Communication Between Men and Women

There is a large problem when it comes to communication between men and women, whether it is between children, teenagers, or adults; because of a cross gender society. Once both sides understand this “cross-culture communication” problem, so that no gender is blamed, improvement will naturally occur. Deborah Tannen, is an award winning writer and a best selling author for her eccentric essays based on differences of male and female conversations. In the essay, “Sex, Lies and Conversation” she writes on the many distinctions of the style of conversations on both men and women.

The author’s main belief in “Sex, Lies and Conversation”, is that both men and women come from two different cultures and that during a simple a conversation it would seem as if it was “cross-cultural communication”. Tannen states that in a research video, she noticed that during conversations between women, “their eyes anchored on each other’s faces and they faced each other directly” (Tannen, p.230). However, for the men she states “they sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room, periodically glancing at each other” (Tannen p.230). She shows an example of a young couple where whenever she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and put his arm over his face. She clearly thinks that he is taking a nap, but he insisted that he was blocking out everything around him and was listening extra hard.

One of the beliefs that Tannen talked about was when she stated, “women make more listener-noise, and such as ‘mhm,’ ‘uhuh,’ and ‘yeah’ to show I’m with you” (Tannen p.230). Basically a woman loves to show attention to the speaker and loves getting the same attention when she is the speaker. “Men, she found, more often give silent attention” (Tannen p.230). A woman’s habit during a conversation is just as irritating to a man, as a man’s conversation habit is to a woman. Women feel that when men are silent they aren’t paying attention, while men feel that a woman’s “stream of listener noise” as overreaction (Tannen p.231). For example, whenever I come home from school my mom always asks me, “How was school?”. I could have the most boring story in the world and my mom will throw out sound affects of “Oooh”, “Ahhh”, and “Oh Wow”. I mean seriously my stories of school are not remotely interesting and she is just so into the conversation like a little kid watching a magic show for the first time. I mean I love my mom but I just can’t talk to her because the interruptions become very annoying after a while. My dad on the other hand, says “sounds good” gives a simple nod like he enjoyed the conversation and eats dinner.

Tannen states, “For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread form which it is woven” (Tannen p. 229). Basically, a good conversation with a girl