CHAPTER 33
GENDERLECT STYLES
Outline
I.
Introduction.
A. Deborah Tannen argues that male-female communication is cross-cultural.
B. Miscommunication between men and women is both common and insidious
because the parties usually don’t realize that the encounters are cross-cultural.
C. Tannen’s writing underscores the mutually alien nature of male and female
conversation styles.
D. Tannen’s approach departs from much feminist scholarship that claims that
conversations between men and women reflect male domination.
1. She assumes that male and female conversational styles are equally valid.
2. The term genderlect suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse
are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or
superior ways of speaking.
E. At the risk of reinforcing a reductive biological determinism, Tannen insists that there
are gender differences in the ways we speak.
II.
Women’s desire for connection versus men’s desire for status.
A. More than anything else, women seek human connection.
B. Men are concerned mainly with status.
C. Tannen does not believe that men and women seek only status and connection,
respectively, but these are their primary goals.
III.
Rapport talk versus report talk.
A. Public speaking versus private speaking.
1. Women talk more than men in private conversations.
2. In the public arena, men vie for ascendancy and speak much more than women.
3. Men assume a lecture style to establish a “one-up” position, command
attention, convey information, and insist on agreement.
4. Men’s monologue style is appropriate for report, but not for rapport.
B. Telling a story.
1. Men tell more stories and jokes than do women.
2. Telling jokes is a masculine way to negotiate status.
3. Men are the heroes in their own stories.
4. When women tell stories, they downplay themselves.
C. Listening.
1. Women show attentiveness through verbal and nonverbal cues.
2. Men may avoid these cues to keep from appearing “one-down.”
3. A woman interrupts to show agreement, to give support, or to supply what she
thinks the speaker will say (a cooperative overlap).
4. Men regard any interruption as a power move.
446 D. Asking questions.
1. Men don’t ask for help because it exposes their ignorance.
2. Women ask questions to establish a connection with others.
3. When women state their opinions, they often use tag questions to soften the
sting of potential disagreement and to invite participation in open, friendly
dialogue.
E. Conflict.
1. Men usually initiate and are more comfortable with conflict.
2. To women, conflict is a threat to connection to be avoided at all costs.
3. Men are extremely wary about being told what to do.
IV.
“Now you’re beginning to understand.”
A. Tannen believes that both men and women need to learn how to adopt the other’s
voice.
B. However, she expresses only guarded hope that men and women will alter their
linguistic styles.
C. She has more confidence in the benefits of multicultural understanding between
men and women.
V.
Critique: is Tannen soft on research and men?
A. Tannen suggests we use the “aha factor”—a subjective standard of validity—to test
her truth claims.
B. Tannen’s analysis of common misunderstandings between men and women has
struck a chord with millions of readers.
C. Critics suggest that selective data may be the only way to support a reductionist
claim that women are one way and men another.
D. Tannen’s intimacy/independence dichotomy echoes one of Baxter and
Montgomery’s tensions, but it suggests none of the ongoing complexity of human
existence that relational dialectics describes.
E. Tannen’s assertions about male and female styles run the risk of becoming selffulfilling prophecy.
F. Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish suggest that although
Tannen claims both female and male styles are equally valid, many of her comments
and examples tend to disparage masculine values.
G. Julia Wood and Christopher Inman observe that the prevailing ideology of intimacy
discounts the ways that men draw close to each other.
H. Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson challenge the different cultures perspective
that is at the heart of Tannen’s genderlect theory, citing their work on comforting as
equally valuable to both sexes.
I. Senta Troemel-Ploetz accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male dominance, control,
power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal insults.
1. You cannot omit issues of power from communication.
2. Men understand what women want but give it only when it suits them.
3. Tannen’s theory should be tested to see if men who read her book talk more
empathetically with their wives.
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Key Names and Terms
Deborah Tannen
A linguist at Georgetown University who has pioneered research in genderlect styles.
Genderlect
A term that suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed
as two distinct cultural dialects and not inferior or superior ways of speaking.
You Just Don’t Understand
Tannen’s best-seller, which presents genderlects styles to a popular audience.
Rapport Talk
The conversational style Tannen associates with women, which seeks to establish
connection.
