You've visited Mars and you've visited Venus. This module is about the language spoken between them.
Back in Lesson 0.1, the course made a claim: men and women aren't from different planets. They're more like speakers of two dialects of the same language, close enough that they assume they understand each other, and different enough that they sometimes don't. This module makes that claim concrete. It covers the ways the same words carry different meanings: a "Fine" that means not now, a question that's really a request, a period at the end of a text that reads like a slammed door, and an "I'm sorry" that isn't an apology.
Much of this comes from Deborah Tannen, the Georgetown linguist whose You Just Don't Understand (1990) sat beside Gray's book on the bestseller lists. Tannen studied real conversations, and many of her observations have held up well as descriptions of common patterns. As usual, the course also tests them against the research, and the research keeps finding that the differences are real but small, and that context, culture and power shape how people talk at least as much as sex does.
The Driving Question
Why do the same words mean different things to different people, and how do you translate?
Gut Answer
Before Lesson 4.1, write down one sentence that someone of the other sex says to you that you've never been sure how to take. Then write down one of your own sentences that you suspect gets misread. Date it.
What You'll Be Able to Do
By the end of this module you'll be able to:
- explain report talk and rapport talk, and replace "How was your day?" with questions that actually open people up;
- recognize hints as a form of politeness, turn your own hints into clear requests, and decode other people's hints generously;
- read tone, body language and texts more accurately, and know when to move a conversation off the screen;
- spot the conversational rituals (apologies, teasing, troubles talk, compliments) that work among friends and misfire between partners.
Time
About 2.25–2.5 hours: four lessons of 30–35 minutes each, plus the check-in.