John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus contains a chapter entitled Speaking Different Languages. In it, Gray says that the "original" Martians and Venusians communicated without difficulty, because they knew their languages were mutually incomprehensible. Modern men and women, by contrast, are under the illusion that they speak the same language. But though the words they use may be the same, their meanings for each sex are different. The result is that men and women often do not understand one another.
The idea that men and women metaphorically "speak different languages" is not, of course, new, but the myth of Mars and Venus has given it new currency and legitimacy. What was once just a metaphor has acquired the status of literal, scientific truth. Today, it is widely believed that misunderstanding between men and women is a widespread and serious problem. But is our concern about it justified by the evidence, or is "male-female miscommunication" a myth?
Before the myth of Mars and Venus, the idea that women communicate less directly than men was associated with concerns about women's alleged lack of assertiveness and confidence. The importance of speaking directly was a staple topic in assertiveness training, and advice based on the same principle was common in self-help books and women's magazines, especially those addressed to professional women. For instance, a 1992 article in Options magazine on "10 classic career mistakes all women make" lists using "tentative language" as number nine.
"How many times have you heard someone say things like, 'I'm not really sure if I'm right, but perhaps ...'?" the article asked. "With that kind of talk, who is going to believe we are confident in what we are saying? ... Too often we make statements as if they were questions, such as, 'We'll bring the deadline forward, OK?'"
Options counsels women to avoid tentative language on the grounds that it makes them sound weak and indecisive - the argument put forward by Robin Lakoff in her influential 1970s text, Language and Woman's Place. But, over time, a different argument has become more popular. The following tip comes from Glamour magazine: "Speak directly to male subordinates. Women tend to shy away from giving a blatant order, but men find the indirect approach manipulative and confusing." Here women are told to speak directly to men, not because indirectness undermines their authority, but because men find it "manipulative and confusing". The substance of the advice has not changed, but the theory behind it has shifted from a "deficit model" of gender difference (women's ways of speaking are inferior to men's) to a "cross-cultural approach" (the two styles are equally valid, but the difference between them can lead to misunderstanding).
This raises two questions. First, if the male and female styles are equally valid, why does it always seem to be women who are told they must accommodate to men's preferences - even, apparently, when the men are their subordinates? Is avoiding male-female miscommunication an exclusively female responsibility? Second, though, why is it assumed that indirectness causes miscommunication in the first place? What is the evidence that men are confused by it?
Glamour is not the only source for this allegation. In a section of his book which explains how to ask men to do things, Gray says that women should avoid using indirect requests. For instance, they should not signal that they would like a man to bring in the shopping by saying, "The groceries are in the car": they should ask him directly, by saying, "Would you bring in the groceries?" Another mistake women make is to formulate requests using the word "could" rather than "would". "'Could you empty the trash?'," says Gray, "is merely a question gathering information. 'Would you empty the trash?' is a request."
Gray seems to be suggesting that men hear utterances such as "Could you empty the trash?" as purely hypothetical questions about their ability to perform the action mentioned. But that is a patently ridiculous claim. No competent user of English would take "Could you empty the trash?" as "merely a question gathering information", any more than they would take "Could you run a mile in four minutes?' as a polite request to start running. Gray is right to think that the "Could you do X?" formula has both functions, but wrong to suppose that this causes confusion. Human languages are not codes in which each word or expression has a single, predetermined meaning. Rather, human communication relies on the ability of humans to put the words someone utters together with other information about the world, and on that basis infer what the speaker intended to communicate to them.
Some individuals - for instance, people with autism - may indeed find indirectness confusing; they find a great deal of human communication confusing, because their condition impairs their ability to make inferences about what is going on in other people's minds. But this kind of problem is exceptional: we define it as a disability precisely because the ability to infer others' intentions plays such a crucial role in communication. Does Gray think that maleness is a disability? And if he really believes men cannot process indirect requests from women, how does he explain the fact that men quite frequently make indirect requests to women?
