Tuesday, April 22, 2008

How do the goals of communication differ between men and women?


The goals of communication are different between men and women because there are different ways to talk. Generally, men’s communication is more like individuals in a hierarchical social order in which they are either one-up or one-down (Deborah Tannen’s book). In other words, the men are dominant and want to be more independent than women. For men, they try to use conversation to achieve their goals and protect themselves. So they put the others down and push them around. Men’s communication is like a contest to put them in high position and avoid failure. For women, their communication is like individuals in a network of connections. Women’s goals of communication are try to seek and give confirmation and get help from the others, and to reach consensus. They want to get a good relationship between each other. So they use the close way to talk with each other that we call intimacy. They always share their feelings for each other and avoid isolation.
Women achieve the high position and avoid failure, but there are not their goals that they always focus, they tend to guise themselves. For men also, to achieve involvement and to avoid isolation is the goal, but they are not focused on them, and they will use direct way to express their opinion. For example, women usually use “we, and apologize words” during their conversation, but men usually use “I or in my opinion” and they never apologize. So everyone needs both intimacy and independence whoever she or he is, but women tend to focus on intimacy and men on the independence and domination. That’s the goals of communication differ between men and women.

8 comments:

Yufi said...

I like your picture!! It's very pretty~

Nicole said...

But sometimes as you noticed, there are exceptions..like Peng!!

FOX said...

TO Nicole: it's ture~haha

FOX said...

Oh My god......What is going on my blog........It drives me crazy......

Nicole said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nicole said...

HAHA! Fox! How do you like your brend-new, super fantastic blog? Do you like it?

FOX said...

to Nicole:i like it very much and u haha~by the way, thank u very much.

Choyi said...

Hey, Fox~
Nice blog!
It is a kind of an evolution. haha...
And I already knew, you love beach, so much! ;) ( it reminds me somthing anyway, haha...)
Take care! :)