talked about, the nature of the
task, the social status of the speakers, and the social context of
the talk.
LECTURE ELEVEN
c) Observed example of man calling his wife the talker at home, while he
was the talker at a meeting.
i) She’s the private talker; he’s the public talker.
54
2) Why do women talk less in public situations?
a) Historically, the thought of a woman standing up in front of an audi-
ence to speak was unthinkable.
i) In 16th-century England, there were laws regulating by class and
gender who could read the Bible aloud.
ii) Grimke Sisters in mid-19th century America, first spoke out in
public situations against the institution of slavery.
(1) From pastoral letter: "Women are like vines" and will bring
shame upon themselves by talking in public and trying to be
like men.
iii) Female abolitionists and suffragists drew the ire of society not
only for their beliefs, but simply because they spoke in public to
get their message out.
(1) A woman speaking before the Vermont Legislature was
described as attempting "a scramble for the britches" or talk-
ing like a man.
b) Former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin.
i) The idea that a good girl does not speak in public, and the fear
that a woman might get an agonistic response.
c) The seeds of women’s reluctance is seen in the way girls grow up
as children.
i) Case study involving little girls and boys at a 12-year old’s birth-
day party.
(1) Girls engaged in private talking about their conflicts and
clammed up when others approached.
(2) Boys actually exaggerated their talking and their conflict
when others approached.
ii) The patterns observed in this birthday party hold true in adult situ-
ations, as well.
d) A frequent occurrence: a woman talks at a meeting at work saying
something which is ignored, and then a man says the same thing and
everyone notices. He’s given credit for it.
i) Reasons could include the way it’s said, the length of the com-
ment, and the communication strategy used.
ii) Joking can be used by the women to alert the men that she had
said it, as opposed to taking umbrage in a more serious way.
e) Women are expected to talk more in a private situation as opposed to
a public situation, and are, indeed, more comfortable speaking private-
ly and not publicly.
i) However, women are often misjudged to be speaking more than
men when they do speak up in public.
55
f) Men not being able to remember conversations to recount to their female
partners.
i) Men aren’t used to recollecting details about what they said, and
women often want a blow-by-blow account since they’re accus-
tomed to it.
ii) Report-talk: talk about factual information where one person is hold-
ing the floor for an extended time (men tend to have more of this).
(1) Just as those who tell jokes are more inclined to remember
them.
iii) Rapport-talk: talk about personal topics in which there’s a back
and forth (women have more of this).
3) There are conversational patterns that can be discerned by observation
a) Women tend to be more inclined to private talk on personal topics with
people they know well.
b) Men tend to be more inclined to public talk where information is
imparted at greater length in a public setting made up of an audience
that they don’t know too well.
c) The historical context is important to remember here, as is the anthro-
pological research.
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will look at the history of research on the relationship
between language and gender.
LECTURE ELEVEN
56
NOTES
57
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Exercises
1. How likely are you to tell a story or a joke to one other person at home?
To a group of people at a large gathering?
2. Listen to several political speeches by women and by men. Do you react
differently when they use similar public speaking rhetorical devices?
3. Why would women have been historically prohibited from public speaking?
Suggested Reading
Kunin, Madeleine May. Living a Political Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1995.
Noble, David F. A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of
Western Science. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1992
Coates, Jennifer. Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell

Publishers, 1998.
LECTURE ELEVEN
58
Lecture Twelve: A History of Research on Gender and Language

Read Language and Woman’s Place by Robin Tolmach Lakoff.
Introduction:
In this lecture, we will trace the history of research on the relationship
between language and gender. The first studies to grow out of the field of lin-
guistics were done on American Indian languages, so I’ll start there.
Consider this ...

1. When did it first occur to you that women and men use language
differently?
2. Of the following words, which do you expect from men, from women,
or from either? Oh my goodness; Damn; That’s lovely; That’s great;
Gimme that; What a beautiful mauve scarf.
3. Can you think of other words or expressions that you expect from
speakers of one sex but not the other?
1) A History of Research on Gender and Language

