Quote:
Originally Posted by CantExplain
Maybe it really is a man/woman thing. If so, it might work like this.
For a woman, the important thing is to say sorry.
For a man, the important thing is to admit fault.
And maybe they are both saying the same thing in different ways.
A big complaint I had against Madame T is that while she sometimes said sorry, she never admitted to being in the wrong. Maybe I did her an injustice...
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I have stayed out of this, but will say only this thing and then hold my peace: I'm afraid there is no such gender difference. It is a nice theory but unfortunately it's not supported by any studies (even if you take into account all the normal caveats: every single piece of research on language use is culture dependent and age dependent, and always says things about populations and never about individuals.)
It is never possible to state "A woman would say this" or "A man would not say that". The only thing that is sometimes possible to say is "It is more likely that a woman in this country would say this", and that's frankly not very interesting (compared to "a man would never say that!" at any rate
) And it is only possible to state "The reason he said that is because he is a man" when it refers to one of those rare languages where the vocabulary or grammar is different depending on the gender of the speaker...