According to the author Deborah Tannen the article, Sex, Lies, and conversation" is about how differently men and women percieve conversation in their relationship. She states that lack of conversation is wreaking havoc within marriages. this is due to the fact that men and women have very different expectations of communication. Tannen describes how differences in communication start in the childhood socialization. For young girls, conversation is the cornerstone of friendship.
Tannen’s article is based on her theory of relations between men and women which states that men tend to be more literal about words while women, listen for metamessages in conversations. A metamessage is a “form of indirectness,” and women are more than likely to use it more often than men throughout conversations (200). Tannen implies that because women are more attentive to speech they become “ more focused on involvement, that is, on relationships among people and it is through metamessages that relationships among people are established and maintained” (202). Since their early childhood years, “their social life usually centers around a best friend,
Let’s Understand Each Other Better The article "Sex, lies, and Conversation," written by the professor of linguistics Deborah Tannen, explains us about the many dissimilarities amongst men and women that occur in the way they communicate with each other. It explains to the reader why there is a lack of communication and understanding between a man and a woman who aim to pursue different objectives through conversations. The article is a very effective passage that provides logical reasoning to support its claim of developing cross cultural understanding in order to avoid the clash of genders that is caused by failed conversations. Most of the women complain that men are not good conversational partners at home. According to the females, men do not listen or talk to them and do not contribute in day to day discussions.
SEX, LIES AND CONVERSATION BY TANNEN DEBORAH A dose reading of sex, lies, and conversation by Deborah tannen reveals to us how differently men and women perceive conversation in their relationship, most wives want their husbands to be first and foremost conversational partners but few husbands share this expectation of their wives. Tannen describes how difference in communities start in childhood socialization by sharing secret and feelings, girls’ intimacy is the fabric of relationship. A conversation is the cornerstone of friendship ``where as young boys build relationships by doing things together, boys tend to hang out in larger group so most struggle to avoid subordinate position in the group intimate conversation ,it tends to be like a form of weakness for boys and men because it makes them feel inferior or ``like a child listening to adults or an employee to a boss``tannen studied video tapes from her own research and experiments as well as from other colleagues of young children and adults making to their same sex best friends. Within all ages, she concluded that the girls and women faced each other with direct eye contact but the boys and men wouldn’t face each other but would glance back at each other every now and then. When men aren’t giving the women that same direct eye contact, the women assume that the men aren’t even paying attention.
The short story is effective to the readers in that it is able to show the repercussions of unbalanced power on one in marriage by the topics of dominance, ignorance, and control. However because the story is written in the first person's point of view, the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" may be seen as an unreliable source. With more voices in the story and having read more books on the topic of gender stratification, the readers might get a sense that marriage in the 1800's was actually not as depressing and unfair for women as the story portrays it was through
Sean Hopper Welch ENGL1301-086 15Sept2009 Rhetorical Analysis of Sex, Lies, and Conversation The author’s goal in this essay seems to be to point out differences in the way men and women communicate in an attempt to eliminate a major contributing factor to divorce. She likens men and women’s difficulties in communicating with difficulties in communicating between cultures. She identifies several factors that contribute to why men and women have these difficulties. I feel she identified situations that are seen and experienced in everyday life of men and women and by doing so has helped relationships worldwide. She begins with a real life situation to set the scene for the essay.
The Discrimination against Women Identities Throughout history, female were considered lesser beings and nothing more than the property of their husband. In the short story, Blank Spaces by Joanna Cockerline, the acknowledgment of female being inferior creatures in comparison to men is highlighted. Struggle against misfortunes, Elizabeth is oppressed by the social inequality due to the fact that she is a girl. In Blank Spaces, the social inequality implied by the narrative severely impacts Elizabeth’s career hierarchy, character traits, and life experiences. Like many feminist writer, Cockerline focuses her emphasis on how social norm discriminate women by inhibit their job opportunities.
Since we don’t realize that others’ styles are different, we miscommunicate with each other causing problems and conflicts in conversation. Conflicts are influenced by our gender and experienced everyday in the workplace, public, and private settings. Men and women both have many different conversational ways. The common ways among us men often involve “using things such as joking, teasing, and playful put-downs.” We can sometimes come across as hostile and arrogant when we aren’t trying to be. The conversational rituals common among women are often ways of “maintaining an appearance of equality, taking into account the effort of the exchange on the other person, using up effort to downplay the speaker’s authority so they can get the job done without flexing their muscles in an obvious way.” Women use conversational strategies to avoid appearing conceited and take another person’s feelings into account.
Now-a-days men and women can be seen as having expanded their roles in society, with women entering male roles and men finding new ways to relate to and function in the family house. As male roles are being taken over by women, does that mean that mean they have to dress like them? Of course not, however there are women who dress like a man because they are comfortable with the clothing. Does that make them odd/different? Who decides what is odd and what is different.
It is interesting to compare the concept of love and partnership in more mature men and women in The Taming of the Shrew with Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Social Roles Both plays deal with the difficulty and stuffiness of the social structure. In "Much Ado About Nothing," the characters often have to give way to people in higher authority roles. Benedick notes frequently that others in the household speak in lofty words to seem of a higher position than they are. In "Taming of the Shrew," Bianca is not allowed to marry until her older sister does, and Katherine does not wish to marry.