Many of the features already identified in women’s speech (e.g. frequent question-type forms) facilitate the exchange of turns, allowing others to speak, with the effect that interaction becomes a shared activity. Interaction among men appears to be organized in a more hierarchical way, with the right to speak or “having the floor” being treated as the goal. Men generally take longer turns at speaking and, in many social contexts (e.g. religious events), may be the only ones allowed to talk.

One effect of the different styles developed by men and women is that certain features become very salient in cross-gender interactions. For example, in same-gender discussions, there is little difference in the number of times speakers interrupt each other. However, in cross-gender interactions, men are much more likely to interrupt women, with 96 percent of the identified interruptions being attributed to men in one study involving American college students.

In same-gender conversations, women produce more back-channels as indicators of listening and paying attention. The term back-channels describes the use of words (yeah, really?) or sounds (hmm, oh) by listeners while someone else is speaking. Men not only produce fewer back-channels, but appear to treat them, when produced by others, as indications of agreement. In cross-gender interaction, the absence of backchannels from men tends to make women think the men are not paying attention to them. The more frequent production of back-channels by women leads men to think that the women are agreeing with what they’re saying.

Other features have been identified as distinctive aspects of men’s or women’s ways of using language in interaction. In fact, the gendered nature of interactional styles has led some writers to describe conversations between men and women as a form of “cross-cultural communication.” If we are to avoid miscommunication in this process, we must all be prepared to try to understand the impact of the cultures we inherit and, through the creativity with language that we are also given, to find new ways of articulating those cultures before we pass them on.