The Danes have a saying for it: "The North Sea will sooner be found wanting in water than a woman at a loss for words." The Japanese say, "When there are women and geese, there's noise."
There's lots of folklore, much of it propagated by men. But is there any truth to the notion that women talk more than men?
In a brief article today in the journal Science, researchers from the Universities of Texas and Arizona conclude that "the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded."
A collection of six studies involving nearly 400 people - most of them U.S. and Mexican psychology students fitted with microphones and recorders for up to 10 days - found no significant gender difference in the number of words they uttered.
"Both men and women on average spoke about 16,000 words per day," said James W. Pennebaker, professor and chairman of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
In some of the campus groups studied, women did talk more than men. But in others, the men out-yakked the women. One of the talkers uttered a mere 695 words per day, while the most insufferable ran on for a staggering 47,016 words. That's nearly 2,800 words per hour for 17 waking hours.
That's not to say that men and women are equally talkative under all circumstances. Previous research has documented real gender differences under varied circumstances. Boys tend to dominate discussions in classrooms, for example, and women tend to talk more under emotional stress.
Advance word of the study's conclusions touched off an avalanche of media inquiries.
"It's horrifying," said Pennebaker, the lead author, who has been fielding questions from reporters as far-flung as South Africa and Asia.
"It's the first time in my life that I've published an article with a non-effect, gotten it published in a top journal and had this much media interest," he said. "That's not the way science is supposed to be. We found nothing."
Nothing, perhaps. But a "nothing" that flies in the face of widely held perceptions and stereotypes.
"Absolutely women talk more than men ... because women are more in control, maybe to take care of everybody ... and it takes a lot more words," said Susan Holtzapple, 51, of Manchester, Pa., who was visiting the Inner Harbor yesterday with Barb Brillhart, 68, of Dover, Pa.
"I talk him to death," Brillhart said of her husband of almost 52 years.
Such perceptions are stereotypes, which serve to maintain "a certain kind of status quo," said Margret Grebowicz, an assistant professor of philosophy at Goucher College who teaches a course on science and gender.
"On the other hand, we tend to fall right into them and maintain them in our most daily, banal activities," she said.
Pennebaker decided to test the notion of gender and chatter after neuropsychiatrist and author Luan Brizendine, in her 2006 book The Female Brain, said a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses a mere 7,000.
The very same numbers have cropped up in news reports and publications for 15 years, Pennebaker found. But efforts to find the original research that produced the numbers have come up dry.
"There is no original source," Pennebaker concluded. But "no one ever questions it." To his mind, "the numbers didn't make any sense based on everything I've studied."
But the truth of the notion had never been tested. So, Pennebaker contacted some colleagues and together they plumbed data from six language studies done between 1998 and 2004 - five at U.S. colleges and one in Monterrey, Mexico.
In each of the studies, and for a variety of reasons, students wore recording devices that captured 30 seconds of speech every 12 minutes during waking hours.
The recorded words were counted, and the numbers were extrapolated to estimate the total number spoken during a presumed 17-hour waking day.
The researchers found that the male students averaged 15,669 words per day, while the females averaged 16,215, a statistically meaningless difference.
What's more, the data showed that women were no more likely than men to be among the most talkative in the six samples.
Among the top 17 percent of word users, the gender breakdown was 50/50. The three top talkers in the crowd? All men.
So where does the notion of female chatterboxes come from? Some of it is surely folklore, reinforced by repetition and perhaps by politics, Goucher's Grebowicz said.
"Gender is a cultural construct ... and it's maintained culturally," she said. "So with some stereotypes you end up in a vicious circle. Because our culture is so shot through with this, we do this - we live this way."
So, she said, she and her girlfriends "all go to the bathroom and powder our noses together. ... We do it because it's how we maintain our femininity." Meanwhile, men learn to be "stoic and silent."
Pennebaker agrees the gabbing female is a pervasive stereotype, but "for the life of us we're not sure where it comes from," he said. "There are a lot of guesses."
For example, there is evidence that women talk more than men when they're grappling with emotional stress or conflict. "Women talk more and men clam up," Pennebaker said. "Those moments become very salient for both people," perhaps reinforcing both the memory and the stereotype.
Maria Hensey, 46, in Baltimore on a sailing tour of the Chesapeake with her husband and children from Limerick, Ireland, agreed. "In my view Irish women talk much more than Irish men," she said, especially under stress. The women talk, while Irish men "go to the bar and have a pint and talk about something else."
But why such a difference?
Pennebaker said there is some research suggesting that emotional arousal is much more "aversive" - unpleasant or frightening - for men. Perhaps it's hormonal differences, or an evolutionary adaptation.
"Possibly men could be adapted to avoid this so they can go kill mountain lions better" without losing their focus on survival, he said. "The flip side is that females are adapted to be more emotionally sensitive to others, especially in terms of early childrearing." But such ideas are "wildly speculative."
There are language differences between the genders that don't include talkativeness, Pennebaker said. His own research has found that men tend to talk more about objects and things - "tools and carburetors," he said - while women use more pronouns and references to other people.
Other studies have found that men tend to dominate public conversations where talk is associated with status and power. Women tend to talk more in private contexts, where language serves to cement social connections.
"My wife will be on the telephone for two hours, and I will take two minutes," said John Ennis, 77, visiting Baltimore yesterday from Philadelphia. "I do business on the telephone, and ... she uses the telephone to keep in touch."
But looking to our anthropological origins to explain differences is risky because "anthropology is the least-innocent discourse in all of science," Grebowicz said. For a century or more anthropologists were complicit in constructing Eurocentric racial theories employed to justify racism.
"Women and men talk very differently," she agreed. "They speak differently in different social contexts. But again, of course that's the case, because we live in a culture where gender is policed so strongly that we police ourselves."
Pennebaker said his data do not allow the social context of the students' conversations to be so finely parsed.
He also allows that the 17- to 29-year-olds whose language he recorded may not be typical. "There might be something special about people that age," he said.
"It's quite possible, after that [their college years], that guys run out of things to say, and women continue talking."
frank.roylance@baltsun.com
Men vs. Women: Who talks the most
Study participants: 396 college students, ages 17-29; 53 percent female, 47 percent male
Average words per day: Women, 16,215; men, 15,669*
Fewest words per day: 695
Most words per day: 47,016
Top 17 percent of talkers: 50 percent men, 50 percent women
Top three talkers: All men* Difference is not statistically significant
[Source: Study in journal Science]