This area of the site is no longer being updated. Gender Differences in Communication
All of us have different styles of communicating with other people. Our style depends on a lot of things: where we're from, how and where we were brought up, our educational background, our age, and it also can depend on our gender. Generally speaking, men and women talk differently although there are varying degrees of masculine and feminine speech characteristics in each of us. But men and women speak in particular ways mostly because those ways are associated with their gender.
The styles that men and women use to communicate have been described as "debate vs. relate", "report vs. rapport, or "competitive vs. cooperative". Men often seek straightforward solutions to problems and useful advice whereas women tend to try and establish intimacy by discussing problems and showing concern and empathy in order to reinforce relationships.
Jennifer Coates, in her book Women, Men and Language (New York: Longman Inc., 1986) studied men-only and women-only discussion groups and found that when women talk to each other they reveal a lot about their private lives. They also stick to one topic for a long time, let all speakers finish their sentences and try to have everyone participate. Men, on the other hand, rarely talked about their personal relationships and feelings but "competed to prove themselves better informed about current affairs, travel, sport, etc.". The topics changed often and the men tried to "over time, establish a reasonably stable hierarchy, with some men dominating conversation and others talking very little".
Dr. Lillian Glass' book He Says, She Says: Closing the Communication Gap Between the Sexes (The Putnam Berkeley Group) details her findings on the many differences in the way men and women communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. You can have a look at what she thinks are the differences in:
 
Since gender isn't readily apparent (unless specified) in online communication, can one determine another person's gender just by reading their written words? Susan Herring thinks so. In a 1994 talk at a panel called Making the Net *Work*, she said that men and women have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet. She backed up this claim with research where she analyzed messages posted by men and women to various newsgroups. Read a transcript of her talk for all the details. To find out how women and men feel about communicating with each other online, have a look at Gladys We's graduate research paper entitled Cross-Gender Communication in Cyberspace where she discusses the results of a survey she sent to both men and women who were online. A study that "investigates whether the use of pseudonyms mitigates gender-based differences of communication patterns in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) context" was submitted for presentation to the 45th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, 1995. Gender, Pseudonyms, and CMC: Masking Identities and Baring Souls by J. Michael Jaffe, Young-Eum Lee, Lining Huang, & Hayg Oshagan is an interesting look at how the use of nicks and the lack of non-verbal cues affect gender-based communication patterns.
 Note: Links have not been updated therefore some may no longer be valid. Here are some interesting links I've found about gender and language. Have you got an essay, article, website, rant, etc. related to gender differences in communication? Send me an email and I'll put a link to it right here! CMC Magazine: Gender Without Bodies Gender and Language Use, sociohistorical background on communicative styles by Lydie Meunier, Ph.D. The Weaker Sex by Robert Puryear The Party Line by Rachel Rafelman. A look at parties, conversations and the gender split. "They" by Michael Crichton The Ladies Room - the film. A documentary about what really goes on in there! Stereotypes and Men's & Women's Discourse by Carlo De Rycke. A personal view on the relation between language and gender, based on the book Gender Voices (1989) by David Graddol and Joan Swann. Information and research on gender styles in communication by Susan Githens. Review of Work on Gender and Language by Clive Grey Gender Differences in the Chinese Language by Marjorie Chan Book Review by Laura Bryannan of Deborah Tannen's book, You Just Don't Understand The Berkeley Women and Language Group encourages excellence and innovation in the study of language and gender. Gender Language Style and Group Composition in Internet Discussion Groups by Victor Savicki, Dawn Lingenfelter and Merle Kelley. Gender and communication in organizations by Dr. Beth Vanfossen for ITROW's Women and Expression Conference. Research shows that socially dominant men are at greater risk for early death. Breaking out of Binaries: Reconceptualizing Gender and its Relationship to Language in Computer-Mediated Communication by Michelle Rodino. The Filled Pause Research Center Home Page On-Line Smiles: Does Gender Make a Difference in the Use of Graphic Accents? by Diane F. Witmer and Sandra Katzman Differences in Gender Communication: UC News Wire May/98 Gender Differences in Physician-Patient Communication Gender Differences In Communication a paper by Mark A. Tripp Language Gender and Identity: A social-psychological study by C.Demetriades 1997 (abstract). Examines the relationship between homosexuality and language to discover how gay identity is linguistically expressed. Women and Performance. A journal for discussion on gender and representation. Issue #17, Sexuality & Cyberspace, now online. Him/Her: discourses of masculinity in a Brazilian magazine, 1969-1972. by Marko Monteiro (You Make Me Feel Like A) Virtual Woman by Jesse Kornbluth. Argument Essay based on You Just Don't Understand by Mayo Takeuchi Papers Relating to Gender and Computing, resources from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Gender and teaching: A study of teacher gender and verbal interaction patterns in same-sex and mixed-sex groups in the classroom. Lush, B. (1997) Dissertation abstract. Gender Differences in Language Use: A study of complimenting from Bath, South West England. Roberts, J. (1998) Dissertation abstract. Linguistik online issue 1/99: Language and Gender Articles covering theoretical and methodological issues, feminist language change and conversation analysis. Gender Games: Doing Business with the Opposite Sex! by Business Educator & Speaker, Candy Tymson.
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