Gender Communication

A detailed Summary of Gender Communication

Men and women communicate differently and often misunderstand each other because of it. Throughout the years people have shown interest in the different communication styles between men and women. People have studied, read, and wrote about the differences. Some of the well known writers who specialize in gender communication are: Deborah Tannen, a linguist professor at Georgetown University, who wrote several best-selling books about language and communication; John Gray, who is famous for Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus series; John Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, who has spent most of his career doing complex, long-term research; and Senta Troemel-Ploetz, a teacher in Germany, who has a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. These people all write about the same things, which are men, women, and communication but they have different ideas about what it is. They all offer a lot of advice and explanations on gender communication. As you will see they each have different techniques in what people should do to communicate better with the opposite sex.

For the longest time, women have been known for talking too much. For years people have argued about and re

When conflict occurs Gottman, Gray, and Tannen all offer their advice and solutions

When men and women do communicate with each other, they often misunderstand each other. Gray believes that an important reason for misunderstanding is that women use many metaphors, superlatives, and generalizations when speaking. He writes, "While men are very literal, they take a woman's expression literally" (Gray 21). An example of this is when a woman says, "We never go out." a man might say, "That's not true. We went out last week." The women was really trying to say that it has been a few days since they have gone out, and feels like spending time with him. But a man might think that she meant that he is some huge disappointment, who is boring and lazy. This upsets men so they end up going in their "cave". They show that they care by not worrying her with their problems. Gray suggests that if a woman needs to talk to the man while in his "cave", she should write him a letter instead. He'll read it when he comes out and everything will magically be okay.

to help resolve it. Mr. Gottman believes that conflict is very healthy and especially important for a relationship to succeed and survive all the hardships life may throw at it. He goes on to write that

there are four miraculous strategies that can be used to break through negativity. Those four wonderful strategies are: Strategy number one: Calm down, Strategy number two: Speak non-defensively, Strategy number three: Validation, and Strategy number four: Over-learning. For good old strategy number one Gottman explains that it is important for the people arguing to check their pulse about every five minutes during an argument. If it goes up over ten percent then its time to calm down and rest for a while. This prevents flooding and physically attacking the other person. In strategy number two he explains that it is better to complain than to attack someone personally, this prevents saying regretful things and hurting feelings and stuff. In strategy number three he states that, " Validation is simply putting yourself in your partner's shoes and imaging his or her emotional state" (Gottman 56). This helps understand what the other person is going through. In strategy number four he explains that it is very important for people to practice these skills with their spouses. This helps them perfect their arguing so that they can bec

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Approximate Word count = 1629
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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