GENDER AND DISCOURSE

Deborah Tannen

Oxford University Press, 1994

Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other demonstrate how intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships - including relationships between men and women - and the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives. Gender and Discourse examines language and gender through the lens of 'sex-class-linked' patterns as well as 'sex-linked' patterns. The six essays in the book address the controversies and misunderstandings of her work. She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's 'essential nature.' She analyzes a number of conversational strategies, such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence showing that no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation. For example, interruption can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context - the participants' individual styles and the interaction of their styles - that result in the balance of power.