Deborah Tannen Quotes
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New Yorkers seem to think the best thing two people can do is talk.
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The contrasting focus on connection versus hierarchy also sheds light on innumerable adult conversations - and frustrations. Say a woman tells another about a personal problem and hears in response, 'I know how you feel' or 'the same thing happens to me.' The resulting 'troubles talk' reinforces the connection between them.
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In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away.
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If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd.
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We all feel wistfulness or regret about roads not taken.
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Sister relationships span a huge range, from best friends to worst enemies. From 'I adore her; I talk to her five times a day' to 'I decided to cut her out of my life.' For most women, it's in between.
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The study of gender and language might seem at first to be a narrowly focused field, but it is actually as interdisciplinary as they come.
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I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conversational style'. That was my dissertation.
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The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.
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There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact.
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I think it is important to remember that there are so many different ways to be sisters.
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I interviewed more than 100 women about their sisters, but if they also had brothers, I asked them to compare. Most said they talked to their sisters more often, at greater length and, yes, about more personal topics. This often meant that they felt closer to their sisters, but not always.
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In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents.
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Why don't men like to stop and ask directions? This question, which I first addressed in my 1990 book 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation', garnered perhaps the most attention of any issue or insight in that book.
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Our ways of relating to each other become like habits.
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Maybe we're kind of predisposed to think that anything a politician does is calculated and therefore suspect.
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There are those who believe that the existence of gender differences at very early ages is evidence that these differences are biological or generic in origin.
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You're not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from.
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I wouldn't say that it's hard for sisters to treat each other with respect. Many do.
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The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.
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Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony.
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My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail.
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There is probably no such thing as a level playing field in political campaigns.
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I've long believed that if you understand how conversational styles work, you can make adjustments in conversations to get what you want in your relationships.