How Men and Women Communicate?

Bueno en primer lugar decir que sé que no actualizo apenas el blog y que está muy abandonado. Pero la verdad es que no tengo tiempo para dedicarme al blog todo lo que me gustaría. Espero que en verano vaya cogiendo ritmo e iré completándolo poco a poco. En esta ocasión os dejo una entrada muy diferente a lo que se supone que sería la dinámica o la temática de este blog. Se trata de una presentación oral que tuve que realizar para la clase de inglés de la escuela de idiomas. Elegí el tema de las diferencias en comunicación entre hombres y mujeres ya que lo había estudiado con anterioridad en la universidad y porque encontré en internet un artículo que me sirvió de inspiración. Es un tema bastante interesante porque aunque las diferencias sean bastante claras y obvias quizás no nos hayamos cuestionado su existencia. Sin más os dejo con el texto. ¡Un saludo!

Good afternoon, I am going to talk about the difference in communication between men and women.

It is an article from the magazine called Discovery that I found on the Internet and I thought it was really interesting.

In the first place, I’m going to start talking about the language in general.

First of all, it should be pointed out that language should not be considered as inherently sexist.

However, sometimes it is used in a sexist way or it reflects a sexist world.

For example, the word “he” is the twelfth commonest word in the English language whereas the word “she” is the thirty-first commonest word.

One reason to explain this is that men are much more likely than women to be leaders of their countries or to have a higher political position, so in newspapers “he” tends to be more frequent than “she”.

The society we live in gives men and women different roles, which consequently impacts how we speak.

The language we speak could identify certain words or concepts with specific genders, so language may predispose men and women to different positions in society, and this causes them to develop linguistic skills differently.

However, the role of women in society has changed tremendously in the late decades.

Now women are fighting against sexist discrimination and language is also reflecting this change.

For instance, there were some masculine terms used to refer to professions associated with men like fireman, policeman or foreman.

And now we use a neutral terms to refer to these professions such as firefighter, police officer or supervisor.

In the second place of this presentation, I would like to talk about certain features associated to the way men and women communicate.

Robin Lakoff who is a professor of linguistics at the University of California identified certain features that distinguish women’s talk.

For example women are more likely to use evaluative adjectives such as charming, lovely or sweet than men.

Moreover, they are more acquainted with a bigger range of colors and shapes and they usually use more tag phrases as you know or kind of and polite noises to support the interlocutor’s view.

Women often converse from the heart, sharing memories that touched them, explaining the details in stories.

They are not afraid to express emotions and they know how to listen.

Males often communicate using their intellect –the rational and analytical part of the brain.

This is why they often jump into solving problems.

They like simple, clear and direct conversations.

They don’t want long-winded stories with emotional drama.

And most men also don’t like to be interrupted.

One reason for these differences stems from the way relationships develop during childhood.

Girl’s friendships focus on making connections –talk is essential to this process.

Sharing secrets, relating experiences, revealing problems and discussing options are important during girls’ development.

Boys generally take another approach to friendship which is not less profound, but just different.

They tend to focus on activities like football matches or whatever rather than conversation.

This difference in youth leads to dissimilar communication styles in adulthood.

Women communicate through dialogue, discussing emotions, choices and problems and men remain action-oriented, that is, the goal of communication for them is to achieve something.

In addition, nonverbal communication involving some levels of body expression is also different.

On the one hand, women tend to be more expressive with animated faces and hands always in motion, often touching others.

On the other hand, men are more conservative in facial movement and body contact.

Obviously, it is a general research but these differences are not absolute.

There are some men who want to chat about their feelings and like conversations and women who quickly tire of discourse.

As we have seen, most of the research studies investigating the language patterns of men and women are based on the presumption that there is a difference.

From my point of view, perhaps if men stopped expecting women to communicate like men, and women stopped trying to get men to communicate like women, we would have enough energy left to appreciate how each sex compliments the other in a wonderful way.

I will finish saying that if you are interested in this topic there is a funny book called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus written by John Gray from which we can learn more about this.

I don’t have any specific question, so if someone wants to make a comment or say something is free to do it.

Thank you very much for your attention.