I finished reading "You Just Don't Understand" by Deborah Tannen last night. This is a First Ballentine Books Edition, June 1991. It's a heavily marked up paperback full of someone else's personal experiences overlaid onto the author's original text. I usually don't like to read marked up books because it affects the way I perceive the original work - like I'm being constantly interrupted while I'm trying to read; but in this case, it was OK. I found the book enlightening in many ways. It highlights many differences in the ways men and women communicate; and it explains some of my own idiosyncrasies of speech as just being typically male. Although the book is a serious scholarly work, there is a joke inside which says a lot about the entire subject. Here's a paraphrase:
A woman sues her husband for divorce; and when the judge asks her why, she explains, "He hasn't spoken to me in more than two years!" The judge turns to the man and asks, "Why haven't you spoken to your wife for more than two years?", and the husband replies, "I didn't want to interrupt her."
Yes, men and women really do have different styles of speech. Sometimes it's really hard to remember that.
Today at the hotel, we had concurrent banquet events. On one side of the hall was a funeral reception for a man named Young; and on the other side was the annual clown convention. I made a comment to one of my co-workers about the interesting juxtaposition; but - instead of seeing the irony of grieving relatives on one side of the hall and a room full of clowns on the other - she just ridiculed my "two-bit attempt to use a college word in regular conversation." I was flummoxed. I could feel my deflector shields go up and my phaser banks begin to charge. I had been challenged. I instinctively reached for the mental twibill and prepared to verbally cleave her asunder; but then I remembered that book. Men and women really do converse in different ways ... perhaps she was just trying to make conversation ... hmmmm.
I decided to take a different tack. I lowered my defenses and allowed as how my usage of "juxtaposition" may have been flawed. Perhaps her suggestion that they had just "been placed too near each other" might have been more clear. Perhaps - in the future - I should be more careful when choosing my words. She smiled! How pleasantly unexpected. Then she began to tell me how she suffers from coulraphobia - talk about your "college words" ... Geez! I guess all the clowns were really stressing her out and she just needed someone to listen. Women are weird like that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bonus points for saying women and not girls. I've read some of Deborah Tannen's writing. I think the whole subject is fascinating. And yes, men and women definitely do have VERY different ways of communicating and that's closely tied to the fact that they think differently. I come at most things with an emotionally affected point of view. Eric usually has a logic based assessment of things. That's why I run stuff by him sometimes, to have him remove the layer of emotion and cut to the core. Your poor co-worker was so caught up in the emotional reaction to the situation that she couldn't really deal with your logical (and funny) observation. You surprised her by addressing her emotions. We women aren't used to men doing that :-) More bonus points I suppose.
ReplyDelete