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''You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation'' is a 1990 non-fiction book on language and gender by Deborah Tannen, a professor of sociolinguistics at Georgetown University. It draws partly on academic research by Tannen and others, but is written for a popular audience, and thus uses anecdotes from literature and the lives of Tannen and her family, students and friends. Tannen writes that, from childhood, boys and girls learn different approaches to language and communication—Tannen calls these different approaches "genderlects." Females engage in "rapport-talk" — a communication style meant to promote social affiliation and emotional connection, while men engage in "report-talk" — a style focused on exchanging information with little emotional import. The differences in metamessages, Tannen shows, result in misunderstandings between men and women. The book remained on the ''New York Times'' best seller list for nearly four years (8 months at No.1) and was subsequently translated into 30 other languages. It received generally positive reviews, and some readers have even credited it with helping save their relationships. Some other linguists, however, have criticized Tannen's representation of the research she cites and faulted her for ascribing the effects of inequities in social power to mere differences in language. ==Summary== Tannen's chapters, broken up into short titled sections of two or three pages, start by distinguishing what men and women seek from conversations: independence and intimacy respectively. This leads to conversations at cross-purposes, since both parties may miss the other's metamessages, with attendant misunderstandings—for example, a woman complaining about the lingering effects of a medical procedure, who may merely be seeking empathy from female friends by doing so, becomes angry at her husband when he suggests a solution involving further surgery. Men and women both perceive the other gender as the more talkative, and they are both accurate, since studies show men speak more in public settings about public topics while women dominate private conversation within and about relationships. The latter is frequently derided as gossip by both genders, and Tannen devotes an entire chapter to exploring its social functions as a way of connecting speaker and listener to a larger group. Men often dominate conversations in public, even where they know less about a subject than a female interlocutor, because they use conversation to establish status. Women, on the other hand, often listen more because they have been socialized to be accommodating. These patterns, which begin in childhood, mean, for instance, that men are far more likely to interrupt another speaker, and not to take it personally when they are themselves interrupted, while women are more likely to finish each other's sentences. These patterns have paradoxical effects. Men use the language of conflict to create connections, and conversely women can use the language of connection to create conflict. "Women and men are inclined to understand each other in terms of their own styles because we assume we all live in the same world."〔Tannen, 179.〕 If the genders would keep this in mind and adjust accordingly, Tannen believes, much discord between them could be averted. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「You Just Don't Understand」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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