Deborah Tannen is convinced that men and women have miscommunication all the time. The reason for this could be the idea of Genderlect, which is “A term suggesting that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct dialects”, which is like a clash of two whole different worlds. Tannen breaks the two into five different parts. One is Private Speaking vs. Public Speaking which is saying that women usually talk more in private than men, also men talk as a weapon to obtain a one up position. Part two is Telling a Story which is saying that men often tell more stories than women, especially jokes. Three is Listening, which says women listening to a story tend to make eye contact and offer other little things that lets the speaker know they are listening, men are more concerned with status so he avoids putting himself out there and just agrees which makes women think they are not listening. Four is asking questions that says women ask questions to establish a connection with others. The fifth is conflict which states that many men are more comfortable with conflict and less likely to hold themselves in check, to women conflict is a threat to connection that they want to avoid at all costs.

In the political cartoon below the man tries to figure out everything by himself because he didn’t want to ask questions and the woman says all he needed to do was ask and she would have figured it out from him. This would fall into category four because men don’t often ask questions.