Williams 1 Danielle Williams WRD 103 Professor Garvey 29 January 2012

Gender & Language It is often said that women have the gift of gab or more simply put by the opinions of many women talk entirely too much. Is there any validity to this statement or could it be possible that the supposedly non-sociable, one-word-answer, men in this world talk just as much? Through observation of gender-mixed groups I plan to analyze the conversational patterns of both men and women. Are women the most dominant in the conversation because theyre more vocal or are men more dominant in the aspect that when they talk everyone tends to listen? These are all questions pivotal to examining the difference between gender languages if indeed there is any difference at all. In cohesion with popular belief I believe that women will indeed dominate general conversation in a mixed gender group. In most arguments, debates, conversations women are usually both the initiators and the ones to have the last word. This becomes evident in many of my everyday conversations which led me to believe that during my observation women would be more dominant primarily because of frequency. Women tend to say more but it may have the same value as a guy saying less so how does one measure who is more dominant? For this investigation I listened in on two groups. One group consisted of four females and three males and it took place in a dorm room setting. The second group consisted of three females and two males and took place in a cafeteria setting. Women have a more complicated thought process than men. As pointed out by Tony Kornheiser, women dont think things are as simple as men do so their conversation is more

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selective and prolonged. This was valid during my observation of both groups. In both groups one of the females initiated conversation with a random statement. It was more than likely about school, classes, or home and one of the guys would add in a word or two; very short and simple statements. They said what they needed to and were quiet whereas the females were more expressive and elaborated a little more. This went on for about fifteen minutes until the conversation takes an inevitable turn. Amongst first year college students/ teenagers, relationships and sex are topics that are going to eventually be discussed in group one I noticed that when sex became a topic the guys had more female conversation tendencies. They had expressions as if they were being selective of what to say, they were more vocal on the matter. They went so far as to give the girls advice on what guys like. This is where I doubted my hypothesis; seeing that the guys werent dominating the conversation not in a chatty aspect but more dominant in the fact that the females were dead silent and interested in what the guys had to say. When one of the last guys finally offered his opinion about relationships it was shut down by the whole room of females. Objections by all the females just encouraged him to be quiet. None of the other guys came to his aid or agreed with him. However, he did argue his point before being quiet. In group two the conversation went on for about ten minutes with the girls gossiping about current events and Guy 1 is just listening but finally gets fed up and changes the subject in a why should you care type of tone. He was more dominant and open to conversation than the males in the first group. This group conversation soon turned to the topic of intercourse. Relationships of any kind; sexual, emotional, being the stimulus of male conversation in group one turned out the same results for group two.

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Women can be more passionate or emotional creatures than men. *(This is purely opinion but proven to be so in most but not all situations). In stating this, women tend to be more passionate and stand firm on what they believe in. When a woman is absolutely positive about any argument or statement she is presenting a man better be ready to fight to the end if he has any rebuttal. With this being said, in the second group Guy 1 made straight forward statements and stood firm in his arguments about sex even though and got ridiculed by all three females because they felt differently. However, the difference this time is that the second guy became more verbal with this topic as well and came to his rescue. With both guys in sync, even though there were three females there seemed to be no dominant gender in the conversation. The playing field became equal because the males were now talking just as much as the females. In closing this observation one may ask if male and females have different languages. Absolutely, I found that females tend to speak more frequently and prolong their conversation whereas males like to keep it short sweet and simple. However, does this make the woman more dominant? No, my hypothesis of women being more dominant in conversation was proven to be false. The length of dialogue spoken by one gender does not determine whos dominant in the conversation; its the value upon the words spoken. Men and women can say the same thing in different lengths and be equal as far as dominance which is what I found in both observations. The major variable that many people dont consider is the subject. It was evident that in both groups women started as the more frequent talkers but once a subject that interested the males came up they were just as vocal. Therefore, its safe to say that yes women talk.but men talk too when the subject is worth speaking on.