After watching The Linguistis and reading these chapters, write a post on your blog about what language means to its speakers. Why would it be important to hold on to a language? Why would it be important to learn another? What policies do you think could be in place to protect a linguistic group's right to its own language?
I think that it is important for speakers to hold on to their languages because it is one of the biggest things that bind him/her to the culture, society, country/region, and family that is around him/her. Language binds people to their family members who speak it because it is the primary way that they can communicate and bond with each other. It also can bind the speakers to their society because the language or even dialect they speak can sometimes be seen as an indication of their social status. Language also binds people to their cultures because the culture uses language to influence how the speaker act and think. Language also binds the speaker to the place he or she came from because people can tell where someone came from just from what language they speak or how they speak the language.
Unfortunately, many people in many different countries must learn another "dominant" language in order to function with the rest of society. It is during this process of learning the "dominant" language when many decide to leave their old language behind. In addition to losing the old language to the dominant one, in some places such as Siberia and India, boarding schools would not allow their students to speak their old languages, which forces them to throw it away, whether they want to or not.
One way to prevent the slow death of these languages is to first allow them to be spoken, and more importantly, allow the speakers to be proud of their language. Enacting laws that makes people learn an "official language" is usually necessary for the country to function, but laws or regulations that forbid people to speak a certain language should be removed, especially the ones in schools. The speakers should also increase awareness of their language and tell the world that their language is a good language full of pride and rich history.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Writing component of presentation: Review of "You Just Don't Understand" by Deborah Tannen
The book "You Just Don't Understand" by Deborah Tannen mainly talks about the two different ways men and women think, speak, and interpret the words and actions of others in a conversation. In the beginning of the book, Tannen says that she believes that men see the world as a constant contest where he must always defend his position from others and advance forward, and women see the world as a constant struggle to prevent others from pushing them away and to get closer and more intimate with others. For both, conversations are "negotiations" to do those things. For the majority of the rest of the book, she talks about how these two different "genderlects" develop as people grow up, she talks about how and why the two genderlects work when two men or two women talk to each other and why and how the two can come into conflict when they interact with each other, and she supports these points by giving many real-life, sometimes personal, examples as well as experiments and observations that many other linguists and anthropologists made.
I think that Tannen's book is very strong because she uses a lot of real-life examples that people who are reading it can relate to. She uses scenarios and conversations that many people might have faced in their lives, and give detailed and yet simple explanations on why someone said something and why something had happened. One thing I wished that she wrote about is how and why parents and teachers seem to encourage the development of the two genderlects. I also wished that she explored is the topic of how the two genderlects evolved into what they are today in the long history of gender inequality, just as Yule talked a lot about history in many parts of his book. I really thought that historical content would have made Tannen's book even better, since gender inequality has existed for a very long time, and therefore different genderlects also may have existed and evolved with gender inequality.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Research Book: Summary of the book so far Part 5
The last part of the book talks about how something like the way a person sits and what he or she does during a conversation can cause misunderstandings.
Tannen looks into many experiments conducted by other linguists where they have pairs of people of the same gender and of the same age talk in a room while being videotaped.
First, the pair of second grade boys were restless, they were looking for things to do, and they were telling jokes and mocking the adult who took them to the room and told them to talk about "something serious". The second grade girls, however, were the complete opposite : they were sitting still and talking about what they were supposed to be talking about. Tannen explains that this difference goes back to the way boys and girls see the world: boys see the world as a constant competition for status which was why they were doing things like playing around and mocking the adults, girls see the world as a constant struggle to maintain equality and intimacy which was why their conversation was full of words that reassure each other that they are not the only ones experiencing a problem (and they did not play around like the boys because they do not gain much intimacy/equality from it).
The next group observed were pairs of sixth graders . Although the boys do not jump around and stuff like the second graders, they still squirm and move around their chairs constantly and do not feel comfortable. The boys also switch topics constantly. They never sit facing each other and rarely made eye contact; they were looking everywhere in the room except at each other. The girls on the other hand, are almost like their second grade counterparts: they sit still and look comfortable, they talk about one topic and continually reinforces and reassures each other, and they sit facing each other, making eye contact many times.
