Soap Opera Report Talk Versus Rapport Talk
Tannen devotes a whole chapter of You Just Don’t Understand to report talk versus rapport talk. She says that men think the whole point of talking is to convey information and anything else, "gossip" to some minds, is a fruitless activity not to be engaged in by seriously minded people. Women are more prone to rapport talk, which means talking to establish connections and reinforce one's relationships.
One of the questions on the research survey said, "When I talk about soaps with my friends, we usually just give each other plot summaries." Men's answers covered the spectrum, but women's answers were heavily concentrated in agreement at seventy percent. However, when the question asked was, "When I talk about soaps with my friends, we usually talk about the characters and the way they act," sixty percent of women were in agreement.
The intention of those two related questions mentioned above was to determine rapport talk versus report talk in reference to how people communicate with each other about soaps. A flaw in the way the question about plot summaries was asked leads to some confusion. Including the word "just" in that question was meant to imply that was the only type of talk about soap operas in which the people engaged. However, it appears that the word "just" was skipped over and respondents did not see that as a limiting term in formulating their answers.
With the results as they are, it is apparent that women talk about all aspects of soap operas. Sixty percent of men disagreed that they talk about the soap characters and their actions. Twenty percent of men were undecided on this issue. These findings are not at odds with Tannen's theories, especially since one might consider that giving plot summaries is also a form of rapport talk since simply talking about common interests maintains a connection between the parties.
Other researchers have found that women place high priority on watching soap operas with friends and talking about soap operas with friends. (Frentz 67) This is especially true on college campuses where soap opera viewing is a group experience (albeit a somewhat mixed gender group). Although the lines are not completely clear-cut, the tendencies in talking about soaps conform to Tannen's theories.
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