He said, she said. Why men and women speak different languages

Men and women, so they say, are from different planets. Men are from Mars, women from Venus. One exudes yin while the other seethes with yang. One is made of puppy dog tails, the other from sugar and spice.

Metaphors, metaphysics and other constructs aside, we all know from simple observation there are significant behavioral differences between the genders, and those have big implications for verbal communication in the workplace.

Men interrupt more, brag more and often feel compelled to play the lead or alpha role.

Let the war of the sexes resume.

One of the social scientists who has studied these communication differences in depth is Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen, the author of books such as That’s Not What I Meant! and Talking from 9 to 5: Men and Women at Work.

What Tannnen has learned is that the interpersonal relationships boys and girls develop as children carries right into adulthood and the workplace. They help explain why men sometimes get credit for ideas originally generated by women.

During their formative years, girls tend to focus on developing rapport with friends, while boys are more focused on earning status among their peers. That’s why sounding certain or authoritative is something more natural to men than women.

Girls learn as children that sounding too sure of themselves will make them unpopular with their peers. It’s common f or girls to ostracize a peer who calls attention to her own knowledge or superiority.

“A girl who tells others what to do is called ‘bossy,’” Tannen wrote in a Harvard Business Review article.

“She thinks she’s something,” is a frequent criticism of such girls.

Boys come of age in an entirely different world. They tend to play in larger groups but not all are treated equally. Those with high status not only get away with emphasizing rather than downplaying their status, such behavior is expected. One or several of the boys are deemed the group’s leader. A hierarchy is established, much like the office.

Unlike girls, boys are less likely to accuse one another of being bossy. Tannen’s research shows the leader is expected to tell lower-status boys what to do.

“Boys learn to use language to negotiate their status in the group by displaying their abilities and knowledge, and by challenging others and resisting challenges,” Tannen says. “Giving orders is one way of getting and keeping the high-status role. Another is taking center stage by telling stories or jokes.”

This helps explain why men often get credit for ideas generated by women.

Take the choice of pronouns men and women use. Tannen says men commonly say “I” in the same situations where women often say “we.”

“For example,” Tannen wrote, “one publishing company executive said, ‘I’m hiring a new manager. I’m going to put him in charge of my marketing division,’ as if he owned the corporation. In stark contrast, I recorded women saying ‘we’ when referring to work they alone had done.”

Just as they learned as children, women use linguistic techniques that tend to be inclusive while men use more individualistic language.

From childhood to adulthood, the chemistry that comprises a man or a woman comes from very different laboratories. But understanding the conversational differences between the genders can smooth communication and help level the playing field.

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