a) We’ll start with linguistic studies in the early 1900s, and we will continue
to the present.
b) Marianne Mithun summarizes the work of linguists studying American
Indian languages.
i) Linguist Edward Sapir wrote about Yana, an American Indian lan-
guage in California (1929).
ii) The men, in pronouncing certain words, added an extra syllable at
the end of a word, and the women didn’t.
(1) Concluded that there were two distinct languages—men’s
language and women’s language.
iii) Years later, Herbert Luthin looked back at this research and real-
ized that the differences revolved around formality.
c) Franz Boas, in an article in 1941, described the Lakhota Indian lan-
guage, including differences between male and female language.
i) Sara Trechter, a contemporary linguist, looked back at the role of
respect, authority, and deference.
ii) Reminds us of the ways of speaking in our contemporary society,
and how it reflects authority and respect.
d) Linguist Bonnie McElhinny studied female police officers in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
59
i) The police force had been required by law to add more female
officers.
ii) Officers of both genders said when they’re in uniform, they’re not
female or male but police officers.
iii) But women had to change their habits of speaking when they
became police officers.
(1) They had to be gruff, and some even began cursing to fit in.
(2) Also had to exhibit detached emotion and not display positive
affect.
(3) Masculinity and authority, traditionally associated with police,
are difficult if not impossible to pull apart.
iv) Women, in traditionally male professions, attempting to exert
authority, may find it difficult.
(1) They risk being seen as overbearing, aggressive or even
masculine.
e) When did modern linguists first write about gender differences in lan-
guage? The crucial year was 1975 when UC-Berkeley linguist Robin
Lakoff published Language and Woman’s Place.
i) A groundbreaking work that described gender-related patterns of
speaking on three levels.
(1) Words (lexical items).
(a) Women tend to use more ‘color’ words—mauve, laven-
der, etc.
(b) Expressions like ‘oh dear’ and adjectives like ‘adorable,’
‘sweet,’ ‘lovely,’ ‘divine.’
(c) Although not inherently feminine, these words are
expected from women.
(2) Syntax (grammatical constructions, expressions).
(a) Tend to use tag questions ("…isn’t it?").
(3) Intonation and other patterns of sound.
(a) "Uptalk": statements end in rising intonation, like
questions.
ii) Women are expected to talk like this and if they don’t then they’re
disliked.
(1) Similar to the Trechter findings from the Lakhota tribe.
3) Research on gender and language continuing into the 1980s
LECTURE TWELVE
a) Cultural difference approach vs. power or dominance approach.

b) People realized this dichotomy denied that there might be both real
world power differences between men and women, as well as cul-
tural differences between men and women going back to ways of
using language learned in childhood.
60
c) Research by Marjorie Harness Goodwin.
i) Playing with neighborhood kids in Philadelphia, she found that girls
typically made suggestions beginning with "Let’s."
ii) Boys typically made suggestions with bold directives.
(1) Concerned, however, that generalizations were being made

from her research, Goodwin began showing how girls playing
with doll houses use similar suggestions as the boys—the
type of activity was important.
d) Linguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, in a 1992 arti-
cle, suggested that language and gender should be approached from
the perspective of communities of practice (practices that emerge in a
group endeavor).
e) Scholars, in recent years, have begun to talk about gender ideology
and gender identity not just gender differences.
f) Gender ideology refers to systematic ways that people in a given cul-
ture think about women and men.
(1) The assumption that women are closer to nature because they
bear children or the assumption that women more naturally
belong in the home.
g) Gender identity: ways of talking, a "social constructionist" view.
i) It’s not in your genes but is created by a way of speaking.
ii) Recall the women police officers performing as police officers and
also seen as acting like men.
h) Kira Hall looks at the example of drag queens.
i) Is a drag queen a man acting like a woman who is acting like a
woman?
ii) Or is a drag queen a man acting like a drag queen?
i) Eleanor Ochs’ concept of indexing gender: ways of speaking in a given
culture become associated with one gender or the other, and a speaker
indexes or points to that gender by talking in that way.
j) Erving Goffman in 1977 said ways of speaking are associated with “sex
class”—not as in social class but as in the "class of men" and the
"class of women" (Bertrand Russell’s sense of logical types).
4) All of these approaches hope to move past a simple dichotomy
towards a more complex and accurate way of understanding how real
men and real women use language to accomplish their daily chal-
lenges at home and work.
NEXT LECTURE:
In the next lecture, we investigate whether the differences between men and
women are a product of nature or nurture.
61
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. When did modern linguists first write about gender differences in lan-
guage?
2. What parallels can you trace between those early studies and observa-
tions of contemporary uses of language by men and women?
Exercises
1. Go over Lakoff’s examples of men’s and women’s language. How often

