What We Say
What We Mean
Who are “We”?
Elaine Rich
Is This You?
The context: A and B are colleagues. A has just given an
important presentation on their work. B had to be in another city
at a separate meeting. B phones A to find out how things went.
B: So how did it go this afternoon?
A: Pretty well, I guess. They really liked our work. But you
would have done a much better job giving the presentation. I wish
you’d been here.
B: Don’t be silly. Most of the ideas in that presentation were
yours.
A: Some were. But you’re a better talker and you’re the one who
figured out how all the pieces fit together.
This Talk
•What we say vs. what we mean
•Do we all share a “common” language?
Language at its Most Straightforward –
Propositional Content
•Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.
•Texas is in France.
•The Matrix is playing at the Dobie.
•Lunch is at noon.
•What time is it?
When There’s More - Presuppositions
•What is Clinton famous for?
•Where’s The Matrix playing?
•Who is the king of France?
•Have you started making it to your morning classes?
•I’m going to check out all the five star restaurants in
Cleveland on this trip.
When There’s More – (Shared?) Presuppositions
“I don’t think Alexander’s getting a proper education,” he said to her one
evening.
“Oh, he’s okay.”
“I asked him to figure what change they’d give back when we bought the
milk today, and he didn’t have the faintest idea. He didn’t even know
he’d have to subtract.”
“Well, he’s only in second grade,” Muriel said.
“I think he ought to switch to a private school.”
“Private schools cost money.”
“So? I’ll pay.”
She stopped flipping the bacon and looked over at him. “What are you
saying?” she said.
“Pardon?”
What are you saying, Macon? Are you saying you’re committed?”
Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist, cited in (YJDU, p. 175)
Conversational Postulates
Grice’s maxims:
•The Maxim of Quantity:
Be as informative as required.
Don’t be more so.
•The Maxim of Quality:
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack sufficient evidence.
•Maxim of relevance: Be relevant
•Maxim of manner:
Avoid obscurity of expression
Avoid ambiguity
Be brief.
Be orderly.
Conversational Postulates and Scalar Implicature
A: Have you done the first math assignment yet?
B: I’m going to go buy the book tomorrow.
Another Example of Scalar Implicature
A: When did you get home last night?
B: I was in bed by midnight.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Inference
A: Joe doesn't seem to have a girl-friend these days.
B: He's been going to Dallas a lot lately.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Inference
A: Let’s go to the movies tonight.
B: I have to study for an exam.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Inference
Reviewer of new book:
It is well-bound and free of typographical errors.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Inference
A: What do you think of my new dress?
B: It’s interesting.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Illocutionary Force
•Do you know what time it is?
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Illocutionary Force
•Do you know what time it is?
•What time is it?
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Illocutionary Force
•Do you know what time it is?
•What time is it?
•I’m freezing.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Illocutionary Force
•Do you know what time it is?
•What time is it?
•I’m freezing.
•Get up and go close the window.
When There’s More – Conversational Postulates and
Illocutionary Force
•Do you know what time it is?
•What time is it?
•I’m freezing.
•Get up and go close the window.
Politeness
When There’s More – Emotive Force
•Come on. Just forget about it.
•Hey, you’re the best.
•Maybe what we ought to do is …
When There’s More – Emotive Force
•Come on. Just forget about it.
•Hey, you’re the best.
•Maybe what we ought to do is …
Do you think maybe we should …
When There’s More – Emotive Force
•Come on. Just forget about it.
•Hey, you’re the best.
•Maybe what we ought to do is …
Do you think maybe we should …
What we need to do is …
This Talk
•What we say vs. what we mean
•Propositional Content
•What we Mean
•Presuppositions
•Conversational Postulates
•Illocutionary Force
•Emotive Force
•Do we all share a “common” language?
In Some Languages, A Fairly Strong “No”
In Japanese:
•Women use the honorific prefix o- more often than men do.
