FROM THE EDITORS
Marshall Shelley
January 1, 1991
The recent furor over women reporters interviewing male athletes in the locker room raised again the centuries-old issue of how men and women relate to one another. The church, of course, has also struggled with this question.
On one hand, we find people who want to minimize the differences between the sexes. The National Football League considers gender differences less important than providing equal (and immediate) access to interviews for the post-game show.
On the other hand, differences between the sexes provide a steady source of material for stand-up comics ("When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?") as well as for serious researchers.
Both traditionalists and feminists are taking seriously the work of Georgetown University linguist Deborah Tannen, whose most recent book, You Just Don't Understand (Morrow, 1990), explores the different conversational styles and unspoken "metamessages" sent and received by women and men.
While admitting many individuals are exceptions to her general conclusions, she identifies a number of ways that male and female conversational styles tend to differ.
Women's conversation, she says, tends to be "symmetrical"-emphasizing equality and intimacy-and is judged primarily on the basis of how close participants perceive themselves to be.
Men's conversations tend to be "hierarchical"-emphasizing each person's independence and relative status. In groups, men tend to identify who has the best information on the topic of interest and grant that person an elevated status.
Thus, while women judge conversations by the quality of interaction, men gauge conversation by the quality of the information. Tannen calls it "rapport" versus "report."
These differences frustrate communication ...
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