do you hear these forms from women and men today?
2. Think of how you would expect a person in authority to speak. Were you
picturing a man or woman? If you change the sex of the person in your
imagination, does that change the way you imagine that person speaking?
3. Watch TV or film representations of women and men as bosses. Are
they made to speak the same way? If not, what differences do you
notice? How do the ways of speaking affect how you, as audience
member, are supposed to regard the speaker? (as a hero or a villain?)
Suggested Reading
Key, Mary Ritchie. Male-Female Language. New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 1975. (out-of-print).
Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. Language and Woman's Place. Cambridge: Oxford
University Press, Feb 2004 (new edition).

Holmes, Janet and Miriam Meyerhoff, eds. Handbook of Language and
Gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
Philips, Susan U., Susan Steele, and Christine Tanz, eds. Language,
Gender, and Sex in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
Tannen, Deborah, ed. 1993. Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press.
LECTURE TWELVE
Philips, Susan U. 2003. “The Power of Gender Ideologies in Discourse.” The
Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam
Meyerhoff, 252-276. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
62
Lecture 13: Nature and Nurture
Are Differences Cultural or Biological in Origin?

Think back on your reactions to the lectures you have heard thus far. Did you
make assumptions or draw conclusions about the source of the differences
discussed? What were those assumptions or conclusions?
Introduction:
After You Just Don’t Understand became a surprise best seller, I was inter-
viewed by a journalist who wanted to know about reactions I had received to
the book. In this connection, she inquired what question I was most frequent-
ly asked about gender and language. I answered: “Whether the differences I
describe are biological or cultural.” At this, the journalist laughed. Puzzled, I
asked why. She said she had always been so certain that any significant dif-
ferences were cultural that the question struck her as absurd. So I should not
have been surprised to read in her article that the two questions I am most
frequently asked are “Why do women nag?” and “Why won’t men ask for
directions?”
This experience captures two aspects of the nature/nurture issue. First, this is
the question I AM most often asked, and second, that to some people the
answer is so obvious that even asking the question is absurd. However,
some people feel the obvious answer is that it is almost all nature, whereas
others are equally certain that it is almost all nurture.
In this lecture, I explore the sources of the differences I have discussed: How
much is nature, how much nurture—and can this question really be asked in
that way?
Consider this ...
1. What assumptions have you tended to make about the influence of
biology and culture on gendered patterns of behavior?
2. If you have both sons and daughters, what similarities and differences
have you noticed both in the way they speak and the way you speak to
them?
1) Nature and Nurture

a) The most frequent question is ‘are differences cultural or biological in
origin?’
b) Many refer to nature and nurture as mutually contaminating; even
researchers feel as if they must pick one or the other.
c) Researchers have come to refer to culturally constructed “gender” as
opposed to biologically determined “sex.”
i) An awful lot of nonsense has been spouted in the name of biology.
63
(1) A Harvard professor argued that women mustn’t pursue
higher education because it will impair their ability to have
healthy children.
ii) Eleanor Maccoby pointed out that uncovering the biological and
social connections to behavior is a major research objective, not
something to be assumed by labels such as “gender” vs. “sex.”
2) The evidence for favoring the cultural approach
a) Boys and girls are treated differently from the moment the child is
born.
b) Men and women can mimic the other sex.
c) We can point to cross-cultural comparison of similar patterns.
d) Girls from a young age are told they need to act or talk "like ladies."
3) The evidence for the biological approach
a) Cross-cultural patterning transcends geographic boundaries.
b) Despite parents’ best efforts, boys and girls still tend to align them-
selves along traditional sex roles.
i) Boys show more aggression and violence.
c) Biological patterns can be traced way back in various earlier
conversations.
i) Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599) and the characters Brutus
and Portia.
ii) Arabian romance of Bedouin Antar (11th century).
(1) Women are shown as valuing intimate talk and expressions
of emotions.
d) The situation of husband and wife and tension between rapport-talk
and report-talk.
i) Paradox is many women were drawn to men because they did talk
at length when they were first dating.
e) Beowulf example:
i) Boasting is a customary male action in the Anglo-Saxon mead hall
and is used to woo a woman.
f) This wooing of a woman by talk is also seen in Shakespeare’s Othello
with Desdemona.
g) These literary stories aren’t proof, but they’re indications of culturally
recognizable patterns.
4) Inextricable intertwining of biology and cultural
LECTURE THIRTEEN
a) Stephen Jay Gould says "it’s logically, mathematically, scientifically