Report Talk
The conversational style Tannen associates with men, which seeks to command
attention, convey information, and insist on agreement.
Cooperative Overlap
When a woman interrupts to add words of agreement, to show support, or to finish a
sentence with what she thinks the speaker will say. It is a sign of rapport rather than a
competitive ploy.
Tag Question
A short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften
the sting of potential disagreement and to invite participation in open, friendly dialogue.
Aha Factor
A subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one’s personal
experience.
Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish
Communication scholars who suggest that although Tannen claims both female and
male styles are equally valid, many of her comments and examples tend to disparage
masculine values.
Julia Wood and Christopher Inman
Communication scholars from the University of North Carolina who observe that the
prevailing ideology of intimacy discounts the ways that men draw close to each other.
Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson
Communication scholars from the University of Kansas and Purdue University,
respectively, who challenge the different cultures perspective based on results from
their research on comforting.
Senta Troemel-Ploetz
A German linguist and feminist who accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male
dominance, control, power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal
insults.
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Principal Changes
Griffin has changed the section on conflict to better align it with Tannen’s thinking,
added Kunkel and Burleson’s objection to the Critique section, and has updated the Second
Look section.
Suggestions for Discussion
Of all the theorists featured in A First Look at Communication Theory, Deborah Tannen
is the only one who qualifies as a genuine celebrity in contemporary popular culture—a fact
conclusively proven by the cartoon on page 477. She is quoted, praised, and criticized
everywhere you turn. Indeed, the “aha factor” has been a reality for millions of Americans, and
you’ll have no trouble interesting your students in this provocative, germane material.
Sex and gender: a very important distinction
Although they are often used synonymously, sex and gender are not the same and it’s a
point worth making at the onset of the discussion of the gender theories. As Griffin points out
in the introduction to this section (469), sex is an objective fact based on biological criteria
while gender is a social, symbolic creation learned through cultural training. Put in the
vernacular, sex is about the hardware and gender the software. To say that a true sex
difference exists is to imply that a difference between men and women is somehow linked to
biological or chromosomal differences. For example, there is a true sex difference between
men and women in physical strength based on differing muscle potency. However, to say that
something is a gender difference suggests that the discrepancy is not related to biology, but to
a culturally learned, cognitive construction. Therefore, genderlects is an apt title for Tannen’s
position, though the point becomes distorted because distinctions are drawn between males
and females, biological-based terms, when it would be more appropriate to label the two
camps by their gender-based titles—masculine and feminine.
How much of a difference is this difference?
As with any claim that any single factor makes an enormous difference, the
conscientious student of communication theory must ask how much of the variability can be
explained. In her theory, Tannen claims that gender differences make all the difference, a
point you may want to discuss with your students. To use Julia Woods’s terminology, is Tannen
“essentializing” or implying that all members of a sex are essentially the same? But, as Griffin
points out in his section introduction (467-69), other researchers have suggested that great
variability exists within the members of each sex and furthermore, much similarity exists
between the two camps. You may want to discuss Kathryn Dindia and Mike Allen’s metaanalysis (“Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 112, 1
[1992], 106-124), which found a -.01 correlation between men and women on self-disclosure,
a finding that clearly challenges Tannen’s claim of a vast divide.
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The merit in being attacked on all sides
In the previous chapter on speech codes, Griffin gives Philipsen some profound praise
when he suggests that important theories are widely attacked. Quoting his own professor,
Griffin says, “You know you’re in the wrong place on an issue if you aren’t getting well roasted
from all sides” (463). It’s important to show your students that this “golden mean” standard
also applies to Tannen’s work. As Griffin’s Critique section succinctly demonstrates, she has
been attacked both for being too tough on men and for being insufficiently tough on them. To
some, she has unlocked the secrets of male-female communication, and to others she has
locked us into the prison house of gender stereotypes. The point, it seems to us, is not to
condemn her for this variety of responses, but to applaud her for stirring the thoughts and
beliefs of so many people. Right, wrong, or somewhere in between, she has been a terrific
catalyst for discussions of communication theory and methodology.
