Language

& Communication, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 353-357, 1997

81;1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
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GENDER, DISCOURSE AND GENDER AND DISCOURSE

HAYLEY DAVIS

In Language & Communication 17: 2, Keli Yerian (Yerian, 1977) attempts to defend
Deborah Tannen’s book Gender and Discourse (Tannen, 1994) against objections voiced
in my review of it (Davis, 1996). Yerian’s global charge is that my remarks about Gender
and Discourse are ‘an example of a critique that misrepresents Tannen’s approach to
language and gender research’. If this charge were well founded and Yerian’s defence of
Gender and Discourse sound, I should clearly owe Tannen an apology. But I do not
think that is the case. On the contrary, Yerian’s defence of Tannen seems to me to lend
weight to my original criticisms. Since these raise issues concerning the responsibilities of
linguists who deliberately choose to deal with matters that are controversial and of wide
public concern (or, as Tannen herself puts it, that ‘touch people where they live’), and
since linguists are-and often like to be-regarded by the public as ‘experts’ on such
matters, it may be worth adding some further comments in the light of Yerian’s
remarks.
The main point at issue concerns linguistic stereotyping, but it is not confined to this or
even to linguistics. In academic work, as in various other fields, it is possible to conduct an
‘investigation’ of a troublesome problem in such a way that the effect of the investigation
may be to perpetuate or aggravate the problem, rather than throw much light on it; and it
is no defence against the conduct of such investigations to proclaim that this was never the
intention of the investigators. To criticize an investigation on this basis is not to accuse the
investigators either of hypocrisy or of disingenuity; but it is to suggest that the problems
associated with the investigation have not been thoroughly appreciated or analysed.
Tannen’s investigations of gender and discourse seem to me open to objections of
exactly this kind. Yerian’s first line of defence of Tannen consists in quoting snippets to
show that Tannen personally does not wish to perpetuate linguistic stereotypes and is fully
aware of their potentially harmful social consequences. This, of course, is an irrelevance,
for the reason already indicated above. However, what it confirms is either (a) a refusal to
accept that Tannen’s work could actually contribute to stereotyping, or else (b) a failure
to recognize some inconsistencies between theory and practice.
As regards (a), the irony is that much of Tannen’s work purports to be dedicated to
clarifying communicational breakdowns. But a breakdown between Tannen and her
readers is never envisaged, even though Yerian begins by observing that I am not alone in
one ‘recurrent misinterpretation of Tannen’s work’. This concerns the rather central
issue of Tannen’s view of male dominance. The question that seems to me relevant here
is how such a ‘misinterpretation’ could arise if there were no basis for it in the work itself.

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Dr H. G. Davis. Department of English. Gold-
smiths College, New Cross, London U.K., SE14 6NW.

353
354 H. DAVIS

How could it be ‘recurrent’, unless there were some foundation for it? The possibility that
Tannen’s work communicates a message that is not what Yerian (or presumably Tannen)
would admit is too easily dismissed. Furthermore, the dismissive word ‘misinterpretation’
already presupposes that there is a correct interpretation available, that Yerian has
grasped and I have not. All Yerian offers by way of validating this ‘correct’ interpretation
is to cite Tannen’s own disclaimers about male dominance-a particularly weak move in a
defence strategy which makes much of Tannen’s readiness to concede (in theory) that in
communication meanings are not ‘given’.
This is not the only example of Yerian’s flair for making things worse for Tannen rather
than better. But it bring us to (b) and the more important question of inconsistencies
between Tannen’s theory and practice (or, more exactly, between her theoretical pro-
nouncements and her methods of investigation). I make the latter qualification because, as
will already be evident to readers of my review, I do not think Tannen presents any clear
theoretical position, and certainly none which would provide a grounding for the motley
assortment of research methods reported in Gender and Discourse. These include writing
up selected anecdotal incidents, literary commentary on a Bergman screenplay, and dis-
tributing questionnaires in which the respondents are allowed only options that have been
restricted in advance by the investigator. Although Tannen claims that one purpose of
publishing Gender and Discourse was to make available to readers of You Just Don’t
Understand the ‘detailed analysis’, the ‘scholarly references’ and the ‘theoretical discus-
sion’ that lay behind the latter book, in fact Gender and Discourse fails to set out any
theoretical position from which discourse, whether ‘natural’ or scripted, can be analysed
in a systematic and coherent way at all. It contains no attempt to explain how discourse is
envisaged as being structured at any level or levels, how certain features of discourse are
identified as communicationally significant, how these can be classified, and how we can
ascertain what their significance in fact is.
Tannen’s methods and her conclusions in Gender and Discourse repeatedly beg these
questions instead of trying to answer them, or even admitting that there are problems.
Yerian takes me to task for my comments on the following example which I will cite
again, at the risk of boring some readers but in the hope of avoiding the risk of annoying
many more who may not have the reference to hand):

