Gender & Communication

1. Gender & Communication Alison Nesbitt PhD Student School of Psychology, TCD nesbitam@tcd.ie

2. Lecture Aims • To reflect on the relationship between language and thought......and power • To examine whether women and men communicate differently • To consider the implications of the view that women and men do communicate differently

3. Discursive Psychology • Language as social action • Discursive devices • Discursive resources / discourses http://www.clinique.co.uk/ • ‘methodology’

4. Discursive Devices • Disclaimers e.g. “I’m not racist/sexist/ageist/ but ........” • Extreme case formulation e.g. “This house is always a mess.” • Active Voicing e.g. He kept saying to me, ‘you know what I mean’ and I kept replying, ‘no! I have no idea what you mean.’

5. The Mars & Venus dichotomy • Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (Gray, 1993) • The essential truth that women and men are completely different from each other • These differences are basic common sense • Miscommunication is inevitable • Accept and embrace differences to improve communication

6. Gender and Speech Styles Venus • Women speak indirectly and inexplicitly • To fully express their feelings they use various superlatives, metaphors and generalisations e.g. “The house is always a mess” Mars • Men’s speech is clear, direct and straightforward • Men use speech as a means of conveying only facts and information • A woman’s words can mislead a man! “It’s not always a mess” (Gray, 1993, p61)

7. The Mars & Venus dichotomy • It is difficult for men to spot the hidden messages in women’s talk • As a result women feel unheard • Men get labelled as bad listeners • Women are deficient communicators • If women improve their skills, miscommunication can be avoided

8. Predecessors of the Mars/Venus Dichotomy • Onus on women to be more communicatively competent • Rape prevention programmes • focus on victim’s ability to say ‘no’ so that it is heard and understood. Emphasis on a direct and explicit refusal. • http://www.journeyworks.com/imagepage.asp?limage=images/5078-Large.jpg

9. Conversation Analysis • Aims to develop an understanding of the underlying structures of naturally occurring conversations • Relies upon careful attention to small details such as pauses, in breaths, out breaths, overlapping, hesitations, false starts, self-corrections • Speakers and listeners have implicit knowledge of these micro-level features • We draw upon these details because of their interactional or social relevance.

10. Acceptances Acceptances are typically immediate, direct, straightforward. There is no pause between the request and the acceptance. Rather, there is overlap (Kitzinger and Frith, 1999). Example 1 A: Why don’t you come up and see me some[time B: [I would like to (Atkinson and Drew, 1979: 58) Example 2 A: We:ll, will you help me [ou:t. B: [I certainly wi:ll. (Davidson, 1984: 116)

11. Refusals Refusals routinely incorporate complex features (Kitzinger and Frith, 1999) Example 3 Mark: We were wondering if you wanted to come over Saturday, f ’r dinner. (0.4) Jane: Well (.) .hh it’d be great but we promised Carol already. (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 86) Example 4 A: Uh if you’d care to come and visit a little while this morning I’ll give you a cup of coffee. B: hehh Well that’s awfully sweet of you, I don’t think I can make it this morning. .hhuhm I’m running an ad in the paper and-and uh I have to stay near the phone. (Atkinson and Drew, 1979: 58)

12. Refusals (i) delays, e.g. pauses and hesitations, like the four-tenths of a second pause in Example 3, and the filled pause ‘hehh’ in Example 4; (ii) prefaces (also referred to as ‘hedges’) e.g. use of markers like ‘uh’ or ‘well’ (‘well’ is used in both the preceding extracts); (iii) palliatives, e.g. appreciations, apologies, token agreements etc. Which serve to alleviate the pain caused by the refusal; compliments such as ‘it’d be great’ or ‘that’s awfully sweet of you’ are both examples of palliatives.

13. Refusals (iv) accounts, i.e. explanations/justifications/excuses for why the invitation is not being accepted as in Examples 3 and 4. It is common (as in the preceding examples) for people to present accounts which suggest that the person refusing the invitation cannot accept it (rather than that s/he chooses not to). Ithas a ‘no blame’ quality and functions to avoid negative consequences. (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 86).

