Deborah Tannen said the commonly asked question, "Why don't men like to stop and ask for directions?" remains the topic people wanted to talk about most after reading her best-selling book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.
The professor of linguistics at Georgetown University shared her answer to that question with a Cornell audience July 2 by explaining that men don't want to be in the "one-down position" or lost due to someone else's faulty directions.
Tannen kicked off a series of five free Wednesday lectures on campus, sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, with a talk titled "She Said/He Said/They Said: Conversational Style in Everyday Talk." Covering a wide range of topics centered around the issue of effective communication, she presented some of her research about children's play and conversational styles, as well as about men and women's interaction and conversation in the workplace and entertained the packed crowd in David L. Call Alumni Auditorium with a series of video clips shot from locations as varied as a playground and an office conference room.
Tannen said that, even as children, people's conversational styles differ, not only because of differences in gender but also because of differences in such things as culture, sexual orientation, position at work and age. She emphasized that unless people have the same conversational style, verbally and non-verbally, they cannot make assumptions about what the other person is saying.
"If you have a misunderstanding with another person, stop and ask yourself, 'Could it just be a difference in conversational style?'" Tannen said.
She hopes the knowledge of these differences will promote "mutual respect and more mutual understanding" between people.
Tannen argued that the basis for the difference between men's and women's conversational styles stem from how boys and girls talk and play.
"Girls often choose to sit and talk in small groups, whereas boys play in larger groups that are activity-focused," she said.
"In forming conversation rituals, there is an expectation for girls to show you're the same, whereas for boys, talk is something used to maintain status or position in a group. They try to top each other, and when somebody succeeds, it's fun."
Tannen also analyzed the differences between how male and female bosses give directions to their subordinates in the workplace.
"Women use such phrases as 'I would,' 'Is there any way we could' and 'Maybe we should,' to not throw their weight around or appear bossy to their subordinates. Men use fewer words and tend to be more direct," she said.
Women remain in this double bind that their style of talking makes them seem less capable and less confident, yet they do not want to be seen as being aggressive, she said.
In different cultures, Tannen explained, verbal fighting and playful opposition are seen differently. In our society, she said, women take fighting more literally, whereas in Greece and Italy, "attack and criticism are signs of mutual respect. In other regions and cultures, women are more direct and assertive. In Germany, you are seen as totally boring if you agree all the time," she said.
Tannen, however, made sure the audience understood that not all men and women in the world will act or talk in the typical patterns that she described. Using her own life as an example, she said her husband is the one who stops to ask for directions, while she tries to find her own way with the map.