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Message board > Male and Female - is there a difference?
Male and Female - is there a difference?
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Logos
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Male and Female - is there a difference?
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The recent forum entry about a girl �s club got me thinking about some sociolinguistics I remember doing many years ago, and that was the differences (linguistically) between males and females. Here is a situation, can you give your comments on what you think the outcome would be:
8 adult people, (4 guys, 4 girls) of the same age, general interests and character are sitting chit chatting for half an hour over coffee.
Question: Who would talk the most - the boys or the girls?
Opinions please and if you can state why!!!! |
26 Mar 2009
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Damielle
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I guess the answer may be tricky!!!!  Hummmmmm.... boys would talk the most!!!!!
Why??? hummmmmmm.......  because the girls would go to the toilet for half an hour while the boys stay talking!!!
Sorry Logos if this is not a linguistics explanation but although I did my best to get the answer, I couldn´t (maybe i´m too tired to think!!!)
Well, I�ll go to bed right now because I have said good night some time ago and then my colleagues scold me because I stay around!!! |
26 Mar 2009
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Logos
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Nice one Damielle, but let �s imagine the toilet is closed!!! |
26 Mar 2009
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Zora
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I �d say the boys - if they are teenagers or young adults and they aren�t "friend-friends" only acquaintances or strangers - because they�d want to impress the girls. It�s a natural thing really - the male tries to get the female�s attention by doing or acting in a way that makes her notice him.
Now, if they are all really good friends, I �d say that all of them would talk more or less the same amount since some of those "instincts" are "gone", suppressed, etc... and so the guys would see the girls as "friends" more than potential "girlfriends" and the girls would feel more comfortable around them since that "barrier" is also removed and they�d feel less "shy" around them...
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26 Mar 2009
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mario89
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Glossolaly...
?????
it could be Female
But now, we are 2-2? |
26 Mar 2009
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mario89
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Glossolaly...
?????
it could be Female
But now, we are 2-2? |
26 Mar 2009
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gumby59
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Hi Logos
I would have to say that in the group of 8, there would be a "ringleader" of sorts, someone who would take charge of the flow of the converstation and others would follow that person. SO I would have to say that since we don �t know the gender of this person, it would be hard to figure out if the males or females would talk more. But if we did know that then i would imagine the conversation would be dominated by that ringleader �s gender.
DOes this make any sense at all? Just my take on the situation anyway.
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26 Mar 2009
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alien boy
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Logos, you ask some very good questions!
However, I �d have to say that other cultural factors would also significantly impact on this.
For example, in the main, in Japan if your sample group were older adults then males would be less interrupted than females in conversation. As a generalisation, the men would be dominant over the women in terms of respect to be accorded to their ideas & vocalisations.
However, in Australian society, men tend to interrupt conversation more than women (I �ll try to find the research paper that I read on this... it �s probably archived in my back up hard drive somewhere!).
I �d not necessarily agree with the �ringleader � approach as being throroughly consistent. A lot would come down to the relationships between the people in the group - e.g. are they close friends, work associates, a dating scene, a book club, acquaintances from a seminar, or something else?
I look forward to reading more of the discussion later! |
26 Mar 2009
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douglas
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Sorry Logos, I can �t really answer this, there are too many environmental factors to consider:
--is the location a prefered location of the women or the men?
--is it a predominately masculine or feminine environment (hardware store vs clothing store)?
--what are the relationship statuses (boyfriend/girlfriend, wife/husband, family, friends/new acquaintances)?
--individual personalities and cultural norms would play a role too.
--chance plays a role as well (a specific topic comes up that someone is real interested in)
My experience is, if the guys start talking about something too "male", the converstaion would split and the women would talk together about another topic. |
26 Mar 2009
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eng789
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I personally think that the men would run out of what to say faster.
I think age is a factor here also. If they are married women with children and or grandchildren then there is no end to what they can talk about regarding kids.
food, recipes, little league, school, holidays, breastfeeding, ............... |
26 Mar 2009
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alien boy
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aah, I found one reference in a more recent journal article (2008) that typifies men as interrupting women in conversation more often than the other way around. This article also recognises that social & cultural imperatives are as important as gender issues (but that gender roles are constructs of societies) when considering & investigating masculine & feminine comminucative differences. Or something like that!
I don �t have my other archives available atm.
Have you ever heard men talk about cars or football (or insert other sport here)... I know some tragics who could �talk under wet cement � about their favorite team...
When it comes down to talking about food you only have to hang out with a few chefs (any gender) to know that men are as interested in it as women. Little league - Japan just won the WBC & baseball here is to men what cricket is to men in Australia... Okay, so breastfeeding doesn �t figure prominently in male conversation...
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26 Mar 2009
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