“Men and women use language differently because they negotiate their worlds differently. Across dozens and dozens of studies, women tend to talk more about other human beings. Men, on the other hand, are more interested in concrete objects and things.”
An article in Scientific American is towing the line between linguistics and psychology, deconstructing the differences in how we use language. Apparently our pronoun use is super revealing.
(via Book Bench)
2 responses
I have never understood what the standards are that determine whether any particular manifestation of this kind of dumb stereotype-reaffirming modern-day phrenology gets featured _approvingly_ or _dismissively_ on blogs like this. Perhaps we are hard-wired to respond favorably to notions about gender differences where we would be skeptical of (e.g.) racial differences? Perhaps men are more hardwired to do this? Enquiring minds are tremendously interested in knowing…
The study referenced can be found here: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Faculty/Pennebaker/Reprints/NewmanSexDif2007.pdf
What I don’t like is Pennebaker’s non-quantitative interpretation of the results: that women gossip and men talk about carburetors and tools. If he wants to make that assertion, he should redo the analysis looking for gender differences in tool-related and gossip-related nouns/verbs–but then, that’s exactly the approach he was trying to avoid with this research.
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