BellaOnline Forums Education Biology Do Men Talk More Quickly than Women?

Here's another brain tease! Who talks more quickly? Is it men? Women? About even?

Talking Quickly single choice
	Women
	Even
	Men
	I know the answer already
Votes accepted starting: 05/22/08 01:53 AM
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I would have said it was even. My boyfriend would have said women talk slightly more quickly. But actually, research shows that men tend to talk more quickly!

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7emyl/languagelog/archives/003423.html

"After spending a couple of hours trying to track down a plausible source for Louann Brizendine's characterization of male and female speaking rates, I've come up empty. Worse than empty: the paper that she cites as the source for the claim contains no relevant information at all, and the rest of the literature on speaking rate not only fails to support her assertion, but also includes results that contradict it."

Oh look, this is fascinating!! In that article, they talk about research. Humans tend to PERCEIVE women as talking more if they are talking with a male - even if they talk exactly the same amount. Apparently they "want" women to talk "less" than the man.

"Apparently, they took various dialogs and, for each dialog, recorded it being read by two women, by two men, by a man and a woman, or by a woman and a man. When a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, are reading the dialog, listeners judged each of them to be taking about equal time; when a man and a woman are reading the same dialog, listeners (male or female) consistently judged the woman to be talking more."

Shoot - I've been beaten out on this research too. Apparently Brizendine has already admitted this was false too.

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I still think we women talk more quickly.

OK Jill - here's a question for you. Is it that:

* Women use more words per minute with the same pauses (i.e. speak more rapidly)
* Women use shorter words while men use longer words (i.e. squish in more words)
* Women take fewer pauses so they can string more words together in a minute
* Women take shorter pauses so they can string more words together in a minute

I'm watching House right now. House and Cameron (male and female) are talking at the same speed with the same relative speech pattern. But would we "feel" they were speaking the same speed? House is speaking deeply and authoritatively. Cameron is speaking in a higher voice and contradicting him. I bet people would "feel" she is speaking more quickly.

We can always watch a pair of characters and count!

Well this is from my experience. I come from a family where the women wear the pants. We are more authoritative. My own DH is from the south and talks so slow that it's irritating. I am always like, "please get to it..."

It's very hard for me to be patient with slow talkers.

My mother, grandmother, sister...we all talk more quickly than the men in our lives.

Of course, being from NY, talking quickly is also cultural.

So science aside, that is my POV.:)

There's also the "mirror" phenomenon which says in most social situations that people who are talking tend to match their vocal inflection and speed to each other, so that they are talking at the same rate and pitch. So it would tend to be if one person talks quickly, and meets up with someone else who talks slowly, that they merge to talk somewhere in the middle

Well yes I think we can all agree that people from the south tend to talk languidly, and people from Yankee country tend to talk quickly and clipped But that would be true for Southern Ladies as well as Southern Men

LOL I told Bob that you said that NYers tend to talk quickly and he replied

(in a slow languid drawl)

"That is ... in general ... true ..."

In fact Bob and I were talking about the languid southerner thing just recently. We were watching a basketball game which requires really fast commentary. I said, "How could someone from the south possibly describe a basketball game? They'd be like:"

* "Johnson has! ..... Oh, score!"

* "The ball .... oh wait ... score!"



I said they must import Yankees into the South to be able to do things like do commentary for basketball games, or run auctions ...

We were listening to a call-in show for sports and one of the callers was talking slowly (well slowly for a Yankee). And I was thinking "get on with it already!!" Call in shows in the South must take HOURS ...