A study conducted by Matthias Miehl, a researcher at the University of Arizona, has supposedly exposed as a myth the idea that women talk more than men.  The research, which involved equipping 400 college students with recording devices, revealed that, on average, men and women are equal in this regard.

Of course, this myth (if it is a myth) is usually understood as a negative criticism of women, based on the assumption that talking a lot is a character defect.  Women take umbrage at being accused of being more gabby than men are, so they are likely to welcome these findings and declare, "See, I told you so!"  However, as we shall see later, the quantity of words one uses may not be the defining quality of one's conversation or character.

Anyway, since I am a man, I naturally have a male bias that makes me doubt the findings of this research.  Despite an admittedly total absence of statistical data, I believe on the basis of empirical evidence that the female of the species tends to be congenitally more loquacious than the male is, or – in simpler terms – observation has convinced me that women talk more than men do.  Of course, the ladies will declare that this opinion proves nothing other than that I'm a male chauvinistic pig, whereas men will silently agree and say nothing for fear of receiving a tongue-lashing from the ladies.

It is unlikely that research will ever resolve the issue; it's even doubtful whether it is worth resolving.  One cannot help but wonder why anyone would spend time, money, and energy trying to do so (though, in truth, many more frivolous matters have been and are being explored in the interest of "research").  Any fool knows that some individuals of either gender are talkative, whereas others are taciturn.  Aunt Bessie may be afflicted with verbal diarrhea, whereas Uncle George may define "Yup" and "Nope" as a conversation; conversely, Uncle George may be a garrulous gas bag, whereas Aunt Bessie may have uttered her last known complete sentence when she said "I do" at the wedding ceremony.  Even thousands of such cases would prove nothing about where the sexes belong on the gabbiness scale.

Moreover, does the number of words one utters have any significance?  Certainly, what those words are, how they are used, and whether they have meaning are more important.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (to use a contemporary example) and the Internal Revenue Service's Tax Code both contain lots of words – though I think the Tax Code beats Harry by a few million – but I don't think anyone would argue that number of words is a significant basis for evaluating the worth of either one.  Why should we then evaluate people (or entire groups of people, such as males and females) by how many words they utter?

I don't think we do.  When individuals are at extreme ends of the spectrum, we may be somewhat critical.  We may label people who rattle on forever as "boorish," and we may brand people who say almost nothing as "uncommunicative."  In the case of the former, our criticism has more to do with the quality of the words than their quantity; in the case of the latter, we are declaring that too few words, not too many, is the fault.

Let's take an example – one that will brand me not only as a male chauvinist but also as teen-bashing geezer.  No manner of speaking drives me to more distraction than the conversation of many (dare I say "most"?) teenage females.  Once their verbal motors are revved up – a process often activated simply by a ringing cell phone – their mouths and vocal chords launch into a breathless, hundred-mile-per-hour torrent of words punctuated only by exclamations and endless repetitions of the word like:  "He was – Oh my god! – like . . ., and I was – Oh my god! – like . . . ."  What distresses me about these verbal torrents is not how many droplets they contain but how few of those droplets have any meaning whatsoever.  I suspect that, if they could hear themselves for only a few moments, some of them might clam up forever out of sheer embarrassment at how ridiculous they sound.  Of course, this will never happen because they never listen; they are too busy talking.

Therein, I think, lies the true measure of conversation.  The critical quality is not how much we talk, or even in how meaningful our words are, but in how much we listen.  Is anybody researching that?  It would be very hard to do, of course, because having one's mouth shut while someone else is talking may not mean that one is listening; one may only be figuring out the next thing to say.

Once more, without any more scientific support than daily observation, I am thoroughly convinced that the ratio of listening to talking is extremely low.  My rough estimate is that 75% of the words we utter are not listened to.  Without realizing it, we spend a considerable amount of time talking to ourselves.   Who hasn't seen groups of people in, say, a restaurant, and everyone is talking?  You don't have to be a genius to do the math:  100% talking = 0% listening.  All right, you may spot one individual who has his mouth shut, but he's probably wondering who is going to pick up the check or where the rest room is rather than listening.

Thus, I don't think it matters much who talks more – women or men.  What matters is how much we listen, really listen, to one another – and I suspect most of us don't.  The ditzy teen with a nonstop torrent of exclamations, the babbling hordes in the restaurant or the cocktail party, the bloviating politicians and salespeople, the individuals who ask a question and then ignore the answer, the students who sit in classrooms while their minds are far away (their mouths may be shut, but they aren't listening) – all these, and more, are not listening.  We, men and women alike, must reconcile ourselves to the probability that people will hear only a fraction of what we say and will listen to only a fraction of that.  Perhaps if we all talked less and listened more, we would get along better.