ABSTRACT

These are a few of the recent headlines that suggest men and women have difficulties communicating with each other. In 1990, Deborah Tannen wrote a popular book entitled You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. From this book, it would appear that women and men have completely different styles of conversation, completely different styles of nonverbal communication, and completely different styles of interacting with one another. Although some of the conversational excerpts provided in her book may ring true, the book is largely based on anecdotal evidence of men’s and women’s interactions. The stories ring true because they are consistent with our schemas about how women and men interact and because it is easier to recall schema-consistent information than schema-inconsistent information. The research evidence, however, shows that women’s and men’s communication patterns are much more varied. Many more variables than the person’s sex influence communication-for example, the sex of the person with whom one is interacting, the situation in which people find themselves, the goal or purpose of the interaction, and the status of the interaction partners. Kathryn Dindia (2006), a gender and communications scholar, concludes that men and women are not from different planets or cultures and do not speak different languages. Rather than men being from Mars and women being from

Venus, Dindia (2006) suggests that men are from North Dakota and women are from South Dakota-meaning that there are many more similarities than differences in communication.