You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen

Author:Deborah Tannen [Tannen, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Human Sexuality, Men's Studies, Psychology, Family & Relationships, Communication, Communication Studies, General, Interpersonal Communication, Interpersonal Relations, Sex Differences (Psychology), Communication in Marriage, Self-Help, Social Science
ISBN: 9780060959623
Publisher: Perennial Currents
Published: 2001-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

“DON’T YOU AGREE?”

The role of peacemaker reflects the general tendency among women to seek agreement. When Marge tells John something she thought of or a comment someone else made, John often responds by pointing out a weakness in the position or an alternative perspective. This makes Marge vaguely uncomfortable. One day she repeated someone’s comment that echoed a point of view John himself had argued only a few days before. She was sure he would say, “Oh, yes. That’s right.” In fact, her main reason for repeating the remark was to please John by offering support for his position. But, to Marge’s surprise and distress, John pointed out the other side. Even when she was sure she was sowing agreement, she reaped a harvest of disagreement. To John, raising a different point of view is a more interesting contribution to make than agreeing. But Marge finds his disagreeing disagreeable, because it introduces a note of contentiousness into the conversation.

For Marge, disagreement carries a metamessage of threat to intimacy. John does not see disagreement as a threat. Quite the opposite, he regards being able to express disagreement as a sign of intimacy. One man explained to me that he feels it is his duty, when someone expresses a view, to point out the other side; if someone complains of another’s behavior, he feels he should explain what that person’s motives might be. When someone takes a position, he feels he ought to help explore it by trying to poke holes in it, and playing devil’s advocate for the opposing view. In all this, he feels he is being supportive, and in a way he is, but it is support modeled on an adversative stance—a stance that is more expected and appreciated by men than by women.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.