THEORY 6: GENDERLECT

The term genderlect suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior ways of speaking” (Griffin, 2000, p.436). This theory is introduced by Deborah Tannen in which she highlighted on different communication styles between genders.

Obviously, men are more influential than women. According to Tannen (1990), men are concerned with status and but women are concerned with connection and intimacy. Men exert greater influence than women and resist women’s influence more than women do because of the greater power that men possesses in group interactions. (Linda L. Carli, 2001) 

According to semiotic and socio-cultural traditions, men’s report talk focuses on status and independence and women’s rapport talk seeks human connection. This is an example of the difference of communication between men and women. 

Based on the one of the scenes from 3 Idiots movie, Piya is a daughter of Professor Virus and she works as a doctor. During her sister’s wedding, her fiancé argued with her just because of she wears an old wrist watch. The reason being is that her fiancé is a very concerned with status. He simply asked Piya to take it off because he thinks that it might damage his image and reputation if people see her wearing “an old piece of junk”.  However, Piya doesn’t see that as a big issue because for her, the old wrist watch has a sentimental value as it is her late mother’s watch. She wears it on her sister’s wedding due to she missed her so much. On the other hand, Rancho is one of his father’s engineering students who came at the wedding and witnessed the scene. Rancho then try to make Piya realized that her fiancé is actually a “price tag”- a person who value materials and seek for high status rather than relationships. Thus, he tries to advice Piya not to marry him because he knows that the reason why her fiancé want to marry her is because she is a doctor and a daughter of a professor. 

Even though Piya feel dishearten with his fiancé action, she is trying to compromise with him because she really concern about their relationship.

To sum up, men seeks for status because high status reflects their achievement and independence. In comparison, several research revealed that women are nicer and warmer than men. (Diekman & Eagly, 2000; Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, this issue). Therefore it has proven that women value connection with people rather than status.

 REFERENCES

Best Demo's by Amir Khan in 3 Idiots Favourited by Abu Shayan.mpg. Retrived from:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYQ0aru_5Pg

Carli, Linda L. (2001) Gender and Social Influence. Journal of social issues Vol. 57, No.4, pp. 725-741

Diekman, A. B., & Eagly, A. H. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic constructs: Women and men of the past, present and future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1171-1188. 

Griffin, E. (2000). A first look at communication theory (4th ed.). United States: The McGraw-Hill companies, Inc.

Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand. NSW: Random House Australia.