PSY 409B – April 25, 2006

Ethnic Style in Male-Female Conversation

Naomi Wong-oral 3

Tannen, Deborah, Gender and Discourse, Oxford University Press, 1994, (pages 175-193).

Instructions for this activity are found at:

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

Instructor: Dr. Leon James

Introduction

A person misunderstanding what another person says is a common characteristic of cross-cultural communication.
It feels good to be understood, to have a sense of belonging and connection, and sharing an identity with someone.
The opposite goes for the not understanding a person.

Indirectness-people expressing wants and opinions “off record”, indirectly
It is necessary for rapport and defensiveness, which is related to Brown and Levinson’s positive and negative face.
Rapport-is the lovely satisfaction of being understood without explaining oneself, and getting what one wants without asking for it.
Defensiveness-is the need to be able to save face by reneging in case one’s conversational contribution is not received well—the ability to say “I never said that,” or “That isn’t what I meant.”
These are socially determined by their past experiences.
This chapter talks about the communication styles of Greeks, Americans, and Greek-Americans.

A. Indirectness in Discourse

1. [Successful indirectness]

Example of a Greek woman interviewed at age 65 said that before she got married she had to ask her father’s permission before doing anything.

Example 1:

Text Box: Scenario:
She asked her father if she could go to a dance.

Father reply 1: If you want, you can go.
(she knew that she could not go and if he really meant that she can go, he would say)
Father reply 2: Yes. You should go.

She takes this indirect answer and does what he prefers without expecting him to express his preference directly.

2. [Unsuccessful indirectness]

Key: to understanding the husband’s strategy is his use of “OK”

Example 2:

Scenario: Example of a couple debating whether to go to a party.

(American native NY of East European Jewish extraction) Wife: John’s having a party. Wanna go?

(Greek )Husband: OK

(later)

Wife: Are you sure you want to go to the party?

Husband: OK, let’s not go. I’m tired anyways.

Wife asking what the husband wanted but didn’t think about her own preference.

However, in asking again, she wanted to make sure, but the husband thought that she didn’t want to go so made up an excuse.

Both being considerate of each other’s feelings got them what neither wanted, because they were expecting to receive information differently from the way the other was sending it out.

OK=positive response

Key=Tannen believes is that she was not expecting to receive her husband’s message through subtle cues; she was assuming he would tell her what he wanted to do directly.

3. Misunderstanding between male and female

When the couple first went out they never had misunderstanding until they were going out for two years. Then it started to happen all the time.

Tannen believes that as the relationship increased,

-the woman increases the use of indirectness (We know each other so well, you will know what I want without my telling you.

-the man, expected less indirectness (we know each other so well, that we can tell each other what we want)

4. Example 3:

Husband: Let’s go visit my boss tonight.

Wife: Why?

Husband: All right, we don’t have to go

Both of them interpreted the word, “why” differently because the wife was asking it for information. He interpreted, as she didn’t want to go.

B. Culturally relative patterns of interpretation: A pilot study

This section talked about extends of cross-cultural differences in interpreting indirectness in Greeks, Americans, and Greek-Americans.

Greeks: from native Greeks living in Bay Area of CA

Greek-American: from New York City

Americans: with Greek-born parents and grandparents

Example questionnaire: Asking to identify the interpretive strategies motivating the couple

Wife: John’s having a party. Wanna go?

Husband: OK.

Wife: I’ll call and tell him we’re coming.

What do you think what the ‘OK’ means by the husband?

1-Indirect: My wife wants to go the this party, since she asked. I’ll go to make her happy.

2-Direct: My wife is asking if I want to go t a party. I feel like going, so I’ll say yes.

What is it about the way the wife and the husband spoke, that gave you that impression?

What would the wife or husband have had to have said differently, in order for you to have checked the other statement?

Results

Choosing 1-indirect

Greek 26%àGreek-American 20%àAmericans 12%

Greeks are the ones mostly like to pick the indirect, and the Greek-Americans are slightly more to the Greeks than the American.

Reason for Greeks to choose 1-indirect:

If the wife didn’t want to go, she would not have brought it up in the first place.

Difference in culture:

Anyone from any culture is capable of interpreting a question either as a request for information or as an expression of some unstated meaning.

However, the one culture group might lean more on the information requesting side or something else.

They also talked about how enthuse or unenthused the husband responded.

Americans: OK=yes 24% lack enthusiasm 20%

Greeks: enthusiasm was stronger for them. No one pointed to “OK” as affirmative nature. “OK” was an unenthusiastic response.

Enthusiasm constraint: brevity effect (the use of brief expression)

American: casual

Greek: reluctant to go to party

Greek-American:

Greeks tend to be more indirect I the context of intimate relationship “rang true” for respondents.

C. Conclusion:

Conversational styles differ among people because of their up bringing, past experiences, and by influences by family communication habits.

Important things to think about are

how meaning is expressed
as seen in patterns of indirectness
what meaning is expressed
as I how much enthusiasm is expected.

My Thoughts:

I believe with some of what Tannen presents in her chapter in indirect communications. In all cultures, there are many different types of indirectness uses between male-female, adults-kids, parents-children, and all kinds of combinations of people. There are positive and negative indirectness depending on many factors, but the main factor I believe is the goal of the communication to the other person. When I was doing this outline for my oral, I interviewed a couple of friends on different examples and asked them what they thought of it. According to one my friends, she referred to example 2 and 4 and gave me her thoughts on that. She gave me an example of her and her friend (Asian) in how she thought that the word, “OK” was a bit difficult to interpret when the person sounds unenthusiastic or upset. She also commented on the wife asking “Why?” She said that the couple should be able to say whatever they want to each other and not be hurt. I don’t agree with her because there are some things that shouldn’t be said because they should be considerate of each other. They don’t always have to be open to each other. When I say this, I am thinking about the collective view from an Asian perspective. I always think about what the other feels and don’t want to corrupt a harmonious relationship in bringing something up that might shake the relationship. In this case, I don’t like to tell what I really feel to another person because I don’t want to be truthful and hurtful. When I relate indirectness to the threefold self and unity model, I can see it being used in all context and in all levels of each threefold self and models.

Links:

http://www.prin.edu/college/china/about/papers/williams3.shtml

This link is written by a student who went to China and Mongolia, and after his trip he made a website about it. In one section it talks about the use of indirectness and the importance of indirectness of communications in the nature of political communication in China. He gives many examples of events in the history of China in how indirectness was used.

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/tellit.htm

This link is an article Deborah Tannen wrote to explain Indirectness, Keeping one’s verbal distance, Hypocrisy! Dishonesty!, Language as We Live It, and Clairty vs. Color. She gives many examples in the linguistic point of view about communication styles between gender and among different cultures.

http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB2/PS/PER/Moeller/WS-0405/Grammer_communication_paradox.pdf

This link talks about what communication is and explains how there are different ways in communicating it through body language, faceial language, reasons for communications, etc. It is also a study of communication between male and female, and also other factors relating to biology and genes. This whole experiment shows all the who, what, where, when, why, how, and other interesting examinations of communications.

My Home Page:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409bs2006/wong/wong-home.htm

Class Home Page is:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/classhome-g24.htm