Customer Reviews

You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation

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3 star:		(8)
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1 star:		(10)

 

 

Deborah Tannen has written an excellent book analyzing theverbal interaction between men and women. I highly recommend it toanyone. For many years I have been only generally aware of some of the symptoms she describes, mostly through personal communication problems that arose in my marriage. After reading her book, I now have a much better understanding of these challenging problems of differing perspective and I hope I can even change my reactions when these problems reoccur. I even note on pg. 201 (page numbers throughout refer to the Hardcover Edition) that the author herself, "as a result of doing this research, learned not to use machine-gun questions or cooperative overlapping with people who don't respond well -- a tangible benefit of understanding conversational style."

I don't believe her book is at all one-sided. It presents examples of how some people (often women) feel they are always being interrupted and not allowed to present their views. It also describes how a male speaker, through his style, fails to get a professional group's attention or credit for bringing up a major point -- that is then later repeated by another speaker, who refers to the earlier speaker but still gets all the credit.

In order for others to gain an appreciation of this book, I quote below from several selections.

WHO DOES MORE OF THE TALKING, AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES?

"Who talks more, then, women or men? The seemingly contradictory evidence is reconciled by the difference between what I call public and private speaking. More men feel comfortable doing `public speaking,' while more women feel comfortable doing `private' speaking. Another way of capturing these differences is by using the terms report-talk and rapport-talk.

"For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. Emphasis is placed on displaying similarities and matching experiences. From childhood, girls criticize peers who try to stand out or appear better than others." (pg. 76, 77)

"From childhood, men learn to use talking as a way to get and keep attention. So they are more comfortable speaking in larger groups made up of people they know less well -- in the broadest sense, `public speaking.' But even the most private situations can be approached like public speaking, more like giving a report than establishing rapport." (pg. 77)

"Many men honestly do not know what women want, and women honestly do not know why men find what they wand so hard to comprehend and deliver." (pg. 81)

JUDGMENTS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE TALK AND DON'T TALK.

"For girls, talk is the glue that holds relationships together. Boys' relationships are held together primarily by activities: doing things together, or talking about activities such as sports or, later, politics." (pg. 85)

"Women and men are inclined to understand each other in terms of their own styles because we assume we all live in the same world. [A] young man in [Thomas Fox' college] writing class noticed that his female peers refused to speak with authority. He imagined the reason to be that they feared being wrong. For him, the point was knowledge, a matter of individual ability. It did not occur to him that what they feared was not being wrong, but being offensive. For them, the point was connection: their relation to the group." (pg. 179)

WHICH IS A BETTER LEARNING EXPERIENCE: BOYS PLAYING GAMES WITH COMPLEX RULES OR GIRLS HAVING VERY FEW, IF ANY, EXPLICIT RULES IN THEIR GAMES?

"[I]t is not that the boys' behavior is more complex in general. Rather, boys and girls are learning to handle complexity in different arenas -- boys in terms of complex rules and activities, girls in terms of [non explicit] complex networks of relationships, and complex ways of using language to mediate those relationships." (pg. 181)

WHEN DO WE LEARN TO BE DIFFERENT?

"If it is fascinating to see the source of adult patterns in second-graders, it boggles the mind to see them in three-year-olds. No wonder it is hard for men and women to understand each other's point of view: We have been looking at the view from different vantage points for as long as we have been looking." (pg. 257)

There is another quote on a page that I can't remember that goes something like "second-grade girls already have more in common with 10th grade girls than they do with second-grade boys."

INTERRUPTIONS AND NOT GETTING AN EQUAL CHANCE TO TALK.

"[I]nadvertent interruptions -- and the impression of domination -- came about because the friends had different conversational styles. I call these styles `high considerateness' and `high involvement,' because the former gave priority to being considerate to others by not imposing, and the latter gave priority to showing enthusiastic involvement. Some apparent interruptions occurred because high-considerateness speakers expected longer pauses between speaking turns. While they were waiting for the proper pause, the high involvement speakers got the impression they had nothing to say and filled in to avoid an uncomfortable silence." (pg. 196)

THE EFFECTS OF FOREIGN CULTURES.

