Gender Differences Essay Example
Gender Differences Essay Example

Gender Differences Essay Example

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  • Pages: 3 (796 words)
  • Published: April 4, 2017
  • Type: Essay
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The thought that men and women speak different languages become a statement of belief. Wide ranges of people also believe that woman talk more than man. Despite this widespread believe, evidence suggest that social perspective and relative power determine who talks more. From our class reading, I am going to compare and contrast between “Sex differences” and “Women talk too much”. In the “Sex Differences”, Ronald Macaulay tries to argue that its myth and stereotyping that sex differences show up language pattern.

On the other hand “Women Talk too much,” is an article written by Holms and on her article she tried to prove that women talk too much is a myth. There are many similarities and dissimilarities between those two essays. The main similarity of those two essays is- i

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n both essays writer tried to prove that, the way general people think about women or sex differences are wrong. On the other hand the main dissimilarity of those two essays is authors view towards the society. Their ideas are very helpful for the development of our society.

Macaulay and Holmes both argue to prove their ideas. Macaulay uses research work to support his ideas and Holmes uses examples to prove her ideas. Macaulay starts with a chronology of research on books written by Jespersen in the 1920. On that book, the author mentioned how women were heavily stereotyped in regard of language use and their knowledge of language. According to the book he shows us that, in previous it was believed that, women use only easy words and focus more on the central field of the language, at the same time men will hold ne

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words easily.

He also mentioned that woman have less vocabulary reserve compared to men. Jespersen also include that woman is linguistically quicker and better than man. However, Macaulay thinks this is a stereotype. On the other hand, Holmes provided examples to prove who talk more. At the beginning of her essay she raised a question that, whether it is true that women talk too much or if it was just a stereotype. In addition, she provided example that show that women seem to talk less than men.

Although, supplementary research shows that there is certain circumstances where men and women would dominate the conversation. Macaulay mentioned that, people behave dissimilar on different activities and it has also found out that men have a tendency to show power and higher status. But Macaulay finally said that, none of those studies were persuasive as the substantiation and judgment was very poor. Another important reason is girls have an innate tendency to imitate the mother’s speech whether boys imitate the father’s speech.

We should not make a division between male and female by believing the results of some unreliable tests. The physical structure of men and women are different and especially for the vibrating part of the vocal cords is bigger for men than women. That causes a voice difference between men and women. On the other hand, Holmes presents some evidence suggesting that men talk more than women. One of the Canadian researchers who examined that woman talked more than men in only two instances.

In the same way the director of a British company expresses his view that women in top management positions also talk less than men. Likewise many

researchers found that even in classrooms discussions are dominated by boys. The purpose of talk also differs in men and women for social factors. Men talk to give a lift their public standards engaging in public talk whereas women talk in a more private context to develop their interpersonal relations. It has seen that for many reasons men’s and women are different on their speaking style.

Men usually tend to share information and make opinions whereas women tend to agree and do supportive talks. Taking everything in consideration found out that there is no actual limit to measure that what the too much talk is. So it has found out that in different social conditions sometimes men and sometimes women talk much. According to Ronald Macaulay, linguistic differences, some differences in expression are specially based on myths and mostly those are stereotypes. According to Janet Holmes, women usually talk very much.

She mentioned, “Women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails – they are never still” (Holmes, 299). Many researchers around the world are still working whether their ideas are true or not. Both the authors used evidence from research studies and from quotes. Both the authors understand that we should not use any unreliable research work. Reality is very much different from the myth. We know now there is no straight answer of who talks more. It all depends on various factors including social factors, speaker’s confidence and power position.

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