A Cultural Approach to Male-Female

Miscommunication.
Daniel Maltz & Ruth Borker

Elizabeth Sosa
Do men and
women speak
differently?
Primary Data on cross-sex conversation
1. Social psychology studies by Soslkin and
John’s (1963), and Strodbeck and Mann’s
(1953).
2. Sociolinguistic studies by West and
Zimmerman (1979), Fishman (1978) and
Lynnete Hirchmann (1973)from the
University of California and the University
of Pennsylvania.
Women’s features in cross-sex conversation.

1. Asking questions.
2. Doing more to facilitate the flow of
conversation.
3. Making use of positive minimal responses like
“mmm hmm”.
4. Adopting a strategy of “silent protest” after
being interrupted.
5. Using pronouns “you” and “we”.
 Men’s features in cross-sex conversation

1. Interrupt the speech.

2. Change or dispute their partners’ utterances.
3. Ignore the comments of the other speaker (no
response), respond slowly (“delayed minimal
response”), or respond unenthusiastically.
4. Use more mechanisms for controlling the topic of
conversation.
5. Make more direct declarations of fact or opinion,
including suggestions, opinions and statements.
Explanations offered

Differences in the social power or in the

personalities of men and women.
Variants of social power
. Men’s dominance in conversation parallels their
dominance in society (West and Zimmer).
. Norms of appropriate behaviour give power and
interactional control to men (Fishman).
. Sex-roles and personalities (Lakoff).
Another alternative explanation:
sociolinguistic subcultures

The stress is not on psychological differences or power

differentials, but on cultural differences between men
and women in their friendly conversations.
● Speech is a means for dealing with social and
psychological situations (Susan Harding 1975).
When men and women have different experiences
and operate in different contexts, they tend to
develop different genres of speech and different
skills for doing things with words.
The different social needs of men and women leads to
sexually differentiated communicative cultures, with each
sex learning a different set of skills for manipulating words
effectively.
The question is: what happens if
and when men and women try to
interact with each other?
Interethnic communication

Systematic problems develop in communication when

speakers of different speech cultures interact. The
problems are due to the differences in systems of
conversational inference and the cues for signalling
speech acts and speaker’s intentions (Gumperz &
Tannen). Conversation is a negotiated activity of
shared assumptions about what is going on.
The interpretation of minimal
responses
● Nods and comments like “yes”, “mm hmm”
have different meanings for men and
women, leading to serious
miscommunication.
● For women they simply mean: “I’m
listening, please continue”.
● For men they mean: “I agree with you” “I
follow your argument”
Different rules can lead to repeated
misunderstandings.
● A man might understand that a woman is
agreeing with everything he said.She’s mere
indicating that she is listening to what he is
saying.
● A woman might get upset believing a man is
not always listening to what she is saying.
He is indicating that he doesn’t always
agree.
Sources of different Cultures
● Men and women possess different cultural
assumptions about friendly conversation.

● By the time we become adults we possess a

wide variety of rules for interacting in
different situations.
The world of girls
● They play in small groups or pairs.
● Their play group is homogeneous in terms of
age.
● Their play is often in private or semi private
settings.
● Their play is cooperative and activities are
usually organized in noncompetitive ways.
The world of girls (II)
Girls learn to do 3 things with words:
1. to create and maintain relationships of
closeness and equality.
2. to criticize others in acceptable ways.
3. to interpret accurately the speech of other
girls.
Friendships among girls are formed
through talk.
Girls need to learn to give
support, recognize the speech
rights of others to let others
speak and to acknowledge what they say in
order to establish and maintain relationships
of equality and closeness.
In activities they need to learn to create
cooperation through speech.

● Goodwin (1980) found that inclusive forms

like “let’s”, “we gonna”, “we could” and
“we gotta” predominated in task-oriented
activities.
● Most girls made suggestions and the other
girls agreed.
Friendships are also ended through talk

● Sharing secrets bind the union together.

● Telling the “secret” to outsiders is symbolic
of the “break-up”
● Girls learn to criticize and argue with other
girls without seeming overly aggressive,
without being perceived as either “bossy”
or “mean”.
● Girls must learn to decipher the degree of
closeness offered by other girls.
● Learning to get things right is a
fundamental skill for social success or
social survival.
The world of boys

● Play in larger, more hierarchically organized

groups.
● Hierarchies fluctuate over time and situation.
● Speech is used in 3 major ways:
1. to assert one’s position of dominance,
2. to attract and maintain an audience,
3. to assert oneself when other speakers have the
floor.
 The world of boys II

Speech for dominance is the best-documented

sociolinguistic pattern in boy’s peer groups.
Richard Savin-Williams (1976) in his study of dominance
patterns uses these examples:
1) giving of verbal commands or orders (“Get up”, “Give
it to me” etc);
2) name calling and other forms of verbal ridicule
(“You’re a dolt”);
3) verbal threats or boasts of authority (“if you don’t
shut up, …”);
4) refusals to obey orders;
5) winning a verbal argument.
● Social success among boys is based on knowing both
how and and when to use (or not) words to express
power.
● Friendly interaction between boys includes using words
to gain and maintain an audience (storytelling, jokes,
narratives etc.).
● Boys must learn to ride out challenges and continue
when there is no encouragement.
● They must also learn to assert themselves and their
opinions.
Women’s Speech
● Women conversation is Interactional
● In friendly talk they are negotiating and
expressing a relationship.
● Orient themselves to the person they are
talking to and they expect such orientation
in return.
Characteristics of women’s speech
● Tendency to use personal and inclusive
pronouns such as “you” and “we”.
● Giving off and looking for signs of
engagement.
● Giving more signs of interests and
attention.
● They acknowledge to what has been said by
others at the beginning of a sentence.
They try to link their utterance to the one
preceding it by building on the previous
utterance or talking about something parallel
or related to it.
Criticism, competition and conflict take forms
that fit the friendship idiom.
Talking smart is more indirect between
women
● Smartness puts distance in a relationship.
● Overt competitiveness is also disguised.
● It is the intent rather than the form what
changes.
Men’s speech

● There are cultural variations between American

subcultures;
● There are differences in performance rules for
storytelling and jokes;
● There are differences in the context of the speech;
● There are differences in the rules that distinguish
aggressive joking from true aggression.
● There are apparent similarities across subcultures in the
patterns of friendly interaction between men and those
observed from boys.
The same three features.
1. Storytelling (narratives and jokes)
2. arguing (loud and aggressive argument)
3. verbal posturing
(challenges, insults,
verbal aggression).
What is happening in cross-sex conversation

Women and men have different cultural rules for

friendly conversation which get into conflict when they
talk to each other as friends and equals.
Five areas in which miscommunication is likely to occur:
1. There are two interpretations of the meaning of
questions.
2. There are two conventions for beginning an utterance
and linking it to the preceding one.
3. There are different interpretations of displays of
verbal aggressiveness.
4. There are two understandings of topic flow and
topic shift.
5. There seems to be two different attitudes towards
problem sharing and advice giving.