argumentative

Avery Dail
Professor Hinckley
English 50
Essay: Argumentative
July 22, 2014

“But What Do You Mean?” In Deborah Tannen’s essay “But What Do You Mean?,” she discusses how men and women differ in their use of communication “rituals.” Women are designed to take other person’s feelings into consideration and men are designed to maintain a one-sided position. She describes seven ways men and women miscommunicate. First, women use apologies to reassure an individual and men can misinterpret apologies as acceptance of them taking the blame. Second, men criticize more directly than women. Women “soften” their criticism in order to spare the feelings of the person they are criticizing. Third, women often say “thank you” repetitively. Fourth, men enjoy “verbally sparring” more than women. Women feel that they are being attacked in a conversation. Fifth, women and men use praise differently. Women tend to expect praise when they have done a good job and men tend to think that not criticizing is praise. Sixth, women discuss their problems in order to share their experiences. They complain not to have their problems solved but to show sympathy. Men don’t view the complaints as conversation, but as problems to be solved. Finally, men and women tend to differ in their senses of humor. Men prefer teasing and “playful insults” while women prefer humor that is more “self-deprecating.” Because of these differences, women can misinterpret men’s humor as “hostile.” In her essay, Tannen’s argument is convincing; however, I would have to disagree with her arguments on miscommunication styles between the sexes of apologizing, and fighting.
Unfortunately, from reading her essay, Tannen tends to show a lot of bias when she writes. And even though, she does deal with several conversational styles and examples. Tannen is writing based on a female’s point of view. She gives no actual experience in looking from a man’s perspective. Tannen’s first agreement is based on Apologies. Tannen starts her argument with “women are often told they apologize too much.” In the second paragraph, she states that women often apologize and take credit for half of the blame. Women expect the other person to take the other half, so it won’t be entirely her fault. I don’t agree with this argument. I believe women tend apologize too much because they are more concerned with the emotional experiences and promoting harmony in relationships with others. For example, on a daily basis, the Riverside City College women’s throwing team participates in throwing drills to perfect their techniques. Their coach will occasionally come around and correct their mistakes. If one accidentally messes up their technique in front of her coach, she will immediately apologize. Why? The reason is she doesn’t want to create tension between her and her coach’s relationship. If she creates tension, she will most likely end up on her coach’s “bad side.”
On the other hand, Tannen’s agreement about Fighting is very conflicting. As I was reading this section, Tannen tends to make men guilty by implying the idea that men always intimate the fight. Tannen states, “Many men expect the discussion of ideas to be a ritual fight… they state their ideas in the strongest possible terms…if there are weaknesses someone will point them out, and by trying to argue against those objections,…” She implies that men only speak to women to point out their flaws. This is not necessarily true because the roles can be reversed. When a man and a woman fight, women can tend to use questioning as personal attacks. Women believe they will get the answers they want by pushing their male partner to challenge his own logic and ideas. Tannen generalizes too much. There is no specific evidence to help her argument, which can lose readers to agree with her. In modern society, not all relationships involve a man and a woman. There are same sex couples with opposite results. They can act differently because of their feelings and experiences. Some men can be sentimental and emotional and some women can be aggressive and one-sided.
Despite Tannen’s generalizations throughout her essay, she also tries to remain neutral. Tannen discusses the miscommunication between men and women in Jokes. Tannen’s neutral view can hold back good insight, because of the constant struggle to prove both sexes are right. For example, Tannen states in her agreement, “Women often mistake men’s teasing as genuinely hostile…Men often mistake women’s mock self-deprecation as truly putting themselves down.” It can be very difficult to maintain to remain neutral when describing the differences between sexes. In this paragraph, Tannen generally looking from a female perspective. This can be a bad and good thing. Tannen can easily connect with her female audience and create a connection. But, she would lose her male audience because she is not looking from a male’s perspective.
Overall, Tannen concludes by stating that differences between men and women are not wrong. Technically, Tannen is right. They are different. Recognizing these differences may help men and women communicate more clearly. However, her writing seems to be from the conversational strengths of women. She mostly implies that women are victims of miscommunication with men. Her writing is more of a female perspective. She could have looked at both female and male perspectives to make her argument stronger. As I reader, I believe Tannen’s arguments were convincing overall, but they would have been better with more reason.