The next group to be videotaped were tenth graders. The pair of boys were like the sixth graders: they do not sit facing each other and they rarely look at each other, the only difference is that they are completely slumped on the chairs they were sitting on. However, unlike the previous groups, the tenth grader boys talked about person things. As for the girls, they are almost identical to their sixth grade counterparts.
The last group observed was made up of twenty-five year old adults. The women were mostly like their younger counterparts, only this time the struggle to maintain equality and intimacy and avoid conflict is a bit harder.
The theory that Tannen develops from watching the videos of these conversations is that the men avoid sitting face to face or making eye contact because it is like a "hostile action, a display of threat (269)". They feel comfortable talking to each other while not facing each other at all. Their conversations can be either impersonal and/or constantly changing topics because they dismiss each other's problems as something that is not as bad as they think it is. Women, on the other hand, face each other while talking because it establishes connection between them. They talk about whatever is on their minds and personal things and they support/reinforce/reassure each other's comments and feelings in conversations because sharing everything means that they are being intimate.
The conflict between the sexes arise when the men and the women judge each other in terms of their own "genderlect". The men and boys do not face each other and they are comfortable with that because it fits into their own logic, but women may interpret this as a lack of interest in the conversation because she assumes that facing each other = good. The men might also see direct eye contact as a sign of flirting, which may be a bad thing for one or both of them. Also, Women may see the constant dismissing of problems as a sign of not caring while the man sees it as normal, and men can see the reassuring words of women as a sign of being subordinated while women see it as normal. Misunderstandings like these can cause conflicts to spiral out of control and damage the relationships between the people.
The book concludes that the best way to avoid misunderstandings or at least minimize the damage caused by it is to understand how both genders think and speak. It also helps to be a little more like the other gender when talking. More importantly, one must say that he/she must do the changing, not their partners.
Tannen looks into many experiments conducted by other linguists where they have pairs of people of the same gender and of the same age talk in a room while being videotaped.
First, the pair of second grade boys were restless, they were looking for things to do, and they were telling jokes and mocking the adult who took them to the room and told them to talk about "something serious". The second grade girls, however, were the complete opposite : they were sitting still and talking about what they were supposed to be talking about. Tannen explains that this difference goes back to the way boys and girls see the world: boys see the world as a constant competition for status which was why they were doing things like playing around and mocking the adults, girls see the world as a constant struggle to maintain equality and intimacy which was why their conversation was full of words that reassure each other that they are not the only ones experiencing a problem (and they did not play around like the boys because they do not gain much intimacy/equality from it).
The next group observed were pairs of sixth graders . Although the boys do not jump around and stuff like the second graders, they still squirm and move around their chairs constantly and do not feel comfortable. The boys also switch topics constantly. They never sit facing each other and rarely made eye contact; they were looking everywhere in the room except at each other. The girls on the other hand, are almost like their second grade counterparts: they sit still and look comfortable, they talk about one topic and continually reinforces and reassures each other, and they sit facing each other, making eye contact many times.
The next group to be videotaped were tenth graders. The pair of boys were like the sixth graders: they do not sit facing each other and they rarely look at each other, the only difference is that they are completely slumped on the chairs they were sitting on. However, unlike the previous groups, the tenth grader boys talked about person things. As for the girls, they are almost identical to their sixth grade counterparts.
The last group observed was made up of twenty-five year old adults. The women were mostly like their younger counterparts, only this time the struggle to maintain equality and intimacy and avoid conflict is a bit harder.
The theory that Tannen develops from watching the videos of these conversations is that the men avoid sitting face to face or making eye contact because it is like a "hostile action, a display of threat (269)". They feel comfortable talking to each other while not facing each other at all. Their conversations can be either impersonal and/or constantly changing topics because they dismiss each other's problems as something that is not as bad as they think it is. Women, on the other hand, face each other while talking because it establishes connection between them. They talk about whatever is on their minds and personal things and they support/reinforce/reassure each other's comments and feelings in conversations because sharing everything means that they are being intimate.
