Dec 14, 2009

Cross talk-differences between men and womenes (yanqiong Li)

“Cross talk” was written by Deborah Tannen who is a professor and has become a well-recognized expert on communication between men and women. The author argues that the difference kinds of over talks between men and women. In my opinion, I strongly agree with the author’s opinion.
On one hand, there was a particular sort of breakdown that tends to occur to the communication between women and men. For example, a woman who owns a bookstore needed to have a talk with the store manager. She had told him to help the bookkeeper with billing, he had agreed, and days later, he still hadn’t done it. Thinking how much she disliked this part of her job, she sat down with the manager to clear things up. They traced the problem to a breakdown in communication. She had said, “Sarah needs help with the bills. What do you think about to help her out?” he had responded, “OK,” by which he meant, “OK, I’ll think about whether or not I want to help her.” During the next day, he thought about it and concluded that he’d rather not. At last, the woman thought that “ok” which was the man just said, he did not willing to do it. I think this wasn’t just an ordinary communication breakdown that could happen between any two people. It was a particular sort of breakdown that tends to occur between women and men.
Most women avoid giving orders. More comfortable with decision making by
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consensus, they tend to phrase requests as questions, to give others the feeling they have some say in the matter and are not being bossed around. But this doesn’t mean they aren’t making their wishes clear. Most women would have understood the bookstore owner’s question, “what do you think about helping her out?” as assigning a task in a considerate way. The manager, however, took the owner’s words literally. She had asked him what he thought; she hadn’t told him to do anything. So he felt within his rights when he took her at her word, thought about it and decided not to help Sarah.
The author said “Most of men are inclined to resist authority if they can because being in a subordinate position makes them intensely uncomfortable. But indirect requests that are transparent to women may be genuinely opaque to men. These differences in management styles are one of many manifestations of gender differences in how we talk to one another”. Women like to use language to create a relationship which is harmonious. Men would prefer to discuss something to as to reach agreement.
There are different ways that boys and girls use language when they grow up. Such as, the girls tend to play indoors whether play in a small group or not. The girls are also having a lot of good friends who can talk, do shopping and sit with them. They like to tell some secret things with their friends who they can trust. However, boys tend to play outdoors in some groups which they think are competitive. If they spend time doing something together, it will make them become friendly.
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On the other hand, more and more men and women are living in a different life. When women come home, they would clean up all the things which were in her house. Then they would prepare food and let their husband have a nice food. However, when men came to home, they would throw their documents everywhere and sit on sofa to watch TV.
If man and woman want to have a travel for a few days, you can see different styles between them. For example, if the woman gets ready to go outside, she will bring sugars, glasses, purse, and lipstick mirror and so on. Otherwise, if the man has a trip, he will bring book, purse and key. Obviously, we can see that it is a different way of the man and woman in their life.
Here is another topic about men and women. If they want to keep health, they will have a plan to do that. For example, if the men want to keep fit, they will just eat a little, because they promise themselves to do that. However, women cannot keep doing that, if they want on a diet, they can not keep the promise. They will eat a lot when they see a lot of food. As a result, men will get achievement to be healthy, but women cannot. Actually, I am not so strong to agree with this point, but in the society, more and more women cannot keep their promise which is to keep fit. They cannot help eating food. From this opinion, men can keep their promise to achieve a better health.
At last, if woman go shopping, she will be shopping for a long time. For example, when the woman settles on a thing, she will go to store and buy it, but at that
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moment, the woman will also look around for the other things, it will waste a lot of time. However, when the man takes a fancy to something, he will go to a store quickly and buy it as soon as he can. It just took a few minutes. All appearance, in this way, I think that men have clearly purpose to do things which they already focus on it, otherwise, women will think it too much while they will buy it or not.
To sum up, different people have different ideas on this topic. Some people may think it will be unfair for men, the other people may think it will be unfair for women.
In my opinion, although there are a lot of ideas in this topic, I am in agreement with man and woman is different. Women sometimes can get a lot of information which they do not know from men, men can also get information from women. In China, there is a saying that goes “yang chang bi duan” it means that you can get someone’s advantage to avoid your disadvantage.

1 comment:

Leslie said...

I agree with your opinion you mentioned in conclusion. ^ ^ (Young Ho)