Pergamon Language & Communication, Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 71-79, 1996

Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0271-5309/96 $15.00 + 0.00

0271-5309(95)00012-7

T H E O R I Z I N G W O M E N ' S A N D M E N ' S L A N G U A G E

HAYLEY DAVIS

Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 203 pp., 1994.

1. Introduction Deborah Tannen, the author of the best-seller You Just Don't Understand, is now proba- bly one of the most famous linguists. Her popularity derives from the fact that her best- seller (hereafter YJD U) was written not with linguistic experts in mind, but was aimed at lay members of the public. Her thesis was, and is, not that there are linguistic differences between men and women which are attributable to their different personal characteristics (e.g. men dominate, are forceful and therefore use 'powerful' assertive language) but rather that the differences between the sexes should be likened to the differences between speakers of the 'same' language who come from different ethnic groups. Looked at in this way, such cross-cultural differences give rise to 'stylistic' differences offering a certain degree of reassurance - - it's not men who are to blame, it's their linguistic style. In addi- tion, YJDU is full of anecdotal 'evidence' which encourages responses such as 'That 's just like my Jim, Dave . . .', responses which make readers feel they are not alone in their experiences. Men don ' t really mean to be aggressive or inattentive. It's just their differences in 'communicative style'.

Believing that you ' re not interested in men, 'you don' t care about me as much as I care about you' , or 'you want to take away my freedom' feels awful. Believing that 'you have a different way of showing you ' re listening' 'or showing you care' allows for no-fault negotiation: You can ask for or make adjust- ments without casting or taking blame (Tannen, 1990, p. 298).

The study of gender and language is thus at present both an issue appealing to the gen- eral public and professional linguists alike.

The approach which Tannen adopts throughout her writings is that of 'interactional sociolinguistics' as formulated by Gumperz (1982a, b) which seeks to integrate the study of situated talk with attention to social, cultural and interactional contexts.

The analyst 's task is to make an in depth study of selected instances of verbal interaction, observe whether or not actors unders tand each other, elicit participants ' interpretations o f what goes on, and then (a) deduce the social assumptions that speakers must have made in order to act as they do, and (b) determine empirically how linguistic signs communicate in the interpretation process (Gumperz, 1982a, pp. 35-36).

Since this statement seems quite ambitious, the questions which will be addressed below are (i) whether this programme is feasible and (ii) whether Tannen actually suc- ceeds in carrying it out. In addition, Tannen also seems to be taking the concepts 'under- standing' and ' interpretation' for granted)

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Dr H. G. Davis, Department of English, Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London, SEI4 6NW, U.K.

71

72 HAYLEY DAVIS

Any book with the title Gender and Discourse offers hope for a person looking for a challenging range of topics. For one, the concepts 'gender' and 'discourse' are by no means unambiguous and uncontroversial. Chambers, for example, points out that the conflation between sex and gender has 'disguised significant correlations of linguistic variation with gender on the one hand and with sex on the other' (Chambers, 1995, p. 104). The difference is, as Cameron notes, that

gender difference - - which goes far beyond, and is not reducible to, the biological differentiation of humans by sex is constructed rather than natural and indeed that the content of the difference is vari- able across cultures and social groups, and over time (Cameron, 1992a, p. 214).

Therefore, as she writes 'Gender should never be used as a bottom line explanation because it is a social construction needing explanation itself (Cameron, 1992b, p. 61). Tannen, in fact, refuses to address the origins of gender differences (p. 12). Although she regards socialization, in particular, the 'role of childhood peer groups as the source of gendered patterns in ways of speaking' (p. 13), it is hard to see how she can hope to really 'under- stand' gender differences without even considering their origins.

Even though the opening sentences pay lip-service to the controversial nature of 'research on gender' ( 'Entering the arena of research on gender is like stepping into a maelstrom', p. 3), the following ones immediately deflate any expectations that we may have of her treatment of it:

What it means to be female or male, what it's like to talk to someone of the other (or the same) gender, are questions whose answers touch people where they live, and when a nerve is touched people h o w l . . .

