Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand, researched the differences between the way men and women communicate with each other. According to Tannen, when adult men and women are communicating with each other they are “tuned to different frequencies” and are speaking “different words from different worlds.” As Tannen studied men and women in conversation, she discovered that men are focused on being superior to everyone else while women are more focused on creating relationships and connections. There are five different topics that Tannen talks about which show the differences between men and women. The first one is private vs public speaking. She states that women usually have a rapport style of talking which is based on making a connection with the other person. Men usually have a report style which is used to command the attention of everyone in the room. The second topic is story telling. Tannen talks about how men tell more stories than women do, and when their stories aren’t jokes they (the men) are usually the heroes in the stories they are telling. Topic number three is all about listening and how it always seems that women pay more attention to what people are saying. This is because of the short phrases women interject into a conversation while the other person is talking, for example, “yeah” or “uh-huh.” The fourth topic has to do with asking questions. Men never ask for help, especially for directions, because it “whittles away at the image of self-sufficiency that is so important to a man.” The final topic is about conflict and how men don’t mind conflict since they see life as a contest.

This cartoon shows a little boy asking his grandma why moses wandered in the desert for forty years, to which she responds, “Because even back then men wouldn’t ask for directions.” This goes under Tannen’s fourth point about asking questions. Men think that asking for help will make them seem less superior to everyone else, so they never ask for help.