"Please proceed to the honorable second floor to do your
money changing."
•Women and men have some different vocabulary items:
women invariably praise food for being oishii (delicious), men
are more likely to say umai
http://www.cic.sfu.ca/tqj/GettingRight/womencomedown.html
http://www.coolest.com/jpfm.htm
In Some Languages, A Fairly Strong “No”
In Japanese:
•Women use the honorific prefix o- more often than men do.
"Please proceed to the honorable second floor to do your
money changing."
•Women and men have some different vocabulary items:
women invariably praise food for being oishii (delicious), men
are more likely to say umai
•Older people are more likely to end sentences with ja.
http://www.cic.sfu.ca/tqj/GettingRight/womencomedown.html
http://www.coolest.com/jpfm.htm
The Language of Men and Women
•In many languages, women generally conform more closely to
the “standard”, “correct” dialect than men do.
•The way people speak reflects their social roles, as well as
their goals and priorities.
What About English?
•Phonetics
•Vocabulary
•Speaking behavior
What About English?
•Phonetics
In the county of Norwich, female speakers of all five income levels surveyed
were consistently more likely to pronounce the final g in "going" (a
characteristic of so-called "correct English") than their male counterparts,
who generally perceived "goin'" as rougher and hence more manly.
•Vocabulary
•Speaking behavior
Vocabulary: The One You Probably Expect
Men are more likely to admit that they use swear words: In
one study, 72% of men and 55% of women admitted that they
swear in public.
Vocabulary: Color Terms
An experiment with five populations:
•I: men aged 20-35. Graduate students or people working
in technical areas.
•II: men aged 45-60. All technically trained, highly
educated professionals.
•III: women aged 20-35:
•A: technical, corresponding to group I.
•B: non-technical but well-educated.
•IV: women aged 45-60. Most of them married to the men
in Group II.
•V: Catholic nuns, most of them over 30.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ear/Sex-Related_Colour.htm
Vocabulary: Color Terms
Four responses:
1. Basic – one of: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple,
violet, white, black, brown, grey, pink, tan.
2. Qualified – a basic word qualified by words such as
light or dark or by another basic word, e.g., yellowish
green.
3. Qualified fancy – a basic word qualified by special
words, such as sky blue or hunter green.
4. Fancy – color words not in the basic category, e.g.,
lavender, magenta, chartreuse.
Vocabulary: Color Terms
95
85
75
65
55
45
35
25
II
I
V
IIIB
IV
IIIA
Speaking Behavior: Two Simple Examples
• Women produce more back-channel utterances (things like
“uh uh”, “I see”, and “yeah” that acknowledge the speaker but
do not grab the floor).
•Women use more tag questions (e.g., “This will work, won’t
it? Or “We need to install more memory, don’t we?”)
Speaking Behavior: A More Complex Pattern
The rest of this talk is based primarily on the work of Deborah
Tannen, as described in:
•You Just Don’t Understand
•Talking from 9 to 5
•Caveat: The claims that Tannen makes are statistical and
anecdotal. They don’t describe universal truths that apply all
the time to all people.
•Caveat: The experimental evidence that forms the basis for
this work was done almost entirely in the US. Not clear to
what extent the conclusions apply to other cultures.
Language As Behavior
The core idea: Language is behavior. As such, it is formed by:
•How we perceive the world
•Men: One Up – One Down
•Women: A group of equals
•The priorities we attach to our goals
•Men : Achieve status (and independence)
•Women: form social connection and intimacies
Language As Behavior
These differences affect:
•When we talk
•How we talk
•Our misunderstandings
When We Talk
•Men talk in public.
•Women talk in private.
When We Talk
• Asking questions
But some situations are riskier than others. A Hollywood talk-show producer told me that she had
been flying with her father in his private airplane when he was running out of gas and uncertain
about the precise location of the local landing strip he was heading for. Beginning to panic, the
woman said, “Daddy! Why don’t you radio the control tower and ask them where to land?” He
answered, “I don’t want them to think I’m lost.” This story had a happy ending, else the woman
would not have been alive to tell it to me.
