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SEX, LIES AND CONVERSATION By Deborah Tannen June 24, 1990

I WAS ADDRESSING a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room -- a

women's group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening,

one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and

anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end

of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their

husbands don't talk to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward

his wife and said, "She's the talker in our family." The room burst into

laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It's true," he explained. "When I

come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn't keep the

conversation going, we'd spend the whole evening in silence."

This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk

more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this

pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage.

The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late '70s.

Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book "Divorce Talk"

that most of the women she interviewed -- but only a few of the men -- gave

lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current

divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the

United States every year -- a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.

In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often

focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a

career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of

daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking, social arrangements and

errands. Instead, they focused on communication: "He doesn't listen to me,"

"He doesn't talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most

wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners,

but few husbands share this expectation of their wives.

In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical

cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up

in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

Linguistic Battle of the Sexes

How can women and men have such different impressions of communication

in marriage? Why the widespread imbalance in their interests and

expectations?

In the April issue of American Psychologist, Stanford University's Eleanor

Maccoby reports the results of her own and others' research showing that

children's development is most influenced by the social structure of peer

interactions. Boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and

their sex-separate groups have different organizational structures and

interactive norms.

I believe these systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk

between women and men like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the

attraction and pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enterprise. My research on

men's and women's conversations uncovered patterns similar to those

described for children's groups.

For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the

thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and maintain friendships by

exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conversation as the cornerstone

of friendship. So a woman expects her husband to be a new and improved

version of a best friend. What is important is not the individual subjects that

are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when

people tell their thoughts, feelings, and impressions.

Bonds between boys can be as intense as girls', but they are based less on

talking, more on doing things together. Since they don't assume talk is the

cement that binds a relationship, men don't know what kind of talk women

want, and they don't miss it when it isn't there.

Boys' groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so boys must

struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group. This may play a role in

women's complaints that men don't listen to them. Some men really don't like

to listen, because being the listener makes them feel one-down, like a child

listening to adults or an employee to a boss.

But often when women tell men, "You aren't listening," and the men protest,

"I am," the men are right. The impression of not listening results from

misalignments in the mechanics of conversation. The misalignment begins as

soon as a man and a woman take physical positions. This became clear when I

studied videotapes made by psychologist Bruce Dorval of children and adults

talking to their same-sex best friends. I found that at every age, the girls and

women faced each other directly, their eyes anchored on each other's faces. At

every age, the boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere

in the room, periodically glancing at each other. They were obviously attuned

to each other, often mirroring each other's movements. But the tendency of

men to face away can give women the impression they aren't listening even

when they are. A young woman in college was frustrated: Whenever she told

her boyfriend she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close

his eyes, and put his arm over his face. This signaled to her, "He's taking a

nap." But he insisted he was listening extra hard. Normally, he looks around

the room, so he is easily distracted. Lying down and covering his eyes helped

him concentrate on what she was saying.

Analogous to the physical alignment that women and men take in

conversation is their topical alignment. The girls in my study tended to talk at

length about one topic, but the boys tended to jump from topic to topic. The

second-grade girls exchanged stories about people they knew. The second-

grade boys teased, told jokes, noticed things in the room and talked about

finding games to play. The sixth-grade girls talked about problems with a

mutual friend. The sixth grade boys talked about 55 different topics, none of

which extended over more than a few turns. Listening to Body Language

Switching topics is another habit that gives women the impression men aren't

listening, especially if they switch to a topic about themselves. But the

evidence of the 10th-grade boys in my study indicates otherwise. The 10th-

grade boys sprawled across their chairs with bodies parallel and eyes straight

ahead, rarely looking at each other. They looked as if they were riding in a car,

staring out the windshield. But they were talking about their feelings. One boy

was upset because a girl had told him he had a drinking problem, and the

other was feeling alienated from all his friends.

Now, when a girl told a friend about a problem, the friend responded by

asking probing questions and expressing agreement and understanding. But

the boys dismissed each other's problems. Todd assured Richard that his

drinking was "no big problem" because "sometimes you're funny when you're

off your butt." And when Todd said he felt left out, Richard responded, "Why

should you? You know more people than me."

