MAN TALK, WOMAN TALK: DIFFERENCES IN GENDER COMMUNICATION STYLES

In Deborah Tannen’s “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation”, the author analyzes not only how men and women communicate differently, but as well why they do so. And in fact, according to Tannen, the nature of communication in the two sexes is almost exactly opposite. Women talk, says Tannen, to interact, while men talk to deliver information. This difference in approach governs both how they talk and what they expect from the other person in communication.
A man expects communication to be for the purpose of giving him information he considers useful. This means that whatever he hears that he does not consider useful is essentially ignored. On the other hand, because a woman expects communication to be for the purpose of interacting with the other person—of involving him or her in activity that connects the woman to that person and vice versa—she makes no judgment of the communication as useful or not. That is, a man prioritizes—as soon as he hears it—any and all verbal communication, while a woman accepts any and all information with no judgment or prioritization.
This significant difference in communication ...