Re: Gender Roles in Storytelling

We talked briefly about ways men and women differ in social storytelling. Here is an interesting observation from an article on "Rank & Relationship in the Evolution of Spoken Language" by linguist, John L. Locke:

"Across diverse cultures, verbal performances have a male bias, just as aggression displays do. But there are other registers of speech, and these are associated with a different sex bias. Among females, power resides less in public demonstrations of verbal finesse than in the ability to carry off private applications of speech in personally oriented talk (Aries & Johnson 1983; Bischoping 1993; Haas 1979; Johnson & Aries 1983; Levin & Arluke 1985). Intimate talking, a category that includes gossip and self-disclosure, tends to foster relationships. Investigators typically find that females are more inclined to speak intimately than males when interacting with a same-sex conversational partner of their own choosing, and in this context they also tend to be more talkative (Dabbs & Ruback 1984; Ickes & Barnes 1977), even as juveniles (Jormakka 1976; Larson, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck & Duckett 1996; Raffaelli & Duckett 1989; Smith & Connolly 1972). "