impossible to pull them apart."
b) Illustrations of the way in which biological and cultural influences are
inextricably intertwined.
i) Males exhibit more aggression in all cultures.
64
(1) Study by Whitings of boys in six different cultures, of all ages,
exhibit this tendency towards aggression which supports the
idea that this is biological.
(2) However, boys with no sisters, who were forced to help out
the mother more in the household, were less aggressive and
seems to support the idea of social conditioning.
ii) Chinese children are not permitted to be aggressive.
iii) A study found that Americans were the most likely to permit violence
by their children and encourage it when compared to other cultures.
(1) Americans even seemed to model aggression by spanking
their kids to deter it.
(2) The fact that Chinese children are discouraged in their
aggression means that they must be inclined to it.
iv) We have every reason to believe that the tendency to aggression is
biological, but it is also heavily affected by various cultural influence.
c) Trying to pull apart biological and cultural influences is senseless and
pointless.
i) Yet people are often polarized in confronting this question.
ii) Men are most likely to believe that most differences are biological-
ly based and women are most likely to believe that they are cultur-
ally based.
5) It’s useful to understand the patterns that exist regardless of their
source.
NEXT LECTURE:
The next lecture will attempt to answer the question: how do we go about
changing the things we’d like to change?
65
LECTURE THIRTEEN
66
NOTES
FOR
FORGREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. Try to think of examples in literature of times when women have boast-
ed of their conquests. In what context?
2. Consider the ways women and men boast today. What reactions do
they get?
Exercises
1. Watch several popular television programs involving couples of differing

age groups/nationalities? Write down your observations of the
male/female communication patterns. How do they vary between gener-
ations? Between cultures?
2. Consider your married friends. Think about how they communicate to you
about their spouse when the spouses are present. When they aren't.
Tannen, Deborah. “Afterword.” You Just Don’t Understand:

Women and Men in Conversation, pp. 299-309. New York: Quill, 2001.
Books of Interest
Colapinto, John. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as
a Girl. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton,
1981.
Ridley, Matt. Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes
Us Human. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal. New York: Pantheon, 1994.
67
Lecture Fourteen: What Can You Do?

Review the previous lectures and your exercises.
Introduction:
The goal of this course has been to increase understanding of the linguistic
patterns by which women and men use language in their daily lives. But
people tell me that the insights help them in their daily lives, both in their
personal relationships and at work.
Consider this ...

1. What have you learned in this course that you can apply in your own
relationships?
2. Is there anything you want to change in your pattern of communication?
1) What Can You Do?

a) Throughout the course, we’ve been emphasizing a metaphorical view
of conversations between women and men as a kind of cross-cultural
communication.
i) We’ve traced the patterns from our childhood to adulthood.
ii) With this knowledge, what can we do to improve our lives?
2) Research over the years has helped develop thoughts over what we
can do
a) Change your style.
i) A woman had run training programs together with a man and felt
that he never let her talk because he was trying to hog the stage.
ii) She resolved to speak up more quickly, and lo and behold, it
worked. In fact, he said that he was relieved she was finally start-
ing to pull her own weight.
b) Metacommunicate: talk about communication.
i) Set people straight if they misunderstand something you’ve said.
3) Solutions at Work
LECTURE FOURTEEN
a) Example of a female boss soliciting advice from a male subordinate.

b) Pay more attention to the actual output of work rather than the way
people talk.
i) The tension between teamwork and individual credit.
(1) Ripe for misunderstandings.
68
ii) Example of the subordinate person being more receptive to
changing his/her style in relation to the superior.
iii) Example where a man who was in a management position
thought that a woman under his direction didn’t want to be pro-
moted—she simply hadn’t been explicit about it because she felt
it was inappropriate.
(1) Dr. Tannen’s research showed that usually those who got the
promotions had explicitly asked for them.
iv) Women feel more uncomfortable not having a good relationship
with their peers. That often means they don’t talk themselves up
enough to the boss.
v) It’s incumbent on the boss to be perceptive about who actually
deserves promotion, etc.—based on work, not talk.
vi) Workers frequently mention those peers or bosses who never
admit fault or apologize as their biggest workplace complaint.
vii) It would behoove both men and women to ask questions when
they don’t know sometimes, but other times, it’s better to hide
their ignorance and find out the answers on their own.
viii) Story of colleague Ron Scollon and the difference between talk-
ing quite a bit and not talking much at all in getting to know
someone new.
ix) No style carries its meaning in isolation without context and inter-
action with others.
4) Solutions to improving communication at home
a) Accept the differences in talking style at home at the end of a long day
and come up with compromises.
b) Take the blame out of it.
i) It can have payoffs in other areas.
c) Understand the logic behind the other’s way of talking.
i) Come to terms with the fact that there isn’t just one right way of
talking.
d) We’re talking about respect for other people and their differences.
e) Understanding the concept of conversational style and the patterns by
which men’s and women’s conversational styles tend to differ gives us
more of an understanding of human behavior in general and gives us
more control in improving our relationships with other people, both at
work and at home.
69
FOR GREATER
UNDERSTANDING
Questions
1. What are the main insights that come to mind as you think of this
course?
2. Have you thought of ways you could put the insights to use?
3. Are there reasons or ways that you resist some of the ideas put forth
here? Why?
Exercises
1. Look over your notes and observations throughout this course. Do you
notice a pattern of change or development?
2. Are there ways you now believe you could have handled past encounters
differently?
3. Are there ways you plan to handle future encounters differently?
Recommended Reading
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. Language and Gender.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Lakoff, Robin. 2003. “Language, Gender, and Politics: Putting ‘Women’ and
‘Power’ in the Same Sentence.” The Handbook of Language and
Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff, 162-178.
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. Talking power: The Politics of Language in Our
Lives. New York: Basic Books, 1990.
Tannen, Deborah. That’s Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style
Makes or Breaks Your Relations With Others. New York: William Morrow,
1986.
Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in
Conversation. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
Tannen, Deborah. I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your
Parents, Partner, Sibs and Kids When You're All Adults. New York:
Random House, 2002.
LECTURE FOURTEEN
Tannen, Deborah Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. New

York: Quill, 1994.
70
REFERENCES
By the Author of This Course:

Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words.
New York: Random House, 1999.
———. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends. Norwood, NJ:
Ablex. 1984.
———. Gender & Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
———. I Only Say this Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner,
Sibs, and Kids When You’re All Adults. New York: Ballantine, 2001.
———. Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. New York: Quill, 1994.
———. That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Can Make or
Break Relationships. New York: Ballantine, 1986.
———. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New
York: Quill, 1990.
Tannen, Deborah, ed. Framing in Discourse. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
———, ed. Gender and Conversational Interaction. New York: Oxford
Other References:
Abinanti, Abby. “Lawyer.” Women and Work: Photographs and Personal

Writings, text ed. by Maureen R. Michelson, photographs ed. by Michael R.
Dressler and Maureen R. Michelson, p. 52. Pasadena, CA: New Sage
Press, 1986.
An American Love Story, 10-part video, directed by Jennifer Fox. Available
through First Run Icarus Films, 32 Court St., 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Angier, Natalie. “At the Science Museum With – Stephen Jay Gould: An
Evolving Celebrity.” The New York Times, February 11, 1993, p. C1.
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.
Bellinger, David, and Jean Berko Gleason. “Sex Differences in Parental
Directives to Young Children.” Sex Roles 8 (1982):1123-1139.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and
Socialization in Family Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997.
Bradford, Lisa, and Sandra Petronio. “Strategic Embarrassment: A Culprit of
Emotions.” In Handbook of Communication and Emotion: Research, Theory,
Applications, and Contexts, ed. by Peter A. Andersen and Laura K.
Guerrero, 99-121. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998.
Campbell, Karlyn Korrs, and E. Claire Jerry. “Woman and Speaker: A Conflict
in Roles.” Seeing Female: Social Roles and Personal Lives, ed. by Sharon
S. Brehm, 123-33. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Coates, Jennifer. Women, Men, and Language. London: Longman, 1986.
71
REFERENCES
Other References (continued):
Conley, John M., William O’Barr, and E. Allen Lind. “The Power of Language:
Presentational Style in the Courtroom.” Duke Law Journal 1978
(1979):1375-1400.
Corsaro, William, and Thomas Rizzo. “Disputes in the Peer Culture of
American and Italian Nursery School Children.” In Conflict Talk, ed. by
Allen Grimshaw, 21-66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Darden, Christopher A., with Jess Walter. In Contempt. New York:
Regan Books, 1996.
Donaldson, E. Talbot (trans.). Beowulf, 11-12. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1966.
Dorval, Bruce, ed. Conversational Coherence and Its Development. Norwood,
NJ: Ablex, 1990.
Eakins, Barbara Westbrook, and R. Gene Eakins. Sex Differences in
Communication. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. “Think Practically and Look
Locally: Language and Gender as Community-based Practice.” Annual
Reviews in Anthropology 21 (1992):461-90.
Ervin-Tripp, Susan, Mary Catherine O’Connor, and Jarrett Rosenberg.
“Language and Power in the Family.” In Language and Power, ed. by
Cheris Kramarae, Muriel Schulz, and William M. O’Barr, 116-135. Beverly
Hills: Sage, 1984.
Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Geertz, Hildred. The Javanese Family: A Study of Kinship and Socialization.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, [1961] 1989.
Goffman, Erving. “The Arrangement Between the Sexes.” Theory and Society
4:3 (1977):301-331.
Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. He-said-she-said: Talk as Social Organization
Among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1990.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. “Games of Stance: Conflict and Footing in
Hopscotch.” Kids Talk: Strategic Language Use in Later Childhood, ed. by
Susan Hoyle and Carolyn Temple Adger, 23-46. New York: Oxford
Hall, Kira. “Exceptional Speakers: Contested and Problematized Gender
Identities.” The Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes
and Miriam Meyerhoff, 352-380. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
REFERENCES
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human

Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
72
REFERENCES
Hughes, Linda A. “‘But That’s Not Really Mean’: Competing in a Cooperative

Mode.” Sex Roles 19.11/12 (1988):669-687.
James, Deborah, and Sandra Clarke. “Women, Men, and Interruptions: A
Critical Review.” Gender and Conversational Interaction, ed. by Deborah
Tannen, 231-280. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
James, Deborah, and Janice Drakich. “Understanding Gender Differences in
Amount of Talk.” Gender and Conversational Interaction, ed. by Deborah
Tannen, 231-280. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Jefferson, Gail. “On the Sequential Organization of Troubles-talk in Ordinary
Conversation.” Social Problems 35.4 (1988):418-441.
Johnstone, Barbara. “Sociolinguistic Resources, Individual Identities, and
Public Speech Styles of Texas Women.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
5:2 (1995):1-20.
Jong, Erica. Fear of Flying. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
Keenan, Elinor O. “Norm-makers, Norm-breakers: Uses of Speech by Men
and Women in a Malagasy Community.” Explorations in the Ethnography of
Speaking, ed. by Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, 125-43. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Kendall, Shari. “Father as Breadwinner: Negotiating Identities as Workers and
Parents.” Paper presented at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, 2001.
Key, Mary Ritchie. Male/Female Language: With a Comprehensive
Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975.
Kiesling, Scott. “Adding Insult to Discourse: Speech Acts, Status and Theory.”
Unpublished Master’s Research Paper, Linguistics Department,
Georgetown University, 1992.
Komarovsky, Mirra. Blue-collar Marriage. New York: Vintage, 1962.
Kuhn, Elisabeth D. “Playing Down Authority While Getting Things Done:
Women Professors Get Help from the Institution.” Locating Power:
Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference,
vol. 2, ed. by Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwomon, 318-325.
Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group, University of
California, Berkeley, 1992.
Kunin, Madeleine. Living a Political Life. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Lakoff, Robin. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper, 1975.
Lakoff, Robin. “Nine Ways of Looking at Apologies: The Necessity for
Interdisciplinary Theory and Method in Discourse Analysis.” In The
Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah
Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 199-214. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
73
REFERENCES
Lakoff, Robin. Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives. New
York: Basic Books, 1990.
Linde, Charlotte. “The Quantitative Study of Communicative Success:
Politeness and Accidents in Aviation Discourse.” Language in Society
17 (1988):375-99.
Maccoby, Eleanor. “Gender as a Social Category.” Developmental
Psychology 24:6 (1988):755-65.
Maltz, Daniel N., and Ruth A. Borker. “A Cultural Approach to Male-female
Miscommunication.” Language and Social Identity, ed. by John J.
Gumperz, 196-216. Cambridge (U.K.) Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Mann, Judy. Mann for All Seasons: Wit and Wisdom from the Washington
Post’s Judy Mann. New York: Master Media, 1990.
McElhinny, Bonnie S. “‘I Don’t Smile Much Anymore’: Affect, Gender, and the
Discourse of Pittsburgh Police Officers.” Locating Power, ed. by Kira Hall,
Mary Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwomon, 386-403. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley
Women and Language Group, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.
Millar, Frank E., Edna L. Rogers, and Janet Beavin Bavelas. “Identifying
Patterns of Verbal Conflict in Interpersonal Dynamics.” Western Journal of
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Mithun, Marianne. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge and
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Niem, Tien-Ing Chyou, and Roberta R. Collard. “Parental Discipline of
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Noble, David. A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of
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Norris, H.T. The Adventures of Antar, 150. Warminster, England: Aris &
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Philips. Ltd., 1980.

Ochs, Elinor. “Indexing Gender.” Rethinking Context: Language as an
Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin,
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Ochs, Elinor, and Carolyn Taylor. “Family Narrative as Political Activity.”
Discourse & Society 3.3 (1992):301-340.
Ong, Walter J. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness.
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Philips, Susan U. “The Power of Gender Ideologies in Discourse.” The

Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam
Meyerhoff, 252-276. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
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Human. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Rosenberg, Rosalind. Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of
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Smith, Frances Lee. “The Pulpit and Woman’s Place: Gender and the
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COMPLETE LISTING OF REFERENCES
76

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Communication

Professor Deborah Tannen

Recorded Books™ is a trademark of

Lecture content ©2003 by Deborah Tannen

72007 by Recorded Books, LLC

About Your Professor ..............................................................................................................4

Lecture 1 He Said/She Said: A Framework for Understanding

Lecture 2 The Source of Gender Patterns: Children at Play ..........................................12

Lecture 3 A Cross-Cultural Approach to GenderTalk ......................................................17

Lecture 4 The Role of Opposition in Men's Relationships ..............................................22

Lecture 5 The Role of Talk in Women's Relationships....................................................26

Lecture 6 The Interplay of Power and Connection ..........................................................30

Lecture 7 Ambiguity and Polysemy: Two Keys to Understanding

Lecture 8 Indirectness: Not in So Many Words ..............................................................41

Lecture 9 Talking at Home: Gender in the Family ..........................................................45

Lecture 10 Talking at Work................................................................................................50

Lecture 11 Who Talks More?: Public and Private Speaking ............................................54

Lecture 12 A History of Research on Gender and Language ..........................................59

Lecture 13 Nature/Nurture: The Source of Gender Differences ........................................63

Lecture 14 Conclusion: What Can You Do?......................................................................68

Deborah Tannen holds the distinguished rank of University Professor at Georgetown

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

felt it was most likely because they didn’t want to acknowledge

Questions and Essays

Other Books of Interest

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) Boys and girls and friendship

b) Has helped fathers understand their little girls

Questions and Essays

1. If you have children, to what extent do their patterns of play correspond

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. He-said-she-said: Talk as Social Organization

Cook-Gumperz, Jenny. 1995. “Reproducing the Discourse of Mothering:

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) Examples from everyday life which show how common frustrations in

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) Role of Opposition in Men's Relationships

1. Observe a group of boys or men of any age in a public setting. Do you

Coates, Jennifer. Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities. Malden,

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) The Role of Talk in Women's Relationships

3) Example from 1999 PBS documentary "An American Love Story"

1. Did any of the conversational transcripts in this lecture sound familiar to

1. Watch a television show or movie that concerns mothers and daughters.

Coates, Jennifer. Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends.

Divorce American Style. Columbia Tristar, 1967.

Eckert, Penelope. 1993. “Cooperative Competition in Adolescent ‘Girl-Talk’.”

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) Introduction to The Grid

ii) Differences in assumptions about hierarchy and closeness exist

(1) Grandparents and grandchildren—hierarchical but also

i) It’s not a matter of either status or connection.

1. Describe the power/connection grid.

Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: HarperCollins

Before beginning this lecture you may want to …

Consider this ...

1) Ambiguity and Polysemy

ences; in all-men vs. all-women groups, the women were shown to