Need help with my writing homework on Amusing Ourselves to Death and You Just Don’t Understand. Write a 1250 word paper answering; Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand is not arranged chronologically. Instead, it takes a range of different topics on the subject of men’s language and women’s language and deals with them one by one.&nbsp. It starts very generally describing how women and men are socialized in separate spaces and develop different techniques.&nbsp. The critical phrase “Asymmetry” is introduced (chapter 2) and defined as the sexes gap. In the middle chapters, more specific topics such as interruptions and gossip are discussed. The last chapter (chapter 10)&nbsp. revisits the idea of asymmetry. The author describes what to do about this mismatch, namely to open up lines of communication that both men and women can understand. An afterword is written ten years after the first publication reports how successful the book was and answers some questions which readers and critics have raised. The thematic structure suggests that the subject is being treated as a collection of observations rather than a single line of argument. It allows the author to range freely over many details.

&nbsp. &nbsp. &nbsp. &nbsp. &nbsp. &nbsp. Postman relies on the earlier ideas of media and culture scholar Marshall McLuhan and notes that “the clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation.” (Postman: 1985, p. 8) From this necessary observation, he moves to a close examination of American discourse, looking at cultural phenomena like Las Vegas, focusing on high risk and materialism, and the medium of television, which offers unintelligent and repetitive material to keep citizens quietly consuming its hidden messages. Postman’s vital issue is that dictatorship need not be evident and violent, like a fascist regime that dominates people’s lives with physical deprivation and misery. A dictatorship can be subtle and deceptive, and television is just such a force.&nbsp. It is not only the message that the media offer, nor even just the medium of presentation that is important, but also the far-reaching implications of both of these things as they impact passive viewers. The argument is compelling because it sums up the commercialization and “dumbing down” of television in the 1980s and 1990s and points out many dangers that most people have not been aware of.