Analysis Of Deborah Tannen But What Do You Mean

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In her article “But What Do You Mean” Deborah Tannen, claims that there is a huge difference in the style of communicating between men and women. Tannen breaks these down into seven different categories; apologies, criticism, thank-yous, fighting, praise, complaints, and jokes. With each of these she compares men to women by explaining the common misconceptions that each of the genders do. The different style of communication can cause some problems at the workplace and even affect the environment. The different styles of communication has been around forever and almost becomes a “ritual”(299). Tannen is effective with mainly women and not men. She is primarily successful with women due to the fact that her tone targets women, also the organization …show more content…

Women are typically more responsive to organized and well thought out points because it is easy to follow. When something is very structured women are more likely to believe the writer, because it builds the writer's credibility. For example, the use of Tannen's different categories of communication styles. By using so many different categories you get a sense of her knowledge about the different communication styles between men and women. Also her use of the bolded subheadings plays a very important role in her effectiveness with her structure. For example, “3. Thank-Yous” you can clearly see that she wants you to be able to know what she will be talking about (301). This provides the reader a well organized article that focuses on one thing at a time instead of having to jump from topic to topic. Tannen is successful with women because her credibility is built on the fact that she knows when and how to say things. Women do not like second guessing so the fact that the text is in bold writing paints a very clear picture and is very hard to miss. The overall structure allows a very easy and well organized article and anyone could appreciate her effort in doing …show more content…

Women respond very well to tone and word choice, which Tannen uses to her advantage. She uses personal experience to relate with her more female audience. For example, in the criticism section she uses a scenario that occurred between a male and female editors. Tannen “appreciated her tentativeness” that she gave Tannen when wanting to cut out part of her story(301). In contrast to that her male editor gave her a much different response, saying “call me when you have something new to say”(301). By stating a scenario with two very different outcomes, she falls more bias to women. This is effective to her more female audience because it paints women in a positive light and paints the men in a very negative light. The obvious bias towards women can arguably hurt her more than it could help her. Tannen automatically outs her male audience at a very awkward side, and makes it impossible for them to feel sympathy towards her. This hurts Tannen’s opportunity for having a broad audience, but for what she wrote it for she is very effective. If we are simply talking about how effective it was for women then Tannen hit home with them. Tannen’s choice of using what men say is also very smart, and helps with her effectiveness. She heard a man say, that after working for two women he realized neither of them have a sense of humor(304). By using examples like these

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