A Study On Influencing Factors In Successful Cross-gender Communication

Researchers point out that we spend 70 percent of our awake time communicating. No matter what we do, we will have to communicate with the opposite sex at some time of our lives-fathers, mothers, siblings, schoolmates, bosses, co-workers and so on. Thus, gender differences in communication are everywhere. In fact, each gender is a "culture" in itself, male and female behaves according to two separate sets of rules about what "right" is.Cross-gender communication is an aspect of intercultural communication, a kind of face-to-face communication between people from subcultures. During the process of cross-gender communication, different gender-roles require them to act in accordance with their own roles, and be the member of their own gender groups. Undoubtedly, these differences will cause difficulties to communication between men and women, even miscommunication. This thesis tries to find out some influencing factors that affect the communication between different genders: male and female have different gendered interpretive frameworks-solution vs sympathy, independence vs intimacy, advice vs understanding, information vs feelings, orders vs proposals, conflict vs compromise, exclusive vs inclusive, contest vs community, especially factors overriding gender, such as age, occupational position, communication intention, empathy, and social and cultural factors can also exert influence on cross-gender communication. Furthermore, some suggestions on how to achieve effective cross-gender communication are given, for instance, accepting Lakoff's suggestion, realizing gender culture differences, increasing shared knowledge, learning to be tolerant, respecting each other, being opening and flexible.