The conflict between the sexes arise when the men and the women judge each other in terms of their own "genderlect". The men and boys do not face each other and they are comfortable with that because it fits into their own logic, but women may interpret this as a lack of interest in the conversation because she assumes that facing each other = good. The men might also see direct eye contact as a sign of flirting, which may be a bad thing for one or both of them. Also, Women may see the constant dismissing of problems as a sign of not caring while the man sees it as normal, and men can see the reassuring words of women as a sign of being subordinated while women see it as normal. Misunderstandings like these can cause conflicts to spiral out of control and damage the relationships between the people.
The book concludes that the best way to avoid misunderstandings or at least minimize the damage caused by it is to understand how both genders think and speak. It also helps to be a little more like the other gender when talking. More importantly, one must say that he/she must do the changing, not their partners.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Research Book: Summary of the book so far Part 4a
So this next section of the book deals with Interrupting in Conversations. There are many factors that determine if there is any interruption in the conversation at all and if so, exactly who is interrupting and who is not. Tannen says that to find out, one must know as much as possible about the people speaking and listening (their culture, where they came from, their personalities, etc), the topic, the setting, who is trying to do or say what, and so on. She says that in general, there are two types of people: people who are "high considerateness" who basically do not impose and who give others a chance to speak, and people who are "high involvement" who basically speak enthusiastically and actively (196). The "high considerateness" people would usually wait for a pause in the conversation before they decide to speak, and at the same time, the "high involvement" people would think that those people are silent because they have nothing to say so therefore they should keep talking to keep the conversation alive.
Tannen also explains the difference between overlapping and interrupting: overlapping is when more than one person talks at the same time, interrupting is when the person you are talking to fells they are being cut off from the conversation. Tannen explains that overlapping does not always necessarily mean that you are interrupting, and that not overlapping in a conversation may not necessarily mean that you are not interrupting. For example, Some people can easily overlap each other in a conversation and never feel interrupted, especially if they keep talking about the same subject or overlaps to expand on it. Also, in some cases, even though people might take turns speaking, one person might feel interrupted if someone abruptly changes the subject or says something that makes the person feel ignored. Of course, if someone is overlapping and changing the subject at the same time, people will feel interrupted, and if there is no overlapping and no abrupt change in subject, the conversation will go on.
Tannen also explains the difference between overlapping and interrupting: overlapping is when more than one person talks at the same time, interrupting is when the person you are talking to fells they are being cut off from the conversation. Tannen explains that overlapping does not always necessarily mean that you are interrupting, and that not overlapping in a conversation may not necessarily mean that you are not interrupting. For example, Some people can easily overlap each other in a conversation and never feel interrupted, especially if they keep talking about the same subject or overlaps to expand on it. Also, in some cases, even though people might take turns speaking, one person might feel interrupted if someone abruptly changes the subject or says something that makes the person feel ignored. Of course, if someone is overlapping and changing the subject at the same time, people will feel interrupted, and if there is no overlapping and no abrupt change in subject, the conversation will go on.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Are you a prescriptivist or descriptivist?
I will say that I am 70% descriptivist and 30% prescriptivist. I accept the use of those new words and sentence structures, but not to the point where I want to suddenly see all the neologism in the dictionaries (especially if they are only used online) or all the different sentence structures being accepted at once. For me, it's fine to use it for everyday chat, but once it goes into the dictionary and people start using it in like papers and reports, it will really feel like the language is going in the wrong direction. I mean imagine the FBI or whatever powerful government agency using those new words (without using quotation marks) in their official reports.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Research Book: Summary of the book so far Part 3
Throughout the book, Tannen talks about how men listen and speak in the language of independence and status while women listen and speak in the language of intimacy and connection. In this part of the book, she goes into detail about the role that these two "genderlects" play when it comes to lecturing and explaining things.
She cites this experiment conduced by another linguist where he paired men and women together to talk about Children and violence on TV. In some groups, it is one man with another man. In others, it was a woman with another woman. Finally, the third set of groups were made of one man and one woman. Also, before the experiment started, half of the people were given material about the topic to read in order to become the "expert" of their pair. At the end of the experiment, he found that in most groups, the "experts" talked the most, the men who were experts talked more. Another surprising result he found was that in the cases where the woman is the expert and the man was not, the woman almost always seemed to play down her expertise and the man would almost resent the fact that she is the expert. The theory here is that in lectures, men think that being the listener mean being inferior and being the lecturer means being superior. As a result, they would try to argue and debate for the status.
