"Can't We Talk?"

The author Deborah Tannen gave a list of how men and women view situations with different objectives. To start off, she introduced herself as a linguistic specialist and proceeded in a somewhat authoritative manner by addressing the issue she wants to talk about. This is quite a unique scenario, given that the author is a female and normally female writers tend to be less direct and prefer to dance around the topic with explanations rather than dive straight into it. The article was done in such a manner, probably to draw the attention to issues that she felt were being ignored in everyday conversations.

The focus on her article is on how gender focus on different angle when viewing the same issue. Men on the general, tend to look at problems and break them down into soluble parts before they proceed to with the appropriate actions. Whereas women view problems not by the content of the problem itself, rather they looked at the reaction of their counterparts before deciding on their course of action. For women, the problem itself is of less importance if they are able to communicate their thoughts across to their intended recipient.

Tannen’s article also conform to the gender stereotype that women can’t seem to express their true intentions to men as the words they used often carried other meanings. As with John Gray’s Mars and Venus book, women often say one thing and meant another, and men being more direct often have trouble deciphering what women are trying to say most of the time. The article also pointed out that men are more concerned about their status with example such as ‘Josh replied, "I can't tell my friend, 'I have to ask my wife for permission'!"’ Given the competitive nature of men, it is no wonder that male dominance exist in the society, women on the other hand derives no such pleasure in maintaining their social status for they tend to occupy themselves with emotional support, intimacy and understanding. Hence from an essentialist point of view, it is easy to understand why society is dominated by men.