Male's Speech Rhetorical Analysis

Tannen’s piece analyzes how men and women differ in their conversational skills, and how most instances of miscommunication are because of these

Summary: According to What Do Men Really Want? written by Eric Jaffe, men are more complex than originally thought. Jaffe talks about how men perceive women’s bodies, how attraction works, commitment, and the complexity of men. Most of the stereotypes people have predisposed toward men, backed by several researcher’s surveys and experiments, are found only partially true.

The company has been around since 1932 but wasn’t until 2013 that they started to use the “Manly-Man” campaign. Ever since Old Spice seems to make you believe using their products will make you smell like a man, appealing to men who don’t think they are man enough. The ad shows a man in an elevator, one half of his body is heavier, covered up with a sweater, scarf and a hat for the winter holding bottles of Old Spice while the other half he is shirtless holding a bowl of cereal with holes in it causing the milk to come out. In the bowl of cereal has little sticks of dynamite.

Sadly, out society places those stereotypes on male individuals and they are looked down upon if they choose a different career such as becoming a stay at home father or becoming a hair dresser. These professions would be considered more feminine and the individuals may even receive rude feedback from family and friends for choosing this career path. Masculinity in Okonkwo’s culture is similar but different. I still feel that there is a very distinct masculine few on men that they are in charge and in power but woman in America have more of a say than women in Okonkwo’s culture do. While reading Things Fall Apart it became very evident that the man in society and tribe was definitely the leader and the ruler.

Essay 3 In Deborah Tannen’s “But What Do You Mean,” she delves into the complications men and women may have when it comes to expressing their ideas and opinions to one another. In this essay, Tannen explores common situations in communication including apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes.

Antony’s speech begins with him using verbal irony to deconstruct Brutus’ argument as well as a mix of logos and pathos to appeal to as many as possible. Throughout his speech, he also uses visual aids and figurative and physical language, as well as logos, ethos, and pathos to turn the hearts of as many men as possible. Antony is a master at knowing his audience, something that Brutus lacked. This is the reason Antony was able to turn the hearts of the Romans. Antony was closer with the plebeians than Brutus.

Antigone’s efforts to execute her will on Creon and his men resulted in her being viewed as weak. Creon asks Haimon, “Is a woman stronger than we?”(Sophocles 218). His question clearly implies the sexist and patriarchal values and beliefs ingrained in him just like plenty of men at that time, which is that women are subservient to men and that’s the way it should be. Creon goes on to call Haimon an “adolescent fool!”(Sophocles 221), all because he defended Antigone’s actions. Ironically, Haimon admits to finding Creon’s wisdom more valuable than his marriage; even the nicest of men have their biased perceptions of superiority.

Stereotyping is not something that only happens with women; men are meant to fit a certain standard, and those who fail to do this are the target of insults. “Be a man,” “suck it up,” and “don’t cry” are only a few phrases handpicked from a plentiful selection of ego-damaging constructions built into today's society, aimed at boys and men. Reinforcing rhetoric that feminizes emotional expression and masculinizes violence has the power to stunt empathy, drive dominance, and connect respect with fear. Boys are born loving creatures, but at a very young age they are taught the traits, diminutive language, and mindset that aligns them with society’s concept of what it means to be a man. If a man is not like this, then essentially, he is not a true

Research claims that the term ‘masculinity’ can offer insight into men’s social identity as it “consist of those behaviors, languages and practices, existing in specific cultural and organizational locations which are commonly associated with males…” (Itulua-Abumere, 2013 pg.1). Despite this, there are societal and personal definitions of what it means to be masculine and how masculinities can be performed, however, most men aspire towards ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Carrigan et al., 2004; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). The concept hegemonic masculinity explains society’s ideology of what it is to be a real man (i.e. being a breadwinner, tough, dominant and violent), and advises against behaviours that would make males appear unmanly and feminine

This social climate and the standards that exist within influence these storytellers, making their perspectives biased. A problem arises when these stories that include women are being told from a male perspective, especially during this time period, when the forced silence and compliance of women let men assume and write what they wanted to about women. This is shown in the warped perceptions that men, like the Reeve, had of women. Instead of being seen as actual humans, women are made to seem like sexual objects, evident in how the Reeve describes Malyne as one would describe cattle, how Nicholas approaches Alison, and how Alan and John treat the women in the Reeve’s Tale. From the viewpoint of these characters, love is impractical when their final goal is to sleep with the women that they see as objects for their pleasure.

In her article “The Power of Talk” Tannen states “Women and men tend to have different habitual ways of saying what they mean, and conversations between them can be like cross-cultural communication: you can’t assume that the other person means what you would mean if you said the same thing in the same way”. In other words, the way of expressing ideas for men and women can be so different that it is comparable to cross-cultural communication. For example man are usually straightforward when telling their thoughts, while women often talk with hints and expect man to understand what they mean. The comedy “White Chicks” is about FBI agent brothers Marcus and Kevin who were assigned to escort celebrity sisters to Hamptons, where they should be

One of the most common stereotypes that is most heard is that a woman can not kill her own spiders. In Dave Barry’s article “ From Here on, Let Women Kill Their Own Spiders” he talks about some of the main stereotypes that concern both men and women. Dave Barry is a novelist with over 30 published books and articles. He is a professional Humorist and believes that humor is a great deal easier than a real job. His main purpose of his essay seems to be to convince men not to kill womens spiders, and that women should give men a break.

Behavior is a feature of one’s self that is commonly influenced by many different things. This can include the environment one grew up in and one’s biological makeup. The diversity of the world makes each of us unique but not necessary different from one another. By means of that, we are all members of human society yet we’re easily distinguished by our habits, cultures, and sex. However, does this mean that we are made to function according to the expectancy from our society?