FREE ESSAY ON GENDER DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNICATION

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNICATION

Gender Differences in Communication
Every race, culture, civilization, and society on this planet shares two things in
common: the presence of both the male and female sex, and the need to communicate between
the two. The subject of gender differences appears to have engaged peoples' curiosity for
as long as people have been writing down their thoughts, from as far back as the writing
of the creation of Adam and Eve, to its current popular expression in books such as Men
are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
The assertion that men and women communicate in different ways, about different things,
and for different reasons seems to go un-argued and is accepted as true by a vast
majority of Americans. It is the reason why we communicate differently that conjures up
quite a bit of debate and conversational turmoil. One of the most traditional hypothesis
is the one John Gray wrote about in his book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,
which essentially points to differences in brain structure, hormones, and socialization
as the cause of such an enormous gender gap in communication. 
But that was then and this is now, scientists throughout the world are working to learn
more about gender differences in communication, and much has been discovered since the
days of Mars & Venus. One such research team is that of Canary and Hause of the
Communication Quarterly. In their study, they conclude that the previous 50 years of
research on sex differences in communications, such as that of John Gray, brought about
no conclusive findings for such differences. The researcher's analyses of their findings
provided evidence for an expectation of small differences due to sex: approximately 1% of
variance, concluding that the effects found were due mostly to society and culture.
Deborah Tannen, a leading scholar of communication, also shares this view of gender and
communication. She studied ethnic groups, which speak the same language using different
styles, and found that the effect of gender on communication is miniscule compared to the
effect of culture and socialization. In her research, Tannen asserts that the basic uses
of conversation by women are to establish and support intimacy; while for men it is to
acquire status. These styles and motives for communicating represent different cultural
upbringings, and one is not necessarily better than the other. However, she also notes in
her findings that men tend to interrupt more and ask questions less. In fact, the female
tendency to ask more questions sometimes results in receiving lower grades from male
professors who view frequent questioning as proof that a student knows less than her male
counter parts.
The theory that differences are fabricated early in a child's life and are not biological
doesn't account for everything. David Cohen, in his article regarding Tannen's findings
points out a mystery in the connections she made. Since women are primarily responsible
for child-rearing and therefore disproportionately responsible for teaching the species
to speak, when is it that boys learn to speak in the male style?
From a very early age, males and females are taught different linguistic practices. For
example, communicative behaviors that are considered acceptable for boys may be
considered completely inappropriate for girls. Whereas a boy might be permitted to use
rough language, a girl in the same situation might be reminded to use her manners and be
lady-like The research on women and language shows that women experience linguistic
discrimination in two ways: in the way they are taught to use language, and in the way
general language usage treats them. So, for example, women reflect their role in the
social order by using tag questions, qualifiers, and fillers to soften what they have to
say. Women exhibit their subordinate status through avoiding direct and threatening
communication. While in recent years this gap has narrowed, our society retains a
tendency to imply that maleness, after all, is the standard for normalcy. 
This unwritten standard society uses to judge people dates back thousands of years and is
clearly depicted in the quotes of some of the most famous people in history. Aristotle
described women as a deformity, a misbegotten male, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that god
should not have created women, craniologists of the nineteenth century argued that
women's smaller heads justified their subordinate position in society, and Freud believed
women had little sense of justice, the list goes on.
The history of male supremacy in communication and life is unfortunate, but it is past,
what does the future hold? Only the media will tell. Mass mediated messages offer the
most contemporary, powerful, technological and influential strategies for shaping
cultural reality. The beauty, diet, and advertising industries are the most obvious, and
the best researched examples of contemporary, self-conscious myth-makers who control
cultural concepts and acceptable images of gender. These industries set the standard for
true masculinity and femininity, offering the law on what is male and what is female
behavior.
As we begin the twenty first century we enter a world of rules and regulations, a world
where what we say and do is controlled by cultural stereo-types, some age old, some
contemporary, and some that are deciding factors in how we live our lives. Through recent
research we have learned that gender differences in communication are not something that
we are born with, they're not due to differences in brain matter, and they're certainly
not due to the two sexes being from different planets. We are who we are and we
communicate how we communicate because it is what society and culture demand of us.
Although this sounds like a simple difference that can easily be resolved you might be
surprised; disregarding everything you've ever learned about the difference between boys
and girls is a mighty big task.