14. Social Conventions • Focus group discussion with all male heterosexual participants aged 19 to 34 • Refusing an invitation to go to the pub (O’Byrne, Rapley, & Hansen, 2006) Extract 1: FG12034 83 Cam: That depends if they’re like really 84 anxious or keen for you to go (.) for 85 whatever reason basically you might like 86 come up with an excuse to let ’em down 87 softly (.) otherwise you might just go, 88 “ah (.) nup (.) don’t feel like it” 89 Kyle: Direct approach 90 Cam: Yep 91 Kyle: “No tha(heh)nkyou (.) I’m feeling seedy 92 from last night”

15. Extract 2: FG0705 128 John: You could come up with one of ya (.) your 129 clichés like “I don’t think this is a good 130 idea”, or ah, you know, “I’m not ready for 131 this” or you know one of the clichés (.) 132 as soon as you come out with that cliché 133 they know (.) they know what you’re trying 134 to say because it’s used all the time, 135 whereas if you sort of (.) try and dance 136 around the clichés they might not get the • point straight away

16. Conforming to cultural norms Extract 1: FG12034 155 James: I don’t think I’d (.) don’t think I’d ever 156 say “no” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 166 James: And then they’d start to get the (.) get 167 the idea (.) I’d call a cab 168 Andrew: (inaudible) rather sensitive excuse (.) I 169 guess 170 John: Yeah you don’t wanna say 171 George: You couldn’t say “no”, could you 172 John: You don’t wanna say “no (.) I don’t like 173 you now” (.) you know you’d come up with 174 some excuse

17. Lecture Aims • To reflect on the relationship between language and thought......and power • To examine whether women and men communicate differently • To consider the implications of the view that women and men do communicate differently

18. Language and Thought Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Whorf, 1956): we do not simply and passively use language to record what we find in the world; rather, our ideas are imposed on our environment by the language we have available to us. Linguistic development (Quigley, 2001): Does the child acquire language, or language acquire the child? Social Constructionism

19. Cognitive Interface • Language and linguistic knowledge are cognitive components • Cognition is the interface between language and social action • The brain as a system of organisation that can locate, retrieve and use the information it contains • The brain cannot possibly process all sensory stimuli at any given moment • Selection: What information gets processed? What do we notice, pay attention to and consciously think about?

20. Cognitive Interface • Categorising and prototyping are cost-effective • They allow us to think automatically, quickly and effortlessly • The world is a highly complex place • Without categorising, processing stimuli would be long and laborious • Instead we use heuristics or ‘rules of thumb’ which serve as a cognitive ‘short cut’ • In so doing, we lose information and details, and we make general assumptions

21. Cognitive Interface • We categorise people into groups where some group members are seen as more typical or representative than others • We construct a simplified and limited model of the group from the characteristics of a few group members and apply these to the whole group • Stereotypes are often exaggerated, and stereotyping is a process of applying a simplified model to a real complex individual • Stereotypes gain credibility because they are easy to perceive rather than because they are true.

22. Psychology Does psychology perpetuate stereotypes? How/How not?

23. Gender Similarities • The Gender Similarities Hypothesis by Janet Hyde (2005) • Meta-analysis of gender differences in a range of abilities e.g. Mathematical / Spatial/ Throwing • Gender differences in aggression, self-esteem, body image.

24. Gender Similarities • Hyde found gender had large effect on differences in throwing , aggression and masturbation • Verbal and communicative differences were slight • Hyde’s conclusion: It is time to consider the cost of over-inflated claims of gender differences.

25. Reading: • Goddard, A., & Meân, L. (2009). Language & Gender. Oxon: Routledge

26. References • Cameron, D. (2007) The Myth of Mars and Venus. Oxford: OUP. • Gray, J. (1993) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. New York: Thorsons. • Hyde, J.S. (2005) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60 (6) • Kitzinger, C. and Frith, H. (1999) Just say no? The use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal. Discourse and Society, 10 (3), 293 -316 • O’Byrne, R., Rapley, M. and Hansen, S. (2006) ‘You couldn’t say no, could you?’: Young men’s understanding of sexual refusal. Feminism & Psychology, 16. • Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology. London: Sage