Male-Female Friendships And Conversation

8 Pages 2070 Words

han females in intergender communication.
One of the most common habits in conversation amongst female friends that I found was positive encouragement. Lines 42 through 44 in the transcribed conversation submitted by a student as the twentieth message on our English 20 message board reads:
CS: put the letter inside the card.
AV: …yeah inside the card.
CW: you guys are so smart.

When CW made her comment she was establishing a certain rapport with her friends. She needed help with something and was given advice by her friends, her comment was meant as a way of saying thanks. This unspoken implication is called a metamessage – a term coined by the linguist Deborah Tannen. Tannen (1990) is a also firm believer that women speak with each other in terms of rapport and communicate more seriously about feelings then men do. Conversation for the most part amongst female friends is opportunity to negotiate or renegotiate relationships.
Now let us look at a sample of conversation that I drew from message number 30 on the English 20 website:
C: Dude we should hacky-sack in the hallway. It’s much easier. I’m serious, Will and I were doing it and we were getting like twenty hits.
M: Okay
B: That’s a lie, you made that up!
C: No! I’m serious….Maybe I exaggerated a little. I think like fifteen but definitely a lot.

This is a good example of the ways different to women, that men confirm or establish rapport in friendships. The accusing tone was a metamessage from speaker B, it was like saying, ‘I know you and I are friends and that is why I am pushing you around.’ Sarcasm is another method of friendly chastising that I found common in male conversation. In my own recorded and transcribed conversation with friends I found one exceptionally good example occurri...