In “Can’t We Talk”, Tannen posits that one has to learn the opposite gender’s way of thinking to bridge the communication gulf between one another. To gain readers’ interest, she inserts some attractive stories about how different approaches are taken by men and women in facing a same situation. Nonetheless, Tannen puts aside the depth of analysis of her research in this article. There is also a contradiction in her explanation. Furthermore, one may decipher that Tannen is more biased towards the women’s side in presenting this article.
By proposing not one but seven (including the introduction) entertaining anecdotes about different actions taken by each gender in a common activity, Tannen could alluringly deliver the important highlights about the issue. As can be concluded from the article, Tannen describes men tend to be a serious and straightforward while women tend to be more friendly and talkative. With some cases where both genders are having arguments due to misunderstanding, Tannen wants to underline the importance of understanding each other’s characteristics to lessen the conflicts.
Nevertheless, in order to create this appealing article, Tannen sacrifices the depth of her analysis of each case. It is true that after each example given, Tannen presents the underlying reason of why men and women take differentactions to approach the same situation. However Tannen fails to further elaborate each reason given. For example, she states that “to most man talk is information” and ”he is focused on what he can do”. She does not provide any explanation of why man thinks and behaves in such way. Academia will find such approach as too soft, superficial, and lack of evidence.
Moreover, Tannen also provide inadequate research to support her argument. She merely gives some random stories and her own experience without any scientific data or details. People in general may not be to concerned about this, but the academia will find this relatively vague. For example, Tannen writes “In trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly.” The meaning of some is not clear in this point. The reader may assume that some is refer to a few people only.
There is also a contradiction in her argument. In the first story, Tannen writes that the woman was irritated as her husband says ‘no’ to her question. This depicts that once the woman thinks the listener is showing a sign of rejection, she will feel infuriated. In the second story, Tannen tells her experience about how she accepts other’s consideration. She even restates that “woman was approaching the world ... as a network of connections seeking support..” Relating both of the stories, woman in the first case should have merely negotiated with her husband again without feeling irritated at all. She should have been trying to seek for her husband approval towards her request.
Investigating more on the article, Tannen positions herself more to woman’s point of view rather than being a third person. In her statement, “To Josh, checking with his wife would mean he was not free to act on his own. It would make him feel like a child or an underling”, she seems to show that woman behaves better than man. In this case, Josh seems to be very childish that he only want to follow his ego. It would be better if Tannen explains Josh’s disagreement is because he does not want to let his fellows think that he is an independent man. Again, the statement used by Tannen will be very bias without any convincing verification which unfortunately, is not provided by Tannen.
Tannen has put great effort in presenting her article with interactive and interesting daily facts bygiving out six different events from daily lives. Nonetheless, an excellent article should have strong and supportive data behind to proof its credibility, which is ignored by Tannen. There is also a contradiction in her examples that further weaken her arguments.
I personally feel that her article is far from convincing. As stated in my previous paragraph, her examples are rather vague and are not strongly supported. From my point of view, I will not react like the woman in the introduction, where she easily angry after thinking that her husband does not agree with her, the “Advice vs. Understanding” where the woman deciphers her husband’s word wrongly. As she does not give any supporting verification upon her stories, her stories merely seem to be limited for certain people. After reading for several times, I am not convinced about her stand. It looks as if rather than differences in gender; the main cause of the fight seems to be due to the differences of personality of each person.
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