So I've been told that it's blog against sexism day. To this I respond, "I'm against sexism and I blog - perfect!" One particular area where sexism gets to me is the intersection of gender and language, genderlects. Although this is a notoriously difficult area of linguistic research, a lot has been done in the last 35 years to investigate how and why men and women communicate differently. In 1973 Robin Lakoff published Language and Woman's Place, citing studies in which men interrupted women more, speak more than women, choose conversational topics more than women, and generally dominate conversation more. Lakoff's explanation was that these were societally conditioned behaviors based on the training we receive as children (girls to be polite and accepting, boys to be competitive).
Then there's Deborah Tannen, a current scholar, who focuses on the differences between male and female communication styles, and claims that neither is inherently better or worse. She describes males as conversational status-seekers and females as conversational connection-seekers. She uses similar evidence to Lakoff and adds that men tend to tell more stories and jokes in conversation (usually about themselves), women ask more questions in conversations, and women seek to avoid conflict where men pursue it. Tannen avoids making judgments on why these differences arise, acknowledging only that socialization plays a large role in their development.
I'm not sure where I stand on this, but I know we should be talking about where these differences come from and what they mean. Intuitively, I want to say that women and men are simply created differently, but that's the dreamer in me coming out. We live in a society that tells men they need to be as big, tough, strong, and independent as they can be (anybody who doubts that should check out the work of William Pollack). This same society tells women they need to be an innocent, submissive damsel in distress (and simultaneously a temptress, but that's another discussion). You can't tell me that doesn't impact the way we communicate. Perhaps, as Tannen says, we just communicate differently and one way is no inherently better or worse than the other. I'm a bit more inclined to think the worst though.
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"Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot" - Thomas More
2 comments:
As I understand it, some scholars suggest that the difference Tannen points to are less genderlects and more powerlects. People with less social capital use those strategies, not just women. On the other hand, only in situations where power is being negotiated is a "masculine style" preferable. In therapeutic situations, for example, "feminine style" works really well.
In the classroom, for a more complex example, I find it most effective to balance some of those features. It's important for me (and women in general) to communicate confidence and expertise, but a style that asks more questions and invites more discussion can be really useful in a classroom setting, both as a professor and as a student. What's so great about genderlects is it gets more complex the more you think about it.
good post Matt.
Indeed it does get more complicated. And to add a bit of third-hand hearsay, I heard an interview with what's-her-name from Desperate Houswives who starred as a transgendered individual in a recent movie. (which I have not seen) She was describing her research for the role and spoke of one memoir she had read. The author wrote that, while a man, if he had a conflict at work, he'd confront the person, deal with it, and then it would be over and he could walk away with very few after-effects. But once his gender transformation was underway and he/she started taking female hormone supplements, a nearly identical situation would elicit a very different response. There was more hesitation to confront, more worry before and after about what was said, a lingering of the situation in the mind that affected the rest of the day, and a compulsion to discuss the situation with friends (female friends) to get other opinions on how it was handled. I wish I knew the specifics about the author instead of recalling this from fuzzy memory. However, the point that the actress made was that things she had attributed to her essence as a woman, how she lived and communicated and dealt with the world, instead appear to be controlled by the hormones in her body and as such can't be classified as part of her personality in the way she had previously thought. The general idea of this has intrigued me since I heard the interview. Would I see the world in a different light, would my perceptions differ, would I change the very way I think -- if I took a testosterone supplement?
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