A couple had the following conversation:

Wife: John’s having a party. Wanna go?

Husband: Okay

Wife: I’ll call and tell him we’re coming

Based on this conversation only, put a check next to the statement which you think explains what the hus-
band really meant when he answered “OK.”

[l-l] My wife wants to go to this party, since she asked. I’ll go to make her happy.

[I-D] My wife is asking if I want to go to a party. I feel like going, so I’ll say yes.

What is it about the way the wife and the husband spoke that gave you that impression?

What would the wife or husband have had to say differently, in order for you to have checked the other
statement? (Tannen, 1994, p. 185).

Yerian complains that I ignore Tannen’s analysis of the answers given by respondents.
In the first place, that is because what I am objecting to has nothing to do with the
 GENDER, DISCOURSE AND GENDER AND DISCOURSE 355

answers: it has to do with what the respondents were asked. You do not have to be a
Mori poll executive to see that these are loaded questions. Asking about ‘what the hus-
band really meant’ already implies that the husband did not say what he really meant.
Tannen never explains why what a husband ‘really means’ might not sometimes be
expressed just by saying ‘Okay’: that possibility is here arbitrarily ruled out. The
respondents have to look for a ‘real meaning’ lurking behind or beyond what was said.
But they are not even allowed to use their own initiative in the hunt for this ‘real
meaning’. Just two possibilities are presented for consideration. Both show the ques-
tionnaire’s conflation of ‘real meaning’ with intention; for both make an attribution of
motive to the husband. In the first case, it is the apparently altruistic motive of wanting
to make his wife happy. In the second case it is the purely selfish motive of wanting to go
to a party.
Why these motives could not be combined, and why there could not be other motives at
work, we are not told; but the reason for the restriction is fairly evident. Without the
separation of the motives and the removal of all other options the ‘evidence’ might not
prove what the designer of the questionnaire wanted it to prove.
Yerian solemnly points out (apparently with no hint of a wink) that Tannen discov-
ered-surprise! surprise!-that many respondents cited the brevity of the husband’s reply
as being significant. Given the example, and the mandatory search for the husband’s
hypothetical ‘real meaning’, it would have been either obtuse or perverse for respondents
to focus on anything else. Since ‘Okay’ is the only thing the husband says, and the written
form of the questionnaire gives no information about how he said it (which, in any ‘real
life’ situation, might conceivably count for quite a bit), there is precious little else that the
poor respondents could reasonably consider as relevant evidence. And since we are not
told whether he was usually a laconic man, or a husband who always agreed to his wife’s
suggestions, or what kind of day they had had so far, or anything else that might have had
a bearing on his reply, it would be naive not to have just an uneasy feeling that this is
the ‘clue’ that is being thrust conspicuously under the semantic detectives’ noses. Small
wonder that so many of them spotted it!
Tannen proceeds to compare the questionnaire responses from three categories of
respondent, Greeks, Americans and Greek-Americans, and attempts to draw conclusions
from the differences between them. Yerian here claims that Tannen shows that the same
linguistic form, the brief ‘Okay’, ‘may have different ‘meanings’ (lack of enthusiasm, sin-
cerity) in certain contexts for different people’. But as far as I can see Tannen shows
nothing of the kind. In the first place, Tannen is not concerned with ‘different people’ but
with different ethnic groupsyuite another matter. Second, it is Tannen who has cate-
gorized these different ethnic groups and given them their distinctive sociolinguistic labels
(‘Greek’, ‘American’ and ‘Greek American’). Third, it is Tannen (or whoever designed the
questionnaire) who implicitly identifies one linguistic form (‘Okay’) as crucially significant
in the episode and foists just two possible ‘real meanings’ upon it. Fourth, it is the same
agent or agents who are responsible for twisting the respondents’ arms to concoct a
plausible story that would back up their forced choice between the only two ‘real mean-
ings’ on offer.
In short, this is not a ‘research finding’ that has emerged unexpectedly from some more
general survey of discourse (there were only 82 respondents in all) but a test designed to
confirm a prior supposition of the investigator. This supposition, moreover, is clearly
founded on the assumption that different ethnic groups will typically react in different
356 H. DAVIS

