Commentary: New book can help female attorneys improve communication skills.

Byline: Jane Pribek

Um, I don't know if this is a good idea, but I thought we could...

This probably sounds stupid, but I thought one way we could handle this...

If you're prone to beginning your presentations at office meetings in either way, chances are you're female.

So wrote Claire Damken Brown and Audrey Nelson, co-authors of a new book geared for women in business, Code Switching: How to Talk So Men Will Listen.

The title refers to a linguistics term, and it means having knowledge of two cultures or languages and readily swapping between them, depending on the situation, to best communicate your message.

Damken Brown and Nelson, who both hold PhDs in gender communications, stress they're not attempting to re-make women into men, nor do they bash men, per se. Rather, they want women to be consciously mixing it up using both male and female communication styles to produce an overall androgynous, synergistic approach.

As previously noted, the book is geared toward success in the office -- it's not particular to the legal world (which explains why it's available for about $12 plus shipping at Amazon.com, instead of costing about five times that much from a legal publisher). But there are numerous parallels to be made; when you're speaking to impress a point upon a male boss, you want to use a similar approach with a male judge at a pretrial conference.

Maybe you already knew this, but you don't want to use the two approaches mentioned at the beginning of this review.

Both are qualifiers embedded with disclaimers. The qualifier part refers to a common linguistic pattern for women (and, sadly, children): They tend to use attention beginnings to bait the listener, such as, You're not going to believe this.... The disclaimer is the apology or excuse made immediately afterward, that women often throw in to distance themselves from the point they're about to make.

It diminishes the speaker's credibility, and it's ridiculously common. This reviewer pleads guilty.

Another pattern the authors identify: Men value brevity. Think of Joe Friday's catchphrase, Just the facts, ma'am, when women told their life stories.

The authors suggest adopting a pyramid style when answering a question. Answer with a yes or no, or a one-sentence explanation. This is the top of the...

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