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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Rants, a Man Thing? |
| 2005-10-04 |
| Women consider conversation a social event, while men use the opportunity to hold long monologues. A study busts the myth of the female chatterbox Women might chatter incessantly, but they are easily overpowered by the incessant rants and ravings of men. A new study has revealed that men talk twice as much as women at social gatherings. Hans JÞrgen Ladegaard from the Institute for Language and Communication at the Southern Danish University, recruited a group of undergraduates to record and analyse conversations at dinner tables, kindergartens, elementary schools, study groups, and companies to find gender differences in communication. The research lasted for five years, and disproved the popular notion that women, not men, are the more talkative gender. 'Men talk more than women. They hold long monologues about their own experiences and are seldom interrupted,' Ladegaard told daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. He said men did two-thirds of the talk around the family dinner table, as well as in companies and at public events. 'The pattern is surprisingly consistent,' Ladegaard said. The study revealed women as active listeners, who ask their husbands and friends about their feelings and experiences, ensuring a smooth, continuous conversation. For women in general, conversation is a goal in itself, a social event, the study found. Ladegaard said that when a woman talked with her female friend, they cooperated to keep the conversation going. Both contributed equally to the flow of talk. Men, on the other hand, only made questions during a conversation when they felt they needed more facts, otherwise letting the other conversationalist finish his or her story. 'Men like to talk about competitive issues like sport, and they compete internally by telling a story that surpasses the one before,' Ladegaard said. He said men rarely interrupted other men, but did not hesitate to cut women off, and did not fear to appear confrontational. 'Men are not afraid to say things like they are, while women are more cautious,' he said. Gender role researcher Kenneth Reinicke of the Roskilde University said he found the conclusions surprising. 'I often hear that men struggle to get free space without talk when they come home from work,' he said. 'I'm surprised to hear that men do most of the talking in the home.' His colleague, Annette Borchorst at the Aalborg University, warned against establishing stereotypical definitions for men and women, as men differed from one another, just as women did. Ladegaard emphasised that his study revealed statistical information about groups, and not about individuals. 'If we accept that the sexes talk in different ways, we have taken the first step towards eradicating the misunderstandings that arise in communication between men and women,' he said. |
| Posted by:DanNY |
| #29 LOL, Barbara! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-10-04 21:52 |
| #28 *Yawn* What tw said. Meeeoooowwww. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-10-04 21:43 |
| #27 After I had originally heard this concept some years ago, I got to see it in action in a 3-way, frustrating lack-of-communication conversation between a physical guy, an emotional guy, and a data-oriented guy. It was bizarre. The physical guy had run in a track meet. The data guy asked him how it was. His answer was simplistic, and he acted it out, "Oh, we ran and ran and the other guys ran really hard and we ran and stuff!" The data guy was puzzled, and whipped out a bunch of statistical questions: who won? who was second place? what were their times? how many people were there?, etc. The physical guy just looked at him painfully, with a "who cares?" expression on his face. He finally replied something like "I guess I won." So the data guy turned to the emotional guy and asked him about the race. The emotional guy had been in the stands and talked about how exciting and thrilling it had been, with lots of emotional highs and lows, but "we" pulled through and won! Now it was the data guy's turn to be puzzled. Once again, he had no data to process, just subjective stuff. The emotional guy had no clue about the stats, but made some approximate guesses, which were unacceptable to the data guy. Anyway, after watching this exchange, the three parted company, and I made it a point to talk to them alone. Each of the three expressed frustration that the other two didn't get the whole point of the race. For the runner it was the action, for the data guy it was the stats, and for the emotional guy it was for the thrill. I have seen better communication between people of different languages. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-04 20:13 |
| #26 Viola? Voila perhaps? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-10-04 20:07 |
| #25 --Data, emotional, and physical communication have very different "frequency bands" in which they normally operate, and some people experience much difficulty jumping from one band to another. These, and other major natural and learned patterns of speech are very exclusive. Unless you are used to them, communication doesn't happen and you are faced with people you don't understand, apparently talking nonsense.-- What's the frequency, Kenneth? takes on an entirely new meaning. and this explains why the LLL commie moonbats don't get it. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-10-04 19:55 |
| #24 Yeah, yeah very interesting cool etc. Anyway this isle of langerhorns is evidently connected to the whipple procedure which I hear is a very bad deal if you need one. But I digress, I used the mirror, polished to 1/10 wave has you recall, to summon thousands of tiny mine laying robots which kept the isles safe from all foes. Viola! I was saved! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-04 19:43 |
| #23 I'm skeptical of this. I'll buy that the overall premise that men hold monologues and will interrupt a woman who is talking....but let's get real here, overall, women talk more than men. Women LIKE to talk. They can talk to their friends on the phone for HOURS going over the same information 1,000 different ways! The biggest talkers in any office I've ever worked in have been women. Perhaps at a dinner table setting this is true, but I think it goes against common sense to say that men talk more than women. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-10-04 19:12 |
