Are Women Too Nice At the Office?

(3 of 3)

Tannen does a great service to men and women by providing a readable guide to the rituals of sexual miscommunication in the workplace. But others can argue that her analysis falls into the old trap of painting women as self- deprecating victims of a man-friendly world. "There is a sense in which every woman is seen as a receptionist -- available to give information and help, perennially interruptible," she says flatly. One wonders how many female CEOs are barged in on by underlings who cannot seem to remember the company fax number.

Tannen is ultimately at her most intriguing when she is at her most contrarian. She challenges the cliche that women are more indirect than men and that tentativeness reflects a lack of confidence. In Japanese culture, she points out, it is actually considered boorish for the higher-status person to be direct. Men and women are both indirect, she argues, but in different ways.

In the men's case, the approach is often a response to displays of emotion. She uses the example of a doctor who has just informed his patient of the serious side effects of a medication he has prescribed for her. "Yeah, so you prolong your life for what, you know?" the patient responds. To which the physician answers, "Do you have an appointment to see a therapist soon?" The doctor's abrupt reply is an indirect way to deal with his patient's emotional distress.

! "People will not always want to engage in conversations about how they communicate," says Tannen in an interview. But she would like her book to serve as a way to make men and women more attuned to one another's unique dialects. "The hope is not only that individuals will change their behavior," she says, "but that people who makes judgments of others will recognize different styles." As the corporate world becomes less rigidly authoritarian, and as men and women learn to become aware of one another's speaking styles, the most widely spoken language of the workplace could simply become the language of civility.