Tannen (1990)

Aim

To investigate the extent to which the features of language, as used by men and women, are distinct from each other.

Method

The research involved a series of observations of couples involved in intimate relationships. The couples' conversations were recorded and then analysed by Tannen to identify patterns of speech that showed differences in linguistic style. Tannen carried out her research in the USA, being based at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Results (men)

Key findings:

• Men use conversation to establish their status and independence; women use conversation to establish intimacy and connectedness between people.

• A man doesn’t always like it when a woman is empathetic towards him (e.g., “Yes, I’ve felt like that too”) as they feel that she is ‘intruding’ upon his feelings, rendering them ‘just like hers’ and therefore not special or unique to him. Women may be baffled by this response, as they may have offered the empathy in order to make the man feel less alone in his feelings; it has been done to show understanding, to communicate that negative feelings are permissible, and that we all feel bad sometimes.

• Men interrupt more than women and they expect to be interrupted themselves. Women use a much more reciprocal style of conversation with turn-taking and conversational rules applying.

Results (women)

Key findings:

• When women say ‘sorry’, they tend to use it as a way to express empathy (e.g., “I’m so sorry you feel bad/that this happened to you”), whereas men hear ‘sorry’ as an apology, which is a sign of weakness, and so they may avoid saying it.

• Women do not appreciate men coming up with practical solutions to their distress or low mood, whereas a man may be oriented towards finding something he can do to help his female partner practically.

• Women tend to be more inclusive, asking the other person’s opinion.

• Women prefer men to listen to them when they are upset or unhappy about something: a man trying to find a pragmatic solution to the problem may make the woman think that he has missed the point, which is that she needs him to listen and empathise (as a woman would do), rather than immediately try to find a way of solving the problem.

• Women tend to use more language tags (really? uh-huh, right, no kidding?) This serves as support to the main speaker, encouraging them in what they are saying and indicating that the communication lines are still open. Tannen calls this overlapping speech.

Conclusion

Men and women use language differently and for different purposes. It is important to remember that the way in which feelings are communicated is also vital; in fact, it may be one of the fundamental reasons for conflict in a relationship. It's not so much what people communicate as how they communicate it, and it seems that men and women are still not very good at ‘reading’ each other, despite hundreds of thousands of years occupying the same planet (this idea has, however, been challenged by Cameron, 2007, see later in this section).

Evaluation (strengths)

• Tannen’s (1990) research uses recorded observations of real couples, and so the results are high in ecological validity. Her research is entirely qualitative, tracing speech patterns in language, which means that the findings are rich and insightful, exploring the topic in an ‘up close and personal’ way most suited to the investigation of relationships.

Evaluation (limitations)

It could be argued that demand characteristics might have been experienced by the couples in the research as the video recording was not carried out covertly: they may have ‘over- played’ for the cameras or not used their usual styles of communication in order to appear more positive (the observer effect). Furthermore, analysis of speech patterns is time-consuming and may be subject to interpretation, which means that the reliability of the research is low, particularly as such research cannot be replicated, as it is unique to each couple participating in it.