Communication Barriers Between Women and Men
Research by Deborah Tannen provides us with important insights into
differences in the conversation styles of men and women.^38 In partic-
ular, Tannen has been able to explain why gender often creates oral
communication barriers. Her research does not suggest that allmen or
allwomen behave the same way in their communication, but she illus-
trates some important generalizations.
The essence of Tannen’s research is that men use talk to emphasize
status, while women use it to create connection. According to Tannen,
women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, while
men speak and hear a language of status and independence. So, for
many men, conversations are primarily a way to preserve independence
and maintain status in a hierarchical social order. For many women,
however, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people
try to seek and give confirmation and support. The following examples
will illustrate Tannen’s thesis.
Men often complain that women talk on and on about their prob-
lems. Women criticize men for not listening. What is happening is
that when men hear a problem, they often assert their desire for inde-
pendence and control by offering solutions. Many women, on the
other hand, view telling a problem as a means to promote closeness.
The women present the problem to gain support and connection, not
to get the male’s advice. Mutual understanding, as sought by women,
is symmetrical. But giving advice is asymmetrical—it sets up the (male)
advice giver as more knowledgeable, more reasonable, and more in
control; this contributes to distancing men and women in their efforts
to communicate.
Men often criticize women for seeming to apologize all the time. Men
tend to see the phrase “I’m sorry” as a weakness because they interpret the phrase to mean
the woman is accepting blame. However, women typically use “I’m sorry” to express empa-
thy: “I know you must feel bad about this. I probably would too in the same position.”
While Tannen has received wide acknowledgment of her work, some suggest that it
is anecdotal and/or based on faulty research. Goldsmith and Fulfs argue that men and
women have more similarities than differences as communicators, although they
acknowledge that when communication difficulties do appear, it is appealing to attrib-
ute them to gender.^39 Despite this, Nancy Langton, your Vancouver-based author, has
noted, based on evidence from role plays, that men and women make requests for
raises differently, and men are more likely to state that men were more effective at mak-
ing requests, while women are more likely to indicate that it was women who handled
the interaction more favourably.^40Cross-Cultural Communication
Effective communication is difficult under the best of conditions. Cross-cultural fac-
tors clearly create the potential for increased communication problems.Cultural Barriers
One author has identified four specific problems related to
language difficulties in cross-cultural communications.^41
First, there are barriers caused by semantics.As we have noted
previously, words mean different things to different peo-
ple. This is particularly true for people from different
national cultures. Some words, for instance, do not translate198 Part 3Interacting Effectively
What factors
hinder cross-cultural
communication?*
Research indicates that women use language to create
connection while men use language to emphasize sta-
tus and power. The businesswomen conversing here
illustrate that women speak and hear a language of
connection and intimacy.