| #22 hmm the wife can get out thousands of words before I get out one. However, you don't see her in forums on the internet as her internet experience involved 3D home shopping.. and browsing B&Bs.... Also, kind of predictable.... "Yah know... We should fix up the basement like this resturant.." (ARGH!!!) |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-10-04 19:03 |
| #21 After 38 years of marriage, it is clear to me that women don't have to talk as much as men, they get what they want the first time they ask for it. |
| Posted by: RWV 2005-10-04 18:44 |
| #20 Sorry I cannot talk to you now, dear. It will take up too much precious bandwidth. That will go over like a you-know-what in a punchbowl. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-10-04 17:44 |
| #19 "Does this dress make me look fat?" "I think the lawn needs mowing..." |
| Posted by: .com 2005-10-04 17:16 |
| #18 how come you never talk? Because when we open our mouths we usually pay for it later. Better to stay quiet and be scolded for it than to have to fight the cats for the couch. |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-10-04 13:47 |
| #17 Why do women always start up a conversations with these werds...how come you never talk_____ A husband, proving to his wife that women talk more than men, showed her a study which indicated that men use on the average only 15,000 words a day, whereas women use 30,000 words a day. She thought about this for a while and then told her husband that women use twice as many words as men because they have to repeat everything they say. Looking stunned, He said, "What?" |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-10-04 13:02 |
| #16 women always prefer the strong, silent type....until they "wanna talk about us" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-10-04 12:43 |
| #15 Moose pretty well |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-10-04 12:43 |
| #14 Shut up and get the lawn mower. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Hans Jørgen Ladegaard 2005-10-04 12:39 |
| #13 "Kind of like a kid learning to ride a 2-wheel bike" Bravo, rkb! |
| Posted by: Darrell 2005-10-04 12:36 |
| #12 Do shut up, Darrell dear. I'm trying to listen to what the others are saying. It's always possible one of the men might utter something informative. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-04 12:31 |
| #11 Let's see, what can I say that's the right level of snark ... I've got it: The way I see it, most men are so poor at talking they can only succeed if they keep going on without interruption. Kind of like a kid learning to ride a 2-wheel bike .... LOL Pleasant apologies to all the articulate Burgers here. |
| Posted by: rkb 2005-10-04 12:07 |
| #10 Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits. Hahahah |
| Posted by: Elmer 2005-10-04 11:59 |
| #9 We're stalking the big game here. We don't want a bunch of useless chatter to drive off our prey... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-10-04 11:17 |
| #8 No way Tex, they leave me feeling empty. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-04 11:16 |
| #7 There are several learned facets to speaking. Men are raised with what can be called "dominance talking", using conversation to control, win debate, argue. Not just their speech, but their body language is noticeably aggressive. (Think "Foghorn Leghorn".) Content is far less important than pecking order. Women are raised with "support talking", eliciting requests for emotional support and offering emotional support. Again, actual content is unimportant. (Think of the stereotypical gab fest.) A third facet, common to both men and women is the content of their speech: data, emotional, or physical. This is both natural and learned. "Data speech", is attempting to convey very accurate and specific information in a clear, concise, and ordered a form as possible. It takes a great deal of focus on the part of both the speaker and the listener, and has severe limitations as far as accuracy goes. "Emotional speech" attempts to convey broader lessons. It is far less accurate as far as data goes, instead idealizing events to clarify complex emotional lessons. Urban legends are the logical extreme of this. "Physical speech" is less talking than a barrage of physical contact while talking. It is uncommon except with very physically-oriented people, who are trained against using it, as most other people interpret it as assault, rather than an effort at communication. Yet another facet of speech is natural, what could be called "frequency". That is, a very 'buzzy' person has difficulty communicating with a very 'sluggish' person. The buzzy person tries to slow their own conversation down, and the sluggish person tries to speed theirs up. If the gap between the two is too great, they can't reach the same "frequency" and no communication happens. Data, emotional, and physical communication have very different "frequency bands" in which they normally operate, and some people experience much difficulty jumping from one band to another. These, and other major natural and learned patterns of speech are very exclusive. Unless you are used to them, communication doesn't happen and you are faced with people you don't understand, apparently talking nonsense. Physical people often end up in jail, just for trying to say something. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-04 11:16 |
| #6 Let's see how long this goes before trailing wife, rkb, Mrs. D, Barbara S., or Seafarious interrupt it... ;) |
| Posted by: Darrell 2005-10-04 11:08 |
| #5 Master of the Obvious graphic here? |
| Posted by: ed 2005-10-04 10:49 |
| #4 Ship, doing surgery on the pancreas eh? Hope it's not a whipple procedure. |
| Posted by: Texhooey 2005-10-04 10:47 |
| #3 Very interest. Anyway, as I was saying, there I was 35 km from the Isles of Langerhorn with nothing but a cheese knife and a parabolic mirror, yes polished to 1/10 wave it was, and silvered not aluminized....... |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-04 09:56 |
| #2 Bite me Hans. Was that short enough for you? |
| Posted by: A Man 2005-10-04 08:58 |
| #1 The strong silent type were necessary for thousands of years for hunting. You don't sneak up on a large animal while engaged in a 'social event'. Conversation was reserved for after the kill and you could count all your limbs and unpunctured body parts as whole. Then and only then would you hear with great exclamation - "It was that big, but you should have seen the one that got away." Heh. The social event occured later usually intiated by "You dragged that dirty thing all the way here and expect me to clean it?" Thus Islam was born. |
| Posted by: Ebbeagum Spainter8781 2005-10-04 08:58 |