Social networking
How do you think social networking practices (“Social Networking”) might be affected by the gender differences outlined by Tannen in “Sex, Lies, and Conversation”?
Sex, Lies & Conversation Men Never Listen And Women Always Interrupt. Or So It May Seem.
July 23, 1990|By DEBORAH TANNEN, The Washington Post
I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room — a women`s group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been
particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that
women frequently complain that their husbands don`t talk to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward his wife and said, “She`s the talker in our family.“
The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. “It`s true,“ he explained. “When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn`t keep the
conversation going, we`d spend the whole evening in silence.“
This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is
wreaking havoc with marriage.
The pattern may have been first observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late `70s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book, Divorce
Talk, that most of the women she interviewed — but only a few of the men — gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce
rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year — a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.
In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities, such as having given up the chance for a career to
accompany a husband for his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking, social arrangements and errands. Instead, they
focused on communication: “He doesn`t listen to me,“ “He doesn`t talk to me.“ I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be,
first and foremost, conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives.
In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in
front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.
WHY CAN`T WE TALK?
How can women and men have such different impressions of communication in marriage? Why the widespread imbalance in their interests and expectations?
In the April issue of American Psychologist, Stanford University`s Eleanor Maccoby reports the results of her own and others` research showing that children`s
development is most influenced by the social structure of peer interactions. Boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and their sex-separate
groups have different organizational structures and interactive norms.
I think these systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk between women and men like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the attraction and
pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enterprise. My research on men`s and women`s conversations uncovered patterns similar to those described for children`s groups.
For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and maintain friendships by
exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conversation as the cornerstone of friendship. So a woman expects her husband to be a new and improved version of a best
friend. What is important is not the individual subjects that are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when people tell their thoughts,
feelings and impressions.
Bonds between boys can be as intense as bonds among girls, but they are based less on talking, more on doing things together. Because they don`t assume talk is the
cement that binds a relationship, men don`t know what kind of talk women want, and they don`t miss it when it isn`t there.
Boys` groups are larger, more inclusive and more hierarchical, so boys must struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group. This may play a role in women`s
complaints that men don`t listen to them. Some men really don`t like to listen because being the listener makes them feel one-down, like a child listening to adults or
an employee to a boss.
But often when women tell men, “You aren`t listening,“ and the men protest, “I am,“ they are right. The impression of not listening results from misalignments in
the mechanics of conversation. The misalignment begins as soon as a man and a woman take physical positions. This became clear when I studied videotapes made by
psychologist Bruce Dorval of children and adults talking to their same-sex best friends. I found that at every age, the girls and women faced each other directly,
their eyes anchored on each other`s faces. At every age, the boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room, periodically glancing at each
other. They were obviously attuned to each other, often mirroring each other`s movements. But the tendency of men to face away can give women the impression they
aren`t listening even when they are.
A young woman in college was frustrated: Whenever she told her boyfriend she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close his eyes and put his arm over
his face. This signaled to her, “He`s taking a nap.“ But he insisted he was listening extra hard. Normally, he looks around the room, so he is easily distracted.
Lying down and covering his eyes helped him concentrate on what she was saying.
Analogous to the physical alignment that women and men take in conversation is their topical alignment. The girls in my study tended to talk at length about one topic,
but the boys tended to jump from topic to topic. The second-grade girls exchanged stories about people they knew. The second- grade boys teased, told jokes, noticed
things in the room and talked about finding games to play. The sixth-grade girls talked about problems with a mutual friend. The sixth-grade boys talked about 55
different topics, none of which extended over more than a few turns.
LISTENER NOISE
There are even simpler reasons for women`s impression that men don`t listen. Linguist Lynette Hirschman found that women make more listener-noise, such as “mhm,“
“uhuh“ and “yeah,“ to show “I`m with you.“ Men, she found, more often give silent attention. Women who expect a stream of listener noise interpret silent
attention as no attention at all.
Women`s conversational habits are as frustrating to men as men`s are to women. Men who expect silent attention interpret a stream of listener noise as overreaction or
impatience. Also, when women talk to each other in a close, comfortable setting, they often overlap, finish each other`s sentences and anticipate what the other is
about to say. This practice, which I call “participatory listenership,“ is often perceived by men as interruption, intrusion and lack of attention.
A parallel difference caused a man to complain about his wife, “She just wants to talk about her own point of view. If I show her another view, she gets mad at me.“
When most women talk to each other, they assume a conversationalist`s job is to express agreement and support. But many men see their conversational duty as pointing
out the other side of an argument. This is heard as disloyalty by women, and refusal to offer the requisite support. It is not that women don`t want to see other
points of view, but that they prefer them phrased as suggestions and inquiries rather than as direct challenges.
In his book Fighting for Life, Walter Ong points out that men use “agonistic“ or warlike, oppositional formats to do almost anything; thus discussion becomes debate
and conversation a competitive sport. In contrast, women see conversation as a ritual means of establishing rapport.
FREEDOM TO TALK
These differences begin to clarify why women and men have such different expectations about communication in marriage. For women, talk creates intimacy. Marriage is an
orgy of closeness: You can tell your feelings and thoughts, and still be loved. Their greatest fear is being pushed away. But men live in a hierarchical world, where
talk maintains independence and status. They are on guard to protect themselves from being put down and pushed around.
This explains the paradox of the talkative man who said of his silent wife, “She`s the talker.“ In the public setting of a guest lecture, he felt challenged to show
his intelligence and display his understanding of the lecture. But at home, where he has nothing to prove and no one to defend against, he is free to remain silent.
For his wife, being home means she is free from the worry that something she says might offend someone, or spark disagreement, or appear to be showing off; at home she
is free to talk.
The communication problems that endanger marriage can`t be fixed by mechanical engineering. They require a new conceptual framework about the role of talk in human
relationships. Many of the psychological explanations that have become second nature may not be helpful because they tend to blame either women (for not being
assertive enough) or men (for not being in touch with their feelings). A sociolinguistic approach by which male-female conversation is seen as cross-cultural
communication allows us to understand the problem and forge solutions without blaming either party.
Once the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally, as it did to the young woman and her boyfriend who seemed to go to sleep when she wanted to talk.
Previously, she had accused him of not listening, and he had refused to change his behavior, since that would be admitting fault. But then she learned about and
explained to him the differences in women`s and men`s habitual ways of aligning themselves in conversation. The next time she told him she wanted to talk, he began, as
usual, by lying down and covering his eyes. When the familiar negative reaction bubbled up, she reassured herself that he really was listening. But then he sat up and
looked at her. Thrilled, she asked why. He said, “You like me to look at you when we talk, so I`ll try to do it.“ Once he saw their differences as cross-cultural
rather than right and wrong, he independently decided to alter his behavior.
Women who feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won`t listen to or report daily news, may be happy to discover their husbands trying to adapt once they
understand the place of small talk in women`s relationships. But if their husbands don`t adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men, this is not a failure of
intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to their friends or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can`t provide it shouldn`t feel their wives
have made unreasonable demands. Some couples still will decide to divorce, but at least their decisions will be based on realistic expectations.
In these times of resurgent ethnic conflicts, the world desperately needs cross-cultural understanding. Like charity, successful cross-cultural communication should
begin at home.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1990-07-23/features/9002050374_1_husbands-conversation-cross-cultural-communication