Cover Letter

    This assignment mainly focused on our writing skills, research and connecting the sources, needless to say these skills are very important in our lives.  Course syllabus part that talks about very same skills mentions,  “Engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” and “Locating research sources (including magazine, articles, videos, movie bits or quotes) in the books, given sources and on the Internet and evaluate them for how trustworthy and credible are they and also keeping in mind their accuracy, timeliness, and bias” which indeed were big part of this phase. Looking back at my first draft of this assignment and the feedback given by my professor and comparing that to this,  I see a big improvement. I really improved my skills when it comes to citations, in-text citations and bibliography pages (“Works cited”), this assignment also improved my skills of giving feedback to other people, the more I read about my peers work, more inspired I get and more ideas I have. 

Saba Khatchapuridze

ENGL 11000

Born to Talk More

      Throughout life everyone can witness someone who they think is annoying because they talk a lot, conversation is the key but like anything else, talking excessively can be tiring and bad. Usually people who talk a lot are not problem and they are not being discouraged or discriminated just because they love talking, it’s viewed as their personality trait and everyone seems to just let that sink in. Actual problem arises when conversation topic turns to women who for centuries were and unfortunately still are perceived as a sex that talks the most, hundreds of articles and so called scientific discoveries suggest that women tend to talk more than men, therefore every female is generalized as someone who talks a lot, because of that other sexist stereotypes are being justified by people abusing it. 

      One great example and somewhat funny example to show how ridiculous these “so-called” scientific researches are is a monologue given by Ellen DeGeneres in her “The Ellen’s Show” where she uses her humor to showcase how funny the findings about “genetical code” and “hormone” that force women to talk more than men are. She uses her strategy of mentioning everyday routine things such as meditation, driving or getting lunch to show that these things are extremely vital for a human to focus on what they actually want to talk about so that their mind is free of distraction and this idea works same for both men and women too, hence there is no logical explanation behind suggesting that women talk more than men, although some people still try pushing very same belief.

     Another example to show how serious this stereotype got is research that shows how much introvert women struggle in workplaces just because they are expected to socialize and talk more than their male co-workers, article published in U.S News mentions that, “You likely bring your own set of strengths to the table as a female introvert – perhaps you have the ability to influence others using emotional intelligence, collaboration skills or empathy. But despite your professional talents, the statistics above suggest that you may nevertheless face unique challenges in the workplace” (1). But despite this, what makes women and not only women but also males stronger is the idea of embracing their strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses, showing strong side and working on improving weak side can be extremely helpful, but that does not change the fact that women are more likely to be discriminated at workplace because of their sex and stereotypes that are connected with it and idea of females talking more than men is one of them.

  Language Myths edited by Bauer and Trudgill mention the same myth too, sixth page of the book is talking about “Myth 6: Women Talk Too Much: Janet Holmes”, this once again shows that the issue of having such stereotypical view is still present in modern day world and women are perceived as the ones who talk a lot, who talk more than men when in reality women are more likely to be confident in social situations and they are more likely to speak up than males. The fact that there’s tens of books, articles and monologues about this issue show that there is a problem and this type of thinking causes many forthcoming issues such as discrimination at workplace mentioned above.

           The source of this myth comes from past centuries where women were objectified and their rights were greatly prejudiced, their fight towards gaining the right to vote led to many men with toxic masculinity creating proverbs saying how talkative females are, in reality personally as a male I can hundred percent say that we talk a lot too and since there is no genetical evidence that females are “programmed’ to talk more than men, saying that women are more talkative is indeed a myth. To prove this I can use my personal example, I was raised by my mother and my sister, so I am the only male in the household and I can’t think of a time when I considered that either my mom or my sister or them combined talked more than me or any of my male peers, I have many female friends and at this point it is safe to say that whenever my whole friend group gets together us, boys do the most talking.

        There are many ways to look at this myth, either in a way that Ellen did or actual, serious research way, but the outcome is the same for both, myth stays as a myth and when it has effect on real life it can be considered as a stereotype, which in the most cases is bad, especially when it concerns a big part of people who are being generalized for something they actually are not. 

Works Cited 

   DeGeneres, Ellen, director. Women Talk More Than Men. Women Talk More Than Men, Youtube, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx4hS4ZL7nY.

Holmes, Janet. “Myth 6 : Women Talk More Than Men.” Language Myths, by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, Penguin Books, 2007, pp. 41–50.

Madell, Robin. “Women Introverts Face ‘Double Whammy’ at Work.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 2019, money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/articles/2018-07-23/women-introverts-face-double-whammy-at-work.

Reddy, Subba, and Michael Mally. “Women Talk More Than Men The Ellen Show on WhateverLife.” Whateverlife.com, Ellen DeGeneres, 1 Mar. 2017, whateverlife.com/women-talk-more-than-men-the-ellen-show-on-whateverlife/.