Summary of Tannen's Essay

Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of one of her most favorite writings: “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation". The essay "There is no Unmarked Woman" was published in 2004 in "50 Essays". I believe that Tannen's thesis in this article focuses on the idea that women can never really just be themselves. They have to walk, talk or dress in a certain way or else they would be considered outcast by society while men can just say, dress, or do whatever and it will be ok. Tannen's context for this essay came about while she was observing how the men and women would wear or act at a conference that she attended. The term "marked" in linguistics terms refers to the way language alters the base meaning of a word by adding a linguistic principle that has no meaning of its own. In this essay, Tannen uses this word to argue the point that men have the option to be umarked whereas with females, every choice they make is available to be marked. Women are marked when they choose between attractive and comfortable shoes, certain hairstyles, clothing, makeup, accessories, etc. There are alot of assumptions out there about women's choices. An example would be a woman's hairstyle. There are many different styles out there for woman and it each has its own personality. But on the other hand, if a woman whose hair has no particular style or design to it, then she can be perceived as not caring about how one looks. Tannen mentions Raplh Fasold's in her essay. By doing this, I believe that she was trying use a male's opinion about a subject that she cared deeply about. He stresses the point that culture is way too hard on the stereotypes of women when in biological terms the male should be considered marked as well. He also says that the prononouns "she" and "he" should reflect biological terms because then "she" would include both sexes while "he" would only specifically refer to men. At the end of her essay, it is interesting to find out that she is marked by writing this essay. How? Well the whole article makes her sound like an extreme feminist. That term can be positive or negative according to some people. Even though she had strong ideas about human behavior and a linguistic background, it gets overshadowed due to the fact that the essay catered more to women than men. In my opinion, Tannen opened and ended the essay with a vivid illustration about the topic, so to me she concluded using a "Hook and Return" strategy.