-
U2:Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to
Talk to Each
Other?
男女交谈为何如此困难
I was addressing a small gathering in a
suburban Virginia living room -- a women's group
that had
invited
men
to
join
them.
Throughout
the
evening,
one
man
had
been
particularly
talkative,
frequently offering ideas and
anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him
on the couch. Toward
the end of the
evening, I commented that women frequently
complain that their husbands don't talk
to them. This man quickly concurred. He
gestured toward his wife and said,
family.
The
room
burst
into
laughter;
the
man
looked
puzzled
and
hurt.
true,
he
explained.
spend
the whole evening in silence.
那是在弗吉尼亚郊区一
个住所的客厅里，我正在一次小型聚
会上发言
——
这是一次女性的聚会，但也邀请了男性参加。整晚，一位男士表现得极为健谈，
他不断地发表自己的看法，讲述奇闻轶事。而他的妻子却安静地坐在他身旁的沙发上。聚会接
< br>近尾声时，我说，一些妻子经常抱怨丈夫不与她们交谈，这位男士立刻表示同意。他指着妻子
说：
“
在家里爱说话的是她。
”
于是满屋子哄堂大笑，这位男士一脸茫然和委屈。
“
这是真的，
”
他解释说，
“
我下班回家后总是无话可说，如果她不说话，我们会整晚沉默。
< br>”
This episode
crystallizes the irony that although American men
tend to talk more than women in
public
situations, they often talk less at home. And this
pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage.
这段
小插曲反映了一种具有讽刺意味的现象，即美国的男性尽管在公共场合比女性健谈
，在家里却
比女性说话少。而正是这一现象使婚姻受到严重威胁。
Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman
reports in her new book
women she
interviewed -- but only a few of the men -- gave
lack of communication as the reason for
their divorces.
社会学家凯瑟琳
?
凯尔
?
里兹曼在她的新
作《离婚谈》中说，她采访过的大多数女
性将离婚的原因归咎于缺乏交谈，但只有少数男
性将此当作离婚的理由。
In my own
research, complaints from women about their
husbands most often focused not on
tangible inequities such as having
given up the chance for a career to accompany a
husband to his, or
doing far more than
their share of daily life-support work like
cleaning, cooking, social arrangements
and errands. Instead, they focused on
communication:
me.
foremost,
conversational partners, but few husbands share
this expectation of their wives.
在我本人
的研究中，女性对丈夫的抱怨大多不是集中在一些实际的不平等现象，例如为了跟随丈夫的事<
/p>
业而放弃了发展自己事业的机会，或者她们所承担的日常生活琐事远远超过她们份内的部分
。
她们的抱怨总是集中在交流问题上，如
“
他不听我说话
”
，
“
他不和我说话
”
。我发现多数做妻子
的都期望丈夫首先是自己的交谈伙伴。但是很少有丈夫对妻子抱有同样的期望。
In short, the image that best
represents the current crisis is the stereotypical
cartoon scene of a
man sitting at the
breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front
of his face, while a woman glares
at
the back of it, wanting to talk.
简言之，最能体
现目前这种危机的是一个老套的卡通画面：一个
男人坐在早餐桌旁，
手中拿着一张报纸看着，
而他的妻子愤怒地盯着报纸背面，
渴望与他交谈。
Linguistic Battle
Between Men and
Women
两性间的唇枪舌剑
How
can women and men have such different impressions
of communication in marriage?Why is
there a widespread imbalance in their
interests and expectations?
在婚姻中的交流问题上，
为何男
女会持有如此不同的观点？为什么男女的兴趣和期望普遍不一致？
In the April 1990 issue of
American Psychologist, Stanford University's
Eleanor Maccoby reports
the results of
her own and other's research showing that
children's development is most influenced by
social stucture of peer interactions.
Boys and girls tend to play with children of their
own gender,and
their sex-separate
groups have different organizational structures
and interactive norms.
斯坦福大学
的埃莉诺
?
