Nov 12: There is whole bundle of myths about women such as two women can never sit silently, women are chatterboxes, they are over sentimental and so on. But a research on the gender differences of language use published in the journal of ‘Personality and Social Psychology Review’ has broken one of myths of women being the chatterboxes.
The research called ‘a meta-analytic review of gender variations in adults’ language use: talkativeness, affiliative speech and assertive speech’ was conducted by Campbell Leaper and Melanie M Ayres.
Three separate sets of Meta-analyses were conducted to find out the gender differences and it was found that men are more talkative than were women, men used more assertive speech where as women used more affiliative speech. Aspects of interactive context, measurement quality and publication source were also tested and were called moderator variables.
It is the controlled conversation that poses them to be less talkative otherwise men talk significantly more than women. Not only they talk more but they talk to impress the listener while talking to strangers and are more assertive in their speech while women talk to find identifying grounds with the listener.
Women talk more while talking to friends and children while men talk more when talking to wife or girlfriend. These differences are not due to biological factors but cultural and social and appear and disappear depending on the interaction context.
The interest in gender differences and especially the relation of language and gender is not something new. A book titled ‘Men are from Mars and Women from Venus’ which came in 1992 outlining the psychological differences between men and women has been a best-seller. Another one talked of different cultures of men and women and divided them into different linguistic communities. This subject captivates the reader so much that these books have been translated into forty different languages.
But there are some who have forwarded gender similarities hypotheses that say that men and women are almost the same. They have more similarities rather than dissimilarities.
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