By Haku Matsutan
There are some beliefs about the way women speaking: women talk more than men; women have more advanced verbal skills than men; women use more emotionally expressive language than men (Cameron, 2019). Besides, according to Montell, A (2019), “while men’s speech style can be categorized as “competitive, women’s is “cooperative””. Some argue that it is true men and women talk differently. But others might not think of it. Are there truly differences between men and women speaking?
First, what do you think about the question, “who speaks more, men or women”? It is not true that women talk more than men. Recent research revealed that men and women use almost same number of words when talking for a day; about 16,000 words (Mehl, R. 2007). However, it is also true that it depends on the situations whether either men or women talk more. Sieghart (2021) stated that how people express themselves through language based on their gender is influenced by various factors such as age, race, ethnicity, social class, education, national origin, and their abilities.
Second, grammatically differences are seen between men and women. In English, however, there are few grammatically differences. Therefore, English is categorized as neutral gender language. According to an article of Frontiers (2019), “Natural gender languages (e.g., English) don’t classify inanimate nouns according to different genders”. But it does not mean that English does not have gender bias. In English, gendered masculine have exist; using he, his, him to express us, some terms like firemen, policemen, and congressmen. To solve the problem, alternative words are appearing these days, which is called politically correct pronouns such as firefighters and police officers.
Third, it is likely that there are some features of men speaking on conversation. Sieghart (2021) mentioned that “this is conversational manspleading, taking up too much conversational space at the expense of the people around you”. She also stated that men are more aggressive than women to secure place for conversation.
In conclusion, women and men talk differently. But some beliefs about women speaking are not true. Both women and men speak almost the same number of words. English is gendering inclusive language, but there are some masculine words like firemen and policemen. On conversation, men tend to speak much more than women, which means men have more power in conversation. However, their speaking will be affected by their circumstances.
References
Cameron, D. (2019). The myth of Mars and Venus (pp. 156-159). Oxford University Press.
Mehl, R., Vazire, S., Ramirez, N., Slatcher, R., & Pennebaker, J. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men? https://jpn01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencemag.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C804d86d1c7b14ff7456c08dc272011ef%7Cf11434e8abcf41f48154a9b2608dcd42%7C0%7C0%7C638428265899237522%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=eakPAD0zGxZt7aNAtFjRFkOZ6kRuRsj3PNSKaceMb%2F0%3D&reserved=0.
Sieghart, M. (2021). The Authority Gap. New York: Doubleday.
Technology Report Article. (2019). https://jpn01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C804d86d1c7b14ff7456c08dc272011ef%7Cf11434e8abcf41f48154a9b2608dcd42%7C0%7C0%7C638428265899244456%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8sOZpY04RgDTlCjz1D9BkrSpxGEGpzgLBpIFTaLNp4s%3D&reserved=0