麦科比在
1990
年
4
月《美国心理学家》刊物上发表了她自己和
他人研究的结果。研究
结果表明，儿童的发展主要受同龄伙伴交往过程中社交结构的影响
。无论男孩女孩都喜欢与同
性伙伴玩耍。不同性别的儿童小群体有不同的组织结构和交际
准则。
I believe these
systematic differences in childhood socialization
make talk between women and
men like
cross-culture communication. My research on men's
and women's conversations uncovered
patterns similar to those described for
children's group.
我相信，儿童时代社交过程中的不同规则，
导致了两性间的交谈如同跨文化交流一样难。我本人通过对男女对话的研究发现，成年男女对<
/p>
话的模式类似于儿童群体交流过程中的模式。
For women, as for girls,
intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk
is the thread from which
it
is
woven.
little
girls
creat
and
maintain
friendship
by
exchanging
secrets;similarly,women
regard
conversation
as
the
cornerstoneof
friendship.
So
a
woman
expects
her
husband
to
be
a
new
and
improved version of a best friend. What
is important is not the individual subjects that
are discussed
but the sense of
closeness,of a life shared,that emerges when
people tell their thoughts,feelings,and
impressions.
成年女性同女孩一样，
彼此亲密是她们感情关系的纽带。
而交谈是编织这种纽带的
线。小女孩通过相互交换秘密来建立和维持友谊。同样，成年女性也把交谈看作友谊的基础。
因此，女性期望丈夫成为自己新的、更好的知心朋友。对她们来说重要的不是某个具体的讨论
话题，而是在说出自己的想法、感受和印象时所表现出来的那种亲密的、分享生活的感觉。
Bonds between boys can be as
intense as girls', but they are based less on
talking, more on doing
things
together
. Since they don't assume talk
is the cement that binds a relationship, men don't
know
what kind of talk women want, and
they don't miss it when it isn't there.
男孩间的关系和女孩一样
紧密。但男孩间的关系与其说建立在交谈基础上，不如说建立
在共同动手基础上。既然他们不
认为交谈能够巩固感情关系，
他
们不知道女人需要何种交谈，
也不会因为没有交谈而感到遗憾。
Boys' group are larger, more inclusive,
and more hierachical, so boys must struggle to
avoid the
subordinate position in the
group. This may play a role in women's complaints
that men don't listen to
them.
< br>男孩的群体比女孩的要大，
所包括的人更广泛
,
也更具有等级特色。
因此，
男孩们势必要
努力争取不在群体中处于从属地位。这也许是为什么女人抱怨男人不听她们说话的根源之一。
Often when women tell
men,
impression
of
not
listening
results
from
misalignments
in
the
mechanics
of
misalignment begins as soon
as a man and a woman take physical position. When
I studied videotapes
made by
psychologist Bruce Dorval of children and adults
taking to their same-sex best friends,I found
at every age,the girls and women faced
each other directly,their eyes anchored on each
other's face.
At
every
age,the
boys
and
men
sat
at
angles
to
each
other
and
looked
elsewhere
in
the
room,perildically glancing at each
other
. But the tendency of men to face
away can give women the
impression
they
aren't
listening
even
when
they
are.A
young
woman
in
college
was
frustrated:whenever
she
told
her
boyfriend
she
wanted
to
talk
to
him,he
would
lie
down
on
the
floor,close
his
eyes,and
put
his
arm
over
his
face.
This
signaled
to
her,
taking
a
nap.
he
insisted
he
was
listening
extra
hard.
Normally,He
looks
around
the
room,so
he
is
easily
distracted.
Lying down and covering his eyes helped
him concentrate on what she was saying.
当女的对男的说
“
你没有在听
”
，而男的反对说
“
我在听
”
时，常常男的是对的。这种给人没有在听的印象是由于
男
女对话方式的不同而引起的。这种不同在男女各自就位时就已表现出来了。我对心理学家布
鲁斯
?
多维尔录制的关于儿童与成人分别与他们的同性好友交
谈时的录像带进行了研究。
研究发
现，无论多大年龄的女孩和成
年女性，都采取面对面的姿势，眼睛看着对方的脸。而各种年龄
的男孩和成年男子就座时
，相互位置都成一定的角度，眼睛看着屋子别的地方，只有时不时瞥
对方一眼。男性这种
看着别处的习惯，可能给女性一种印象，那就是他们没有在听，即使他们