Another interesting part of this book is when Tannen analyzes the times when people respond with "yeah." She says that women say that word when they follow and men use it when they agree. This could cause conflicts because when a man hears that from a woman who in the end does not agree with him, he might think that she was only agreeing but not listening to him. On the other side, when a woman does not hear a man say "yeah," she thinks that he is not listening to her at all because she assumed that saying "yeah" means that someone is following what she said.
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As of now, I am looking forward to reading the chapter on Interrupting, because that also seems to be a very big cause for major conflicts between men and women.
She cites this experiment conduced by another linguist where he paired men and women together to talk about Children and violence on TV. In some groups, it is one man with another man. In others, it was a woman with another woman. Finally, the third set of groups were made of one man and one woman. Also, before the experiment started, half of the people were given material about the topic to read in order to become the "expert" of their pair. At the end of the experiment, he found that in most groups, the "experts" talked the most, the men who were experts talked more. Another surprising result he found was that in the cases where the woman is the expert and the man was not, the woman almost always seemed to play down her expertise and the man would almost resent the fact that she is the expert. The theory here is that in lectures, men think that being the listener mean being inferior and being the lecturer means being superior. As a result, they would try to argue and debate for the status.
Another interesting part of this book is when Tannen analyzes the times when people respond with "yeah." She says that women say that word when they follow and men use it when they agree. This could cause conflicts because when a man hears that from a woman who in the end does not agree with him, he might think that she was only agreeing but not listening to him. On the other side, when a woman does not hear a man say "yeah," she thinks that he is not listening to her at all because she assumed that saying "yeah" means that someone is following what she said.
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As of now, I am looking forward to reading the chapter on Interrupting, because that also seems to be a very big cause for major conflicts between men and women.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Research Book: Summary of the book so far Part 2
So far, Tannen explained that when men and women listen and speak, they do so using two different yet equally valid "languages": Men listen and speak in the language of independence and status while women listen and speak in the language of intimacy and connection. These two languages are developed when the people are very young children. Since these two languages inherently contradict each other, many problems and misunderstandings can arise from this. Tannen gives us many scenarios from her own life, her friend's and colleagues' lives, and even from works of fiction, that demonstrates how these speakers of two different languages interact with people of the same gender and how they interact (and sometimes create conflicts) with the opposite sex.
One scenario is when someone is asking for help. Tannen tells us about a couple that she knew who is driving around, trying to find a street that is supposed to be nearby. The man is driving and the woman is at the front seat. The man insists on finding the street on his own because to him, "driving around until he finds his way is the reasonable thing to do, since asking for help makes him uncomfortable. He's avoiding that discomfort and trying to maintain his sense of himself as a self-sufficient person." Meanwhile, his wife is furious because "if she were driving, she would have asked directions as soon as she realized she didn't know which way to go...Since asking directions does not make Sybil uncomfortable, refusing to ask makes no sense to her" (62). Tannen explained that this happened because to the man, being the one who gives directions means that he knows more than the other person and therefore higher up in the ladder while being the one who receives directions means he knows less and one step lower on the ladder. Also, because saying "I don't know" is humiliating and because he wants to be independent, he thinks that asking for directions will also make him dependent and that taking a wild guess or driving around until he finds the place is the best thing to do. Women, on the other hand, "not only feel comfortable seeking help, but feel honor-bound to seek it, accept it, and display gratitude in exchange." One example she gives of that is how when one of her friends got off the subway, she would ask where a place is even if she can figure it out with a little effort. Even after the person she asked could not help her at all, "she had used the commonplace ritual of asking directions of a stranger not only - and not mostly - to find her way on emerging from the subway, but to reinforce her connection with the mass of people in the big city by making fleeting contact with one of them."
The next chapter talks about the differences in the way men and women in "public and private speaking". Women and girls are more comfortable with private speaking, where they talk with a few people who they are very close and comfortable with and in settings that feel like "home". Men and boys, on the other hand, like public speaking with strangers and bigger groups of people because to them, they must "perserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order" (77) by being able to show others their knowledge and skills.
