Maybe I'm just a strange kind of woman. Maybe it's because I grew up on a farm in isolation with my cats, books, typewriter and music as my best friends. Being adopted as a baby into a family with much older parents and a brother who didn't make conversation with me, I had to learn it through books or the soap opera General Hospital, then in college; but I've never had the typical conversational style of a woman. So when author/sociolinguist Deborah Tannen, who first penned bestselling-book That's Not What I Meant!, concludes some things from her many studies in her 1990 book, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men In Conversation, I can't agree.
Ultimately, Tannen's reason for writing this book is to prove that the sexes have been raised with different approaches to communicating and if we as adults only realize what these differences are, then we shall be able to develop better communication habits. She does not take into consideration that there are many, many people of both sexes who, for some reason or other, have not been influenced in the same way as others of their sex.
I'm sure it's true for a lot of women that they love to gossip, which for them helps to build emotional intimacy with another. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of men hate to indulge in women's gossip, but will enjoy it with a male friend on occasion. Tannen shows this very well with stories and dialogues of real conversations by young people who thought they were not being listened to.
I'm also sure that a lot of women like to complain or "trouble talk," while many men do not and instead see it as demeaning the person indulging in it. These men would rather just fix your problem and if they can't, they're not interested in it. Tannen likewise illustrates this problem over and over again.
What it all comes down to is that the men she has studied believe that conversation is an indicator of status in the relationship and the women she has studied believe that conversation indicates the level of intimacy in the relationship.
Tannen explains that these beliefs were formed in our childhood when girls formed a few close friends to gab and the boys formed teams to play competitive sports. This, I agree, is probably a part of the problem for many people, but not all. There is also the influence of parental beliefs and expectations as well as society's, but Tannen doesn't point this out, but only to say that "gender differences are so much more troubling than other cross-cultural differences."
Not that this book only gives her perspective, though. She discusses in great length other psychologists she knows and their impressions or cases, then follows up with her corroborating research, plus a full index of her sources in the back. Here is a sample of this:
In light of these and many other studies of girls' real conversations, it is no wonder that girls fear rejection by their peers if they appear too successful and boys don't. Boys, from the earliest age, learn that they can get what they want "higher status" by displaying superiority. Girls learn that displaying superiority will not get them what they want: affiliation with their peers. Pp 218
Tannen notes the subjects talked about and body language are amazingly similar in men and women as children and at twenty-five years of age. That's quite a provocative statement, isn't it? Whether or not it's realistic, her point is that our conversational habits were formed as youngsters and will not change. We can only learn to appreciate our differences with the other sex and not expect them to respond like we would.
Concluding Thoughts
This book would be considered a self-help book, I'm sure, and it does have a lot of compelling research in the first hundred pages. Then, my friends, I started skipping for the remaining, repetitive 198 pages. Yes, almost three hundred pages that point out the differences in the sexes and nary a similarity that I noticed, from what I read or noted from titles of chapters or subchapters like "Damned if I do!," "Community and Contest," "Whose Way Is Better?" and "Physical Constellations."
So did it help me?
I guess since reading this book I'm less inclined to be offended by my guy friend's silence when I wouldn't mind talking, although it's not like I'm pressuring him with questions or embarrassing him with my trouble or emotional talk. I really don't have a problem with talking to or understanding men, so I don't think I got much out of this narrowly-defined book with its pat advice of understanding the unique make-up of the sexes.
I'd rather look at it like this, that we're all unique and it takes time and compassion to understand each other. Not a book filled with case studies. However, Stephen_Murray was much more appreciative of the book, and naphtalia gave it four stars. They might have read later versions or are more fascinated with the ground-breaking insights than I am.
I got bored after a hundred pages. My recommendation is to either check out her more recent work or to look up Dr. Rollo May instead. I've always been impressed with him and have reviewed two of his psychologically-helpful books and will probably be reviewing another.
Thanks for reading!
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