The missing metamessage
Tannen’s books are filled with many interesting ideas, and unfortunately Griffin had to
cut much to keep this chapter an appropriate length. One of the most important excluded
concepts is the “metamessage.” In both That’s Not What I Meant! and You Just Don’t
Understand, Tannen suggests that women are more sensitive to the communicative power of
context, whereas men tend to focus more narrowly on messages in isolation from situational
factors. When misunderstandings arise over metamessages, women accuse men of being
“insensitive” and men blame women for “reading things into” what they say. (One could argue,
in fact, that interpretative differences concerning metamessages correspond to the different
communicative styles of collectivistic and individualistic cultures as featured in Chapter 31.
Tannen seems to be suggesting that whereas women’s culture is high context, men’s is low
context.) The concept of the metamessage also relates closely to a key axiom of the
interactional view (communication = content + relationship). You might consider adding
differences in the interpretation of metamessages to the list of five major distinctions between
male and female communication included in the section of the chapter titled “Rapport Talk
versus Report Talk.”
Unappreciated empathy
At the beginning of the Critique section, Griffin covers the basic point that women are
more likely to desire understanding than advice in conversation (478), but he is unable to
include Tannen’s important counterpoint that men may not appreciate displays of empathy
because they undermine their autonomy and the uniqueness of their particular problem (You
Just Don’t Understand 51). Unlike women, men may not like their partners to say, “I know just
how you feel.” It will be interesting to see how your class responds to this claim.
Bateson’s “complementary schismogenesis”: A worsening spiral
One of Tannen’s most useful concepts (featured in both That’s Not What I Meant! and
You Just Don’t Understand) has been borrowed from Gregory Bateson—“complementary
schismogenesis.” This notion aptly describes the worsening spiral of miscommunication that
often frustrates men and women. Bateson’s electric-blanket analogy is priceless.
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High involvement conversational style
Perhaps the most underrated and provocative section of You Just Don’t Understand is
Tannen’s discussion of the “high considerateness”/”high involvement” dichotomy in
conversation (196-202). She suggests that some people who interrupt and overlap frequently
aren’t being rude; they’re simply operating under the conversational norms of high
involvement. What’s particularly interesting here is that Tannen attributes differences in
communicative style to culture and geographical region, rather than gender, thus complicating
her approach to conversational styles considerably.
Genderlects as a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Be sure your students understand Griffin’s point that Tannen’s theory could function as
self-fulfilling prophecy (479). If self and gender are socially constructed, then the work of
celebrity theorists such as Tannen can have a terrific impact on actual human development. In
this sense, books that claim to reveal the “truth” about male or female patterns have the
potential to become normative. If influential writers such as Tannen and John Gray—author of
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication
and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) and several
sequels—tell us that men and women invariably act in certain ways, then it is but a small step
to believing that they should do so. How, then, should one view women professors who
consistently put their careers ahead of relationships and friendships? More to the point, how
should these women view themselves? Are they unfeminine or abnormal? Are husbands who
put their wives ahead of their jobs effeminate? When does mere description become
prescription? (An example of an explicit translation of description of gender differences into
prescription is the popular and controversial book The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for
Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider [New York: Warner
Books, 1995.]) (Essay Questions #23 and #27 below address this issue.)
Is genderlect theory ethnocentric?
The critique of Burke, Burroughs-Denhart, and McClish that You Just Don’t Understand
contains an implicit bias against the male style raises an issue that was initially brought up in
our treatment of speech codes theory: the difficulty of comparing your own culture to another
without inherently favoring that with which you are more familiar. Just as Philipsen could be
seen to paint a more favorable picture of the communicative practices of Nacirema than those
of Teamsterville, so Tannen may give a better impression of female conversation than its male
counterpart. It’s a point worth considering. Another way to approach the issue would be to ask
the following question: “What would You Just Don’t Understand be like if it had been written by
a man?”
With regard to Kunkel and Burleson’s claim that the different cultures perspective “has
lost its narrative force” (479), we are reminded of a like-minded bumper sticker: “Men are from
Earth, women are from Earth—Get used to it!”