Nowhere is there any 'real' discussion of the construction of gender identity, nor of the relationship between gender and sex. 'Discourse', too, is equally ambiguous. For exam- ple, Chris Baldick, in his Concise Oxford Dictionary o f Literary Terms defines it thus

any extended use o f speech or w r i t i n g . . , the name given to units o f language longer than a single sen- t e n c e . . , any coherent body of statements that produces a self-confirming reality by defining an object of attention and generating concepts with which to analyse i t . . . The specific discourse in which a state- ment is made will govern the kinds of connections that can be made between ideas, and will involve cer- tain assumptions about the kind of person(s) addressed. By extension . . . language in actual use within its social and ideological context and in institutionalized representations o f the world called discursive practices. In general, the increased use of this term in modern cultural theory arises from dissatisfaction with the rather fixed and abstract term ' l a n g u a g e ' . . . by contrast, 'discourse' better indicates the specific contexts and relationships involved in historically produced uses of language' (Baldick, 1990, p. 59).

By contrast, Tannen's book pursues none of the above challenges and in fact shows little awareness of the existence of any such controversies. Her treatment of 'discourse' is narrowly constrained, discussed as 'communicative style' (p. 5).

Such lacunae are permissible and acceptable, perhaps not even to be treated as omis- sions per se, if the thesis can be shown to shed some light on, or raise some interesting issues about, the nature of male/female interaction.

The purpose of editing this collection of five of her essays was, so the dust jacket states, to 'elaborate the theoretical and empirical framework that underlies her best- selling book' (YJDU) or, as Tannen herself states, to show 'the detailed analysis and scholarly references that led to the writing of that book, as well as the theoretical discus- sion that was beyond its scope' (p. 4). Since Y J D U is a book for a popular readership, with no discussion of the research or theoretical position underlying it, it seems reason- able to produce another book, addressed to a more specialized audience, which explains the underpinnings. But actually Gender and Discourse does not fulfil this aim. For a large part, Gender and Discourse is padded out with anecdotes but provides very little justifica- tion for accepting such 'evidence'.

THEORIZING WOMEN'S AND MEN'S LANGUAGE 73

In the introduction, Tannen explains the purpose of her research which is avowedly not prescriptive. Instead of prescribing how men and women should speak, she claims to be describing the patterns she, and other colleagues, observe; rather like 'anthropologists who approach a distant culture to understand it' than like 'missionaries who seek to change it' (Tannen, p. 12).

What is required to effect change, she writes, 'is an understanding of the patterns of human behaviour as they exist today, an appreciation of the complexity of these pat- terns, and a humane respect for other human beings' (p. 13). It is hardly surprising that Tannen's eleventh book has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for nearly 4 years when she appears to be promising, 'Read my book and we will all love each other': that is, if you are either a male or female in a heterosexual relationship.

Although it is not necessarily a problem to acknowledge that language variation may involve social differences, generalizing about language use on the basis of socio-cultural constructs, whether gendered or ethnic, is a problem. For example, in the following quo- tation the relationship between the anti-Semitism and the stereotype is unclear and in need of further discussion:

when I show (Tannen 1981) that the stereotype of Jews as aggressive and pushy results in part from differences in conversational style, I am not denying that anti-Semitism exists in American society, but attempting to combat it (p. 9).

Moreover, it is unclear how, by 'understanding' linguistic/communicative differences, anyone can combat racism or sexism. We want to know how Tannen can eradicate anti- Semitism in American, or any other, society. Do all anti-Semites or Jews share the same values, linguistic strategies and outlook? or just some of them? One is here reminded of James Murray's task when asked to compile the first volume of the Oxford English Dic- tionary which would contain all the words in the language of 'Englishmen':

Of Some Englishmen? or of all Englishmen? Is it al l that al l Englishmen speak, or s o m e of what s o m e Englishmen speak? Does it include the English of Scotland, and of Ireland, the speech of British Englishmen and American Eng l i shmen? . . . (Murray, 1978, p. 189).

Attempting to show some of the ways in which stereotypes are maintained is not the same as 'combating' ethnic discrimination. As long as 'differences' are visible and notice- able, there will always be grounds for discrimination for some. Despite statements to the contrary ('no group is homogeneous; any attempt to characterize all members of a group breaks down on closer inspection', p. 79, fn 11), it is difficult to see what Tannen is attempting to do in her analysis other than perpetuate a stereotype that is based on the assumption that there exists a homogeneous group of speakers.

