Explore the concept of gender and explain the roles of different forms of communication within gender

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Gender Studies, grade: 1,7, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Communication and Culture), language: English, abstract: Lots of researchers define sex as a biological categorization, classifying people as male or female based on their sex organs (Basow 1992, Eckert & Mc-Connell-Ginet 2003) and interpret gender as the social forming of the biological sex. (Eckert & Mc-Connell-Ginet 2003). Butler agrees that gender is the cultural meaning of the sexed body but points out that the sexed body must not match with the biological sex. What this means is that the category 'women' can contain people with a male and a female body, it is the same with the classification 'men'. For Butler, sex or the sexed body is a cultural defined category of gender (Butler 1990). There is lots of research in the field of gender differences in language use. This essay looked at varieties between the genders in verbal and nonverbal communication with the aim to find out which variables characterize the language use of each gender. In the field of talkativeness the researchers got opposite results, therefore nothing can be said about which gender has a larger amount of the conversation. Looking at the other points of comparison between the genders, it could be detected that woman use more affiliative speech which includes the use of different stylistic devices to avoid making a clear statements. Besides, the observation of their visual behaviour showed that women use their view for orientation and as a source for information (e.g. about their communication partner). Furthermore, they use eye contact for getting a feedback about their own behaviour from their communication partner, feeling uncomfortable when they can't see their opposite. In addition women are more involved, use more expressions and feel easily embarrassed. Overall these results indicate unambiguously that women have a submissive communication style. Men on the contrary, use affiliative speech and directives. They have a more passive visual behaviour which is mainly lead by the visual input, the researchers could not observe men looking around for feedback about their behavior. Besides, men are more socially, tireless and relaxed. Looking at this result it could be detected men having a dominate communication style.