The genderlect theory by Deborah Tannen attempts to explain how men and women communicate differently. Often this can be the cause of men and women arguing and not understanding each other. The theory states that men want to feel independent and respected, while women feel it’s more important to be friendly and liked by everyone. These two separate motives lead them to communicate differently with a different goal in mind.
The theory is practical and it is important to know. In relationships, you should know how men and women react to a certain subject, so that you can communicate effectively and fairly. A look into the theory of feminism, attempts to show how women communicate. They will be soft-spoken when they want something, make eye-contact when they notice a ‘cute guy,’ or blink a lot when they are in shock.
Understanding the feminism theory is important in order communicating with women. While we can learn how women act through the feminism theory, we can look at how they interact with men using the genderlect theory. The genderlect theory helps explain how differently we communicate, and how this affects our conversation.
This clip from the show “Friends,” is a good example of the differences between men and women. The men are very brief, to-the-point, and relaxed in this clip, while the women are overly excited and ask a ton of questions. This shows how women want to know everything and be very close with the friends, while men are interested, but don’t ask many questions.
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3 comments:
I think we’ve all experience the gap in communication between men and women in our lives more than once. Watching this clip was funny because I can totally relate to that I think a lot of other guys as well as women can to. There has always been a gap between the two sex’s men, and women weather it was communication or standing in a society. I think it’s hard for men and women to communicate because they don’t understand each other, it easy for us to talk to the same sex because men understand how men think, and women do the same. When we try to apply that to men and women something gets lost in translation, and sometimes it just turns out to be awful. Fights start, divorce, other things as well, I think if we can just try to get into the other genders mind and just attempt to understand why they are the way they are it would go a long way to helping gender relationships in today’s society and in the future.
This clip is very representative of how men and women differ in behavior, seeing as women many times do ask more questions, especially on such social topics as boys and such, while men tend to be more straightforward and to the point, which many times leads women to become frustrated with men. In women’s eyes, if men do not offer a lot to say on a subject, it is viewed as the man not caring or listening, when in fact he may just not have a lot to say, or be trying to avoid conflict, but women view this as upsetting and tend to argue as Andy pointed out. In the clip, Tannen’s views on men and women are well-represented, because both the men and women are portrayed as having their typical stereotypical traits as discussed by Tannen and as seen by society, such as the women becoming overly emotional, asking lots of questions, a peaked interest in the social subject, and so on, and the men being more laid back, a lack of questions, more to the point, etc.
You can apply Genderlect Theory to this clip as well as many other popular sitcoms; a typecast production packed with stock characters that act their part in the stereotypical role-play. You can easily label the quirky, funny, smart, dumb, boring, and the ditz. It’s these very representations that communicate what’s “real” in personal relationships, the ideological differences between men and women. Personally, I don’t have any “friends” who would react in the same when the ditz acquires the boring. Although I can speculate that many women can relate, as well as men, it just doesn’t seem reasonable to say that this is how men are, and this is how women are- by what terms? Genderlect theory tries to explain the communication gap between genders, in hopes that we might understand one another in a new light with respects to our biological differences, but I just don’t believe it’s fair to judge. These six people are only characters, not real people; they don’t have real identities, they are cultural fabrications created in the minds of producers and writers. This is where Genderlect theory falls short of real feminist communication studies; it doesn’t show the transformative meanings behind gender and representation, it only epitomizes the stereotypical, “scientific” differences.
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