On Gender Differences In Communication And Inter-gender Miscommunication

Sex differences are a fundamental fact of human life. Ever since the publication of Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place in 1975, there has been an extensive study of language and gender. In this book, Lakoff argued that women's speech differs in a number of respects from men's speech, claiming that women's speech contains more linguistic expressions of uncertainty than men's speech does. Women tend to use more tag questions, hedges, and question intonation patterns in declarative sentences, which suggests a degree of uncertainty or a lack of assertiveness. Over thirty years have passed, and many of Lakoff's claims have been criticized for their lack of empirical support. However, there is almost a consensus among sociolinguists that whatever language one analyzes, women and men will be found to speak differently in one way or another. This is hardly surprising when we consider that all known societies divide human beings into the categories of female and male and allot different statuses to them on this basis. As a result, men and women develop different features in language use and communication style in the course of their sociolization and thus constitute different sub-cultures. When men and women interact with each other, miscommunications may occur due to their different expectations and interpretations about each other's speech. This paper on gender difference in communication and inter-gender miscommunication is written within a framework of five chapters.Chapter One begins with a discussion of sexism in English by presenting the various linguistic phenomena in English that bear the marks of a sexist language. The speech of men and women forms two systems which are in many ways distinct from each other. Six aspects of verbal differences including color terms, adjectives, swearing and taboo language, tag questions, hedging expressions, and commands and directives are analyzed and studied, among which women's use of tag questions and hedging expressions are studied from the perspective of pragmatics.Chapter Two firstly describes all-female and all-male gender patterns in communication, then comes to the source of gender patterns which began in the early years when children play in same-sex peer groups. Although boys and girls grow up together and go to school together, sex differences have influenced children's behaviors and speech. Thecharacteristics of childhood games, together with the accompanied behavioral and speech patterns, are carried forward into adulthood. As a result, men and women develop different communicative styles, for which three explanations are offered from three different perspectives.Chapter Three lists and expands on eight areas of potential miscommunication and four stereotypes in inter-gender miscommunication. It is argued that inter-gender miscommunications are caused by men and women's different conceptions and interpretations of interaction, and that some stereotypes play a negative role in understanding inter-gender communication and are sometimes misleading. It is risky to guide inter-gender communication by stereotypes because they neglect the differences between individuals.Chapter Four provides three approaches to the problem of inter-gender miscommunication. Men and women's different interpretive frameworks show that they have different ways of seeing the world which result from the asymmetrical differentiation of the roles and statuses of men and women. When studied from the perspective of pragmatics, inter-gender miscommunication can be attributed to the conflict of different face strategies, or politeness strategies, i.e., either involvement strategy or independence strategy. The multi-determined social context approach not only sees gender differences in speech as underlying inter-gender miscommunication, but also takes the factors of racial, ethnic, age and class differences into consideration.Chapter Five suggests several ways of improving inter-gender communication ?to increase shared knowledge, to learn to be open and flexible and to recognize th...