Tannen found that women and men had very different speech styles. She refers to womens style of conversation as “rapport-talk”, as she believes women today use language for intimacy. Women are taught to believe from a very early age that "talk is the glue that holds relationships together", and carry this state of mind with them through life, using language for closeness, to give and receive support, to negotiate and reach consensus. Overall she found; women talk a lot more than men, often seen as talking ‘too much’, women tend to talk privately, or in small groups of friends, to build relations is the main conversation purpose
Men, however, use a different language style that Tannen refers to as “report-talk”. Contrasting to women, men use language to gain the upper-hand in conversation, and to avoid being put down by others. She found that, in childhood, while girls learn to maintain relationships through conversation, boys learn to maintain relationships primarily through their activities, so conversation for adult males becomes a contest, as there seems to be a sort of ‘social hierarchy’ between men.
However, even though each gender, generally speaking, are very different in conversation, the language used by men is seen as the norm, according to Tannen, who does not agree that this should be the case, and that women should not change their conversational style to fit in with men’s. She observed that women who do so are seen as invading a mans realm of speech, and are judged harshly, and are often also considered to be rude and unfeminine.
Overall, Deborah Tannen found that women talk a lot more than men, which is often seen as talking too much, women tend to talk privately or in small groups of friends, where as men speak publicly, women ‘overlap’ more than men, where as men tend to speak one at a time. She found the purpose for conversation also differs between men and women; while women talk to build relations, men talk to negotiate and avoid failure.
Jenny Cheshire performed studies on an entirely different age group, in a completely different environment to Deborah Tannen. Cheshire studied the conversational patterns of children aged eight to eleven playing in adventure playgrounds in Reading. She gained acceptance from two groups of girls and one group of boys, and observed how they spoke to each other within them groups.
After looking at the first group of girls, Cheshire seen that there was a lot more conversation in their games than the boys, and before deciding what they wanted to do, they would discuss it with one another until all could come to a conclusion that they all agree on. Therefore, observing that girls are generally more consensus-driven than boys.
On the other hand, Cheshire seen that the group of boys tended to have a more hierarchical structure of interaction; there would be one leader who decides what they will do, and the other boys simply follow what he says without argument.
The third group that she observed was a group of ‘tomboy’ type girls, who did not talk or play like the other group of girls did, but instead, adopted a similar linguistic style to that of the boys, and by doing so, thought they were more powerful than the first group of girls, drawing a conclusion to the studies of Jenny Cheshire that girls associated male peer linguistic international style with status.
In conclusion, both of these writers, although carrying out very different studies, seem to both find similar things. The observations of Deborah Tannen, and Jenny Cheshire support eachother in many aspects.