A friend once told me a story about the family dinners of her childhood. Each night as the family sat down to eat, her father would examine the food on his plate and then say to his wife something like, "Is there any ketchup, Vera?" His wife would then get up and fetch whatever condiment he had mentioned. According to Gray's theory, he should have reacted with surprise: "Oh, I didn't mean I wanted ketchup, I was just asking whether we had any." Needless to say, that was not his reaction. Both he and his wife understood "Is there any ketchup?" as an indirect request to get the ketchup, rather than "merely a question gathering information".
Yet if my friend made the same request, her mother's response was different: she treated it as an information question and said, "Yes, dear, it's in the cupboard." Presumably, that was not because she had suddenly become incapable of understanding indirectness. Rather, she pretended to hear her daughter's request as an information question because she wanted to send her a message along the lines of, "I may get ketchup for your father, but I don't feel obliged to do the same for you."
What this example illustrates is that some "misunderstandings" are tactical rather than real. Pretending not to understand what someone wants you to do is one way to avoid doing it. This may be what is really going on when a man claims not to have recognised a woman's "Could you empty the trash?" or "The groceries are in the car" as a request. The "real" conflict is not about what was meant, it is about who is entitled to expect what services from whom.
By recasting this type of domestic dispute as a problem of "male-female miscommunication", the myth of Mars and Venus just obscures the real issue. And while arguments about who empties the trash or unloads the groceries may be petty, there are other conflicts between men and women where far more is at stake.
At a Canadian university in the 1990s, two women students made complaints against the same male student after they discovered by chance that they had both, on separate occasions, gone out on a date with him and been sexually assaulted at the end of the evening. Their complaints were heard by a university tribunal whose proceedings were recorded for a linguistic research project.
Like many rape and sexual assault cases, this one turned on whether or not the defendant could reasonably have believed that the complainants consented to sex. Both incidents had begun consensually, with the women inviting the man into their room and engaging in activities such as kissing and touching; but they claimed he had gone on to force them into further sexual activity which they made clear they did not want. He maintained that they did want it - or at least, had said nothing to make him think they did not.
In this extract from the hearing, one of the complainants, MB, has just told the tribunal that the defendant persisted in touching her even after she had repeatedly communicated to him that she did not want to have sex. A tribunal member, GK, then asks her the following question: "And did it occur to you through the persistent behaviour that maybe your signals were not coming across loud and clear, that 'I'm not getting through what I want and what I don't want?' . . . This is the whole thing about getting signals mixed up. We all socialise in one way or the other to read signals and to give signals. In that particular context, were you at all concerned your signals were not being read exactly and did you think, since signals were not being read correctly for you, 'Should I do something different with my signals?'"
GK evidently interprets the incident as a case of miscommunication ("getting signals mixed up"). She also appears to hold the complainant responsible for the breakdown in communication. She phrases her initial question using a formula ("Did it occur to you that . . . ?") which usually implies that the point should have occurred to the addressee. Her subsequent questions ("Were you at all concerned that . . . ?", "Did you think that . . . [you] should . . . ?") are phrased in a similarly loaded way. GK is not so much asking about MB's view of events as communicating her own: MB should have realised that her signals were not getting through, and she should have acted on that realisation by "doing something different with [her] signals".
Susan Ehrlich, the linguist who analysed the tribunal proceedings, notes that the defendant is never challenged in the same way about his response to the complainants' signals. At one point he is asked why he persisted in sexual activity with MB when she was either asleep or pretending to be asleep. He replies. "She said that she was tired, you know, she never said like 'No', 'Stop', 'Don't', you know, 'Don't do this', uhm, 'Get out of bed'." Nobody asks him why he did not consider the possibility that by saying she was tired and then apparently falling asleep, MB was communicating that she wanted him to stop. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that someone who feigns unconsciousness while in bed with you probably doesn't want to have sex. But nobody criticises the defendant for being so obtuse. In these proceedings, the assumption does seem to be that avoiding miscommunication is not a shared responsibility, but specifically a female one.
