Ada Wang's Paper

Sex, Lies, and Conversation

In conversation, the ways of communication between men and women are greatly diverse, so men and women both feel frustrated when they communicate with each other, and the unhappiness induces the high divorce rate of nearly 50 percent in America today. To our surprise, in women’s mind, the most concerned reason which might cause the crisis of high divorce rate is lack of conversation with their husbands instead of virtual inequities such as the housework or professional sacrifice in order to cooperate with their husband’s. To eliminate the misery between genders, it is essential to understand the concepts and patterns which genders acquire and practice in conversation.

According to Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, the explanation of the conversational difficulty in marriage is that the systematic differences in childhood socialization turn gender talks into cross-cultural communication. Girls believe that through talks they can establish relationship and intimacy with others, and experience the sense of closeness; on the other hand, Boys who survive in the hierarchical structure do not take talks as the element of forming relationship, but take communication as the means to show their intelligence and prevent themselves from being subordinate roles. That is also the reason why men always talk a lot in the public places in order to show his ability, but do not talk at home because they do not need to protest against anything. In short, men and women have their own particular and unique beliefs and ways of expression, so there are always arguments in conversation.

In reality, men and women behave extremely different in communication. During conversations, men tend to sit in parallel, look around, and glance at each other sometimes. They would talk from one topic to another topic quickly, and switch topics such as dismissing each other’s problem. Besides, men regard silence during conversation as patience and attention, and do not want people to interrupt. Men would like to give suggestions to others who are in trouble.

On the contrary, while talking women prefer to look at each other because it is regarded as “listening” and chat with the same topic at length. Women would express agreement and understanding when their friends face difficulties. During the conversation, women would make listener-noise such as “mhm” or “uhuh” and overlap other’s sentence in order to show their attention and concern. When their friends encounter crises, they would express agreement and support in order to show loyalty.

In order to establish the harmony between genders in marriage or in the society, we need to understand that “male-female conversation is seen as cross-cultural communication allows us to understand the problem and forge solutions…” in the words of Tannen. The mode of male and female in conversation should be seen as cross-cultural communication instead of blaming women for not being assertive and men for not being sensitive. Because of understanding the communicative mode and cherish feeling of the opposite sex, it is worthy for both sexes to change their habits of communication.

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