Men vs. Women

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Men vs. Women

• Language

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Zimmerman and West

• Zimmerman and West created the Dominance and
  Different theory. In the following slides, we
  will show that some parts of their theory is
  true, and some is false.

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Women gossip, men talk shop

• There is a widespread belief that women talk more
  than men, yet research findings consistently
  contradict this. Men have been shown to talk more
  than women in a settings.
• When asked to describe three pictures, male
  subjects took on average 13.00 minutes per
  picture compared with 3.17 minutes for female
  subjects (Swacker 1975).

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• Women are more ready to let other speakers into
  the conversation or to allow another speaker to
  dominate the discussion.
• Women send out and look for signs of agreement
  and link what they say to the speech of others.
  They are careful to respect each other's turns in
  speaking and tend to apologise for talking too
  much.
• Women are generally co-operative and
  non-competitive.

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• A study of children at play in a Philadelphia
  street (Goodwin 1980 1988 1990) found that
  girls tended to use mitigated directives, i.e.
  when they wanted to get the group to do something
  they used suggestion rather than a direct
  command.
• However, this study was created in 1990 times
  have changed since then, and women have more
  rights and are more out-spoken.

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So what does this tell us?

• This information tells us that Zimmerman and
  Wests subjects were of the norm as men were more
  dominant and women are seen as the weaker sex
  from when they are young girls, they hesitate to
  make demands and instead make suggestions. The
  researchers all create their theories after
  ZWs, and their research mostly agrees with ZW.

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Men

• Boys tend to have more hierarchically organised
  groups than girls and speech is often used to
  assert dominance. Goodwin's study found that boys
  used aggravated, or explicit directives to get
  what they wanted, e.g. 'Get off', 'Gimine', 'I
  want'. This type of command establishes status
  differences.

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• Men tend to jump from topic to topic, vying to
  tell anecdotes about their achievements. They
  rarely talk about their feelings or their
  personal problems.
• This is because men are men. They dont need to
  talk about feelings or their problems they can
  handle them on their own without any help because
  they are men and so are strong. This could be
  taken from the ideology of past years of which
  men are the leaders and should show no weaknesses.

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• Men compete for dominance, with some men talking
  a lot more than others. They don't feel the need
  to link their own contributions to others.
  Instead, they are more likely to ignore what has
  been said before and to stress their own point of
  view.

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What does this tell us?

• From young ages, boys are thought to be more
  dominant they make demands and use directives to
  get what they want.
• They use anecdotes to show that they are the best
  and have achieved something proudly.

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So what happens between mixed-sex conversations?

• Lack of Communication is one of the most
  frequently given reasons for breakdown of marital
  relations.
• Traditionally, it has been seen as the woman's
  responsibility to initiate conversations on
  topics likely to be of interest to men, and to
  maintain the conversation.

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• Pamela Fishman taped daily conversations of three
  young American couples (fifty-two hours of
  speech). She found that women asked the vast
  majority of questions 263 out of a total of 370.
  This may reflect women's relative weakness in
  interactive situations they exploit questions
  and answers in order to force a response and keep
  the conversation going.

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• In mixed-sex conversations men interrupt women
  more, with the result that women are less able to
  complete their turns at talk and tend to talk
  less.
• As a result, men tend to dominate topics of
  conversation and women tend to take on the role
  of listener.
• This information all supports ZWs theory that
  men are more dominant in mixed-sex conversations,
  and are more likely to interrupt than women.

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Our Results

• In our first recording, we found
• The male was more dominant in conversation than
  females, including having control of the
  conversation topic, and interrupting three times.
• Even though the male was the most dominant, the
  older woman did make an attempt to interrupt him
  and take control of the conversation. This could
  show that women do have the power to interrupt
  and control, but prefer to just listen and follow
  the rules of turn-taking most of the time.

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• However, there are other factors that may
  influence why men seem to interrupt more than
  women. For instance, age and experience,
  personalities as well as interest in the
  conversation.
• Zimmerman and West may have used subjects of the
  same age with the same likes.

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• In other conversations we recorded, men
  interrupted and overlapped the same amount in
  conversations with each other, as they did in
  mixed sex conversations. However in just male
  conversations they did not make an attempt to
  change the subject of the conversation, as they
  did in the mixed sex conversations.
• This could show men want to link to other males
  contributions but contradict or challenge
  womens, and want to attempt to have control with
  women.

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• In a conversation with just females, turn-taking
  was more apparent, as they all listened to each
  others responses more.
• However, they did overlap sometimes when they
  wanted to agree with a point the woman was
  making. However it was normally done in a
  supportive way.