This assumption both reflects and reinforces the traditional tendency of rape trials - especially where the parties are acquainted - to focus more on the character and behaviour of the complainant than on that of the alleged perpetrator. Her clothing, her alcohol consumption, her previous sexual conduct and reputation, are all scrutinised minutely for any sign that she might have been willing all along. By suggesting that men have trouble understanding any refusal which is not maximally direct, the myth of Mars and Venus has added to the burden judicial proceedings place on women who claim to have been raped. They can now be challenged not only to prove that they did not consent to sex, but also that they refused in a manner sufficiently direct to preclude misunderstanding. The women in the Canadian case were unable to satisfy the tribunal on that point. The tribunal's written judgment criticised their behaviour: "There is little doubt that both complainants did not expressly object to some of the activity that took place that evening. It is also clear that their actions at times did not unequivocally indicate a lack of willing participation."
The defendant was found guilty, but the tribunal declined to impose the recommended punishment, expulsion from the university. Instead, they banned him from campus dormitory buildings. This decision reflected their view that the complainants were partly responsible for what had happened to them. Had they communicated differently, they could have prevented it.
That idea also features prominently in sex education and "rape prevention" programmes, which instruct women that if they do not want to have sex they should "Just say no". It is stressed that a woman's refusal should take the form of a firm, unvarnished "No" (spoken in a tone and accompanied by body language that make clear it is a real, rather than a token, refusal), and that it is not necessary - in fact, it is counter-productive - to give reasons for refusing. Only by keeping the message short and simple can you be sure that it will not be misunderstood. This advice may be well-intentioned, but linguistic research suggests it is highly questionable.
The researchers Celia Kitzinger and Hannah Frith conducted focus-group interviews with 58 women and asked them how, in practice, they communicated to men that they did not wish to have sex. Despite being familiar with the standard rape-prevention advice, all but a tiny handful of the women said they would never "Just say no". They judged this to be an unacceptable way of doing things, and likely to make matters worse by giving men an additional reason to feel aggrieved.
The strategies the women actually reported using were designed to "soften the blow", as one put it, in various ways. One popular tactic was to provide a reason for refusing which made reference to a woman's inability, as opposed to her unwillingness, to have sex. Examples included the time-honoured "I've got a headache", "I'm really tired" and "I've got my period". As one woman explained, such excuses would prevent the man from "getting really upset" or "blaming you". Another softening tactic was to preface the refusal with something like "I'm incredibly flattered, but . . ." Women also reported telling men that they were not yet ready for sex, when they knew in reality that they would never be interested.
All this might seem like depressing evidence that psychologists are right about women lacking assertiveness, confidence, or self-esteem - except for one crucial fact. All the strategies the women reported using in this situation are also used, by both sexes, in every other situation where it is necessary to verbalise a refusal. Research on conversational patterns shows that in everyday contexts, refusing is never done by "just saying no". Most refusals do not even contain the word "No". Yet, in non-sexual situations, no one seems to have trouble understanding them.
If this sounds counter-intuitive, let us consider a concrete example. Suppose a colleague says to me casually as I pass her in the corridor: "A few of us are going to the pub after work, do you want to come?" This is an invitation, which calls for me to respond with either an acceptance or a refusal. If I am going to accept, I can simply say "Yes, I'd love to" or "Sure, see you there." If I am going to refuse, by contrast, I am unlikely to communicate that by just saying "No, I can't" (let alone "No, I don't want to").
Why the difference? Because refusing an invitation - even one that is much less sensitive than a sexual proposal - is a more delicate matter than accepting one. The act of inviting someone implies that you hope they will say yes: if they say no, there is a risk that you will be offended, upset, or just disappointed. To show that they are aware of this, and do not want you to feel bad, people generally design refusals to convey reluctance and regret.
Because this pattern is so consistent, and because it contrasts with the pattern for the alternative response, acceptance, refusals are immediately recognisable as such. In fact, the evidence suggests that people can tell a refusal is coming as soon as they register the initial hesitation. And when I say "people", I mean people of both sexes. No one has found any difference between men's and women's use of the system I have just described.