ways. It is difficult to make any sense of the research otherwise (whatever the disclaimers
may be) and difficult to see that ethnic stereotyping is not involved.
Tannen goes on to break down responses by sex and detects a significant difference
between the Americans and the other two groups. She says that the percentages of
respondents identifying [I-I] as the ‘real meaning’ were ‘more or less the same for Greek
men and women and for Greek-American men and women’ but the American group
showed ‘quite different percentages’. Now these ‘quite different percentages’ turn out to be
27% and 36%, and the actual number of individuals involved 3 and 5 respectively. It is
hard to imagine that any researcher would attach significance to such figures unless per-
suaded in advance that there was a sex difference to be ‘discovered’. On this Tannen cites
with approval her former teacher Robin Lakoffs suggestion ‘that American women tend
to be more indirect than American men’. Again, it is implausible to claim that there is no
gender stereotyping involved, or that Tannen’s ‘results’ cannot be interpreted as confirm-
ing it.
According to Yerian, ‘proposing an alternative interpretation of negatively perceived
behaviors, as Tannen does, is a possible way to defuse the stereotypes and racism that
may derive in part from differing conversational styles’ (Yerian, 1977, p. 171). I would
find this reassuring if I could see any way in which the kind of research exemplified above
could possibly be construed as questioning race or gender stereotypes. Yerian’s claim
about possible ways of ‘defusing’ stereotypes and racism is not accompanied by any
explanation of how this is supposed to work.
I accept that Tannen is interested in people’s interpretations of what is going on in
discourse, and particularly in conflicting interpretations. But it seems to me that there is a
great difference between her work, which still seeks (forces?) explanations in terms of
ethnic and gender stereotypes, and work which does not. Of the latter, some has
sought to correlate differing interpretations with the extent of the interpreter’s familiarity
with or involvement in the situation. Another approach, which I cited in my review, is that
of McGregor (1983, 1986). McGregor is no less interested than Tannen in participants’
and observers’ interpretations, but he does not try to write linguistic best-sellers for a
popular market. This is in part because he is academically rigorous enough to doubt
whether interpretations can ultimately be accounted for in any systematic way, let alone
by dividing them into ‘typical’ categories based on sex or ethnicity. Similarly, he is scep-
tical about whether listeners actually know which features of an episode led them to
interpret an utterance as they did; and more sceptical still about research techniques which
implicitly identify in advance the relevant communicational messages with those that the
analyst seeks to elicit.
McGregor’s kind of approach, although less headline-grabbing and certainly less
financially rewarding than some, seems to me to hold out a more attractive prospect for
any sociolinguists who are seriously concerned that their work shall not actually reinforce
the popular misconceptions and social ills they are often so keen to deplore.

REFERENCES
Davis, H. (1996) Theorizing women’s and men’s language. Language & Communicarion 16, 71-79.
McGregor, G. (1983) Listeners’ comments on conversation. Language & Communication 3. 271-304.
McGregor, G. (1986) The hearer as ‘listener judge’: an interpretive sociolinguistic approach to utterance inter-
pretation. In Language for Hearers, ed. G. McGregor, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
 GENDER. DISCOURSE AND GENDER AND DISCOURSE 357

Tannen, D. (I 994) Gender and Discourse. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Yerian, K. (1977) From stereotypes of gender difference to stereotypes of theory: a response to Hayley Davis’
review of Deborah Tannen’s Gender and Discourse. Language & Communication 17, 165-176.