• What about at school?
How We Talk
• Men vie for control; women try to equalize everyone.
Laurie Heatherington and her colleagues had student experimenters ask hundreds of incoming
college students to predict how they thought their first year at college would go by forecasting the
grades they expected to get. In some cases, the predictions were made anonymously: They were
put in writing and placed in an envelope. In others, they were made publicly, either orally to the
experimenter or by writing on a paper that the experimenter promptly read. The researchers found
that women predicted lower grades for themselves than men did – but only when they made their
predictions publicly. The predictions the women students made in private did not differ from the
men’s just as the grades they actually earned as the year progressed did not differ from the men’s.
In other words, their lower predictions evidenced not lack of confidence but reluctance to reveal the
level of confidence they felt.
The same researchers conducted a second study that captured women’s characteristic balancing
act between their own interests and those of the person they are talking to. In half the cases, the
experimenters told their own grade-point averages to the students they interviewed, and the grades
they claimed to have gotten were comparatively low. Lo and behold, when women students thought
they were talking to someone who had gotten low grades, they lowered their predictions of what they
expected their own grades to be. Whether or not the experimenter claimed to have gotten low
grades did not affect the predictions made by the men students.
How We Talk
• Interrupting
How We Talk
• Tooting our own horns
• Social conversation – who talks and who listens
I was at dinner with faculty members from other departments at my university. To my right was a
woman. As the dinner began, we introduced ourselves. After we told each other what departments
we were in and what subjects we taught, she asked what my research was about. We talked about
my research for a little while. Then I asked her about her research and she told me about it. Finally,
we discussed the ways that our research overlapped. Later, as tends to happen at dinners, we
branched out to others at the table. I asked a man across the table from me what department he
was in and what he did. During the next half hour, I learned a lot about his job, his research, and his
background. Shortly before the dinner ended there was a lull, and he asked me what I did. When I
said I was a linguist, he became excited and told me about a research project he had conducted that
was related to neurolinguistics. He was still telling me about his research when we all got up to
leave the table.
How We Talk
• Tooting our own horns
• An experiment with expert/nonexpert pairs
Psychologist H. M. Leet-Pellegrini set out to discover whether gender or expertise determined who
would behave in what she terms a “dominant” way – for example, by talking more, interrupting, and
controlling the topic. She set up pairs of women, pairs of men, and mixed pairs, and asked them to
discuss the effects of television violence on children. In some cases, she made one of the partners
an expert by providing relevant factual information and time to read and assimilate it before the
videotaped discussion. One might expect that the conversationalist who was the expert would talk
more, interrupt more, and spend less time supporting the conversational partner who knew less
about the subject. But it wasn’t so simple. On average, those who had expertise did talk more, but
men experts talked more than women experts.
Expertise also had a different effect on women and men with regard to supportive behavior. LeetPellegrini expected that the one who did not have expertise would spend more time offering
agreement and support to the one who did. This turned out to be true –except in cases where a
woman was the expert and her nonexpert partner was man. In this situation, the women experts
showed support – saying things like “Yeah” and “That’s right” – far more than the nonexpert men
they were talking to. Observers often rated the male nonexpert as more dominant than the female
expert. In other words, the women in this experiment not only didn’t weild their expertise as power,
but tried to play it down and make up for it through extra assenting behavior. They acted as if their
expertise were something to hide. …
How We Talk
• Tooting our own horns
• An experiment with expert/nonexpert pairs - continued
Furthermore, when an expert man talked to an uninformed woman, he took a controlling role in
structuring the conversation in the beginning and the end. But when an expert man talked to an
uninformed man, he dominated in the beginning but not always in the end. In other words, having
expertise was enough to keep a man in the controlling position if we talking to a woman, but not if he
was talking to a man. Apparently, when a woman surmised that the man she was talking to had
more information on the subject than she did, she simply accepted the reactive role. But another
man, despite a lack of information, might still give the expert a run for his money and possibly gain
the upper hand by the end.
