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Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women's styles of friendship and conversation aren't inherently better than men's, simply different.
Deborah Tannen -
I can't tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental.
Deborah Tannen
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A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other.
Deborah Tannen -
A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life.
Deborah Tannen -
Our ways of relating to each other become like habits.
Deborah Tannen -
Many mothers and daughters are as close as any two people can be, but closeness always carries with it the need - indeed, the desire - to consider how your actions will affect the other person, and this can make you feel that you are no longer in control of your own life.
Deborah Tannen -
For many women, and a fair number of men, saying 'I'm sorry' isn't literally an apology; it's a ritual way of restoring balance to a conversation.
Deborah Tannen -
Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony.
Deborah Tannen
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Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.
Deborah Tannen -
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.
Deborah Tannen -
I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conversational style'. That was my dissertation.
Deborah Tannen -
The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.
Deborah Tannen -
When Clinton first appeared on the national stage back in 1992, the young wife of the Arkansas governor running for president, she kept her natural-brown hair off her face with a headband.
Deborah Tannen -
Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention - an argument culture.
Deborah Tannen
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In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents.
Deborah Tannen -
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.
Deborah Tannen -
Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own.
Deborah Tannen -
I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships.
Deborah Tannen -
My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that linguistics has something to offer in understanding and improving relationships.
Deborah Tannen -
I was one of those daughters who saw my mother as my enemy when I was a teen.
Deborah Tannen
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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.
Deborah Tannen -
The political Right is particularly vehement when it comes to compromise. Conservatives are now strongly swayed by the Tea Party movement, whose clarion call is a refusal to compromise regardless of the practical consequences.
Deborah Tannen -
You're not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from.
Deborah Tannen -
Now I am married to a man who is a partner and friend. We come from similar backgrounds and share values and interests. It is a continual source of pleasure to talk to him.
Deborah Tannen