When women talk to their best friends, they talk about everything in great detail while men tend to dismiss a lot of things as "unimportant", especially those small details women look for. As a result, there are a lot of times when the woman will feel that the man is distant while the man still thinks that they are close: the man is very happy with the fact that she is there with him and a lot of the small details that women like to talk about is seen as nothing noteworthy, so he stays silent unless it is something he feels is important. The woman would feel that the silence means that they are drifting further and further away because he is not talking a lot which means that he does not care. This feeling of drifting away is amplified when she finds that the man is very talkative when he is around others but not when they are both together alone.
The next chapter was about gossip, which Tannen describes as details of your friend's life that you tell to another friend. It is something can either be destructive or an important part of constructing intimacy, especially for women. She relates it to telling secrets as children, saying that "telling what's happening to your life and the lives of those you talk to is a grown-up version of telling secrets, the essence of girls' and women's friendships" (97).
Gossip creates friendships between women because they feel that exchanging and telling secrets is the way they go from being an acquaintance to being a friend since they now know that they can speak their minds when they are with each other. On the other hand, a woman who is not telling her friends secrets will hurt those friends because they will feel that she does not want to be connected to them and is distancing herself from the group.
Gossip and secrets are used my women and girls as proof of status: when a girl claims that she is friends with a popular girl, the way that she proves that to others is by showing them that she knows secrets that the popular girl can only tell her if they are friends. Boys, on the other hand, usually do not do this nearly as much because gossip does very little to raise their status, since their hierarchy is based on skill and winning arguments.
Women like to go over the small details because when someone asks them for those details, they feel that the person cares for them.
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As of now, I think that everything goes back to how boys and girls grow up playing different games with different rules and types of hierarchies shape how they do everything in the rest of their lives. It also goes back to how the society you live in demands that you speak in a certain way (like how in some societies, you have to use "north", "south", "east", and "west" to survive): in order to fit in and function the children have to learn how to listen, speak, and act in certain ways in their conversations in order to find and keep friends and/or status. Men and women have to constantly look and listen for the changes in their friendships and their status when talking to someone and they have to act accordingly to try to keep the friendship alive.
I think that Tannen will expand even more on the argument that men want independence and status and that women want intimacy and connection by giving more detailed examples and scenarios. I think that she will also explain how people can adjust their conversations so that these misunderstandings can be avoided. I am looking forward to the "Lecturing and Listening" chapter, because I think that this is one of the biggest sources of conflict between men and women.
One scenario is when someone is asking for help. Tannen tells us about a couple that she knew who is driving around, trying to find a street that is supposed to be nearby. The man is driving and the woman is at the front seat. The man insists on finding the street on his own because to him, "driving around until he finds his way is the reasonable thing to do, since asking for help makes him uncomfortable. He's avoiding that discomfort and trying to maintain his sense of himself as a self-sufficient person." Meanwhile, his wife is furious because "if she were driving, she would have asked directions as soon as she realized she didn't know which way to go...Since asking directions does not make Sybil uncomfortable, refusing to ask makes no sense to her" (62). Tannen explained that this happened because to the man, being the one who gives directions means that he knows more than the other person and therefore higher up in the ladder while being the one who receives directions means he knows less and one step lower on the ladder. Also, because saying "I don't know" is humiliating and because he wants to be independent, he thinks that asking for directions will also make him dependent and that taking a wild guess or driving around until he finds the place is the best thing to do. Women, on the other hand, "not only feel comfortable seeking help, but feel honor-bound to seek it, accept it, and display gratitude in exchange." One example she gives of that is how when one of her friends got off the subway, she would ask where a place is even if she can figure it out with a little effort. Even after the person she asked could not help her at all, "she had used the commonplace ritual of asking directions of a stranger not only - and not mostly - to find her way on emerging from the subway, but to reinforce her connection with the mass of people in the big city by making fleeting contact with one of them."
The next chapter talks about the differences in the way men and women in "public and private speaking". Women and girls are more comfortable with private speaking, where they talk with a few people who they are very close and comfortable with and in settings that feel like "home". Men and boys, on the other hand, like public speaking with strangers and bigger groups of people because to them, they must "perserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order" (77) by being able to show others their knowledge and skills.
