After noting that the jacket blurb for Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, said: “Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why [a] woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000…” as was mentioned in this post last September, linguist Mark Liberman wrote:
I looked through the book to try to find the research behind the 20,000-vs.-7,000-words-per-day claim, and I looked on the web as well, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. Brizendine also claims that women speak twice as fast as men (250 words per minute vs. 125 words per minute). These are striking assertions from an eminent scientist, with big quantitative differences confirming the standard stereotype about those gabby women and us laconic guys. The only trouble is, I’m pretty sure that both claims are false.
Liberman also observed:
The authors of self-help works, as a group, don’t seem to have any particular standards of accuracy. Journalists, meanwhile, generally take them at their word in reviews and interviews, and publishers are happy as long as the books sell well.
It’s a shame to see this approach to the facts spreading into the growing genre of books about the neuroscience of sex differences, where the facts can have real consequences.
Has Brizendine either produced support for her claim, or acknowledged that it is fictitious and unsupportable? No, she hasn’t, not even close. Deborah Solomon interviewed Brizendine for yesterday’s NYT, and here is the completely inadequate exchange they had on that topic:
Your book cites a study claiming that women use about 20,000 words a day, while men use about 7,000.
The real phraseology of that should have been that a woman has many more communication events a day : gestures, words, raising of your eyebrows.
Are you concerned that you are rehabilitating outdated gender stereotypes that portray women as chatterboxes ruled by female hormones?
A stereotype always has an aspect of truth to it, or it wouldn’t be a stereotype. I am talking about the biological basis behind behaviors that we all know about.
Does Brizendine have any actual research to support this “communication events” assertion? I’m guessing no, and she is counting on the fact that there isn’t any pesky quantitative data on facial movement by gender that will undermine this claim. Of course, I suppose I should admit that upon reading this unresponsive misdirection, not only did my eyebrows go up, but my hand almost involuntarily formed a well-know gesture and I uttered an epithet, constituting a three communication event reaction. Ugh. There is something about reifying stereotypes because they have a biological basis that “we all know” (No research necessary! Saves on test tubes!) that sounds vaguely familar. Oh yeah, now I remember.
–Ann Bartow
Read same article. Had same thoughts. Glad female poster could explain with more words.
Also curious as to science behind claim that for teenage girls, gossipping triggers chemicals that induce drug-like euphoria. But lacked vocabularly to question.
I have my doubts about this “science” but will leave it for actual scientists to unpack. The lack of scientific support for her other claims is astonishing, really. She and Larry Summers shold hang out together…
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This book gives actual studies, with evidence and everything, that women do not talk more than men: Jennifer Coates, ed., Language and Gender: a Reader, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1998).