Essay: Female Conversational Styles

Sample Essay

Unlike private relationships, where people have more power to determine together the nature of their interaction, “someone who takes a job is entering the world that is already functioning, with its own characteristic style already in place.” That world is, from top to bottom, biased against female conversational styles. Women apologize more than men. They speak more indirectly. They tend not to dominate meetings. They are left out of the sports talk and the dirty jokes. Their concerns about sexual harassment make men wary of them. Great gains have been made by women in the world of work, but if these different evaluations of conversational style are allowed to persist, those gains will go for naught. (Tannen, 1994)

What to do? “I would not advise women to adopt men’s styles to succeed — although, in some cases, in some ways, this might work.” The fault lies not in men and women, nor even in sexism. The fault lies in our culture’s valuation of men’s way of speaking more than women’s. Hence we must revise our institutions to give more recognition to women’s ways of talking. What we need is a kind of communicative affirmative action, procedures that will distribute equally the opportunity to speak.

Please go to the order form to order essays, research papers, term papers, thesis, dissertation, case study, assignments on this essay topic.