As Kitzinger and Frith comment, this evidence undermines the claim that men do not understand any refusal less direct than a firm "No". If "ordinary", non-sexual refusals do not generally take the form of saying "No", but are performed using conventional strategies such as hesitating, hedging and offering excuses, then sexual refusals which use exactly the same strategies should not present any special problem. "For men to claim that they do not understand such refusals to be refusals," Kitzinger and Frith say, "is to lay claim to an astounding and implausible ignorance."
Even so, you might think that if a woman is worried about being assaulted she should err on the side of caution: forget the usual social niceties and "unequivocally indicate a lack of willing participation". The Canadian tribunal was clearly puzzled by MB's failure to do this. They pressed her about it until she finally offered an explanation. Like the women in Kitzinger and Frith's study, MB felt it was prudent to try to "soften the blow". She did not confront her assailant directly, she said, because she was afraid of him - and of what, beyond sexual assault, he might do to her if she provoked him: "You do whatever you have to to survive. [Crying] I mean, I was just thinking how to survive that second. I mean, I didn't care if that meant getting back into bed with him. If he didn't hurt me I didn't care at that second . . . I did whatever I could to get by."
This raises doubts about the wisdom of expert advice on rape prevention, which tells women to do the opposite of "softening the blow": in essence, it tells them to aggravate the offence of rejecting a man's advances by verbalising their refusals in a highly confrontational way. This advice presupposes that men who persist in making unwanted sexual advances are genuinely confused, and will be happy to have their confusion dispelled by a simple, firm "No". It does not allow for the possibility that men who behave in this way are not so much confused about women's wishes as indifferent to them. Confronting a violent and determined aggressor is not necessarily the safest option and, to a woman who is terrified, it may well seem like the most dangerous, putting her at risk of being beaten as well as raped.
Women are not wrong to fear the consequences of following advice to "just say no". But thanks to the myth of Mars and Venus, they are not only receiving bad advice on how to prevent rape, they are also being held responsible for preventing it and blamed if they do not succeed.
The 1967 prison film Cool Hand Luke is remembered, among other things, for a line spoken by the prison warden to Luke, an inmate who persistently rebels against authority. "What we have here," says the warden, "is failure to communicate." Both of them know that communication is not the issue. Luke understands the warden, but chooses to defy him. What the warden really means is "failure to do what I want you to do".
A similar (mis)use of the word "communication" has become increasingly common in our culture. Conflicts which are really caused by people wanting different things (he wants her to have sex and she does not want to; she wants him to do his share of the housework and he wants her to stop nagging about it) are persistently described as "misunderstandings" or "communication problems". If someone does not respond in the way we want them to, it means they cannot have understood us - the problem is "failure to communicate", and the solution is better communication.
This belief, or hope, is undoubtedly one of the things that make the idea of male-female miscommunication appealing to many people. In the words of Deborah Tannen: "Under- standing style differences for what they are takes the sting out of them. Believing that 'You're not interested in me', 'You don't care about me as much as I care about you' or 'You want to take away my freedom' feels awful. Believing that 'You have a different way of showing you're listening' or 'Showing you care' allows for no-fault negotiation: you can ask for or make adjustments without casting or taking blame."
It is comforting to be told that nobody needs to "feel awful": that there are no real conflicts, only misunderstandings, and no disagreements of substance, only differences of style. Acknowledging that many problems between men and women go deeper than "failure to communicate" would make for a much bleaker and less reassuring message.
But the research evidence does not support the claims made by Tannen and others about the nature, the causes, and the prevalence of male-female miscommunication. No doubt some conflicts between individual men and women are caused by misunderstanding: the potential for communication to go awry is latent in every exchange between humans, simply because language is not telepathy. But the idea that men and women have a particular problem because they differ systematically in their ways of using language, and that this is the major source of conflict between them, does not stand up to scrutiny.
· Deborah Cameron. Extracted from The Myth of Mars and Venus published, by Oxford University Press in hardback at £10.99. To order a copy for £9.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.
· In G2 tomorrow Our final extract: If Mars and Venus is a myth, why do we fall for it?