Chasing our tails

The notion is that women talk a whole lot more than men.  Well, that depends.  On what?  Socialization of course.  Some researchers have studied mixed groups and their conversational habits and observed that women speak more words and with more frequency than men.  But, there are other groupings, such as men with men and women with women.  How many words are used then?

And then there is the idea of topic.  Because men like banter, they tend to speak about the two subjects, religion and politics, which women tend to avoid because they prefer more personalized subjects.  Because women like alignment with each other, they tend to speak on topics they personally identify with.  So, the topic helps to dictate whether women or men are using more words to express themselves.

Also, what constitutes a conversation is the subject of some debate.  One researcher, for example, mentions that women were much more silent in a mixed group faculty meeting of high school teachers.  One has to ask if a faculty meeting is the same as a conversation  among friends, even among acquaintances, or if formal meeting groups are not to be considered conversations.

Back to the main point: men are socialized to speak with other men, not other women, as women are to speak with other women, not other men.  So, it would be natural to think that women are more verbose with other women and men with other men.  A researcher would need to take those two groupings, then weight the findings against the third grouping if (s)he thinks that (s)he has figured out the role of the third grouping and the guiding principles on when women will speak in such a grouping or when men will speak.

Another problem with researching the above idea is the so-called Observer's Paradox.  When people know they are being observed, they alter their language behavior.  Some methods have been used to beat the Observer's Paradox, but not the studies dealing with conversation groupings.  Socialization doesn't happen under the microscope.  It happens over time as a result of seeing how language operates in all the possible combinations where language is used.  That's a real problem, for who can study language situations over a lengthy period of time or define what scenarios for language use represent other scenarios if trying to shorten the length of time or the number of different situations in which language is used?

So, no one really knows whether women speak more or not.  It doesn't really matter except that the popular belief is that women speak more, so are perceived as more nurturing, or better with words, or better communicators, or more impressive in sales jobs, or better at persuasion when closing a deal, or easier to listen to in presentations, or... (the list goes on).  And how does that popular belief arise?  Now we're back to socialization.