Genderlect Styles

Genderlect Styles

Example: Blue & Pink Phones & Hearing Aids

Are You Playing Tug of War In Your Communication?

The example of blue and pink phones and hear aids supports the Genderlect Styles. Genderlect is defined as a term suggesting that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects. In this theory, Tannen describes the differences between how men and women communicate. Men tend to switch topics a lot (love to talk about sports) and prefer to accomplish ideas and move on. Women like face-to-face time and enjoy talking about just one topic. Men tend to be quiet in relationships while women are wordier. Men tell more stories than women, jokes elevate their ego, and they tell more stories about themselves. Meanwhile, women just like to talk about others. Those differences between men and women represent the blue and pink phones. This is because men and women communicate differently. The blue phone represents how the men communicate and the pink phone represents how women communicate. When it comes to listening, men and women differ as well. This can be represented with the blue hearing aid for men and the pink hearing aid for women. Men want rapid fire conversations, while women like to add agreement terms into the conversation like ("OK" "Uh-huh" "right" and "mmmhmmm"). The differences in communication (talking and listening) between men and women can cause tension and a tug or war like mentality. Personally, I believe that men and women can learn from one another when it comes to their communication styles. Quiet frankly, if men and women don't try to understand how the other communicates, their relationship is doomed and will not be very successful.

This might be one of the most important theories for myself to understand out of all the theories discussed this semester. This is because communicating man to man or women to women is always easy. Why? The answer is simple, because we understand how the other talks and listens. When it comes to communicating with the opposite sex, men just say, "Women are complicated" and women just say, "Men are weird." Both of these statements have truth to them, but I have come to realize that the problem (I am guilty of this too) is that men and women don't take the time to understand how the other communicates. They try to use a blue phone to talk to a pink hearing aid and vice versa. It wont work!! This theory has opened my eyes to the main differences between how a man talks and listens compared to how a woman talks and listens. I will make sure to spend time talking about 1 topic thoroughly with women and not try to bounce around subjects. I will also attempt to talk a little less about sports and don't use sports analogies all the time. I will make a goal to listen more carefully to the opposite sex when they are talking to me. I might even throw in some agreeing terms, so that they really believe that I am listening to them. Those goals I have set out for myself might seem impossible to some, but to me, I believe it will vastly improve my communication with women, so that we stop playing tug of war when it comes to communicating.