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Gender and Communication
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CULTURAL CONTEXT: GENDER AND COMMUNICATION


Further Resources 10th Edition

  • A good general essay is Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk, “Gender, Communication, and Community,” Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research, ed. Turner and Sterk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 213-21.
  • Ruth Wodaks collection of essays, Gender and Discourse (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997), contains many useful pieces. 
  • For updates of Lakoff’s initial work comparing women-talk and men-talk, see:
    • Lakoff and Mary Bucholtz Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (Studies in Language and Gender, 3) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
    • Lakoff, The Language War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)
    • Lakoff, Talking Power: The Politics of Language (New York: Basic Books, 1990)
    • Diana K. Ivy and Phil Backlund, Exploring Genderspeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication, 2nd ed. (New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999)
    • Lea Stewart, Pamela Cooper, Alan D. Stewart, and Sheryl Friedley,  Gender and Communication, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002)
    • Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron, eds., Women and Their Speech Communities (London: Longman, 1988)
    • Julia T. Wood, Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008)
    • Jane Blankenship and Deborah C. Robson, “A ’Feminine Style’ in Women’s Political Discourse: An Exploratory Essay,” Communication Quarterly 43 (1995): 353-66
    • Helen Mott and Helen Petrie, “Workplace Interactions: Women’s Linguistic Behavior,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 14 (1995): 324-36. 
  • In “Gender Differences in Management Communication: A Meta-Analysis,” Management Communication Quarterly 5 (1991): 6-35, Brenda M. Wilkins and Peter A. Andersen downplay the differences between men’s and women’s communication patterns. In fact, they argue, “It can be safely concluded that there is no meaningful difference in the communication behavior of male and female managers based on current quantitative findings” (27). 
  • Laura Stafford, Marrianne Dainton, and Stephen Haas argue that although sex is a weak predictor of strategic behaviors, gender predicts rather well in “Measuring Routine and Strategic Relational Maintenance: Scale Revision, Sex Versus Gender Roles, and the Prediction of Relational Characteristics,” Communication Monographs 67 (September 2000): 306-23. 
  • For those interested in issues related to gender, childhood, and communication, we recommend a special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction entitled “Constituting Gender Through Talk in Childhood: Conversations in Parent-Child, Peer and Sibling Relationships” 29 (1996). 
  • For those who wish to know more about the relationship between gender and communicating emotional support, see Communication Reports 15 (Winter 2002).  Wendy Samters essay, “How Gender and Cognitive Complexity Influence the Provision of Emotional Support” (5-16), provides a good link back to constructivism. Samter argues that gender remains an important variable, even when one controls for cognitive complexity. 
  • For additional discussion of androgyny and related issues, see:
    • Sandra Lipsitz Bem, “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42 (1974): 155-62
    • Bem, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
    • Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish, “Androgyny and Identity in Gender Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (November 1994): 482-97. 
  • The classic literary work on androgyny is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, 1929), which has been sadly neglected by communication scholars.  For further discussion, see Glen McClish, “Virginia Woolf, Androgyny, and the Discipline of Communication,” Human Studies 37 (June 1995): 55-65. 
  • For discussion of gender and the Internet, see Susan B. Barnes, Online Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relationships (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001). 
  • For a distinctly conservative approach to gender and communication, see Kay E. Payne, Different But Equal: Communication Between the Sexes (Westport: Praeger, 2001). 
  • For related work in the field of composition studies, see Mary Ann Cain, Revisioning Writers’ Talk: Gender and Culture in Acts of Composing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 
  • The film He Said, She Said offers a humorous portrayal of differences between men’s and women’s perceptions and communication patterns. 

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OVERVIEWS

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OUTLINES


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APP LOGS

ESSAY

MOVIE CLIPS

LINKS

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TEXT COMPARE

Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions
are available in
Resources by Type.
See list

New to Theory
Resources?

Find out more in this short
video overview (3:01).


Gender and Communication
Chapter Component

CULTURAL CONTEXT: GENDER AND COMMUNICATION


Further Resources 10th Edition

  • A good general essay is Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk, “Gender, Communication, and Community,” Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research, ed. Turner and Sterk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 213-21.
  • Ruth Wodaks collection of essays, Gender and Discourse (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997), contains many useful pieces. 
  • For updates of Lakoff’s initial work comparing women-talk and men-talk, see:
    • Lakoff and Mary Bucholtz Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (Studies in Language and Gender, 3) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
    • Lakoff, The Language War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)
    • Lakoff, Talking Power: The Politics of Language (New York: Basic Books, 1990)
    • Diana K. Ivy and Phil Backlund, Exploring Genderspeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication, 2nd ed. (New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999)
    • Lea Stewart, Pamela Cooper, Alan D. Stewart, and Sheryl Friedley,  Gender and Communication, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002)
    • Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron, eds., Women and Their Speech Communities (London: Longman, 1988)
    • Julia T. Wood, Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008)
    • Jane Blankenship and Deborah C. Robson, “A ’Feminine Style’ in Women’s Political Discourse: An Exploratory Essay,” Communication Quarterly 43 (1995): 353-66
    • Helen Mott and Helen Petrie, “Workplace Interactions: Women’s Linguistic Behavior,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 14 (1995): 324-36. 
  • In “Gender Differences in Management Communication: A Meta-Analysis,” Management Communication Quarterly 5 (1991): 6-35, Brenda M. Wilkins and Peter A. Andersen downplay the differences between men’s and women’s communication patterns. In fact, they argue, “It can be safely concluded that there is no meaningful difference in the communication behavior of male and female managers based on current quantitative findings” (27). 
  • Laura Stafford, Marrianne Dainton, and Stephen Haas argue that although sex is a weak predictor of strategic behaviors, gender predicts rather well in “Measuring Routine and Strategic Relational Maintenance: Scale Revision, Sex Versus Gender Roles, and the Prediction of Relational Characteristics,” Communication Monographs 67 (September 2000): 306-23. 
  • For those interested in issues related to gender, childhood, and communication, we recommend a special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction entitled “Constituting Gender Through Talk in Childhood: Conversations in Parent-Child, Peer and Sibling Relationships” 29 (1996). 
  • For those who wish to know more about the relationship between gender and communicating emotional support, see Communication Reports 15 (Winter 2002).  Wendy Samters essay, “How Gender and Cognitive Complexity Influence the Provision of Emotional Support” (5-16), provides a good link back to constructivism. Samter argues that gender remains an important variable, even when one controls for cognitive complexity. 
  • For additional discussion of androgyny and related issues, see:
    • Sandra Lipsitz Bem, “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42 (1974): 155-62
    • Bem, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
    • Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish, “Androgyny and Identity in Gender Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (November 1994): 482-97. 
  • The classic literary work on androgyny is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, 1929), which has been sadly neglected by communication scholars.  For further discussion, see Glen McClish, “Virginia Woolf, Androgyny, and the Discipline of Communication,” Human Studies 37 (June 1995): 55-65. 
  • For discussion of gender and the Internet, see Susan B. Barnes, Online Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relationships (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001). 
  • For a distinctly conservative approach to gender and communication, see Kay E. Payne, Different But Equal: Communication Between the Sexes (Westport: Praeger, 2001). 
  • For related work in the field of composition studies, see Mary Ann Cain, Revisioning Writers’ Talk: Gender and Culture in Acts of Composing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 
  • The film He Said, She Said offers a humorous portrayal of differences between men’s and women’s perceptions and communication patterns. 

 
 
 
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