"Social dimensions of language are important influences in shaping your response to others...The ability to think critically gives you insight and the intellectual ability to distinguish people's language use from their individual qualities, to correct inaccurate beliefs about people, and to avoid stereotypical responses in the future. One arena in which two distinct language styles clash repeatedly is male/female communication, which we will explore in the next section."
-John Chaffee, PhD.

"Men are so insensitive. My partner never wants to just sit down, look me in the eye, and spend some time having a real conversation about our thoughts, feelings, or even the day's events. He seems so impatient and just doesn't listen. Even when I'm upset or having a serious problem I'm working through, he tends to minimize it or suggests ways to solve it, instead of trying to understand what I'm experiencing."

"Why do women like to spend so much time talking, especially about the same things? My partner likes to take a subject and trample it to death, going over and over it. She seems more interested in wasting time talking about problems instead of figuring out how to solve them. And she can talk about the day's events until I'm falling asleep. She seems to think we're having a problem communicating, but things seem all right to me."

Back to (Mis)Communication | Identify Room For Improvement | Thinking Activity