"If cultural differences are likely to cause misjudgment in personal settings, they are certain to do so in international ones. I would wager that the much-publicized antipathy between Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev resulted from cultural differences in conversational style. According to Nancy Reagan, `From the moment we met, she talked and talked and talked -- so much that I could barely get a word in, edgewise or otherwise.' I suspect that if anyone asked Raisa Gorbachev, she would say she'd been wondering why her American counterpart never said anything." (pg. 207)

Another example of "foreign" cultures relates to Americans from different backgrounds, not only of obvious ethnic differences, but even, for example, simply from different parts of America. On page 201 Tannen points out the different backgrounds and conversational styles of Jewish New Yorkers (and many New Yorkers who are not Jewish), who "have high-involvement styles and are often perceived as interrupting in conversation with speakers from different backgrounds, such as Californians. But [on the other hand] many Californians expect shorter pauses than many midwesterners or New Englanders, so in conversations between them, the Californians end up interrupting. Just as [the author] was considered extremely polite when [she] lived in New York but was sometimes perceived as rude in California, a polite Californian was shocked and hurt to find herself accused of rudeness when she moved to Vermont."

Still another example of cultural difference is that of an American tourist in Turkey trying to refuse a street merchant. "She found herself holding a stone head, and when she told him politely that she did not want it, he would not take it back. Instead, he thrust forward another one, which she also automatically accepted. Since the man would not take either head back, the only path to escape she could envision was offering to buy them. She cut his price in half and hoped he'd refuse so she could move on. Instead, he agreed to drop the price and she dropped the two heads in her tote. But as she handed him the money, he handed her a third head. ... Seeing no alternative, she paid for the third head and stalked off -- shaken and angry. When ... she showed her purchases to custom officials [at the ship, they] had her arrested and thrown into jail for trying to smuggle out a national treasure. The third head was a genuine antiquity." (pg. 281)

THE BOTTOM LINE IN ALL OF TANNEN'S RESEARCH IS:

"We all want, above all, to be heard -- but not merely to be heard. We want to be understood -- heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we mean. With increased understanding of the ways women and men use language should come a decrease in frequency of the complaint `You don't understand.' END

This book can change your life, but only if both you and your spouse read it. Or a good handbook for singles, hoping to figure out just what exactly that other strange species is really saying. What is most impressive is how even handedly Dr. Tannen treats female- and male-oriented communication styles, noting that neither style is inherently better, but just profoundly different, and that understanding the basis for how women and men communicate so differently can really lay a groundwork for avoiding lots of misunderstandings. This is absolutely true. As a man, I am amazed that Dr. Tannen has such a solid and objective understanding of male-pattern communication styles. I certainly learned a lot about how women communicate, and thus have avoided perhaps 50% of the misunderstandings in my marriage. Now if I can only get my lovely spouse to "just read the book" (which alas has turned into my final defense on more than one occaision), we can eliminate the other 50%!

To start my review of this book, let me tell a story that's an applicable analogy.

A scientist named Alec loves research, and he is working on an invention for this formula that grows plants in the desert. As he nears completion of his research, the government becomes interested in it. Alec finishes his formula, and it works exactly the way that he had intended. He's about to use it to grow plants in the desert when the government steals it from him, and uses it to make a bomb, to destroy the desert country that Alec was trying to save by growing his plants.

Deborah Tannen is that scientist.

Her research is pure...her research is good. However, this book could be used for any purpose. It could be used to bring a husband and wife much closer together. It also could be used in the most horrific ways to manipulate both men and women.

This book explains everything. It explains why men won't stop and ask for directions, and more importantly, why women want them to. It explains why women get jealous that their husbands talk to people in groups, but then their husbands won't talk to them when they are alone.

And, it kept explaining things....I can't think of any common male-female difference that this book didn't explain and have a model for why.