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Sample Application Log
Nate
The best example of a real difference between the need for connection and status is how my
wife and I get into conflicts. I usually initiate arguments by bringing up things we need to work
on, whereas my wife needs to know that everything is good right now. You see, I want to have
the best relationship of anyone we know. My wife does want the same, but she thinks it should
be that way to start off with—a difficult thing for a male communications student.
Exercises and Activities
Is genderlects outdated?
Many of our students have suggested that distinct behavioral and communicative
differences between the genders are more relics of the past than conditions of the present. In
this era of relative gender equality, they claim, the kinds of dichotomies Tannen describes are
primarily matters of history, rather than contemporary life. Challenge students to provide
evidence for this “Brave New World” claim. (Essay Question #24, below, addresses this issue.)
You might also want students to discuss how cultural factors intersect with gender to
complicate Tannen’s claims. (See Essay Question #27 below.)
Bem’s sex role inventory (BSRI)
Before covering genderlects theory in class, consider asking your students to complete
Sharon Lipsitz Bem’s sex role inventory that Griffin discusses in the gender section’s
introduction (468). The inventory is based on evaluating how aptly or characteristically 60
adjectives are of one’s self and the tallied score indicates a person’s degree of masculinity and
femininity, or amount of identification with a particular sex role. While some students may find
themselves a perfect match between sex and sex role identification (i.e. the very masculine
man or the ultra feminine woman), others may find themselves in a more undefined place, by
either straddling neutral ground or by being extremely high or low in both masculine and
feminine traits. As with any pencil-and-paper personality indicator, it is good to remind
students not to allow a number on a paper define who they are. Based on their BSRI scores, do
students support or object to Tannen’s gender-based claims? It’s likely that those who are
either highly masculine or feminine will be more likely to endorse her position than those in
murky waters.
A tricky test question
You’ll notice that the second half of Essay Question #21 below is deliberately
controversial and provocative. Students can choose the safe answer (Tannen’s official
response)—that they are different, but equally valid. They can also opt for the integrative
approach, arguing that since both styles are potentially useful it’s best to be as androgynous
and flexible as possible. (Integrative Essay Question #30 below may be applicable here.) Or
they can go out on a limb and explicate the inherent superiority of one approach or the other.
To do so, they’ll have to establish appropriate criteria for judgment. Essay Question #25, which
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takes an instrumental approach to the issue of differing styles, may provide some help in
creating such criteria.
Media and literary portrayals of genderlects
Gender differences are an extremely popular theme for contemporary television shows
and movies, and you’ll have no trouble finding recent clips that illustrate ostensible differences
between the ways males and females communicate. In some ways, though, it might be more
revealing to go back at least a decade or two, when writers and producers were less deliberate
about portraying the ways in which men and women converse.
Tannen is extremely adept at drawing upon literature to support her theory, so it may be
interesting to present a literary example or two that complicates the picture. One possible
candidate is Thorton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. Consider, for example, the long encounter
in Act II when George and Emily communicate their true feelings for one another. George
listens diligently and nondefensively to Emily’s rather harshly worded complaint about his
character and focuses his response on relational—rather than hierarchical—issues. Because
their rapport is of central importance to him, he confirms her perceptions and willingly
discloses his private feelings to her. George, a sensitive young man of the early twentieth
century, seeks to establish supportive, egalitarian, open communication about their
relationship—there is no complementary schismogenesis here. Whereas the passage does not
overturn every stereotypical expectation we have developed about communication between
males and females, it suggests to students that individual differences and matters of
personality are often the most salient aspects of communicative patterns. Perhaps George
would have eventually turned out like his father, who avoids important relational
communication with his wife by refusing to discuss a romantic vacation in Paris, but at this
moment, at least, he seems to be a male at home with intimate connections and webs of
relationships. Another excellent text is PBS’s The Farmer’s Wife. The evolution of Juanita and
Darrel’s communication over the course of the film provides a profound case study for
genderlect theory.
When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he shows his students the clip on male-female
friendship from When Harry Met Sally (Cue Point: 0:08:50) featured in the chapter (471-72).
