If You Spoke as Who Does? (Blog #10)

Yup, it's true. Women tend to speak or text to create rapport much more than males do. How do I know that? It happens in my home. My wife is outstanding at being timid on the web and also wants to make everyone in her group that she is speaking to, to be involved.

Just as the graph suggests, she tends to get social support from her social networking sites, when she is interacting with other women. As opposed to me, when interacting with my friends, the getting is much less.

It's also evident that much of her words used in a posting are based on an emotional response to the conversational subject. This creates the need for the support from other women who, consequently, also base their responses on emotion, which can help heal the pain, so to speak.

I, on the other hand, seem to fall right in line with the article's findings, where I find myself wanting to protect my "social standing" and would rather not show a sign of weakness. Just the facts, ma'am.

I Totally Agree With Facebook

What can I say, this particular article is fascinating. I find that the results found in this writing are more accurate (when compared to my everyday experiences) and I can relate to them in my personal life more than the previous writings throughout the semester.

My wife spends some of her time on Facebook and therefore writes a lot on the "walls" of others and also tends to instant-message many of her friends. Every once in a while I take a peek at what she's saying (she knows I'm watching) and I find many similarities in the way she "speaks" online to the way women were studied by Guiller and Durndell. Her postings and chats are filled with qualifiers and opinion, and were almost always positive. Even when she had to make a disagreeable statement, she had difficulty in being negative.

Contrary to that, I rarely use Facebook, but when I do chat with friends online, I have no problem being negative if that's what it takes to get what I want. The statistics found in the study say that 23% of the postings are from males, and 77% are from females. You can't argue with those results, especially when I see it first hand in my home.

The females using the words such as "totally," "really," and "very" in postings, also shows that they tend to write similar to how they tend to speak. My sister-in-law and wife are notorious for using these intensifiers within all of their conversations.

Angry Pronouns

From the sound (perceived from the writing style) of Dennis E. Baron's words, it can be concluded that there is a hint of anger, or at least a sense on personal inaptness towards the use (or non-use) of certain words. I dug deep into my automatically-assumed sexist heart (because I'm a man) and didn't even come close to finding what Mr. Baron had thought about, and wrote about, in his sixteen page article. Personally, I feel that there must have been something that had triggered his brain to write such an article.

Aside from my personal feelings of Baron, I still have a difficult time in believing that it is 100% masculine 100% of the time. One can break apart the speech patterns in "American Speech" and if they (no gender intended) dig deep enough, I guess you can conclude whatever you desire, or whatever your motive may be. The phrase "Joseph took the young mother and the child by night, and fled with them into Egypt," is just one example of Baron determining masculinity by surgically examining "sexist" words. In my opinion the average person is not going to look at this and say "this needs to be more feminine." Not because it isn't feminine enough, but because the pronouns used to describe the situation mean certain things to each beholder.

Women as "Open Persons"

It's difficult to disagree with the section "Not-so small insults: Street remarks' and verbal violence against women." More specifically, there are certain unwritten rules, a "norm of civil inattention" that people utilize while in public places.

Being a man, I will never fully understand what a woman must go through when she has to balance her reactions against her replies. She must decide against fully accepting a compliment that will then classify her as an open person, or ignoring a compliment in which then she might be accused of rudeness.

This behavior can cause a woman to be perpetually self conscious about herself when she is alone, or even with another person or persons. Women are aware they are being looked at, and that is what creates this self consciousness. It doesn't really matter if the woman being watched likes or dislikes the attention, this behavior can cause a women to act in a different manner than most men in public (such as a homosexual type of setting).

It's unfortunate that women can be construed as sexual prey, but it looks like these street remarks may be more difficult to avoid than meets the eye.

What? - The President's More Respected Than a Senator?

Former President Bill Clinton, whether you love him or hate him, is going to be more respected than a Senator, even if that Senator is his own wife. The question here is whether or not there was a difference in communication among the interviewer versus the interviewee, when comparing the former President of the United States and the former First Lady/Senator from New York, with the same interviewers.

First let me explain that I firmly believe that Bill Clinton is going to be looked at and treated with more respect, solely because he is a respected former president, than any Senator, male or female. That being said, the charts in the article clearly show some bias in the process of interviewing and questioning regarding these two.

As a president, or in this case a former president, words are your friend. You are always in the spotlight and need an explanation for everything. Bill Clinton is clearly still in this mode, or has always been. That, to me, explains the amount of syllables spoken by him to be greater.

Hillary might already consider herself an underdog, not necessarily because she's a woman, but because she was never president and not looked up to and respected the same as her husband, therefore explaining the greater use of more "first names" and "you." She clearly wants to include everyone that she is speaking about in specifics, not in vague generalities, and showing that she "cares" and is serious about her business.

The obvious differences in interviews are clear to see, but I think there might be more to the eye than we see. If both Clinton's were President, then I think the playing field might be more fair, and a truer answer would result.

Kings Are Royaler Than Queens?

In 1990, Amy Sheldon did a home study on her 6 1/2 year old daughter, noticing that she referred to stuffed animals that showed no gender at all, to "he's." Sheldon pondered this reference to males, which further empowered her male-dominating society theory. Not being able to connect this to anything in her daughter's everyday interactions, she concludes that language is to blame for her daughter's label of "he," and is responsible for making females "invisible."

I, however, have a different conclusion solely based on my personal life. By no means is my amateur, non-scientific study better or more comprehensive than Sheldon's, but I, too, have a 6 1/2 year old daughter, and I couldn't resist in performing the same test with her. And while I'm at it, why don't I throw my 4 1/2 year old son in the study as well.

I simply asked my daughter and my son to bring three stuffed animals each from their rooms. I did not tell them what I was doing; I simply asked them what the name's of each animal was, and if it was a boy or a girl (according to what gender they each assigned to them). Each of my son's was a boy with a boy name, and each of my daughter's was a girl with a girl name.

All I can really conclude from this is at least two things. First, our family tries very hard to make everyone equal, and to not assign a label to anything (except where the facts don't lie, such as my son and I are males and my daughter and wife are females). And second, I believe our whole society has evolved and advanced quite well for equality since this study was constructed. Twenty years is a long time, and I would like to see a more recent study one day just to see the difference in reactions.

Taboo?

After reading the Vivian de Klerk article, "How Taboo are Taboo Words for Girls," I realize that there are different mannerisms associated with how a person responds to various key words. Let me preface by saying I did not expect that much profanity (not that I'm offended) from males or females while giving their description of the key words. I found it interesting that the age groups in question had such varying responses, primarily based on life experience, 2.) the study suggests that if the subject person knew the key word was describing a certain gender, the response might be swayed, according to what gender was believed to be portrayed, and 3.) the age of the article was much older than I expected, however still relevant to today.