There is a biological explanation for the reason why women are chattier than men. Scientists have discovered that women possess higher levels of a "language protein" in their brains, which could explain why females are so talkative.
I think that you present a common situation reflecting general impression about women, but in my opinion everything depends on personality independing of gender.
Dear Aieman,
possibly the talk of women is by words, the talk of man is by body signals and behaviour.
There is an assumption of categorical, dichotomous, essential differences in the ways that men and women speak.
Social groups organize and conceptualize men and women in culturally specific and meaningful ways. Given that language is the major symbolic system of the human species, we would expect language to be a source and moving force of gender ideologies. In other words, we should expect language to be influenced by local organizations of gender roles, rights, and expectations and to actively perpetuate these organizations in spoken and written communication (Bourdieu 1977; Ochs in Miller 1993). In relating sociocultural constructions of gender to social meaning of language, an issue of importance emerges: few features of language directly and exclusively index gender (Ochs in Miller 1993).
“Women’s Language?” (Lakoff 1975)
Lakoff had proposed that women’s speech varies from men’s in several ways. Barr &Atkins (1998 [1980]) wanted to test the hypothesis that there were absolute ways women and men talk. They concluded that individuals play particular roles, which have linguistic dimensions that sometime reflect broader social roles and sometimes they are particular to that setting. Essentially, not ALL women use “women’s language” and not all “women’s language” users are women (nonexclusive indexicality).
What are the implications?
When we see someone who who fits our preconceptions (which have already been evoked at the onset) we can easily “supply the cultural script that makes them meaningful and ‘typical’” (Cameron 1997 cited in Ahearn 2011). When we encounter someone who does not fit a particular stereotype (ex: use gendered” language) we tend not to notice or explain the case away as an aberration.
Ahearn, L.
2011 Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons
Ochs, E.
1993 Indexing gender. Miller, B. (Editor) Sex and Gender Hierarchies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
So to not be too culturally or biologically deterministic here, "this language protein" is probably part of larger complex interactions between biology, culture, development, environment, personality etc etc etc. Nothing conclusive can be said and this complexity means it is near impossible to make any generalizations on the matter.
@Nathan,
your arguements are the reason for my short and provoking post.
This is what we observe in general. Women have better networking skills than men and I think it is a necessary requirement for that.
Dear Aieman, I do not have statistics at hand, but jokingly speaking - when I see phone bills of my husband who is chattering, (or sending sms, mms etc.) constanly to my brother, with whom he spends lot of time in the fitness or pool, I give up thinking that women speak more.
But what is the (time) scale of analysis? Perhaps those women/men that talk a lot in public (visible) do not talk a lot in private (invisible) or vice versa. Perhaps the monitoring methods of speech research are biased? Perhaps the language proteins can also result from thinking about speech? In songbirds, the true song repertoire consist of songs types that are produced, but also of song types that are memorised but not produced.
Women are in fact compensating for their physical weakness with their linguistic strength. I can very easily beat my wife physically but when it comes to verbal fight I am nowhere.
@Sumodan,
I don´t like your post and examples.
1. Women do have less muscles and strength in these muscles, but they do childbearing ( a lot of strength)
2. To think, to beat his wife is totally forbidden for my mind.
3. I know many "silent" women, who tolerate babbeling men.
@Piotr:
The rat experiments are known, but humans are no rats and orientated with their own genom. So the extrapolation seems to quick without further arguements.
@Sumodan, what do you exactly mean by "beating wife" ? Is it winning with her in physical competitions or am I wrong ?
"Rats are no human"... Would it be interesting to answer this question having the data of levels of a "language protein" in the brains of the Orthodox Hesychasts (both – monks and nuns), Protestant Quietists, and Sufis? And afterwords compare the data with the data received from ordinary people?...
According to a study by Rupert Lanzenberger, it is related to the effects of sex hormones that circulate in the body (ie. testosterone).
And we should not assume a chatty one as a woman indeed.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiy1rjigfrVAhVEOo8KHSeQCOoQFggtMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.meduniwien.ac.at%2Fhp%2Fphd-neuroscience%2Fresearch-laboratories%2Frupert-lanzenberger%2F&usg=AFQjCNGbRbBQVaiLAB2NE2l1LYx4orpk9g
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Language