He also recommends Tannen herself on video and encourages instructors to check out videos
in which she is featured from their institutions’ libraries or media centers. He notes that the
audiences for these video performances tend to be white and middle class, a point that could
lead to some interesting discussion of the scope and range of her theoretical principles. In
addition, Griffin likes to interrogate the “aha factor” Tannen claims validates her approach
(478). To do this, he asks his students about their “aha” experiences, then discusses the
extent to which these personal epiphanies are legitimately generalizable for the class. Is the
“aha factor” really a valid way to conduct or test theory?
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Further Resources
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A good general collection of essays on related issues is Linda A.M. Perry, Lynn H.
Turner, and Helen M. Sterk, eds., Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links
among Communication, Language, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1992). Particularly relevant is Nancy Hoar’s piece, “Genderlect, Powerlect, and
Politeness,” 127-36.
Annette Hannah and Tamar Murachver explore the genderlect hypothesis in “Gender
and Conversational Style as Predictors of Conversational Behavior,” Journal of
Language and Social Psychology 18 (June 1999): 153-74.
Suzanne Braun Levine examines the importance of genderlects in the profession of
journalism in “News-Speak and ‘Genderlect’—(It’s Only News if You Can Sell It),” Media
Studies Journal 7 (Winter 1993): 114-23.
William Rawlins’s Friendship Matters, which Griffin features in the Second Look section
of Chapter 11, has much of interest to say about the ways males and females
communicate with their friends and romantic partners.
For a good example of the influence of Tannen’s work on the communication field, see
Richard L. Weaver’s chapter, “Gender Communication: Understanding the Other Sex,”
in Understanding Interpersonal Communication, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996),
245-70. Although Weaver includes the usual cautions about generalizations, his
discussion—like Tannen’s—could be seen to perpetuate the very differences he seeks
merely to describe, particularly his claim that “gender differences have as much to do
with the biology of the brain as the way we are raised” (252).
Heidi Reeder examines the assumptions, ideologies, and methodologies for studying
gender differences in interpersonal communication in her article, “A Critical Look at
Gender Difference in Communication Research,” Communication Studies 47, 4 (1996):
318-31.
For a critical assessment of the male genderlect, see Peter F. Murphy, Studs, Tools, and
the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2001).
For discussion of interruptions, see Sara Hayden, “Interruptions and the Construction of
Reality,” in Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender
Research, eds. Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994),
99-106.
Shawn Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles analyze problems with the “feminine style” of
discourse in the political realm in “Gendered Politics and Presidential Image
Construction: A Reassessment of the ‘Feminine Style,’” Communication Monographs
63 (December 1996): 337-53.
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Other texts by Tannen
§ Framing and Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Gender and
Conversational Interaction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
§ You may wish to check out her work, The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of
Words (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). Although probably misnamed—Tannen is
not really against argument when it is conducted rationally, fairly, and productively—it
takes on the discourse of contentiousness that may be too prevalent in our society.
Two-cultures hypothesis in groups
§ Renee A. Myers, et al. provide empirical support for the dual cultures approach to malefemale communication in “Sex Differences and Group Argument: A Theoretical
Framework and Empirical Investigation,” Communication Studies 48 (Spring 1997): 1941.
§ Katherine Hawkins and Christopher B. Power explore the presence of genderlects in
small groups in “Gender Differences in Questions Asked During Small Decision-Making
Group Discussions,” Small Group Research 30 (April 1999): 235-56.
Critiques of Tannen
§ In The Mismeasure of Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), Carol Tavris
offers an interesting critique of Tannen’s genderlects theory (297-301). For example,
she argues, “What Tannen’s approach overlooks is that people’s ways of speaking . . .
often depend more on the gender of the person they are speaking with than on their
own intrinsic ‘conversation style’” (298-99).
§ Other critiques of the two-cultures approach to gender and communication can be
found in Mary Crawford’s Talking Difference: On Gender and Language (London: Sage,
1995); and Elizabeth Aries’s Men and Women in Interaction: Reconsidering the
Differences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
§ An attack on Tannen’s evidence for You Just Don’t Understand is launched by Daena J.
Goldsmith and Patricia A. Fulfs in “‘You Just Don’t Have the Evidence’: An Analysis of
Claims and Evidence in Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand,” Communication
Yearbook 22 (1999): 1-49.
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