Sex,Sighs and Conversation:Why Men and Women can’t Communicate

-Deborah Tannen

Deborah TannenHe is a well known professor of linguistics at Georgetown University.He has written

several popular books on gender differencs in language use. In 1990 his first article “You Just Don’t Understand:Women and Men in conversation” and “That’s Not What I Meant!:How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships” appeared

in the Boston Globe, a large daily newspaper.

1.Why men reluctant to ask direction? Why aren’t women?

2.Why can’t women understand why men don’t want to ask?

-Differences that begin with how girls and boys use languages as children,growing up in different worlds.

-For a women’s perspective,you ask help,you get it.A fleeting connection is made with stranger,which is fundamentally pleasant.

-But a man is aware that by admitti ng igonarance and asking information his positions will be one down to someone else and its humiliating.

Anthropologists,sociologists and psychologists have found that litt le girls play in small groups or in pairs,they have a best friend.-It’s the telling of secrets that makes them best friends.Boys,tend to play competitive games in larger groups which are hierarchical.Boys learn to use language to preserve independence and negotiate their status.-It’s because high-status boys give orders and low status boys are pushed around.So they take this as challenge and resist challenges,display knowledge and verbal skill.

Women: How was your day?Men: Same old rat race.Women: You don’t tell me anything.Men: Nothing happened at work.

For a girl telling life’s daily events and impressions means she is not alone in the world and her partner is best friend.

But for a boy he never spent time talking in this way with his friends so he doesn’t expect it,doesn’t know how to do it.

A women talks about her problem;He offers solution; She dismiss it.He feels frustrated; She complains but doesn’t want to do anything to solve her problem.She is frustrated because the solution cuts short the discussion.

If she discusses it with another women,her friend typically explores the problem and offers similar experience and offer a solution.Now she is happy because her friend discussed the problem more seriously then her partner.

Its not that women always talk more.Women talk more at “home” since talk for them is a way of creating intimacy.

But men talk more at “public” situations with people they know less well. At the meeting men speaks first and even in the radio talk show most of the callers are men. Men are more likely to speak at length and giving introductions.

Men and women have different ways of talking.Not knowing that people of the other gender have different ways of talking,and different assumptions about the place of talk in relationship may leads to disappointment, burden,blame and mutual accusation.The concequences may be even more worse than this like break-up of relationship.

ConclusionRealizing that a partner’s behaviour is not his or her individual failing,but a normal expression of gender,lift s this burden blame and disappoinment.So people must try to make small adjustments that will please their partners and improve the relationship even more.

Group Members-Amogh Ratna Bajracharya-Annie Acharya-Mallika Kansakar-Mahendra Bashyal-Sandesh Shrestha-Shreya Regmi