Sex, Lies, and Conversation

Sex, Lies and Conversation “But often when women tell men, "You aren't listening," and the men protest, "I am," the men are right.” This was a quote the heard while at a gathering of men and women speaking about marriage and communication. Deborah Tannen, the hostess of the gathering decided to dive further into the study of exactly how men and women communicate, and how this communication can affect their lives and their marriages. Tannen’s study enveloped not only the aspect of how men and women communicate as adults, but also how they begin their strategies of conversation as young children. In her exploration of how children and adults communicate, she referenced the results of a similar study. The study she observed was published by Eleanor Maccoby, a Standard University professor. Within this publication, Professor Maccoby spoke about how boys and girls typically tend to play with their own gender. Maccoby also mentioned how the structure and functioning of these specific groups range depending on the gender. Boys in Maccoby’s study tended to be a more action and less talk group of individuals, whereas the girls were the exact opposite; loving to gossip and laugh while preferring to drift from the heavy actions of play. Within their respected gender groups, Maccoby noticed a hierarchical tendency that evolves when boys are together. None of the boys wanted to look or seem lower than the boy next to him. She found that this also contributed to boy’s groups being much larger than the girl’s groups of friends, since boy’s were always looking someone to replace them as the low rank in the chain of command. Tannen took note of this information, and found that these traits evolve much more as the child becomes older. As the child becomes an adult, more body language is thrown into the mix of communication among friends and spouses. In Tannen’s observations, women were the renowned gossipers of the study and when speaking to others, they often used