Who Does the Talking Here

Word count: 266

Summary #1 who does the talking here?

In her essay "who does the talking here?" scholar Deborah Tannen

Discusses which gender talks most. To answer this question Tannen believes one must consider situation and purpose of the talk; she finds that women use engaged in "rapport -talk" while men use "report-talk" (346-347).

They need to consider what the conversation is about. If the conversation is something that interest the male and female, they would both talk, but if only one person finds it interesting, one would talk more that the other. Tannen describes a research that she made with a small group in a suburban Virginia living room, she finds that a man stood out because he was talking more than his wife and someone ask him when they would get home to see who would talk more? And he said "When were at home, she does all the talking. If she didn't, we'd spend the evening in silence" (347).

Men express themselves more when other groups are involved than when there alone with their partner. On the other hand women are more loquacious with others when they talk about personal things like kids, relationships, shopping etc. Men tend to do the opposite thing; they just like to talk about work, non personal things or simply just read the newspaper. In addition to this, Tannen states an example "A men wants to read a paper, while his wife wants to talk" (347).

That's a conclusion men and women talk the same but always depends on the situation that they are in.