ABSTRACT
Coupland et al.’s approach to miscommunication has successfully attempted to integrate the macro and micro elements of interaction between speakers by situating discourse in its social context, by considering interaction inclusive of people’s attitudes, value systems, intentions and identities, and by focusing the topic of miscommunication not only on its items of production but also on its causes and effects. This entails going beyond a merely descriptive interpersonal approach in order to meet the principle of remedy. Moral and social analyses which transcend the notion of reparability of conventional discourse analysis are allowed by their recognition that ‘language and communication underpin and enact…specific social problems, divisions, inequalities, and dissatisfactions’, together with their claim of the need for research on ‘how deception is interactionally constituted and the contexts in which it may be pernicious or necessary.’ The framework seems irreproachable, one eagerly sought after in sociolinguistics, and most suitable to outline the comprehensive approach to female/ male communication that Henley and Kramarae propose in this essay ‘Gender, Power, and Miscommunication’. What is more, as the editors make feasible the study and comparison of some misunderstandings whose roots can be found at a level beyond personal interaction, the paper I will be dealing with (pp. 18-43) may gain perspective if some of Henley and Kramarae’s conclusions are compared to the findings of the rest of the researchers in the volume.
