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why do women talk so much?

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
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Apr 30, 2006
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why do women talk so much?

Now the stereotypes have been given scientific substance, of a sort, by a bestselling book in the US, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. In her book, Brizendine claims that men and women are different because their brains function differently, and one of the most interesting examples she comes up with is that women talk more - 20,000 words a day compared with 7,000 for the average man - and they talk twice as fast.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1957827,00.html

but hang, on, do women talk more than men?

Mark Liberman, professor of phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania, has turned the demolition of the women-talk-threetimes-as-much-as-men fact into a personal crusade. The 20,000 v 7,000 numbers that appear on the book jacket, he says, "have been cited in reviews all over the world, from the New York Times to the Mumbai Mirror". They are rapidly hardening into fact, but where do they come from?

Brizendine's book runs to 280 pages, of which almost a third are notes. Liberman was sure he would find "a reliable source for this statistic" among this battery of supporting data. Instead, according to a piece he wrote in the Boston Globe, all he found was an apparent attribution to a self-help book - Talk Language: How to Use Conversation for Profit and Pleasure by Allan Pease and Alan Garner. He was not impressed.

In the end, he concluded that the figures were probably based on guesswork, likening the "fact" that women talk more than men to the often stated "fact" that the Inuit have 17 words for snow. Both, he said, were myths. The Inuit actually have only one word for snow; and research shows only minute differences between the amount that men and women talk. "Whatever the average female v male difference turns out to be," he concluded, "it will be small compared to the variation among women and among men; and there will also be big differences, for any given individual, from one social setting to another."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1957827,00.html

discuss :)
 
:eye-poppi :boggled:

Um. I should really read the whole article before replying, but...

I think women do verbalize faster, I know I talk so fast sometimes that even my teacher (a woman) misses most of what I say. She always tells me to talk slower, or repeat what I've said so she can hear what she missed the first time I spoke.

Also, women don't like quiet people, it seems. I would prefer to never talk, but I've been getting along with other women at work and school now that I make the effort to talk more, even if I don't like the subject matter. I also offer less opinions, and do more paraphrasing. Women like to agree on, and talk a subject to death (it seems). Having a differing opinion seems to make a person appear argumentative, and not as liking discussion. Arguing bad. Adding agreement is good. I think. This from someone (me) who is clueless in social situations.

Sorry if I'm stereotyping, and offering only my personal experience, but that's all I can add to this discussion. Any other thoughts, opinions?
 
Finally! Scientific documentation of something everyone already knew.

Sorry, did you say something, Eos?

:)
 
There are talkative women and there are quiet women just like there are talkative men and quiet men. In my experience it isn't a gender specific behaviour.

I'm left wondering how they chose the subjects of their study. Perhaps more extroverted talkative women are more likely to volunteer to be test subjects?
 
parrotslave said:
There are talkative women and there are quiet women just like there are talkative men and quiet men. In my experience it isn't a gender specific behaviour.

I'm left wondering how they chose the subjects of their study. Perhaps more extroverted talkative women are more likely to volunteer to be test subjects?
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You talk a lot. Are you female?
 
I've found that people in the north of the U.S. talk faster than people in the south.

Do northerners' brains work twice as fast or is it just because when it gets cold they don't want to have their mouth's open for long?
 
You would think the cold would cause everything to slow down. I guess that only holds true for lizards and other cold-blooded types?
 
Most talk show hosts are men.

Woody Allen, a man who lives to talk and lives to talk about living, is a man.

John Edwards is a man and he's got a fast mouth.

There are quite men and quite women and talkative men and talkative women. There are also quiet and talkative hermaphodites and transexuals and everything else in between.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
:eye-poppi :boggled:

Um. I should really read the whole article before replying, but...

I think women do verbalize faster, I know I talk so fast sometimes that even my teacher (a woman) misses most of what I say. She always tells me to talk slower, or repeat what I've said so she can hear what she missed the first time I spoke.

Also, women don't like quiet people, it seems. I would prefer to never talk, but I've been getting along with other women at work and school now that I make the effort to talk more, even if I don't like the subject matter. I also offer less opinions, and do more paraphrasing. Women like to agree on, and talk a subject to death (it seems). Having a differing opinion seems to make a person appear argumentative, and not as liking discussion. Arguing bad. Adding agreement is good. I think. This from someone (me) who is clueless in social situations.

Sorry if I'm stereotyping, and offering only my personal experience, but that's all I can add to this discussion. Any other thoughts, opinions?
Click to expand...

I just like that you're discussing social intelligence, a top interest of mine. I think in-group/out-group formations and intra-group heirarchies are often constructed using agreement matrixes, where the empirical validity of the topic of discussion is less important than demonstrating one's social intelligence by agreeing & disagreeing with the right people, situationally. Not just for women, but generally, although I suspect women employ them more in part due to what may be generally superior social intelligence relative to men.

I'm curious about published research in this particular area, and blogs on these type topics
 
Womens' mouths are smaller. So they use smaller words.
Smaller words contain less information.
So. To maintain the same average data transmission rate as a man...

...this isn't working, is it?

Cover me, while I break for the door.
 
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