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Show You Are What You Speak a By JANET LOWE Copley News Service ;' I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. Not that I want to hurt your feelings, or anything. I don't, but you see, it's something you really ought to know. SPEECH patterns of women have come under the parsing eye of linguists, and we've come out on the wimpy side, somewhat. Their findings find-ings come as a great disappointment disap-pointment for those of us who've spent a lifetime learning to speak softly, tactfully, tact-fully, thoughtfully, persuasively per-suasively in short, to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. We now discover dis-cover the truth. Who really wants to catch flies? In the working world, those using vinegar tactics, the men, have caught the big game-higher salaries, longer vacations, more generous health benefits, promotions all the cushy things that make life easier. MARGARET Gibbs, associate as-sociate professor of administration adminis-tration at California State, San Bernardino, who teaches a videotape course called "Training Women in Administration Ad-ministration by Videotape" is one of the bearers of bad news. What she has discovered dis-covered on the tapes are speech patterns and body language that cost women jobs and promotions. Feminine behavior isn't the same as executive behavior, it seems, and maybe they never meet. "MANY WOMEN tend to wander more in conversation," conversa-tion," says Gibbs. "When they're asked a question, they give a five-minute answer. Men are impatient with us., They are more direct and ex-' pect direct answers." Other experts in speech patterns of women report that females are more hesitant, more apologetic and less willing to assert their own opinion. In 'Conversation power plays, women are likely to lose, which means tht.jn business negotiation, they Tiave to learn to fire larger cannons to win. IN AN-ahatysis a spontaneous spon-taneous conversations bween couples in their .homes, University of California Califor-nia at Santa Barbara sociologists discovei Lnvmy differences in speech patterns of men aild women. Even with people thev diiiu;i Jyiow and with whom yuu would expect greater politeness, some of the same patterns persisted. Interruption Interrup-tion is a common way (or males to take charge of a conversation. ! ThF RFSEARCHERS also found tik en dominated the subjects of conversation, but women did more of the work talk, that of keeping the conversation con-versation going by agreeing or asking questions. Women initiated 62 percent of the topics, but their topics succeeded suc-ceeded only 36 percent of the time. Topics introduced by men su reeded 96 percent of the time. Interesting as this may be, it does not automatically mean that women should become more like men in their conversations. If all of us became equally rude, there would be even less communication com-munication than there is now. Of such tactics wars are made. EVEN IF this sounds like distressing news at first, I did a little study of my own. By watching television programs, listening to radio talk shows, attending panel discussions, committee meet ings and such public discussions discus-sions where women are appearing ap-pearing more and more frequently, I learned that the conversation patterns of women make them look better bet-ter in public. The man may feel like he won if he talked the woman down in public, but in reality, he made a lot of enemies. The negative public image caused by such tactics has not escaped es-caped the searching eye of image-makers, and different speech patterns are emerging. emerg-ing. LISTEN for the clues. Count the conversations or comments com-ments th.it begin, "It's my sense that. ..." or, "We in the widget business feel..." "Our studies show...." The women, traditional softies, sof-ties, are making a difference. |
