Communication In Deborah Tannen's But What Do You Mean

Socio-linguist Deborah Tannen demonstrates how men and women communicate differently in her essay “Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?” In her observations of communication styles, she discusses the way in which men and women communicate leads them to conflict because they have different understanding of their partners’ role. She also explains male and female communication differences not only cause ineffective conversation, but also push couples into a dilemma in their relationship; however, as men and women better understand the differences, their relationship improves.

There are various cultural differences that teachers are likely to come across culturally diverse classrooms including Gender, Age, Cognition, Norms, beliefs, Primary language, Exceptionality, Cultural heritage, Socio-economic status, Opinions, ideas, Attitudes, Expectations, Behavioral styles, Geography, Learning styles, Communication Styles, Decision making styles, Ways of Communicating Non-verbally, Ways of Learning, Ways of Dealing with Conflict, Ways of Using Symbols and Approaches to completing tasks etc.

Socio-linguist Deborah Tannen illustrates that communication differences within men and women in “Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other.” Tannen provides an anecdote to describe the same conversational problems that happen on married couples. Tannen states different communication styles of men and women cause misunderstanding or even ruin their marriage. Tannen also provides the solution of understanding “cross-cultural” differences can improve male and female relationship.

Names/Nombres written by Julia Alvarez is a short story regarding a little girl, Hooleetah, moving with her family from the Dominican Republic to New York City in the 1960s. It is extremely clear within the beginning of the story that the girl absolutely despises it when people pronounce her, or her family's’ names wrong, this is proven when she corrects the customs officer under her breath when he mispronounces her family’s last name. “At Immigration, the officer asked my father, Mister Elbures, if he had anything to declare... but I said our name to myself, opening my mouth wide for the organ blast of trilling my tongue for the drumroll of the r, All-vab- rrr-es (Alvarez 1). As the story continues each member of her family is assigned with many different American names, as people found it hard to pronounce their actual names. Her mother, father and two sisters all had a variation of names they went by,

Communication is a critical foundation of every relationship; without it the relationship is deemed unsuccessful. Unsuccessful communication can result in constant tension, power inequalities and disagreements. Relational Dialectics is a communication theory, formed by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, in which personal relationships are judged upon the management of tension produced by contradictory forces. (Thrift, 2017). Each of the contradictory forces contain two components, an internal source, between the individuals in the relationship and and external source, which is interference from the outside world. The film Safe Haven (Bowen, Hallström, 2013), illustrates the successful use of the contradictory forces, as well as how to manage the tensions of selection, separation, neutralization and reframing set out by the theory of Relational Dialectics. Communication in romantic relationships may pose challenges among significant others when learning how to allude the tensions unexpected realities put upon them. Relational Dialectics, demonstrated by the characters of Katie and

In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda struggles with communication. Melinda is at a party, she is attacked and raped by a student who attends her school, Merryweather high. When it is time to head back to school after the summer, Melinda decides not to talk to anyone. She became completely mute. In the beginning of the book, Melinda is thinking about her attack when her " throat squeezes shut...I can't even look at myself." (pg.28) Melinda was so embarrassed that she did want to talk to anyone about it. Melinda demonstrates lack of communication during this time, if she had talked to someone they could have helped her, and made sure she was ok. Melinda thinks that “[She] should probably tell someone, just tell someone. Get it over with.

Driscoll (2000) model) consists of three stages (What, So what & Now what) completing one cycle help me to improve my caring practice continuously and learning from those experience for better practice in the future. The cycle starts with a description of the situation (“What”), which include analysis of the incident. “So what” evaluate the experience, including the analysis to make sense of the experience, and the final stage “Now what” is a conclusion of what else could I have done better and an action plan to prepare for, if the similar situation arose again. Baird and winter (2005) gave some reasons why reflection is required in the reflective practice. They highlighted that a reflection could generate the practical knowledge, help to adapt

It is form of exchanging information through the usage of messages, non-verbal actions and facial expressions. This type of communication is useful in professional, personal and social life of a person.

In Deborah Tannen’s article, “But What Do You Mean?” Tannen exchanges her view on seven topics of a predicament in a communication between both men and women. The seven topics which are apologies, criticism, thank-you’s, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. In this article, Tannen focuses on women mostly as her primary examples, such as giving more examples of women’s misinterpreting and miscommunicating in conversations. However, I believe that her article is too old and that her claims about the ways men and women communicate are too rigid. Therefore, in this essay, I will share my encounters in these three topics, apologies, criticism, and fighting.

Effective relationships should be a common goal for all to strive for. The learner believes that there are four major signs that make us human; the need to love, the need to be loved, the need to be accepted and the need to be respected as an individual. None of these things can be accomplished alone, therefore, a relationship needs to be formed. The more effective the relationship the more these needs are able to be met. In the study of marriage and family we look into the areas that can either make or break relationships. We look at the different ways to communicate effectively, the power and conflicts that occur within relationships, and the personal responsibility role we each take on in a relationship.

Communication is an essential part of everyday life. People encounter some form of communication with others on a daily basis, whether it is face-to-face, electronically, etc. However, communication is not universal in that everyone interacts with each other through these several methods. Thus, numerous studies about communication from different viewpoints have been conducted. One of these perspectives is analyzing communication through gender. In the book, You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen (1990) popularized the term “genderlect” to describe the way in which men and women communicate with each other. She suggested that men and women have different styles of conversing, forming two distinct dialects. In a review of Tannen’s book, DeFrancisco (1992) attributed the differing communication styles of men and women to the respective cultures in which they grow up. Because of such gender differences, misunderstanding between men and women creates a gap in the communication process. Tannen used her genderlect theory to help bridge that gap by acknowledging and achieving an understanding of the language of each gender.

The fact that gender-differentiated socialization exists in society cannot be disputed. Equally, to find that differences do emerge with regard to speaking styles between men and women is not surprising. However, by failing to associate gender arrangements to the power arrangements that they promote and enforce is naïve in an intellectual way. Considering the highly integrated lives of the American men and women, to assign full-fledged cultural status to patterns that emerge out of socialization is of doubtful validity. Besides, Tannen moves from the initial premise that boys and girls grow up in two distinct cultures, which is a disputed fact, to the questionable claim that problems with communication between adult males and females are equivalent to other types of cross-cultural miscommunication. With this view, her final conclusion that the issue of miscommunication between men and women emerges from our lack of familiarity with gender specific styles of communication is founded on biased, fictional information.

Since we are kids, there has been a battle between men and women. The conflict is also of misunderstanding reactions of each one to problems with authority, financial problems, communication, etc. Women blame men for not wanting the relationship to work, while men defend themselves, saying that women are too emotional. These happen because men and women look for different behavior from the other one. Anyhow, is important to know that the missing piece of a relationship is communication, and understand that men and women are different. Although Tannen, in Sex, Lies, and Conversation, states that communication manners vary from men and women, causing conflict; however, Judy Brady,

The methods of communication have changed over time. Society has gone from writing letters to email. From there communication went to IM or text messaging. Technology continued to evolve and communication continued to advance. FaceTime or Skype allows us to communicate no matter the distance. Yet, one thing still remained – our interpersonal communication. We still exchange information. We still speak about our feelings, through verbal and non-verbal messages. Over time, myriads of professors have developed different theories that humans communicate. This paper will take a look at Knapp’s Relationship Theory what the purpose of the study is and the results. Furthermore, we’ll take a look at the strengths, weaknesses, and room for improvement

Two of the most relevant topics developed in the last weeks were: non-verbal communication and the barriers to communication.