2. Theory Tannen derives her theoretical approach of explaining the misunderstandings between

men and women from the work of Robin Lakoff and Gumperz, her former teachers at the University of California. Tannen wishes to see the linguistic 'differences' between the sexes in the same way as one would see the differences between speakers from two differ- ent ethnic backgrounds. This approach sees cross-cultural and cross-gender misunder- standings as arising from 'systematic differences in communicative style' (p. 5). And here Tannen feels obliged to both answer and pre-empt some objections that this approach of seeing gender differences as cultural differences is denying the existence of sexism, racism and discrimination (p. 8).

74 HAYLEY DAVIS

When Gumperz claims that job interviews between speakers of British English and speakers of Indian English end badly for the Pakistanis and Indians because of differences in discourse strategies, he is not denying that there are numerous and pervasive forms of discrimination against Asians in British society. When. . . (p. 8.)

However , this a rgument begs more questions than it answers in that, being similar to the arguments waged by the political correctness lobby, it appears to be laying the blame on the language. When one speaker is insulted by another speaker using the terms yid, nig- ger or whore, it may be hard to forgive such a speaker on the grounds that they just did no t unders tand each other ' s ' communica t ive style'. Similarly, the same worries could be voiced abou t excusing male colleagues' m o n o p o l y o f the discussions at depar tment meet- ings or their insistence on their assignment o f grades in cases o f dispute during examina- tions. In such cases, it seems rather patronizing to say that here we merely have a case o f misunders tanding the communica t ive style o f another.

An even stronger objection to Tannen ' s research is in her insistence on viewing gender differences and racial or ethnic ones in the same light. There are s trong historical reasons for the inequality that has existed between men and women, reasons which need to be addressed and which are not necessarily applicable to the differences existing between different racial or ethnic groups.

Tannen claims that close at tent ion to specific linguistic strategies, such as interrup- tions and indirectness, can show how 'dominance and powerlessness are expressed and created in interact ion ' (p. 32). Since, as she rightly states, there is no one- to-one mapping between linguistic features and interactional meanings (p. 10), since all linguistic strate- gies are potential ly ambiguous (p. 23), then 'specific linguistic strategies have widely divergent potential meanings ' (p. 20).

This ambiguity, writes Tannen in one o f her m a n y anecdotal pieces o f 'evidence' , can be seen in the following quota t ion:

Two women were walking together from one building to another in order to attend a meeting. They were joined by a man they both knew who had just exited a third building on his way to the same meet- ing. One of the women greeted the man and remarked, 'Where's your coat?' The man responded, 'Thanks, Mom'. His response framed the woman's remark as a gambit in a power exchange: a mother tells a child to put on his coat. Yet the woman might have intended the remark as showing friendly con- cern rather than parental caretaking. Was it power (condescending, on the model of parent to child) or solidarity (friendly, on the model of intimate peers)? Though the man's uptake is clear, the woman's intention in making the remark is not (p. 24).

It is puzzling how Tannen can say that the man ' s uptake is clear but not the w o m a n ' s intention. It could be that the man was using his response as a flirtatious remark, to con- tinue the verbal exchange. Alternatively, it could have been a sign o f irritation. Perhaps he was too polite to say 'piss off'. In the same way, the w o m a n ' s remark could have been made because she, for the life o f her, couldn ' t think o f anything else to say but was just t rying to strike up a conversat ion.

In another chapter, ' In terpret ing In ter rupt ion in Conversa t ion ' , Tannen demonstra tes how, no t being attentive to, or aware of, ' relativity' and ' ambigui ty ' o f linguistic strate- gies, can lead to negative stereotyping o f certain groups. This is a valid point. I f one is not familiar with the norms of certain ethnic groups, that, for example, what is a sign o f interrupt ion and rudeness to one speaker, is a sign o f enthusiastic par taking in the con- versation to another , then misinterpretat ion may occur. But this is something we are all familiar with in encounters with people f rom other cultures. I f Tannen is trying to show how stereotypes are mainta ined in conversat ional styles, often to the detr iment o f women, that would be a wor thy endeavour . But Tannen appears to have higher aims in

THEORIZING WOMEN'S AND MEN'S LANGUAGE 75

mind: generalizing from a number of specific examples of interactions to reach conclu- sions about the nature of male/female conversations in general.