How We Talk
•Use of personal examples
How We Talk
•Story-telling styles
Each year, students in my classes record ordinary conversations that they happen to take part in,
and transcribe a segment where people tell about personal experiences. One year, two students
analyzed all the stories transcribed by class members to compare the ones told by women and those
told by men. They found differences that fit in with the patterns I have been describing.
The fourteen stories that men had told were all about themselves. Of the twelve stories told by
women, only six were about themselves; the others were about incidents that happened to other
people. The men, but not the women, had told stories in which there were protagonists and
antagonists. For the most part, the stories that men told made them look good. For example, two
men told about times when they had won a game for their team by their extraordinary performance.
Many of the women told stories that made them look foolish. For example, one woman told of not
having realized she had broken her nose until a doctor informed her of the fact years later. Another
told of having been so angry at losing her hubcap to a pothole that she stopped the car, searched in
vain among a pile of hubcaps that had found a similar fate, and, not wanting to leave empty-handed,
took a Mercedes hubcap that was of no use to her.
How We Talk
•Use of indirect expressions
How We Talk
•Trouble talk
HE: I’m really tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.
SHE: I didn’t sleep well either. I never do.
HE: Why are you trying to belittle me?
SHE: I’m not! I’m just trying to show that I understand.
Girl: Hey, Max, my baby’s not feeling good.
Boy: So sorry. I’m not the person who fixes sick babies.
Girl: I wasn’t telling you to fix her, I was just telling you.
How We Talk
•Who interrupts
How We Talk
•The role of fighting (arguing)
For boys and men, aggression does not preclude friendship. Quite the contrary, it is a good way to
start interactiona nd create involvement. A woman told me of her surprise when she was a member
of a mixed group of students attending a basketball game at the University of Michigan. Although
their tickets had seat assignments, the usual practice among students at this university was for
spectators to take any seats they found – first come, first served. Following these unwritten rules,
the students took seats in the front row of the balcony. Before long, a group of men from Michigan
State University arrived, assuming they were entitled to the seats shown on their tickets. Finding
people in their seats, they ordered them out. When the University of Michigan students refused to
vacate the seats, a loud argument ensued in which the men of the two groups denounced and
threatened each other, and the women sank down in their seats. After a while, the visitors settled for
the seats adjoining the disputed ones. Then the men who had just been engaged in an angry verbal
fight began a friendly chat about the teams and the schools and the game about to begin. The
women were dumbfounded. They would never have engaged in such an argument, but they
assumed that if they had it would have made them enemies for life, not friends in the wink of an eye.
These Differences Show Up Very Early
•Boys give orders; girls use words like “let’s”
Psychologist Jacqueline Sachs and her colleagues, studying preschoolers between the ages of two
and five, found that girls tended to make proposals for action by saying “Let’s,”, whereas boys often
gave each other commands. For example, in playing doctor, the little boys said things like: “Lie
down.”, “Get the heart thing.”, “Gimme your arm.”, “Try to give me the medicine.” When girls played
doctor, they said things like “Let’s sit down and use it.”
Marjorie Harness Goodwin found exactly the same pattern in a completely different group – black
children between the ages of six and fourteen, playing on the streets of a Philadelphia
neighborhood. The boys, who were (agonistically) making slingshots in preparation for a fight, gave
each other orders: “Gimme the pliers!”, “Man, don’t come in here where I am.”, “Give me that, man.