Also, I felt a little gay when I was reading this book, because I thought.... "These are things that I'm really not supposed to know." I feel like I had learned too much, like I had stumbled into a temple that held the keys to the secrets of the universe, but that I was not ready for it.

And, it's more slanted toward women than toward men. That's okay, but I think that half of the all of the copies of this book that sell have been sold to women. And the other half of the copies of this book that sell are sold to those same women who then give them as gifts to their male friends, who end up shelving the book. I ran into three guys so far who had been given this book as gifts, but who haven't opened it.

This book has more content in five pages of it than many books have in all of their pages. Even if I hated this book, I would have to give it five stars, because it's got so much good research in it.

But, I loved this book, and so I'm giving it a very enthusiastic five stars.

One of the things I've noticed about books like this is that the author comes up with a "matrix" of different, usually opposing, characteristics (in this case, human behaviour), then uses that matrix to explain *all* the differences in behaviour. Here Tannen expresses every described conflict between men and women *solely* in terms of gender differences. SOme are, some aren't.

Books like this sound very plausible when you are reading them, but then if you read another similar book, you notice that the second author uses an entirely different set of "parameters" for their own matrix (which is quite plausible when you're reading it as well). Trouble is, the two matrices that sound so compelling are totally incompatible and in fact contradict each other.

Moral of the story: it doesn't have to be accurate, it just has to be plausible enough to get a publishing deal.

Good case in point: Tannen mentions the trouble she had with a new computer purchase. The first time she took it back to the shop, the repairman was very unhelpful and spouted a bunch of gibberish at her. Later, she took the computer back and talked to one of the saleswomen, who solved her problem. Conclusion: men are unfriendly and one-uppers, while women are helpful and nurturing.

Problem is, I've known many women who act like the uncommunicative repairman. And I've seen many males who are very helpful and can easily help solve people's problems.

So this wasn't a male-female difference that Tannen experienced, it was simply that the first person she encountered (who happened to be male) was a very technically oriented type; he probably wasn't trying to be rude or unhelpful, he was just not too great at verbal interaction. Likewise, the second person Tannen met (who happened to be female) was in sales, a "people person". She was the type of person who is empathetic and able to communicate ideas and understand where someone else is struggling.

There are many other scenarios in this book that have other explanations other than guy thing/girl thing. So a very large caveat if you want to buy this: the author isn't really trying to accurately *explain* why a conflict happened, she's just illustrating the central thesis of her book. A little more objectivity would have been quite welcome.

I read this book many years ago, and have since given it as a gift many times over. Ms. Tannen gives us a clear picture of WHY men and women's communication styles are so different through studies and examples that are easy to read and understand. This book has given me information that has proven invaluable over time in my relationships with both men and women. I have given this book as a wedding gift and have been profusely thanked by both husband and wife. I have also given it to a few teens who are just beginning to get into the world of male/female communication (or lack thereof). It has been well accepted and appreciated. My own experiences have been less frustrating based on a better understanding of where we are going (communicatively) and why. Thank you Deborah Tannen for a wonderful gift of insight!

John Gray did the male gender no favors by characterizing us guys as "from Mars". Fortunately, Deborah Tannen knows better. Despite her male detractors, who usually find fault with what they consider overindulgence of the more estrogen-laden of our species, Dr. Tannen strives (and succeeds) at maintaining a refreshing academic distance from a strong gender bias in this seminal work. Her anecdotal examples of male and female communication styles are convincing and rub no ones noses in their own verbal messes. Having found impenetrable more than one woman's labyrinth of words and feelings, it was quite comforting to find from a woman a sympathetic spirit. If you have tried reading "Men Are From Mars..." and were put off by the premise, "You Just Don't Understand" may provide a welcome alternative in the male/female communication blues.

Though I read this book about five years ago, it has stuck with me. Maybe because it was the first book I read on the subject, but it opened up my eyes to the various linguistic styles that I'd experienced previously but not actually recognized. For example, the girlfriend who poured out her problems to me but never took the "solutions" I offered frustrating me no end. It was classic "rapport-talk" -- she wasn't looking for analytical solutions, just the connection. Or the typical "report-talking" people I knew whose mission was to lecture you about something or other as oppose to conversing.

