This time within an idiotic article at Men’s Health entitled “The Secret Language of Men.” The piece starts out:
The numbers say it all: In studies, women speak an average of 20,000 words a day. Men speak an average of 7,000.
What studies would those be, exactly? Could the author be referencing the completely unsupported and discredited claim make by Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain? As was mentioned in this post last December and in this post last September, U. Penn 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.
Liberman sure called this one. Probably best not to take any actual health advice from “Men’s Health” either, given their obvious complete absence of fact checking and lack of concern for accuracy.
–Ann Bartow