Finally, in her theoretical discussions, Tannen tends to regard socialization (cultural experience such as childhood peer-grouping) as the main influence shaping identified pat- terns of adult linguistic behaviour (p. 13). But what needs to be addressed here is both what the triggers for such behaviour patterns in the first place are and what ensures a continuation of such patterns of behaviour from child to adulthood. The fact that the sexes are often segregated from a very early school age is not an explanation for such gender distinctions 'but only a part of the system, its maintenance equipment' (Cameron, 1995, p. 198).

3. Methodology It is with her discussion of methodology that Tannen departs more from mainstream

sociolinguistics. In Gender and Discourse she uses a wide variety of methods to get her data, ranging from eliciting lay responses, to analysing videotapes of informants in con- versation. In addition, Tannen also employs, as illustrations, dialogues in literary texts.

In the introduction, Tannen, following Gumperz (1982a), also talks of the method- ological approach of playing back recordings of naturally occurring conversations to 'participants in order to elicit their spontaneous interpretations and reactions' (p. 6). This provides, claims Tannen 'critical checks on interpretations, given the hermeneutic (that is, interpretive) methodological framework' (p. 6). A problem here is that this involves, for Gumperz and Tannen, identifying 'segments' in conversations 'in which trouble is evident' as well as 'looking for culturally patterned differences in signalling meaning that could account for the trouble' (p. 6). In her chapter 'Interpreting Interrup- tion in Conversation', Tannen sets out to question, on methodological, sociolinguistic and ethical grounds 2, the assumption 'that overlap is always interruption and that inter- ruption perpetuates dominance' (p. 54). For Tannen, an interruption is not an absolute category; rather it is highly variable dependent upon the participants in the conversa- tional exchange (p. 59). Interruption, or 'overlap' can, according to Tannen, be 'support- ive' displaying not dominance or power, but rather solidarity and participation. Tannen thus concludes that 'apparent interruption' is the effect of 'style differences in interaction' (p. 62).

As an example, Tannen cites a segment of conversation between herself and her two friends, Peter and David. David, an American Sign Language interpreter, is talking about sign language and is apparently 'interrupted' or 'overlapped' by the other two speakers most of the time.

In contrast, only two of David 's seven turns overlap a prior turn; furthermore, these two u t t e r a n c e s . . . are probably both at tempts to answer the first parts o f my double-barrelled preceding t u r n s . . . David shows evidence o f discomfort in his pauses, hesitations, repetitions, and circumlocutions.

Dur ing playback, David averred that the first pace o f the questions, here and elsewhere, caught him off guard and made him feel borne in upon.

• . . The comparat ive evidence of the other example . . . makes it clear that the fast-paced, latching, and overlapping q u e s t i o n s . . , have exactly the effect I intended when used with co-stylists: they are taken as a show of interest and rapport; they encourage and reinforce the speaker. It is only in interaction with those who do not share a high involvement style that such questions and other instances o f overlapping speech create disruptions and interruptions (p. 67).

However, the major problem with this methodological focus, given the rapidity of any conversation exchange, is the assumption that the participants here 'knew' what

76 HAYLEY DAVIS

segments led them to the interpretation of the conversational exchange. At the time, David may not have felt he was being ' interrupted' as such, rather he may have felt that Deborah and Peter were 'testing' his knowledge of his profession.

Another methodological objection to this research is that by starting out looking for 'interruptions' and 'overlaps' in conversation, in effect determines the end results. Tan- nen is only 'finding' those segments that SHE is seeking to elicit. There is no guarantee that the 'messages' communicated to Tannen were the same as those communicated to the other participants in the conversation.

In the chapter 'Ethnic Style in Male-Female Conversation', Tannen claims to be using a 'radically different methodological approach' to the other chapters (p. 175). She dis- tributed a questionnaire to three groups of speakers: Greeks, Americans and Greek- Americans to examine 'patterns of interpretation of a sample conversation' (p. 175). The hypothesis Tannen was investigating was the different expectations of indirectness by these groups 'tracing the process of adaptation of this conversational strategy as an ele- ment of ethnicity' (p. 179).

The informants were given a transcript of a conversation, some paraphrase choices, and were then asked for explanations of their choices. This supposedly was to identify the features that led them to arrive at such interpretations (see below).

Wife: John 's having a party. W a n n a go

Husband: O K

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

Based on this conversation only, put a check next to the s tatement which you think explains what the husband 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 this party. I feel like going, so I'll say yes.

Wha t is it about the way the wife and the husband spoke, that gave you that impression? (ibid., p. 185).