I found it very eye-opening and didn't get caught up in the gender issues as other readers appear to have done. As for "lack of solutions" -- I don't know what kind of solutions people are looking for. Gaining the knowledge and ability to recognize such patterns which are the root of many misunderstandings offers a solution in and of itself. On the downside I do recall allusions to works of fiction giving the book a less authentic ring.

Tannen's book is well done and worth the read. However... it is also imbued with a subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, bias toward a perspective which presumes female modes of communication and other activities to be inherently superior to those of males. Of course, this is a patently false presumption. The examples of female communications/activities are almost uniformly praised and those of males are much more likely to be disparaged, either subtly or explicitly.

If you read the book, and I recommend you do, you should keep an eye out for this stuff. You should not have to look far; if you do, that should give you pause. Actually, it is an excellent exercise in learning to spot this form of sexism.

Overall, still, highly recommended.

The main thing that I give the book credit for is that it made me think about things that I do as a man and try to come up with my own explanations for my behavior, since hers clearly didn't resonate with me. I like to think of myself as "not a typical guy"; most of my women friends would agree. Yet I did recognize my own behavior in some of Tannen's examples. However, when she went on to explain why men do these things, it made me ponder my childhood relationships with other boys and, well, it wasn't anything like what she said. To be sure, there are boys/men who see the world in the binary one-up/one-down way that she describes. We've all met "super-alpha" men like this: the proverbial high-pressure salesman... the man who, upon entering a room where people are conversing, instantly creates a crowd. This isn't the way most boys/men are; some, certainly, but not most.

Also, the assumption that men are universally combative is incorrect. I think a more accurate picture of most boys growing up is that we find ourselves unwillingly placed into competition by bullies/super-alpha boys. I found myself picked on or challenged constantly in my childhood, when, all I really wanted was just to get along with everybody and not have people hassle me. I think most guys would nod their heads with me on this one. This, for me, is a much better explanation why men see people as challenging them where women do not, as men are hypersensitive to such challenges... and if you failed to rise to the challenge, you were humiliated by the bully's gang in front of your peers.

Boys too wanted to be accepted by their peers, and thrived on community. This explains the popularity of team sports among men. Some of the best memories of our childhood were our bonding with our teams for the unified purpose of winning a game.

Another point completely missing in her theory was the fact that, from a very early age, boys are "taught" not to show vulnerable feelings. Doesn't matter how enlightened your parents were. Unless you grew up in a vacuum, your peers would be sure to teach you that. This would explain why men relate to each other without actually ever talking about themselves or their deep feelings, but rather like to keep topics to common interests (most of the time).

Likewise, in male-female relationships, women are just as likely to be controlling as men. Women take different approaches to control, as brute force doesn't usually work for them. The idea that every woman just tries to get along flies in the face of the facts in some of my less successful relationships; I tend to be conflict-averse (a trait she attributes universally to women). I have infuriated some past partners who found "verbal sparring" a meaningful form of engagement (a trait Tannen attributes universally to men).

Anyway, she came up with some interesting observations that, I think, are universal to most men from super-alpha to enlightened/sensitive men, then used an "all men aspire to be super-alpha males" approach to try to explain them; and the converse seems to be true of her approach to explaining female behavior as well.

Deborah Tannen's "You Don't Understand" was the topic of our men's (age 50 & over) once - a - month afternoon discussion and dinner gathering in the spring of '92. Not surprisingly, several of us were undergoing unrecognized mid-life crises issues with our marriages. "You Don't Understand" opened my eyes dramatically. It had a profound effect in my understanding the communications problems I was having with own wife and women in general. You don't have to be a scholar or scientist to understand the value of a book that offers enlightenment. There have been a number of more popular books written on this theme since '91, but Deborah Tannen's name and book are seared in my memory for ever. Not many books or authors can command that respect, and not many have helped me resurrect my own marriage as this one did.