When women talk to their best friends, they talk about everything in great detail while men tend to dismiss a lot of things as "unimportant", especially those small details women look for. As a result, there are a lot of times when the woman will feel that the man is distant while the man still thinks that they are close: the man is very happy with the fact that she is there with him and a lot of the small details that women like to talk about is seen as nothing noteworthy, so he stays silent unless it is something he feels is important. The woman would feel that the silence means that they are drifting further and further away because he is not talking a lot which means that he does not care. This feeling of drifting away is amplified when she finds that the man is very talkative when he is around others but not when they are both together alone.
The next chapter was about gossip, which Tannen describes as details of your friend's life that you tell to another friend. It is something can either be destructive or an important part of constructing intimacy, especially for women. She relates it to telling secrets as children, saying that "telling what's happening to your life and the lives of those you talk to is a grown-up version of telling secrets, the essence of girls' and women's friendships" (97).
Gossip creates friendships between women because they feel that exchanging and telling secrets is the way they go from being an acquaintance to being a friend since they now know that they can speak their minds when they are with each other. On the other hand, a woman who is not telling her friends secrets will hurt those friends because they will feel that she does not want to be connected to them and is distancing herself from the group.
Gossip and secrets are used my women and girls as proof of status: when a girl claims that she is friends with a popular girl, the way that she proves that to others is by showing them that she knows secrets that the popular girl can only tell her if they are friends. Boys, on the other hand, usually do not do this nearly as much because gossip does very little to raise their status, since their hierarchy is based on skill and winning arguments.
Women like to go over the small details because when someone asks them for those details, they feel that the person cares for them.
----
As of now, I think that everything goes back to how boys and girls grow up playing different games with different rules and types of hierarchies shape how they do everything in the rest of their lives. It also goes back to how the society you live in demands that you speak in a certain way (like how in some societies, you have to use "north", "south", "east", and "west" to survive): in order to fit in and function the children have to learn how to listen, speak, and act in certain ways in their conversations in order to find and keep friends and/or status. Men and women have to constantly look and listen for the changes in their friendships and their status when talking to someone and they have to act accordingly to try to keep the friendship alive.
I think that Tannen will expand even more on the argument that men want independence and status and that women want intimacy and connection by giving more detailed examples and scenarios. I think that she will also explain how people can adjust their conversations so that these misunderstandings can be avoided. I am looking forward to the "Lecturing and Listening" chapter, because I think that this is one of the biggest sources of conflict between men and women.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Excuse me, but how do you pronounce your name?
1: The first syllable in my name starts as a voiced alveolar stop "d" plus the front middle vowel "eh" : "De." The next syllable is voiced alveolar liquid "r" followed by a front high vowel "i" and finally ends with the unvoiced velar stop "k" "Rik" Combine the two together and you will get "dɛrɪk".
2: To start out, put the tip of your tongue on that bony part right behind your top teeth. hold the air in just for a second and let got if it to make "d". Then, follow it up with "eh", After, put your tongue slightly further back than before and let the air out as you roll your tongue flat again to make the "r" sound. Follow that with 'ih" and end it with "k" by having the back part of your tongue touch that soft spot at the back of the roof of your mouth.
2: To start out, put the tip of your tongue on that bony part right behind your top teeth. hold the air in just for a second and let got if it to make "d". Then, follow it up with "eh", After, put your tongue slightly further back than before and let the air out as you roll your tongue flat again to make the "r" sound. Follow that with 'ih" and end it with "k" by having the back part of your tongue touch that soft spot at the back of the roof of your mouth.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Research Book: Summary of the book so far Part 1
My research book is "You Just Don't Understand!: Women and Men in Conversation" by Deborah Tannen. It is basically about how men and women both interpret things differently, how they both are looking for different things, and how these two factors influence the conversations they have with each other. So far, this is what I got from reading it:
Men see the world as a constant contest where he must always defend his position from others and advance forward, and women see the world as a constant struggle to prevent others from pushing them away and to get closer and more intimate with others. for both, conversations are "negotiations" to do those things.