It is the last question here that is somewhat problematic. If, as Tannen appears to con- cede, communication is a matter of constant negotiation, based on incessant guesswork about the other's intentions, then it is unclear how individuals can ever be aware of what particular linguistic feature in discourse led to the interpretation of a communicational exchange. Guesswork and interruption do not have to include any linguistic features at all. After all, silence can be an extremely powerful way of 'getting a message across'. The husband's okay above could equally well have been an 'unthinking' utterance: perhaps he didn't really care, one way or another, about going to a party; perhaps he didn't even 'hear' his wife's question.

Asking for lay speakers' judgements about conversations is not asking for an identifi- cation of a particular word, clause, or sentence (which, in itself, already presumes a prior act of interpretation), but rather allows for the foregrounding of the bases on which the informants have made their judgements. And the expectations and past experiences of the participants involved play just as large a role in the interpretation of a conversation as the actual words used. Tannen, however, appears to be overly concentrating on the spoken words. People who are participants in a conversation are likely to reach a differ- ent 'understanding' of what is going on than those who are non-participants.

In other cases during her discussions of methodology, Tannen attempts to counter any objections to her slightly unorthodox methods of using lay judgements.

Tannen examined some videotaped data 3 involving students of school and university age in conversation with their same-sex best friends for 20 minutes. The only instructions given

THEORIZING WOMEN'S AND MEN'S LANGUAGE 77

were to 'find "something serious and/or intimate" to talk about, and he [Dorval] informed them that he would be returning in 5 minutes to remind them of these instructions' (p. 87). Although Tannen rightly points out in a footnote, in an attempt to counter a possible objection that the speech elicited would be forced and unnatural, that 'all "natural" speech is simply speech natural to the situation in which it is produced' (ibid., p. 130 fn 2), her con- clusion from the analysis of these data is rather suspect. She attempts to show that, although the boys in the study tended to 'physically align themselves' away from each other, compared with the girls and women 'who focused more tightly and directly on each other', (p. 127) the boys and men were clearly 'orienting to each other and conversationally involved' (p. 128). So far so good. But the conclusion she attempts to draw is that, when women complain that their male partners are inattentive and maintain little eye contact etc., this does not indicate 'lack of listenership', rather they just don' t understand their 'different norms for establishing and displaying conversational involvement' (p. 128). But people are able to tell when someone is being inattentive and not maintaining eye con- tact, and when someone is being extremely attentive but, for reasons of embarrassment, or the wallpaper patterns in the r o o m . . , they are not maintaining eye contact.

Insisting that linguistic features can never be aligned on a one-to-one bases with interac- tional intentions or meanings, Tannen prefers to analyse the construction of roles in inter- action. Even context, she claims, is not given, but rather constituted by talk and ac t ion)

But if she had followed this methodological approach to its logical conclusion, then she would have seen that the linguistic forms and identities which she identifies (interrup- tions, Greeks, questions and differences) are and must be subject to the same vagaries as their 'meanings' or 'intentions'. For, if there is no determinacy of 'semantic' content, there can be no linguistic ' form' to which it is attached. Such categories and identities as interruptions, Greeks, and questions are in need of just the same treatment as the words she is citing as evidence.

Adopting a 'difference' approach, comparing the different 'communicative styles' of published linguists, one could, as I did, give passages from Tannen's book (see below) to a number (four) of academic colleagues. The responses elicited were both systematic and revealing. Both women picked up on the smugness with which she wrote (to cite just a few of the numerous examples):

The chapters gathered here constitute the totality of my academic writings on gender and language prior to and since the publication of You Just Don't Understand, my eleventh book. My previous books and articles were on other topics (p. 6).

'The roots of my approach can clearly be seen in my b o o k . . , and dozens of articles I have published in scholarly journals and b o o k s . . . (p. 7).

My years of painstaking re sea rch . . . (p. 54)

whereas the two male colleagues did not find much odd about this 'discourse': 'just nor- mal academic boasting', 'I would guess that this is an American, and it's typical of pow- erful academic language'.

The interpretations given by the informants, and which I could draw theoretical con- clusions about, were that Tannen is boasting about her achievements, she is insecure and needs constant flattery, she is giving some authority to her findings, she's an academic New York J e w . . . ) . But what is the point? I could do this, but to what end? And this is the feeling I have about Tannen's book.