After this, after you chop ‘em, give ‘em to me.”, “Get off my steps.” The girls, who were making glass
rings out of bottle necks, didn’t issue commands. They made proposals beginning with “Let’s”:
“Let’s go around Subs and Suds [a corner bar/restaurant].”, “Let’s ask her, ‘Do you have any
bottles?’ “, “Come on. Let’s go find some.”, “Come on. Let’s turn back, y’all, so we can safe keep
‘em.”, “Let’s move these out first.” Other ways the girls proposed activities were with “We gonna”
(“We gonna make a whole display of rings”), “We could” (“We could use a sewer”), “Maybe”, and
“We gotta”.
These Differences Show Up Very Early
•Girls give reasons; boys don’t.
•Girls get in trouble if they brag or stand out.
•“She thinks she’s something.”
•In mixed groups, girls often become “invisible”
•Different attitudes toward “trouble talk”
Conversational Style at Work
•Meetings
•One-on one interaction style
Conversational Style at Work – Meetings: Who
Talks?
• Men talk more
Barbara and Gene Eakins examined tape recordings of seven university faculty meetings and found
that, with one exception, the men spoke more often and, without exception, spoke longer. The
men’s turns ranged from 10.66 to 17.07 seconds, the women’s from 3 to 10 seconds. The longest
contribution by a woman was still shorter than the shortest contribution by a man.
Conversational Style at Work – Meetings: Who
Talks?
• Men talk more but meeting style matters.
Edelsky taped and analyzed five complete meetings of a standing university department faculty
committee composed of seven women (of which she was one) and four men. When she set out to
measure how much women and men spoke at the meetings, she realized that the meetings broke
into two different types of interactions. At times, interaction followed what one things of as meeting
structure: One person spoke while others listened or responded. But there were times when the
nature of interaction was quite different: They seemed like “free-for-alls” in which several people
talked at once or seemed to be “on the same wavelength.” In order to answer the question of who
talked more, she first had to ask which type of interaction was going on. She found that men took
more and longer turns and did more joking, arguing, directing, and soliciting of responses during the
more structured segments of the meetings. During the “free-for-all” parts of the meetings, women
and men talked equally, and women joked, argued, directed, and solicited responses more than
men. In these parts of the meeting, no one person held the floor while others sat silently listening.
Instead, several voices were going at once as people either talked over each other or talked to their
neighbors at the same time that other parallel conversations were going on.
Conversational Style at Work – Meetings: How
Do People Talk?
• Women use hedge expressions such as:
•“I don’t know if this will work, but …”
•“You’ve probably already thought of this, but …”
•“This may be a silly naïve question, but …”
Conversational Style at Work – Ritualized
Behavior
•Women say “I’m sorry”, “I’m confused”, and “Thanks”
Sociologist Keller Magenau tape-recorded and studied the talk of a woman who worked in the
central office of a large insurance company. The woman, Karie, was responsible for approving
insurance policies referred to her by underwriters. In one taped segment, Karie had received a
policy from Lisa that she could not approve because it lacked a critical piece of information that Lisa
should have provided. Instead of saying, “Lisa, you haven’t given me all the information you’re
supposed to,” Karie began, “I’m just a little confused.” When she pointed out the problem, Lisa took
responsibility for it: “No, I should have reworded that,” and went on to clarify. Karie did not lose face
by claiming confusion, because Lisa took the blame back on herself. If Karie put herself in a onedown position, it was only fleeting, because Lisa quickly pulled her back up. It is only when others
do not do their part to restore the balance that ritual self-deprecation leaves the speaker in a onedown position.
-------------------------------------I had been interviewed by a well-known columnist who ended our friendly conversation by giving me
the number of her direct phone line in case I ever wanted to call her. Some time later, I did want to
call her but had misplaced her direct number and had to go through the newspaper receptionist to
get through to her. When our conversation was ending, and had both uttered ending-type remarks, I
remembered that I wanted to get her direct number for the future and said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot – last
time you gave me your direct number, but I lost it; I wondered if I could get it again.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’
she came back instantly. ‘It’s …’
Conversational Style at Work – Ritualized
Behavior
•Women give compliments
Deirdre and her colleague William both gave presentations at a
national conference. On the way back to their home city, Deirdre
told William, ‘That was a great talk!’ ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then she
asked, ‘What did you think of mine?’ and he told her –in the form of
a lengthy and detailed critique.
