Communication Styles and Gender

because of essential differences between the two sexes. The contrasts in biology, anatomy, and genes provide the initial reason for gender miscommunication, while the influences of society account for the fundamentally contrasting ways in which men and women select the messages they send and transmit to others. Understanding these differences can offer fascinating insights into both the process of information transmission and the contrast between the sexes.

The act of transmitting information is complex and therefore naturally subject to errors, miscommunication, and a complete failure to communicate anything at all. The act begins with an information source. In the case of human communication, this is usually one individual, the encoder. This source decides on the information, or message, to be transmitted and the means, or channel, to be used. The channel can be anything from a spoken sentence to a mass media source, such as a television signal, a magazine article, or the internet.

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appropriate response or feedback, and begin the process of responding to the message by composing his or her own message. Considering the complexity of the communication process, theorists have sometimes expressed astonishment that any information is ever exchanged effectively among human beings. When the individuals are as different as members of two "opposite" sexes, true communication appears to be an almost impossible process. Charles K. West observes, "A person's frame of reference consists of both cognitive (or knowledge) and emotional components" (27), and the substance of these components can present significant stumbling blocks to the way that messages are selected, encoded, and decoded. In fact, the most important reasons for communication failures are especially evident when men and women attempt to communicate. Information transmission is most often interrupted by the assumption of similarity, language problems, nonverbal misinterpretations, preconceptions and stereotypes, and the tendency to evaluate. On the matter of similarity, Kathleen Kelley Reardon argues: For too long business academics and practitioners have been hesitant to acknowledge that men and women experience life, and therefore work as well, i
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Women Venus, Elizabeth Herron, Carol Rudman, Kelley Reardon, Charles West, , communication process, Little Brown, York Morrow, Communication Barriers, Communication Workplace, preconceptions stereotypes, information transmission, message transmitted, message decoder, nonverbal misinterpretations, tendency evaluate, elizabeth herron, rudman observes, kathleen kelley,
Approximate Word count = 1286
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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