The main difficulty in writing a thesis is not the question of knowing what to say, but rather knowing when to stop. Tannen would have done better if she had followed the

78 HAYLEY DAVIS

work of McGregor (1986a) and McGregor and White (1990), one who, like Tannen, learnt from Gumperz. McGregor, for example, is interested also in what individuals have to say about 'what is going on' in their own and other people's verbal exchanges (McGre- gor, 1986a, p. 159), but strongly rejects any attempt to describe an account for such responses in any systematic way (McGregor, 1990, p. 101). There are, as he writes, 'an extraordinarily large set of possible linguistic and extralinguistic permutations' in conver- sational exchanges (McGregor, 1986b, p. 155). One of the 'main themes' of YJDU 'that the systematic differences in women's and men's characteristic styles often put women in a subordinate position in interactions with men' [emphasis mine] (p. 11) goes too far. It is not a problem for a speaker to talk about other speakers from different cultures (Aus- tralian, American) and the words they use (g'day, cookie), but it is a problem to theorize from something which started off as, and remains, an individual act of interpretation.

What is needed in a discussion of gender and discourse is a methodology in which lin- guistic features are empirically determined, and not presupposed by the theory. By going too far, looking for some sort of determinacy to attach generalizations to, Tannen, instead of 'repairing' communicational breakdowns, is merely giving foundations for lin- guistic stereotypes which necessarily have ramifications for our social lives.

NOTES

IFor example, much debate has been centred around the notion of understanding (see Taylor, 1986, 1992). 'Indeed, it might be argued that how theorists conceptualize what it is for a hearer to understand an utterance constitutes one of the fundamental pillars supporting the edifice of modern linguistic thought' (Taylor, 1986, p. 91). 2The methodological objections are that of, for example, using mechanical definitions to identify interruptions which require 'operational' definitions. The sociolinguistic objections, would, for example, be based on the assumption that interruption is evidence of power whereas the ethical objection is that 'it supports the stereo- typing of a group of people on the basis of their conversational style' (p. 55). 3The videotapes were made by Bruce Dorval. In 1986 Dorval organized a study group, with support from the Society for Research in Child Development 'to which he invited scholars in a range of disciplines to examine the videotapes' (Tannen, p. 87). Tannen was one of those scholars. 4And, as McGregor writes, 'it is impossible to determine exactly what it is a listener understands in the moment-by-moment sequencing of taking turns at t a l k . . . ' .

Given that the interpretative strategies are context-specific, the analyst cannot know for certain which utter- ance or utterances may have been of particular salience in leading to the communicative sequence created by the participants (McGregor, 1986b, p. 154).

REFERENCES

BALDICK, C. 1990 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

CAMERON, D. 1992a New arrivals, the feminist challenge in language study. In Wolf, G. (Ed.), New Depar- tures in Linguistics, pp. 213-235. Garland, New York.

CAMERON, D. 1992b Feminism and Linguistic Theory. Macmillan, Basingstoke.

CAMERON, D. 1995 Verbal Hygiene. Routledge, London.

CHAMBERS, J. K. 1995 Sociolinguistic Theory. Blackwell, Oxford.

GUMPERZ, J. 1982a Discourse Strategies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

GUMPERZ, J. 1982b (Ed.) Language and Social Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

McGREGOR, G. 1986a Language For Hearers. Pergamon Press, Oxford.

McGREGOR, G. 1986b The hearer as 'listener judge': an interpretive sociolinguistic approach to utterance interpretation. In McGregor G. (Ed.), Language for Hearers, pp. 153-186. Pergamon Press, Oxford.

McGREGOR, G. and WHITE, R. (Eds) 1990 Reception and Response: Hearer Creativity and the Analysis of Spoken and Written Texts. Routledge, London.

MURRAY, K. M. E. 1978 Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictio- nary. Yale University Press, New Haven.

THEORIZING WOMEN'S AND MEN'S LANGUAGE 79

TANNEN, D. 1990 You Just Don't Understand." Women and Men in Conversation. William Morrow, New York.

TAYLOR, T. 1986 Do you understand? Criteria of understanding in verbal interaction. In MacGregor, G. (Ed.), Language for Hearers, pp. 91-105, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

TAYLOR, T. 1992 Mutual Misunderstanding: Scepticism and the Theorizing o f Language and Interpretation. Duke University Press, Durham.