Point Break Deborah Tannen Analysis

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Women are more naturally talkative and sensitive while men are tough and do not bother paying attention to their own feelings. In the movie Point Break, you will see characters communicating with each other very differently with one another. From Deborah Tannen’s essay on Sex Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard For Men and Women To Talk To Each Other?, sometimes the points she makes and the research in her essay is seen in the movie with certain characters but not on all of them. Cross-cultural communication is one of the reasons as to why they communicate very differently. Men and women both communicate very well with the same sex, that whenever it comes time to communicate with the opposite, it is not quite successful. Women’s expectations…show more content…
Tyler always questioned Utah’s different facial expressions and what was going on with him but Utah never actually told her the truth because he always seemed to stumbled on his own words. Based on the research from Eleanor Maccoby, from Stanford University, Tannen explains “For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven…women regard conversation as the cornerstone of friendship” (Tannen 229). Women like Tyler rely on communication to bond with someone. When Utah lays off on telling her the truth every time she asks for it, she begins to think there is something wrong as to why he will not tell her. To Tyler, Utah telling her the truth would be a way to have bonded with him or made their relationship stronger. This is one of the reasons she snuck out of bed one night to figure out what he was hiding from her. Which then lead to Tyler shooting at the pillow next to Utah that suddenly woke him up because of how hurt she had felt that he had lied to her about everything especially his parents “tragic death”. As for Utah, he had a difficult time expressing how he was feeling about situations going on and also his feelings towards her and trying to tell the truth.…show more content…
But you also see differences of communication not being reflected by Tannen’s essay as well, which had resulted in lack of communication skills coming from the four main characters, Utah, Bodhi, Tyler and Pappas. Tannen gave examples of other peoples studies to back up some of hers and by doing so, her results came out simple reasons why they communicate differently and where it starts to drift away from being common. Bodhi was one of the characters that was not, all the way, alike to Tannen’s studies. He showed women characteristics in communicating as well as men’s. Out of the four characters, the one that was most closely alike and described in Tannen’s studies, was Pappas. He showed every characteristic of communication the way a man should, based on Tannen’s essay or view point especially when one of her studies that showed men mainly communicate to get straight to the point of problems. Because of the lack of communication with Tyler and Utah, it lead Tyler to distrust Utah at one point by not telling her the truth. Women always expect men to talk about their feelings but what they do not understand is that men do not know how to because that is not how they instantly communicate with. With men, trying to talk with women, they begin to show them other sides to an argument but women always thinks she is right and does not

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