(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

OK, so let's see what the 1995 book Women, Men, and Politeness by NZ feminist and linguist Janet Holmes has to say about differences in the way men and women talk, and especially how they handle conflict.

First lemme quote you these two bits from chapter 1:

"Most women enjoy talk and regard talking as an important means of keeping in touch, especially with friends and intimates. They use language to establish, nurture and develop personal relationships. Men tend to see language more as a tool for obtaining and conveying information. They see talk as a means to an end, and the end can often be very precisely defined - a decision reached, for instance, some information gained, or a problem resolved. These different perceptions of the main purpose of talk account for a wide variety of differences in the way women and men use language." (p 2 - all emphases in this posting are mine)

"Men's reasons for talking often focus on the content of the talk or its outcome, rather than on how it affects the feelings of others. It is women who rather emphasises this aspect of talk. Women compliment others more often than men do, and they apologise more often than men do too." (p 2)

Or, as someone (ahem) remarked to me the other day: "If you care about interacting instead of lecturing you might consider what I said." Holmes explains that these are the "referential" and "affective" functions of language - one carries information ("It's seven a.m.") and the other expresses feelings ("Sorry to wake you up so early.").

She goes on to say that everyone has "face needs" - the need not to be imposed on, the need to be "liked and admired". When you - when I challenge someone with a bald disagreement, that's a "face-threatening act". (It was this loss of face that used to send me into a terrible panic in online disputes, as recently as racewank '07. "Oh shit, I've fucked this up, everyone laughs at/hates me forever!!!") Defensiveness arises out of the need to "save face" - for example, an older fangirl "pulling rank" on me when I bluntly pointed out she was wrong. (People of lower status are generally more polite to people of higher status.)

Linguists have put forward a variety of explanations for these differences, from the biological (of which I'm personally very sceptical) to socialisation to inequality. Of the latter, Holmes says: "Men's greater social power allows them to define and control situations, and male norms predominate in interaction." (p 8) Add that to the Internet's original male majority, and we have an explanation of why so much Internet discussion was (and is) "masculine" in nature: confrontational, brusque, concerned with winning the argument rather than group bonding or soothing ruffled feathers. Well, that and the urge to save bandwidth.

(Lemme see if I can dig up some examples from Usenet. ETA: here's a thread from talk.rape in which I use a blunt style. It's actually a pretty civil discussion, but there's no mucking about reassuring each other. And ETA again: a discussion in which I made an effort to defuse things a bit with compliments and humour.)

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

"[Women] apologise more often than men do too."

My friends will tell you that I have been working on redressing this balance for some years now...:)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

[NODS] I'm sorry, but it's true... [G,D&RVVF]

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

From what I have observed:

Men tend to see language more as a tool for obtaining and conveying information. That's you when you are presenting something that you consider important, and you don't want to dilute the information with anything extraneous.

Most women enjoy talk and regard talking as an important means of keeping in touch, especially with friends and intimates. And that would be you for almost everything else, especially personal communications.

Frequently I've found that many people I've encountered (everywhere, not just online) don't like to be forced to think, especially about something that is in disagreement with their own opinions and beliefs. And you've discussed this yourself, in your postings about methods and mayhem of arguments- when someone feels like they have been backed into a corner during an argument, some times they will "just attack everything" to try to win, including the person they are arguing with instead of the matter at hand.

In online forums, that frequently seems to take the path of attacking the manner something is being stated, instead of what has actually been stated."If you care about interacting instead of lecturing you might consider what I said."

an older fangirl "pulling rank" on me when I bluntly pointed out she was wrong This has become tiresome for me; all the one-upmanship that goes on in fandom ("I used to walk 10 miles up a hill both ways in the snow to watch Dr. Who on a black and white televison in a box with no sound!" "LUXURY!!! At least you HAD a box!") Why does fandom have to be a competitive martyrdom? Why can't old-school fans all just accept that we all went through the trenches in various ways and enjoy the camaraderie that should exist as a result?

One of your practices that I truly appreciate is how you almost always backup your research with sources; probably because I work in newspaper. Whenever I see someone accused of using "anecdotes from a 1983 fanzine" (I may have got the quote wrong, I don't feel like slogging back through that posting to find it), I wish they could see how little they're left to stand on when they don't offer up a cited counter-point, or any citation at all, for that matter.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

lol, I'm bitextual. (A commenter just referred to me as "he/she/whatever". Result!)

At some point I have to confront the problem of my own "status" in fandom. Does it lend me some sort of weight, or does it have the opposite effect - "Who does that bitch think she is, just because she wrote a few books?"

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

bitextual This may be the best made-up word ever.

At some point I have to confront the problem of my own "status" in fandom. I think when you start thinking about that sort of thing, the temptation follows to start throwing around your weight, so to speak. I honestly don't think you should address it one way or the other- just be who you are, and let other people throw around your status.

Unless you're discussing something in your own books. Kind of hard to not throw around your weight there, as the author.

Throwing my weight around

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=YwNi8dzj0S8

Re: Throwing my weight around

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

*loves manatees*

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

A uni friend with whom I still have contact, and who is now a professor, had a number of linguistics-related buttons made for her at cons, but my all-time favorite remains "Deborah Tannen thinks I'm a man." Getting to wear it to a conference at which Tannen was actually speaking was an early highlight of her academic career.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

That's funneh. I have to connect it to the binary "But I'm a girl! Don't tell me I'm a boy!" response from a few peeps, though.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much the same, I think. I'm generally pretty easygoing, but my hackles go up in a hurry if I feel like I'm being told some portion of my default behavior is somehow male by definition.

Tangentially related: The book club in one of my former workplaces (which, IIRC, was all women) almost unanimously declared they were unable to get into Smilla's Sense of Snow because Smilla was basically a male character in disguise. I was completely bewildered, because everything she did and thought made perfect sense to me.

I asked if they would have said the same thing had the author been female, and they admitted they weren't sure, though a couple could not imagine a female author writing a woman that way. It made for an interesting discussion, but really pointed up why I was so often coming at things so perpendicular to everyone else in the room.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Well, "masculine", rather than "male".