Deborah Tannen’s “Can't We Talk? ” from the book “You Just Don't Understand” is a depiction of conflict between men and women’s form of conversation. Men and women have their own styles in releasing their intentions and emotions. Through verbal communication, both men and women want to unleash specific thoughts. According to Githens (1991), Intimacy, information, and cooperative overlapping are the key factors in Tannen’s text. Intimacy is for women, information is for men, and cooperative overlapping is for both men and women.
Women want intimacy while men seek for information when they start a conversation. Because of this, they tend to overlap their intentions instead of creating collaboration to make their relationship stronger. As what Tannen is trying to convey in her text, men and women have different communication styles but they could both provide better understanding if they want to. It's not hard, from even these simple observations, to see the potential problems when men and women communicate (Bryannan).
Laura Bryannan sees the fact that through simple observation we could already define, understand, and analyze the issues of communication between men and women. However, in every problem, there is a potential solution to save each relationship and obtain better future for couples. According to Eklund (2005), High-involvement speakers can talk away. If both men and women involve themselves to one another they could be able to accommodate each need.Through this, their effort and willingness to accept one another conquer their differences especially in communication style.
Therefore, they could be able to find better ways in expressing their thought and/or intentions to one another without feeling rejected or manipulated. From all of these, it can be said that Tannen’s point of view helps many couples to deal with certain differences that they could not avoid. In the end, these couples can go a long way with their relationship through their understanding and support to one another.
