Learning to speak 'merican

There’s a terrific post by Dan Clayton over at the Macmillan English Blog about Deborah Cameron’s linguistic research on gender. Basically he’s pointing out that male and female differences in communication styles have been over emphasized and he quotes Deborah Cameron saying that the differences are about as large as a gnat’s fart. Ha! But the point is that when they look at speech data, variables like context and power and status are much more important than gender. It all sounds very sensible.

And it raises a question. How has the myth that men and women communicate in significantly different ways arisen when there’s scant evidence in the data? Presumably it’s because it’s an intriguing idea? There have been lots of best sellers along the men-are-from-mars-and-women-are-from-venus lines, including ‘You Just Don’t Understand’ by Deborah Tannen – a sociolinguist. A book called ‘You understand perfectly well 99% of the time’, while more accurate, wouldn’t have had the same appeal.

It reminded me of some quick and dirty research that I did a while back to explore a rather different topic. I recorded a conversation of a misunderstanding two ways, switching roles between a British (female) speaker and American (male) speaker. I wondered whether I might discover some transatlantic differences in interpretation. I didn’t. But I was surprised to find a gender variable.

It seemed that female listeners were more inclined to blame the female speaker for the misunderstanding and male listeners were more inclined to blame the male speaker. (If there had been no gender variation, my stats should have been about fifty-fifty. Instead they came out about two thirds-one third – so a bit more than a gnat’s fart in this case.)

So when we’re judging people’s communication skills I think we might be more lenient and forgiving to the opposite sex. Similarly, we seem to hold our own sex to higher standards of accountability, which is rather unfair if you think about it. So now I’m guessing it’s another manifestation of our desire to believe in significant gender differences in communication. But the men-are-from-mars-and-women-are-from-venus explanations are largely myths – delightful and intriguing ones – but myths nevertheless.

Over on the east coast (where I’m based) it’s easy to forget that Spanish is the second most used language in the United States. According to Wikipedia it’s spoken at home by more than 35.5 million people aged 5 or older.

So I was tickled by this video of Tom Hanks delivering the weather forecast on a Spanish TV channel. Lots of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) features are evident here:

• if you don’t understand, keep smiling and hope you’ll catch on later ( ‘letting it pass’ is the term coined by Alan Firth – see more on that here)
• people will speak slowly to accommodate (It’s just good manners. Ettiquette may vary in all sorts of ways across cultures but it’s the human condition to want to help)
• on a similar point – look at all the code switching that’s going on here. Hey Tom, we don’t care if you answer us in whatever language you can cope with and think is going to be most comprehensible and express your thoughts best. We’ll adapt.
• a lot of shared understanding transcends language and derives from modern culture (e.g. we all know that newscasters performing in front of a greenscreen can’t actually see what region on a map they are pointing to)

Hope you enjoyed it too. If so, let me know with a thumbs up or comment. I’d love to know what mainland Spanish speakers might think of this too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/3286039442/

When do we address someone  by the term  ‘Professor’? Anne Hodgson has just raised this and other interesting questions about ‘college talk’ around the world in her blog .

Americans have a reputation for informality. But there ways in which I think folks are more formal and attached to ceremony here than in Europe. One of them is the ‘Professor’ title. My impression is it’s accorded more liberally in the US than the UK.

I think it stems from politeness and positive face issues. As a Brit, I’m uncomfortable being addressed as ‘professor’ when I’m working at the University of Pennsylvania or the New School. It’s like receiving a compliment I don’t feel I merit. And I probably should know better because I realize it’s generally just a matter of routine. In British terms, it’s akin to someone at my bank calling me Mrs or Ms when they call me up. But it’s actually quite hard to think of British equivalents because I think we tend to use titles less in the UK. (‘Ma’am’ is another one I only hear in the US)

I wonder, am I’m undermining my students’ status when I say ‘Don’t call me ‘Professor’’? If their teacher is putting themselves down, might it imply that they’re getting put down too. Oh what tangled webs we weave.

By: faeryhedgehog

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Terms of endearment

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