Muted Group Theory

Have any of you been in a conversation where you are made to feel unimportant? It could be that when you say something the other participents in the conversation disregard your opinion or ignore you altogether. This happens on a regular basis when a woman is outnumbered by men in a conversation. Beleive it or not, there is a communication theory that explains why this happens to a majority of women. The theory is called Muted Group and was developed by Cheris Kramarae.

Here are some statements I want you to think about:

How many gender related words can you think that desrcibe a man and those that describe a woman? An example is the word "stud" for men and the word "tramp" for women.

How many of the women reading this have been in a situation where males domninate? Have you had to change your mannerisms and speech patterns to fit in? I took a political science course during my sophomore year of college and out of thirty students only ten were females. I learned quickly that if you want your ideas to be understood you had to give short explanations that get straight to the point or you would lose the attention of fellow class mates.

How many movies, books, and cartoons can you think of that has a woman as the central character? The more serious books and movies become, the less you will see a woman as the central character. On the other hand, the more romantic the content becomes, the more you will see women as the central character. Unfortunately, this is not true for cartoons. How many cartoons can you think of that have a woman as the central character? The only cartoon I can name off the top of my head that has a woman as the central character is "Cathy". The other cartoons that come to mind, and have a male as the central character, are Ziggy, Peanuts (Charlie Brown and Snoopy are both males), Blondie (unfortunately the title is misleading because it revolves around Dagwood), Doonesbury, Hagar the Horrible, Snuffy Smith, and Mother Goose and Grimm (her dog, Grimm, is a male and the cartoon mainly revovles around him).

These are explanations of the main points of the theory. First, women perceive the world differently than men, and, thus, their language is different. Second, if a woman wants to participate in a male dominated group, then she has to change her mannerisms and language to fit in with that group. Yet, men might have to do the same if the situation was reversed. Third, the cultural aspects of society including books, movies, cartoons, art, and so on are dominated by a masculine influence depending on the situation depicted.

Now is your chance to learn more about this theory from memebers of our web group and through various links to other sites on the web.

Research Report - Carrie offers an insight into this theory by doing research.

Research Report - Want to read up on more research done by our group. Then check out Brian's page.

Application - How does this theory work in society? Megan applies this theory to a situation to help gain more understanding of how the theory works.

Application - Sean offers another application of this theory and how it works.

Theory Critique - Dave offers an evaluation of this theory and gives his own thoughts on it.

Issues in Feminism - This page offers a look at the many issues of femnism icluding Cross-Gender Communication, Feminist Theory, Gender Differences in Communication, Feminist.Com homepage, and Gender Issues Online.

A site about Gender - This site offers an insight into gender through applications, various looks at the theory, and even a link to a previuos OU Inco 234 webgroup page.

Inco 234 Homepage - I encourage you to go here if you want to leran more about other theories done by other groups from past to present.

Would you like to learn about some related theories?

Genderlect - This theory looks at the conversational styles of men and women, and how those styles relate to status and connection. Genderlect relates to muted group theory because these conversational styles could be a factor in why certain groups remain a communication minority.

Spiral of Silence - This theory refers to how people tend to remain silent if their views are held in the minority. Spiral of silence is related to muted group theory because if people choose to remain silent rather than speak their mind, then that group will remain as a minority and will have to change in order to be heard.

Don't forget to check out the other web pages complied by previous qaurters for more information!

Works Cited

Griffin, E. (1997). A first Look at Communication Theory, 3rd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.