Psychology 409B April 4, 2006

Conversational Coherence between Genders

By Lisa Tabon

Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse, Oxford University Press, 1994 (pages 99-129)

Instructions for this activity are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/g24-oral1.htm

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

I. Topical Cohesion

a. Girls’ and women’s talk is more tightly focused, while the boys’ and men’s are more diffuse

b. At all ages, the girls and women exhibit minimal or no difficulty finding something to talk about

c. At all ages, the boys and men exhibit great difficulty finding something to talk about

d. Second Grade Boys

i. No topic is elaborated

ii. Exhibit extreme discomfort in the situation of sitting in a room with nothing to do but talk

iii. They talk about finding something to do, tease, tell jokes, plan future activities, what’s in the room, look for a game to play

e. Second Grade Girls

i. Immediately agreed on a topic that was also an activity: told each other stories

ii. They later come up with a serious topic to talk about: illness, accidents, hospitalizations, falls and scrapes

iii. They seem comfortable engaging in the activity of talk

f. Sixth Grade Boys

i. In their 20 minute conversation, they touched on 55 topics: school, homework, tv, sports, sex, violence on tv, music, girls, guns, videos, etc.

ii. The boys switch topics often, and no topic is extensively elaborated

iii. They do however, negotiate a lot of agreement

g. Sixth Grade Girls

i. One girl opens the conversation with something that happened the night before

ii. Most of their talk concerns intimacy and fights: the concern that fights destroy intimacy

iii. Their talk has a highly stylized sing-song quality

1. this quality results from sharp shifts in pitch, strong emphatic stress on many words, intonation which rises and remains steady at the end of phrases, and elongation of vowels

iv. much of their talk is made up of “constructed dialogue”

h. Tenth Grade Girls

i. Spend first 5 minutes giggling, joking, and laughing

ii. They decide to talk about something serious and/or intimate: Nancy’s problematic relationship with her boyfriend and mother

iii. The rest of the talk elaborates this experience

iv. Intonation patterns are similar to sixth grade girls

v. The intonation contours are exaggerated and the pivotal events are relationships among people and the speaker’s feelings about them

i. Tenth Grade Boys

i. Although they don’t look at each other, neither do they look aimlessly around the room

ii. They talk at length on each topic

iii. Their talk revolves around two related topics, each one reflecting the preoccupation of one of the boys

iv. Both topics grow out of the boys’ relationships, feelings, behavior, and conversations that arouse during a party they attended the night before

v. Friendship alliances are of central concern

vi. They talk about other people; spend a lot of time putting others down

vii. girls are specific in criticizing the behavior of others while boys put them down in a general way

j. women frequently express dissatisfaction with the way men respond to their concerns

i. they would like men to express understanding and sympathy, what they hear is downplaying of the problem

ii. observation of the 10^th grade boys supports the suggestion that such dissatisfaction is the result of cross-cultural differences

iii. denying the basis for the other’s complaint seems not to be failure of empathy but rather a means of reassurance

k. Twenty-five year old men

i. Men in the oldest pair exhibit difficulty finding a topic, marked by displays of cerebral effort and strain

ii. They finally decide on the topic of marriage—they talk about it on a theoretical level

iii. They agree that women are more concerned with marriage than are men

iv. The men’s talk is characterized by slow pacing, formal register, numerous hesitations, fillers, and formulaic expressions

v. They make broad and abstract rather than personal statements

l. Twenty-five year old women

i. Cover their own relationship with each other as well as their personal life plans and choices

ii. The conversation includes many small struggles

iii. The women seem to be vying for the distinction of having little confidence, low grades, lack of ability, and poor communication skills

II. Summary: Topical Cohesion

a. Easier for girls and women to choose topics and talk about them; they devoted more talk to fewer topics; their topics focused on personal and specific concerns

b. Boys at the 2^nd and 6^th grade levels devoted small amounts of talk to each of a great number of topics

i. The youngest boys expressed their desire to find something to do

ii. 10^th grade and 25 year old men talked at length about a limited number of topics even while showing signs of discomfort

iii. The men discussed personal topic, marriage, in an impersonal way.

c. The 10^th grade boys discussed topics of intense personal concern but differed from the girls who discussed personal concerns in two ways

i. Each focused on and returned to his own concerns and downplay the concerns expressed by others

ii. One confronted the other directly with a complaint about their relationship, whereas the girls complained about relationships with others who were not present

III. The Congruence of Posture and Topic

a. In both the alignment of posture and gaze and the development of topics, the girls and women focused more tightly and more directly on each other than did the boys and men

b. The 10^th grade boys sat aligned but parallel, both looking out rather than at each other, whereas the girls sat facing and looking at each other

c. Although girls are more visibly aligned with each other both physically and topically, the girls expressed complaints against friends who weren’t present

d. The talk of the 10^th grade boys displayed more intense intimacy than the other pairs, although their physical postures were indirectly aligned, and they never looked directly at each other