Language and Gender Article Summary

'Is Your Communication Style Dictated By Your Gender?' https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2016/03/31/is-your-communication-style-dictated-by-your-gender/#dbcc3d5eb9d3

This article was written by Carol Kinsey Goman who opens her piece with a reference to the research she conducted. She conducted research in different countries such as the United States, Europe and Canada to see how gender differences in communication were displayed in the workplace. An advantage of this research is that it shows cultural validity, as the research was not only conducted in one country but another two others. The variation of this will give a clearer indication of how gender differences truly differ and if they differ in some countries more than others. Although the fact she firstly found the same sets of strengths and weaknesses identified in both men and women in themselves and each other may prove otherwise. Although the fact that these results were taken from a workplace, they may be bias in comparison to how men and women communicate in every day life as men are seen to be more authoritative at work as they feel they have more power and dominance over women as they're the original 'business owners' and want to stick to their status. Whereas women, as stated in their top three weaknesses by the writer, may be 'overly emotional' as they have a lot more on their plate such as domestic duties, 'meandering', they won't get to the point as women tend to commonly go off topic in their speech about other things or they're interrupted by the man and 'not authoritative' as that is portrayed as the male's role only. However despite what Goman's research suggests in this article, and that being all very accurate describing men and women's different ways of communicating, it has changed immensely overtime where women have gained more freedom of speech.