Women perceive such responses as belittling and unsupportive. But the boys

seemed satisfied with them. Whereas women reassure each other by implying,

"You shouldn't feel bad because I've had similar experiences," men do so by

implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because your problems aren't so bad."

There are even simpler reasons for women's impression that men don't listen.

Linguist Lynette Hirschman found that women make more listener-noise,

such as "mhm," "uhuh," and "yeah," to show "I'm with you." Men, she found,

more often give silent attention. Women who expect a stream of listener noise

interpret silent attention as no attention at all.

Women's conversational habits are as frustrating to men as men's are to

women. Men who expect silent attention interpret a stream of listener noise as

overreaction or impatience. Also, when women talk to each other in a close,

comfortable setting, they often overlap, finish each other's sentences and

anticipate what the other is about to say. This practice, which I call

"participatory listenership," is often perceived by men as interruption,

intrusion and lack of attention.

A parallel difference caused a man to complain about his wife, "She just wants

to talk about her own point of view. If I show her another view, she gets mad

at me." When most women talk to each other, they assume a

conversationalist's job is to express agreement and support. But many men see

their conversational duty as pointing out the other side of an argument. This is

heard as disloyalty by women, and refusal to offer the requisite support. It is

not that women don't want to see other points of view, but that they prefer

them phrased as suggestions and inquiries rather than as direct challenges.

In his book "Fighting for Life," Walter Ong points out that men use "agonistic"

or warlike, oppositional formats to do almost anything; thus discussion

becomes debate, and conversation a competitive sport. In contrast, women see

conversation as a ritual means of establishing rapport. If Jane tells a problem

and June says she has a similar one, they walk away feeling closer to each

other. But this attempt at establishing rapport can backfire when used with

men. Men take too literally women's ritual "troubles talk," just as women

mistake men's ritual challenges for real attack. {See box.} The Sounds of

Silence

These differences begin to clarify why women and men have such different

expectations about communication in marriage. For women, talk creates

intimacy. Marriage is an orgy of closeness: you can tell your feelings and

thoughts, and still be loved. Their greatest fear is being pushed away. But men

live in a hierarchical world, where talk maintains independence and status.

They are on guard to protect themselves from being put down and pushed

around.

This explains the paradox of the talkative man who said of his silent wife,

"She's the talker." In the public setting of a guest lecture, he felt challenged to

show his intelligence and display his understanding of the lecture. But at

home, where he has nothing to prove and no one to defend against, he is free

to remain silent. For his wife, being home means she is free from the worry

that something she says might offend someone, or spark disagreement, or

appear to be showing off; at home she is free to talk.

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The communication problems that endanger marriage can't be fixed by

mechanical engineering. They require a new conceptual framework about the

role of talk in human relationships. Many of the psychological explanations

that have become second nature may not be helpful, because they tend to

blame either women (for not being assertive enough) or men (for not being in

touch with their feelings). A sociolinguistic approach by which male-female

conversation is seen as cross-cultural communication allows us to understand

the problem and forge solutions without blaming either party.

Once the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally, as it did to

the young woman and her boyfriend who seemed to go to sleep when she

wanted to talk. Previously, she had accused him of not listening, and he had

refused to change his behavior, since that would be admitting fault. But then

she learned about and explained to him the differences in women's and men's

habitual ways of aligning themselves in conversation. The next time she told

him she wanted to talk, he began, as usual, by lying down and covering his

eyes. When the familiar negative reaction bubbled up, she reassured herself

that he really was listening. But then he sat up and looked at her. Thrilled, she

asked why. He said, "You like me to look at you when we talk, so I'll try to do

it." Once he saw their differences as cross-cultural rather than right and

wrong, he independently altered his behavior.

Women who feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won't listen to

or report daily news may be happy to discover their husbands trying to adapt

once they understand the place of small talk in women's relationships. But if

their husbands don't adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men,

this is not a failure of intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to

their friends or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can't provide it

shouldn't feel their wives have made unreasonable demands. Some couples

will still decide to divorce, but at least their decisions will be based on realistic

expectations.

In these times of resurgent ethnic conflicts, the world desperately needs cross-

cultural understanding. Like charity, successful cross-cultural communication

should begin at home.

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is the

author of "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,"

published this month by William Morrow.