Deborah Tannen Quotes
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It is easy to understand why conflict is so often highlighted: Writers of headlines or promotional copy want to catch attention and attract an audience. They are usually under time pressure, which lures them to established, conventionalized ways of expressing ideas in the absence of leisure to think up entirely new ones.
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The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.
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For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it's just not as critical.
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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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Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women.
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There is probably no such thing as a level playing field in political campaigns.
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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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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.
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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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There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact.
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While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leader and a good woman are mutually exclusive. A good leader must be tough, but a good woman must not be. A good woman must be self-deprecating, but a good leader must not be.
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The death of compromise has become a threat to our nation as we confront crucial issues such as the debt ceiling and that most basic of legislative responsibilities: a federal budget. At stake is the very meaning of what had once seemed unshakable: 'the full faith and credit' of the U.S. government.
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There's the bond of a connection and the bond of bondage... When you are connected to somebody, everything each one does affects the other, and it's a kind of bondage. You're not as free as you would be if that person wasn't in your life.
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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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The culture of critique undermines the spirit not only of people in public roles but of those who read about them, afraid to believe in anyone or anything because the next story... will tell them why they shouldn't.
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I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. For part of my life, I was living in Detroit, and I remember a friend of mine commenting she could always tell when I had been speaking to my mother because my New York accent had come back.
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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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Everything you say in a family carries meaning from all that was said before. So with friends, there is less likelihood of a few words triggering associations from childhood, where our deepest emotions often are rooted.
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My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail.
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I can't tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental.
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It's an interesting point about sisters not getting the same attention as parents and children, and even brothers. I suspect it's just because women didn't count that much and weren't the ones writing the accounts.
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In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents.
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When daughters react with annoyance or even anger at the smallest, seemingly innocent remarks, mothers get the feeling that talking to their daughters can be like walking on eggshells: they have to watch every word.
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Our ways of relating to each other become like habits.