Cooperative language in consultations by male and female doctors. Paper can be interpreted in two ways depending on reader's viewpoint.

Editor—In their descriptive study of cooperative language by male and female doctors Skelton and Hobbs show that communication style does not differ with respect to gender.1 They conclude nevertheless that men have more to learn to achieve competence as professional communicators. I suspect that their assertion is rooted more in the assumptions of gender stereotypes than in hard evidence. For example, the claim that men dominate talk between men and women is based on a few very small studies. The most persuasive of these, by Zimmerman and West, had conversations from only 11 male-female pairs.2 The claim that men dominate speech even in the presence of female superiors is supported by an even smaller study, which looked at conversations taped for 14-30 minutes but with only a two minute random extract analysed.3 The results were not impressive, and the study’s authors said that larger studies were needed to confirm their findings. As found in the review cited in Skelton and Hobbs’s paper,4 such small studies yield weak conclusions hedged by words such as “suggest,” “tend,” “seem,” and “generally.” For example, “women tend to organise their talk cooperatively, while men tend to organise their talk competitively.” Very quickly, these words are dropped and vague trends evolve into fossilised dogma (especially if the researcher has an agenda). This is illustrated by an example from the same review; in mixed sex groups “it seems that women put far more effort than men into maintaining and facilitating a conversation” becomes, according to Fishman,3,4 “women have to perform the interactive shitwork.” Men are also guilty of this—for example, by labelling women as gossips they have succeeded in trivialising the content of their speech. Skelton and Hobbs’s paper can be interpreted in two ways depending on your viewpoint. If you believe that men’s speech style is competitive and not cooperative then this study shows that men as well as women have the capacity for psychological androgyny—that they are capable of adopting female speech styles. If you believe that men already have cooperative abilities then this study is confirmatory. In neither case is there evidence that male doctors have more to learn than female doctors to achieve competence as professional communicators. As researchers we must rise above prevailing prejudices or we risk falling into the same trap as the authors and reaching unsupportable conclusions.