Language Log

It's been a few years since I checked for references to the invented "science" of gender differences in talkativeness — and a scan of recent news articles for "words per day" turns up a steady drip of replications.

Following up on "Citation crimes and misdemeanors" (9/9/2017), Breffni O'Rourke sent in a link to Michel Paradis, "More belles infidèles — or why do so many bilingual studies speak with forked tongue?", Journal of Neurolinguistics 2006: This note reports misquotations, misinterpretations, misrepresentations, inaccuracies and plain falsehoods found in the literature on the neuroscience of bilingualism. […]

Silas Lesnick, "An ensemble cast has come together for Whitney Cummings’ The Female Brain movie", comingsoon.net 8/17/2016: Black Bicycle Entertainment has today announced the ensemble cast for their upcoming The Female Brain movie, which marks the directorial debut of Whitney Cummings. Cummings herself will also star in the film, which she co-wrote alongside Neal Brennan, […]

In a ten-year-old LLOG post ("Gender and tags" 5/9/2004),  I cited "the complexity of findings about language and gender, where published claims sometimes contradict one another, and where the various things that 'everybody knows' are not always confirmed by experiment", and warned that This happens in every area of rational inquiry, but it's especially common in cases […]

Catherine Griffin, "Why Women Talk More Than Men: Language Protein Uncovered", Science World Report 2/20/2013. You know all the times that men complain about women talking too much? Apparently there's a biological explanation for the reason why women are chattier than men. Scientists have discovered that women possess higher levels of a "language protein" in […]

That's the title of Cordelia Fine's new book, due out on August 30. Some reviews: Katherine Bouton, "Peeling Away Theories on Gender and the Brain", NYT 8/23/2010; Robin McKie, "Male and female ability differences down to socialisation, not genetics", The Observer 8/15/2010; "Q&A: 'Delusions of Gender' author Cordelia Fine", USA Today 8/9/2010; Louise Grey, "New […]

Shorter Louann Brizendine, from today's Non Sequitur:

A web search for the phrase "Men don't listen" turns up lots of pop-psychology books and articles. There's Allan and Barbara Pease's relationship self-help book Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps;  an online chapter from the book Be Your Own Therapist with the title "Men Don't Listen; Men Don't Communicate"; another self-help […]

OK, I'm back in Philadelphia and my copy of Louann Brizendine's The Male Brain has arrived. I still haven't had time to read it, but I promised to look up the business about the dorsal premammillary nucleus, so here goes.

The cover of Louann Brizendine's new book The Male Brain is puzzling.

Louann's Brizendine's The Male Brain has just come out.  I haven't read it yet — for some reason, the publisher didn't send me a review copy — and so I'll reserve judgment until my copy arrives. But Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks has an evaluation ("Brizendine, true to stereotype", 3/24/2010) based on an Opinion piece […]

It's been a while since we posted on differences between the sexes, so here's a Zippy on the subject: Yes, I know, this isn't really about language, but Language Log stumbled into sex differences a few years ago, mostly thanks to Leonard Sax and Louann Brizendine (via David Brooks).

From Monday's NYT (Neil Amdur, "Asperger's Syndrome, on Screen and in Life", 8/3/2009): “I wanted to tell a film about my friend,” Mr. Elliot, now 37 and an award-winning writer and director, said in a phone interview from Australia, where “Mary and Max” has grossed more than $1 million since its opening in April. “Asperger’s […]