Conversational Style at Work – Fighting
•Men argue and fight.
Conversational Style at Work – Indirect Requests vs.
Bossiness
•What if you’re the boss?
A university president was expecting a visit from a member of
the board of trustees. When her secretary buzzed to tell her
that the board member had arrived, she left her office and
entered the reception area to greet him. Before ushering him
into her office, she handed her secretary a sheet of paper and
said, ‘I’ve just finished drafting this letter. Do you think you
could type it right away? I’d like to get it out before lunch. And
would you please do me a favor and hold all calls while I’m
meeting with Mr. Smith?’ When they sat down behind the
closed door of her office, Mr. Smith began by telling her that he
thought she had spoken inappropriately to her secretary. ‘Don’t
forget’, he said, ‘you’re the president!’
Conversational Style at Work – Indirect Requests vs.
Bossiness
•Women must be careful
•What happens among peers? It’s even more subtle.
Marian: Sal, are you busy?
Sally: No.
Marian: What’re you doing?
Sally: Just talking to Deborah. Do you need me to cover the
phone?
Marian: Yes, I have to go to the accounting office.
Sally: Okay, I”ll be right there.
Conversational Style at Work
•Asserting control vs. soliciting consensus
Two coworkers who were on very friendly terms with each other
were assigned to do a marketing survey together. When they got
the assignment, the man began by saying, ‘I’ll do the airline and
automobile industry, and you can do the housewares and directmail market.’ The woman was taken aback. “Hey,’ she said. ‘It
sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. As a matter of fact, I’d like
to do airlines and autos. I’ve already got a lot of contacts in those
areas.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, a little chagrined and a lot surprised.
Conversational Style at Work
•Trying to protect others’ feelings
Amy was a manger with a problem: She had just read a final
report written by Donald, and she felt it was woefully inadequate.
She faced the unsavory task of telling him to do it over. When
she met with Donald, she made sure to soften the blow by
beginning with praise, telling him everything about his report that
was good. Then she went on to explain what was lacking and
what needed to be done to make it acceptable. She was
pleased with the diplomatic way she had managed to deliver the
bad news. Thanks to her thoughtfulness in starting with praise,
Donald was able to listen to the criticism and seemed to
understand what was needed. But when the revised report
appeared on her desk, Amy was shocked. Donald had made on
minor, superficial changes, and none of the necessary ones.
Conversational Style at Work
•Promoting oneself
Not only advancement and recognition, but hiring is affected by ways
of speaking. A woman who supervised three computer programmers
mentioned that her best employee was another woman whom she had
hired over the objections of her own boss. Her boss had preferred a
male candidate because he felt the man would be better able to step
into her supervisory role if needed. But she had taken a dislike to the
male candidate. For one thing, she had felt he was inappropriately
flirtatious with her. But most important, she had found him arrogant,
because he spoke as if he already had the job, using the pronoun “we”
to refer to the group that had not yet hired him.
Conversational Style at Work
•The overall effect of feeling confident
The CEO of a corporation explained to me that he regularly has to make
decisions based on insufficient information – and making decisions is a
large part of his work life. Much of his day is spent hearing brief
presentations following which he must either approve or reject a course of
action. He has to make a judgment in five minutes about issues the
presenters have worked on for months. “I decide,” he explained, “based
on how confident they seem. If they seem very confident, I call it a go. If
they seem unsure, I figure it’s too risky and nix it.”
What Matters?
•Not the style itself
•It’s the mismatch
http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Faculties/HMSAS/english/rh/modules/LNG3001-1.htm
More Information?
http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Faculties/HMSAS/english/rh/modules/LNG3001-1.htm
http://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTM