Daisy Ramirez WRD 103 January 24, 2012 DePaul University Is there a Dominance and language barrier between

both sexes? Men and woman are two completely different kinds of human beings. In the article What language Barrier? by Deborah Cameron, it discuses the matter of men and women possibly having a different form of language, when it comes to having a conversation within the same sex or the opposite sex, it is completely different. In the next article of Women talk too much, by Janet Holmes, she talks about how women might talk more than they should rather than men, but rather in fact her evidence proposes that it is completely opposite. She says that when it comes to men and women talking together the men are the ones that overrule the women in conversation. By reading these to articles I have come to a hypothesis that men do to dominate women and that they have a different language barrier, but it depends on what the theme of the conversation. I began to analyze my hypothesis on a birthday party that I went to with my mother. Emily, which is the daughter of my mothers best friend, Olga was turning thirty years old and wanted to have only close and personal friends at their home. When I arrived with my mom everyone greeted us very kindly and seemed so happy. The house was nice and cozy by the time that we took off our coats. The ages were between 20 and 62 years old. In the living all of the older adults sat on the couches and the younger adults were standing in the kitchen talking and drinking. Once I had greeted everyone there, I

headed to the kitchen to be with the younger crowd and watch them converse with one another. The ratio between them was even, two men and two women. At first no one talked because people were just arriving and it seemed as if no one was comfortable, but once everyone in the party started drinking they were all happy talking and laughing. At one moment I began to see a pattern that group had, which was that once they finished their drinks they were silent, but when Willy, the father of Emily, gave them another round of drinks they began to talk all over again. It made me notice that drinking alcohol to them was their relaxer to talk with one another. It made me question, do people need alcohol in order be relaxed around the opposite sex? Although when it came to the older crowd, they kept a steady conversation with or without an alcoholic beverage. As the younger crowd received their drinks again I found one conversation interesting that started with, Emilys god-brother, Walter. He began to talk about the Chicago Bulls playing against the Miami Heat the next night to Emily, Byron (Emilys boyfriend), and Jenny (Emilys cousin). Walter said, Theres no excuse for the Bulls to lose tomorrow even if Rose is out from his sprained toe. The only thing that Byron told Walter was that he agreed and that Lebron sucked. Walter saw that the ladies were not interested so he kept on talking with Byron about them as well as other teams. He seemed very knowledgeable about the particular sport. He knew about the roasters and statistics of each team, which made his conversation with them last about five to ten minutes. Through out that conversation I saw that the ladies did not speak once, the only thing they did was listen and drink. Both of the ladies show no interest in the conversation because they were looking around the room, at each other, and their phones. So far it showed me that the men had their own language when it came to basketball, because they

knew a lot about the statistics, the teams and were highly informer about the games. As for the ladies they had no idea about what the men were talking except certain teams such as the Bulls, but were they did not know about all of the statistics of it, so they just listened to the men talk. Later on in the night another conversation about sports began, this time it was about soccer. As well as it being a different conversation there were people different in the kitchen. Willy, Byron, Walter, Julio (Emilys old friend), Jenny, my mother and I seemed to began to be very interested. The ratio between men and women was 4 to 2, since I excluded myself. The only thing that started this conversation was Julio saying A alguien le gusta FC Barcelona? This is when I saw that everyones face lit up with joy. I knew before hand that even the women had their even share of knowledge of the sport and the team. An interesting factor of the conversation was when Willy began to say Si ponen a Leo Messi contra Pele de Brasil, es de seguro que ganara Pele. Aunque Messi es un buen jugador. (If you put Leo Messi to play against Pele from Brazil, it is for sure that Pele would beat him. Even though Messi is good.) My mothers response, Pues es de seguro que Pele le ganara a Messi. Me encanta Barcelona pero es obvio que Brasil tiene mejor tcticas para ganar. (Well for sure Pele would beat him. I love Barcelona, but it is obvious that Brazil has better tactics in order to win.) That is when Willy jumps in and starts to cut my mother off by saying that Peles tactics in playing soccer are far more amazing than Messi in order for the player to make a goal. Everyone agreed with Willy and my mother because we all knew that it was true. But I saw that Walter just nodded his head up and down saying yes even though he did not talk much throughout this topic because he did not have a lot of knowledge of the teams that they

were talking about. Willy just kept on talking about his favorite player, which was Xavi from Barcelona as well. Not only did this show me that even if the women knew a lot about the subject of the conversation they were always cut off and were being dominated by the men. There were moments when Jenny wanted to jump in the conversation and to say her opinion about a player such as Christiano Ronaldo, but Willy, Byron, or Julio always cut her off. Once they heard Ronaldo they started talking about him and saying that he is a good player but as Walter stated, hes overrated and he hangs out with Paris Hilton a lot and Willy said, Ronaldo es un buen jugador pero se cree mucho. (Ronaldo is a good player but he thinks hes all that.) I looked over to Jenny and noticed that she rolled her eye because the men did not let her finish talking. Not only did I see that both women were cut off, but they showed that it bothered them that the men do not let them finish talking when they had an opinion. Once that conversation was over, the music was a little bit louder and everyone in the house began to dance to salsa, some people were sitting down watching them dance. So this is when I moved onto another area to see if there was something new to analyze. I sat in the living room with Olga (Emilys mother), Dona Olga (Olgas friend) my mother, and Jenny. This time the conversation was about relationships, something that I saw a lot between the women in the party. No matter how old women are they still talk about their relationships and others as well. It all started out with Olga saying, Yo se quienes son mis amigos cercanos. Uno nunca sabe quienes te pueden ver la cara. (I know whom my real friends. You never know who can turn against.) Then, Olga started talking about how a coworker left her husband and stayed at her best friends house, but she ended up

sleeping with her best friends husband. Jennys reaction to that whole story was that her eyes went big and she moved her head in disappointment. My mother said, que barbaridad! which means how crazy it was. They kept on talking about their marriages and gossiping about other women. Seeing that within that same gender they talked for a long time and they knew what they were well informed. It seemed that even though they were gossip they were talking formally. None of the women cursed and they all sat properly with their legs crossed or they were sitting straight. Even though I would still need more research about my hypothesis, it still showed me that in one of my assumptions, I am wrong. By noticing how the men dominated the women about soccer, it proved me wrong. No not matter what the discussion was about; the men managed to dominant the women even if they had the same amount of knowledge.