Absolutely, I believe that men and women use language differently. Men and women perceive information in different ways, and how we communicate what information we have taken in is just an example of how we differ. A good example of this is advertising. In commercials for, let's say, beer advertised during a football game, every image that you see will only last 1-2 seconds before it transitions to another part of the ad. The ad will talk about the product being "cold, refreshing," and make it a man's beer. It emphasizes on how it's a manly product and is something a man's man can enjoy. It's using personal prototypes to target a specific group that the ad agency thinks will be watching this particular program.
On the flip side, when something is advertised toward a woman, it's message can be something along the lines of saving money, using a "family" message, including how it can benefit or protect your family in some way, or trying to appeal to a woman's sense of self, including targeting her physical beauty. These tactics that are targeted to men and women is just an example of how we communicate different.
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I agree that men and women communicate differently in different situations. Your example of advertising was very good as well. Advertisers are trained on how to target the audience they want, and they do this by using different language and concepts to appeal to different populations, men and women in this case.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this idea, advertisers purposefully use the concepts you mentioned to target women, most likely because they view those concepts as widely discussed or thought about by women. Conversely, they use different language and concepts to target men because they believe men widely discuss or think about those concepts.
Perhaps if the language between men and women were more similar, advertisements targeting them would be more similar. On the other hand, perhaps advertisements use these specific concepts for each gender because that is how they expect them, or want them, to behave and think, not necessarily because they actually do have different languages. It is definitely something interesting to think about.