Communication is the opening chapter in ‘ Himglish & Femalese ’ by Jean Hannah Edelstein ( >www.landmarkonthenet.com ). Men and women who are supposedly speaking the same language can express the same thoughts in completely different ways, she finds. Which explains the title of the book, as the two distinct dialects of men and women.
For instance, the author notes that women are famous for their habit of being false about their true feelings in conversation, in contrast to men, who are better known for their tendency to either tell bold-faced lies or be painfully honest. “Thanks to our facility for using language in a vague, extensive way, coupled with the social pressure many of us feel to be nice at all costs and avoid conflict, women often find that being at least a little bit fake often feels much easier than truth-telling…”
Spasms of confusion
Two sections in the chapter should interest techies: text messaging and email. While calling for communication between the sexes all of the time, using the ever-expanding number of modes of communication technology at our disposal, Jean feels that with the advent of text messaging in the late nineties, men and women gained a particularly exciting new way to communicate with each other – or rather, to mis-communicate with each other.
To men, the general social acceptance of text messaging came like ‘a big sparkly gift from a magical deity,’ because they could say as little as possible in this mode of communication. Contrast this with the tyranny they endured for decades, in the form of ‘the terrible pressure to take the initiative to actually make telephone calls to women in which they were expected to articulate whole sentences.’
At the receiving end, however, there were ‘spasms of confusion’ – such as ‘over what the meaning of oh-K actually is.’ Sample these spasms: “Does it mean ‘OK’? Is it a bit sarcastic? Is it meant to be funny? Breathy? Why is there no punctuation?
Limitations of SMS
Character limits imposed by the text messaging platform can pose a tough challenge to women, empathises Jean. How to reconcile our innate desire to communicate through the use of obtuse metaphors and delicate shades of meaning within the limitations of the short form of the SMS, she asks.
“For many women, writing text messages to men is a consummately difficult challenge. You might as well ask us to compose sonnets or Ph.D. dissertations. That’s why we often take the team approach, wherein any one text message should properly be credited to as many authors as the average paper in a major science journal.”
Teamwork process
At that, most men should be gasping for breath, in sheer disbelief, but Jean confesses to having routinely sat around with a group of girls where one attempts to tap out a message to a new romantic interest with the collective input of a support team of three or four people. Entire evenings have been used up with this as the central form of entertainment, she adds.
“Many men would not believe that actual hours can elapse during the process of: (a) deciding how long we should wait until a text message is sent in response to a two- or three-line remark from a man; (b) drafting the text message; (c) gaining approval for each draft from our carefully selected panel of text message editors, with redrafting and editing conducted as need; and (d) actually sending the text message.”
‘See you next Tuesday’
An amusing snatch is about how a simple message such as ‘See you next Tuesday x’ can be interpreted by the man receiving it as ‘Ah, I will see her next Tuesday,’ instead of what the sender dearly wants him to think, which is: ‘Well, she must be very busy and important if she can’t see me until next Tuesday, no doubt because of the distractions provided by her multitudes of other suitors with whom I am in competition, and I am pleased to note that she has signed with a kiss, indicating affection, but only one kiss, indicating that while she is keen on our relationship, she is not in fact so keen that she is willing to make a fool of herself through sending me a profligate number of text smooches. I probably should buy her flowers…’
He-mail and she-mail
Gender differences come into play when emailing, too. While men may use email as a vehicle to convey functional messages with actual information in them, women tend to infuse the electronic epistles with heavy amounts of meaning inserted between the lines, distinguishes Jean. Since ‘women assume that emails from men are full of hidden meaning’ and ‘men think that emails from women should be taken at face value,’ what ensue are taxing mental exercises.
Since anguish caused by waiting for response can be excruciating, she advises men how they can interpret non-receipt of a swift reply to their electronic correspondence. It is not because the lady has not read said correspondence but because she feels (or, perhaps her crack team of editorial consultants feels) that it is essential that she not be too hasty in her response, counsels Jean.
“It’s not that she’s being rude, exactly, she’s just trying to not seem needy, and as a result she is patiently counting down the minutes (or hours, or days) before she feels that her reply, composed almost immediately upon receipt of a missive, will be non-committal and utterly dignified.”
Entertaining and educative, if you can steer clear of the trap of stereotyping the genders.
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