I think at the very least, it calls out the constructed nature of whatever gaps appear. It's entirely possible that the gap reverses for older men, but that's not a very good argument for Biological Differences Between Men and Women. Which is what the word gap is thrown around a lot for.
now i wonder if we will ever see studies of say .... how many words tall people v shorter people blonde v brunette blue eyed v green eyed v hazel eyed etc...
i hear people with more ear wax use hundreds more words per day than people with no ear wax. ; )
I suspect that what our culture tells us about gender and loquacity leaves out at least one important factor: the unconscious filtering effect that gender role probably exerts on what (and how much) we *hear* another person saying.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some tacit value judgments lurking in the societal stereotypes (for example, does each gender see the other as jabbering on about unimportant things and/or clamming up on the stuff that's really important -- and that mainly when there's cross-gender contact?). The net effect would be to help maintain a certain sexual segregation, increase sexual tension (which results in states of mind that are much easier to manipulate and distract), and perhaps get in the way of the genders talking more or less intelligently to each other, which leads to inconvenient things like cultural change. Call it a hunch.
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Language Log talks about this a lot.
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myth busting is a good thing...
now i wonder if we will ever see studies of say ....
how many words
tall people v shorter people
blonde v brunette
blue eyed v green eyed v hazel eyed
etc...
i hear people with more ear wax use hundreds more words per day than people with no ear wax.
; )
Reply
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I wouldn't be surprised if there were some tacit value judgments lurking in the societal stereotypes (for example, does each gender see the other as jabbering on about unimportant things and/or clamming up on the stuff that's really important -- and that mainly when there's cross-gender contact?). The net effect would be to help maintain a certain sexual segregation, increase sexual tension (which results in states of mind that are much easier to manipulate and distract), and perhaps get in the way of the genders talking more or less intelligently to each other, which leads to inconvenient things like cultural change. Call it a hunch.
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