Gender and Communication Relations Analysis Research Paper

Introduction

Our social identities influence the way we communicate our communication behaviour can be based on our personal/ or our social identities. There are many of our social identities that can be the basis of misinterpretations and ineffective communication; one of these is our gender. The word gender is used to refer to the learned behaviours and attitudes associated with the words ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. Although it may seem that both males and females share the same environments and experiences, for example, schools women and men grow up in two distinct communication cultures. Everyone has different styles of communicating verbally with people. Many factors contribute to this, including where someone’s from, how and where they’re brought up, their educational background and their age (Bonnie, p.261). These all contribute to an individuals use and style of verbal communication. Another factor that I believe is more apparent is the gender of the individual. Of course, there are exceptions to most rules, however generally speaking males have different characteristics when it comes to communicating verbally compared to females.

Discussion

There have always been two very different sets of expectations placed on boys and girls, for example boys and girls grow up playing very different games, girls play with dolls whereas boys have cars and guns to play with. Another example is that girls are expected to help with chores inside the house whereas boys are able to do jobs outside. These expectations create two groups of people who have very different perceptions of themselves. They act, talk and relate to people differently and also interpret the things going on in the world very differently. The different experiences generate unique modes of behaviour that influence communication.

Gender has an impact on communication because both men and women approach conversations with very different expectations and with the aim of achieving different results. When these expectations are not observed, misinterpretations can occur (Tannen, p. 80). These misinterpretations can frequently be attributed to conversational differences. Women for example see questions as a method of keeping a conversation going whereas men see them as a method of receiving information. Aggressiveness is seen as a way of communicating by men but as an attack by women. Women discuss their problems in order to gain reassurance but men are hoping for a solution (Wood, p. 64).

When women discuss their problems with another woman, the women is likely to offer support and relate a problem of their own to the problem they are being told about. However, if a woman told the same problem to a man he is either likely to offer a reprimand and explanation of what she did wrong. When women discuss their troubles a man is likely to interpret it as a request for assistance and also as a sign of weakness. When a man is told someone’s problems he is likely to accept it as a challenge to his ability, his competence, his expertise. A man is only too happy to jump in and offer a solution (Bonnie, p. 259). Because the woman is looking for some reassurance and an exchange of problems and she receives a solution, she places further emphasis on her problem. The man then understands this as a failure to accept his solution, which questions his sense of knowledge and expertise. Both parties continue their conversation using their very different interpretative frameworks until the misinterpretation gets increasingly worse and one person or another becomes irritable and disregards the conversation.

Another example of the differences of communication between the genders regards information. Men consider information to be current affairs topics whereas women view information as personal details about themselves and their daily lives. A man would call a good talk one in which he had discussed a wide variety of subjects such as politics and sport. A woman would regard a good Talk as one in which individual lives and feelings had been discussed. A man would dismiss the women’s conversation as pure gossip.

Another issue is that men and women approach different situations with different expectations. In some conversations between men and women one person may be expecting a highly explicit statement to be made and at the same time the other person may be expecting an indirect expression. (Diana, 216) When this occurs misinterpretations of the partners messages often occur. An example of this is women’s most common complaint that their partners or husbands don’t ever tell them that they love them. The women expect a direct statement from the man but what the men are actually doing is making an inexplicit statement through their actions such as working hard in their jobs and being faithful to their partners.

It is not a case of whether the man or woman speaks more directly or indirectly but actually how they interpret what is said to them. Because men and women have such different interpretative frameworks it often leads them to draw different meaning from language, which under different circumstances would be extremely explicit (Wood, p. 67). A clear difference has been noted between the behaviour of men and women in organisational communication. Research has shown that in a meeting of mixed gender, men have a tendency to dominate the conversation taking the most turns to talk and talking for a long period of time when they do. However, a business meeting, in which all of the participants are female one notices extremely quick turn taking, and the conversation topics are introduced polychromatically (Tannen, p. 79).

Another example is in a university classroom where the lecturer is leading a discussion. In this situation males are again dominant and the females are taking fewer and shorter turns. However, when working in smaller groups’ women tend to have a lot more to say. Both of these situations contradict women’s most common discontent with their partners because they are normally sullen, silent and withdrawn from them.

Their whole use of language is thought to differ from females in many ways. If a male used verbal communication in the same way as the average female, people might wonder if hes a homosexual or at least class him as being feminine. This is because there are norms for each gender when it comes to communicating. These norms are not explained or taught in any way, they are picked up at an early age. Just as we pick up the language of our family and culture, we subconsciously pick up the ways we are expected to communicate verbally (Diana, p. 210).

There has been a large amount of research done on gender differences, including verbal communication, including research by Zimmerman & West. Wood, researched that men kill or ignore conversational topics introduced by females much more readily than male initiated topics. He found that females do not kill or ignore conversational topics as much as males do. In research results by Zimmerman & West in 1975, males interrupted twenty-four times as much as females do in mixed sex conversations. 94% of interruptions were made by males. This big difference acts as an indicator of the differences between the sexes generally as well as verbally.

While engaging in a conversation, woman tend to have a more supportive attitude to the conversation they’re taking part in. They will ask more questions and show interest more than a male that is just as bored/interested. Females are more likely to give supportive feedback by nodding or verbally letting them know they’re interested and listening (eg. ‘Yes’, ‘I know’, ‘mm’ ‘right’ ‘I see’). This was backed up by research by Zimmerman & West. Although men do do the above, they do it much less frequently than females.

Males on the other hand do not just take a slightly less supportive attitude to the conversation they’re in, but also take a much more competitive approach. The amount of interruptions mentioned in the last paragraph and their tendency to ignore or end conversational topics initiated by females show they are much more interested than females to control and be in charge of conversations.

There is a big difference in the way males and females use verbal communication due to the topics each talk about in same sex conversations. Females talk more about their feelings, how they feel about this or that and males talk more about facts, objects and hobbies, such as sport. This is down to difference in male and females attitudes, which were built up whilst growing up and being socialised by a huge amount of members of society.

Conclusion

To a certain degree gender does have an impact on communication but some of the other factors that make up our social identities such as age or social status have a bigger impact. There are a great many differences between the communication of men and women and it is well known that the speech of men and women has been proven to be extremely different within many of the worlds languages. Everyone is born into a culture, gender, generation and family, however, in almost every culture the experience of women is markedly different to the experience of men. These experiences would become noticeable within the different discourse systems.

The impact that gender has on communication is thought to be universal as the discourse systems of gender cut across culture and generations. The different interpretative frameworks that we have are simply part of being men and women. Both men and women find their miscommunications difficult to correct as their sense of identity and their sense of place in culture and society are tied up in the ideological history of relationships between men and women. Men and women’s different ways of seeing the world are in professional communication a major source of miscommunication.

Works Cited

1. Zimmerman, D.H. and C. West. Sex roles interruptions and silences in conversations. In B. Thorne and N. Henley (Eds.), Language and Sex Difference and Dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 1975: 105-129
2. Wood, J.T. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture (5th ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth. 2002: 60-67
3. Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. Harper Paperbacks, 2007: 78-84
4. Diana K. Ivy, Phil Backlund. GenderSpeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon; 4 edition, 2007: 204-218
5. Bonnie J. Dow, Julia T. Wood. The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Communication. Sage Publications, Inc, 2006: 255-271