GAD101

• Communication


  The process of exchanging ideas and information through words or actions
• Types of communication


  • Verbal
  • Non-verbal
• Verbal communication


  Related to words
• Non-verbal communication


  Related to actions and gestures
• Gender


  A socially constructed definition of women and men. The differences among women and men, based on some factors.
• Gender communication


  A specialization of the communication field that focuses on the ways we, as gendered beings, communicate
• Language is one of the most powerful means through which sexism and gender discrimination are perpetrated and reproduced
• Sexism in language


  Language devalues members of a certain gender
• Sexist language promotes male superiority. It affects consciousness, perceptions of reality, encoding and transmitting cultural meanings and socialization
• The content of gender stereotypes, according to which women should display communal/warmth traits and men should display agentic/competence traits, is reflected in the lexical choices of everyday communication
• Language subtly reproduces the societal asymmetries of status and power in favor of men, which are attached to the corresponding social roles
• The hidden yet consensual norm according to which the prototypical human being is male is embedded in the structure of many languages
• Grammatical and syntactical rules are built in a way that feminine terms usually derive from the corresponding masculine form. Similarly, masculine nouns and pronouns are often used with a generic function to refer to both men and women
• Such linguistic forms have the negative effects of making women disappear in mental representations
• Gender-fair language


  Minimizes unnecessary concern about gender in your subject matter, allowing both you and your reader to focus on what people do rather than on which sex they happen to be
• The practice of using he and man as generic terms poses a common problem. Rather than presenting a general picture of reality, he and man used generically can mislead your audience
• Research by Wendy Martyna has shown that the average reader's tendency is to imagine a male when reading he or man, even if the rest of the passage is gender-neutral
• Masculine rhetoric


  • Decisive, direct, rational, authoritative, logical, aggressive, and impersonal
• Feminine rhetoric


  • Cautious, receptive, indirect, emotional, conciliatory, subjective, and polite
• Differences in gender communication

  • Women are more vocal than men
  • Women are more verbally skilled than men
  • Men are more action oriented in their use of language, while women are more relationship oriented
  • Men are more competitive in their language use, while women are more cooperative
  • The above differences lead to regular communication frictions between men and women
• Other communication differences


  • Men mainly communicate to support their prominence, while women do so to build relationships
  • Men smile less than women, women use more paralanguage (nonverbal indicators of listening and understanding) than men do
  • Men will use communicative touching more to confirm their dominance, while women will touch for connection, and women use more eye contact than men
• Men and women are so different, they must be from different planets
• In reality we all come form Earth, but men and women do have different ways of speaking, thinking and communication overall
• Rationality


  All humans are highly emotional, men and women simply tend to show it in different ways. While a woman cry when she's flooded with emotion, a man is more likely to get angry and become violent and stupid
• Biologically-speaking, considering men are the physically stronger of the two, this make sense. Men are more likely to want fight if they are angry or emotional
• Women are emotional ones because men can't express their emotion in the way they want to
• In relation to intelligence, women develop more white brain matter, and men develop more gray brain matter. This doesn't mean that men are smarter than women or vice versa. It simply represents that men and women tend to do things differently
• Verbal communication differences based on gender

  • Men: Avoid Personal stories, Attempt to control the conversation, Less likely to listen, More aggressive

  Women: Share Personal stories, Form groups, Listen Carefully, Less aggressive
• Non-verbal communication differences based on gender

  • Men: Less facial expression, Avoid eye contact, More relaxed, Average use of gestures

  Women: More facial expression, Prefer eye contact, More tense, Too much use of gestures
• Female communication style


  • Complex, Literate, Socio intellectual, Aesthetic value, Detailed, More Questions, Facilitate Conversation
• Male communication style


  • Argumentative, Aggressive, Language, Control, Individualism, Forceful, Blunt, Intense
• Men and women can learn so much from each other if only the gender communication barriers can be broken. These barriers disappear with time, understanding, and effort. An investment of time is necessary to evaluate personal communicative style
• Genderlect


  A theory presented by Deborah Tannen about cross-gender communication, where she describes the way that the conversation of men and women are not right and wrong they are just different, as different cultures
• Connection and status


  The fundamental difference is that women have a deep desire to seek connection, while men have a deep desire to seek status
• Emotion and rapport


  In seeking connection, women will talk more about feelings, relationships and people, and will include more emotional elements in their talk and will encourage others to do the same. In seeking status, men will prefer solid facts
• Private and public


  Women talk more in private conversations, while men talk more in a public forum
• Conflict


  Conflict, for a woman, is a process where connections are reduced, and so they will work hard to avoid them. Men, on the other hand, will use conflict as a short-cut to gaining status
• Goals of genderlect


  The main goal is mutual respect and understanding, in contrast to feminist viewpoints that criticize men for inferior communication which extinguish women
• Culture


  All socially transmitted behaviors, arts, languages, signs, symbols, ideas, beliefs, which is learnt and shared in a particular society
• Female communication style


  • Collaborative, like to get input from others, talk about ideas out loud, ensure everyone is on the same page