Men want independence while women want intimacy. Women may become upset when the man does something on his own without consulting her because she always consulted him first on these things. To the man, the fact that he has to as his wife for permission means he is not independent. the wife, on the other hand, thinks that asking her husband first is a good thing because she sees it as being deeply involved with another person. He feels that she is taking his independence away, and she feels that they are not intimate enough.
Men do not like to be of a lower status: if they are, they tend to do show their discomfort of being of the lower status.
As for "nagging": women repeat the request because she is thinking that the man will do what she wants if she shows him that she REALLY wants it done. On the other hand, men do not want others to know that he is being ordered around by another person. As a result, men tend to wait a while before doing what the woman wants him to do in order to create a feeling that he is doing it on his own accord, that he is doing it independently. Then, every time the woman "nags", he will delay doing it again and again.
When communicating, especially when it comes to offering help, people convey two messages: a message that is created by the person's words, and one "metamessage" that is created by you tone, body language, gestures, or even the difference in "status" or "rank" between the speaker and the listener. For example, when bosses offer help to their subordinates , the subordinates might think that their boss is really threatening them.
"Framing": When you are chatting, giving advice, scolding, arguing, etc, you are giving yourself and the listener a "rank" or "position". When you are talking, are you positioning yourself as a teacher talking to a student, or a student looking for more help, or a boss talking to an employee. This will influence how both of you interpret things and respond.
Men speak and listen in terms of status and independence, women speak and listen in terms of connection and intimacy. This way of speaking and listening and thinking start to develop when they are young children: Boys play in groups and their games have winners and losers (and therefore a hierarchy), and they tend to argue and boast. Girls play in smaller groups or pairs, they do not play games that have winners or losers and they do not like to boss others around, and all they care about is intimacy with her best friends, not rank.
As of now, I am interested to see if Tannen is going to explain how to avoid misunderstandings due to the different ways men and women speak and listen. I am also looking forward to reading the "gossip" section of the book.
Men see the world as a constant contest where he must always defend his position from others and advance forward, and women see the world as a constant struggle to prevent others from pushing them away and to get closer and more intimate with others. for both, conversations are "negotiations" to do those things.
Men want independence while women want intimacy. Women may become upset when the man does something on his own without consulting her because she always consulted him first on these things. To the man, the fact that he has to as his wife for permission means he is not independent. the wife, on the other hand, thinks that asking her husband first is a good thing because she sees it as being deeply involved with another person. He feels that she is taking his independence away, and she feels that they are not intimate enough.
Men do not like to be of a lower status: if they are, they tend to do show their discomfort of being of the lower status.
As for "nagging": women repeat the request because she is thinking that the man will do what she wants if she shows him that she REALLY wants it done. On the other hand, men do not want others to know that he is being ordered around by another person. As a result, men tend to wait a while before doing what the woman wants him to do in order to create a feeling that he is doing it on his own accord, that he is doing it independently. Then, every time the woman "nags", he will delay doing it again and again.
When communicating, especially when it comes to offering help, people convey two messages: a message that is created by the person's words, and one "metamessage" that is created by you tone, body language, gestures, or even the difference in "status" or "rank" between the speaker and the listener. For example, when bosses offer help to their subordinates , the subordinates might think that their boss is really threatening them.
"Framing": When you are chatting, giving advice, scolding, arguing, etc, you are giving yourself and the listener a "rank" or "position". When you are talking, are you positioning yourself as a teacher talking to a student, or a student looking for more help, or a boss talking to an employee. This will influence how both of you interpret things and respond.
Men speak and listen in terms of status and independence, women speak and listen in terms of connection and intimacy. This way of speaking and listening and thinking start to develop when they are young children: Boys play in groups and their games have winners and losers (and therefore a hierarchy), and they tend to argue and boast. Girls play in smaller groups or pairs, they do not play games that have winners or losers and they do not like to boss others around, and all they care about is intimacy with her best friends, not rank.
As of now, I am interested to see if Tannen is going to explain how to avoid misunderstandings due to the different ways men and women speak and listen. I am also looking forward to reading the "gossip" section of the book.
