Text Message and Gender Differences

Since the book I use briefly talks about gender differences in Communication, I decided to take it a step further. Here's a couple of points that inspired this lesson:

• Research shows that the differences in men and women’s communication has more to do with why we communicate rather than how.
-Men tend to talk to accomplish something or complete a task.
-Women often use conversation to establish and maintain relationships.
• Men view the purpose of communication as primarily information exchange. You talk when you have something to say.
• Women use communication for the purpose of relating or connecting to others-to know them and be known by them. Talking implies a relationship.
**The main reason we are different are in the motivations or reasons for communicating-the how may not be different, but the why may be.
(Beebe & Beebe, 2011, p. 143-144)

These points alone are enough to get most individuals thinking about how easily miscommunication occurs; when applying all this to text messages, it just could get even more messy! Therefore, we did a class activity. Ladies were on one side of the room, and men on the other.
We defined:
*Texting Rules
*When it is ok for either party to initiate text
*What certain text content translates to each party.

I have to say, it was quite interesting. What I have found is that guys say they text for an actual reason-to see action. The majority of the time, they want to hang out or make a plan to. In addition, my students say they are very annoyed by abbreviations ( like u instead of you or, brb instead of be right back) when you could just write the entire thing since most phones have a keyboard.