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Book I Chose
The book that I decided to read for the research paper is "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men In Conversation" by Deborah Tannen. The book seems to be an analysis of the roles of women and men in daily conversations, and how these two "cultures" that have "different-but equally valid-communication styles" can sometimes come into conflict with each other. Tannen also talks about the opinions of experts in many different fields of study and the help they offer in order to minimize these conflicts and misunderstandings that arise because of the differences in the way men and women speak, think, and react.
I chose this book because I have always noticed that there is some subtle difference in the way men and women speak and in the way they interpret and react to things they hear. This has always made me wonder about how gender influences the way a person speaks, interpret what others say, and react to it.
I hope that after reading this book, I will have a greater understanding and awareness of exactly how men and women both think and speak and how to use that to try to avoid creating misunderstandings and conflicts with others.
I chose this book because I have always noticed that there is some subtle difference in the way men and women speak and in the way they interpret and react to things they hear. This has always made me wonder about how gender influences the way a person speaks, interpret what others say, and react to it.
I hope that after reading this book, I will have a greater understanding and awareness of exactly how men and women both think and speak and how to use that to try to avoid creating misunderstandings and conflicts with others.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Seasons of My Languages
The Seasons of My Languages
As of now, I mainly speak English, which is my second language but also the one I use most of the time. I also speak some Cantonese when I talk to my parents and relatives, though it deteriorated a lot because ever since I started learning English in kindergarten and first grade, my parents made me concentrate on learning English and never made me learn Chinese (Now that I think about it, my Chinese was never really that great to begin with: even before I started to learn English I would not understand 2/3 of the things I hear on the radio or on the dramas my parents watch). Then, one summer day before I started my first semester in LaGuardia, I was watching a Chinese drama with my uncle and cousins when I realized that I had absolutely no idea what they were saying, which made me realize that my Chinese really was deteriorating. That scared me because I was losing my native language and soon I might not be able to communicate with my relatives anymore. As a result, I am currently doing whatever it takes to re-learn Cantonese as well as to learn Mandarin on my own as well as with some help by my family and my friends. I also took Spanish classes from 6th to 11th Grade. I was not really that good with it because I was not really motivated to learn it plus I got overwhelmed a lot and now I have pretty much forgotten most of what I have learned. However, I am actually willing to re-learn it too. I kind of am “unofficially” learning Japanese and Korean mainly by watching a lot of anime and a few dramas and figuring out what is what by reading the subtitles, also by listening to a lot of Japanese and Korean songs and looking up translations of the lyrics. I am now also “rediscovering” Chinese songs and movies, and I am also learning some of the language from those. In short, I can read, write, and understand English perfectly and fluently, I can speak and understand some Cantonese and Mandarin plus write a little bit of Chinese (and is improving steadily), I used to be decent at reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Spanish because of school but I forgot almost everything after not taking a class or practicing it for years, I also understand a little bit of Japanese and Korean mainly because of anime, music, and dramas. In the future, I want to learn/re-learn and become at least “more than decent” in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
One question that I always wonder about is if borders of countries disappear now and assuming that everyone in the world can easily travel to anywhere they want, would the world eventually end up speaking one specific language (say Hindi), one “hybrid” language that is a combination of all of the languages, or would everyone be able to speak every language? I also wonder about what other factors, other than things like genocide, can cause a language to die out? Watching science fiction movies also make me ask myself if aliens from across the galaxy came to Earth, how easy or how hard will it be to decipher their language, and could their grammar and sentence structuring be very similar to one of the languages humans speak on Earth? Another thing that I have always wondered about is something that my mom always tell me: Chinese people are smart because of the Chinese characters. She still have never explained to me if and why this is true, and I hope that this class can help me figure it out. As for the creation of languages, I have always thought that is like making music: if a caveman uttered something one day and it sounds good to everyone else, it will be used to describe that thing or action for the rest of history, or at least evolve until it does that.
Before reading the article, I underestimated just how much languages play a role in shaping people and how they think. I was surprised that language can affect what people think as masculine or feminine or neither. I was also surprised that the use of words such as forward, backwards, right, and left versus words like north, south, east, and west can tell about a person and how they think. The article also left me wondering if language also effects things like a country’s food and music because my high school music appreciation teacher was explaining how French food and music are “light and fluffy and delicate” whereas German food and music is “heavy and solid,” which makes me wonder if their spoken languages are like that as well.
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