Quotes by Deborah Tannen - Page 3

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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
New York
Brooklyn
Detroit
Grew
Life Remember My Life
Life Mother Always
Accent
Friend
Commenting
Mine
Speaking
York
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Likelihood
Rooted
Associations
Carries
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In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Common
Communicators
Conversation
Discourse
Enlightenment
Entertainment
Interrupting
Public Discourse
Sound
Today
Great Today Past
Conversational
Public
In The Past
Orator
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When did the word 'compromise' get compromised? When did the negative connotations of 'He was caught in a compromising position' or 'She compromised her ethics' replace the positive connotations of 'They reached a compromise'?
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Caught
Compromise
Ethics
Connotations
Reached
Replace
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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 / Professor
Compromise
Refusal
Tea Party
Tea Party Movement
Vehement
Consequences
Conservatives
Practical
Regardless
Strongly
Swayed
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The allure of love is to have someone who knows you so well that you don't have to explain yourself. It is the promise of someone who cares enough about you to protect you against the world of strangers who do not wish you well.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Love Is
Promise
Wish
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In my own writing, I avoid 'female' and try to say 'woman' because I feel that the word 'female' has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of 'female' to me is more appropriate for a female animal.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Animal
Appropriate
Biology
Mammals
Connotations
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My mother cared a lot about clothes. It was a point of friction because when I was a teenager, and I only wanted to wear my father's shirts, and I never wanted to wear makeup, she would say: 'Put on lipstick.' That was her thing.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Friction
Lipstick
Makeup
Shirts
Cared
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Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn't feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Men
Father
Mother
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Attention
Book
Conversation
Insight
Ask
Understand
Why
Men Women Why
Directions
Issue
Perhaps
Question
Women And Men
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American popular culture, like individuals in daily life, tends to either romanticize or demonize mothers. We ricochet between 'Everything I ever accomplished I owe to my mother' and 'Every problem I have in my life is my mother's fault.'
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Accomplished
Daily Life
Popular Culture
Demonize
Owe
Mothers
Tends
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Life Your Free
Affects
Bond
Connection
Each One
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I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words change their functions in that way. It's one of the most common phenomena about words. They start as one thing, and they end up as something else.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Common
Adjective
Phenomena
Functions
Noun
Something Else
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[T]he seeds of [the Argument Culture] can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea . . . setting up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Teacher
Ideas
Winning
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It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
War
Fighting
Taken
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This idea that we should be best friends with our partner of the opposite gender leads toward tremendous frustration. Did you ever notice that while men often refer to their wives as best friends, women usually refer to another woman in that way?
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Another Woman
Frustration
Best Men Women
Opposite
Tremendous
Best Women Men
Leads
Notice
Partner
Refer
Toward
Wives
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When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they will look temporarily--in the end they turn away, we really need to develop other metaphors and not talk about two sides, but talk about all sides.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Running
Long
Two Sides
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The word 'sister' evokes an ideal of connection and support, like the friendships that made Rebecca Wells's 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' and Ann Brashares's 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' into best-selling novels and successful films.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Divine
Pants
Sisterhood
Connection
Friendships
Ideal
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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 / Professor
Alone
Communication
Independence
Cogs
Intimacy
Juggling
Needs
Act
Balancing
Concert
Conflicting
Simply
Others
Rather
Survive
To Survive
Wheel
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When women told me they'd always wished they had a sister, they were thinking of this ideal of mutual encouragement and support. Many of those who have sisters also yearn for this ideal because their relationships with their sisters don't always live up to it.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Encouragement
Sister
Mutual
Ideal
Relationships
Wished
Yearn
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For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together - and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Amiable
Blow
Conversation
Glue
Wounded
Chat
Exploded
Explosive
Holds
Perfectly
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All communication is more or less cross-cultural. We learn to use language as we grow up, and growing up in different parts of the country, having different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, even just being male or female - all result in different ways of talking.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Country
Growing Up
Religious
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Exclusive
Good Leader
Requirements
Self Deprecating
Tough
Good Man Must
Good Man Woman
Mutually
Mutually Exclusive
Similar
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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 / Professor
Closeness
Life Always Your
Actions
Affect
Carries
Life Control People
Indeed
Mothers
Two People
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Compare
Length
Topics
Sisters
Women Always More
Closer
Talked
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A sister is the one person you can call in the middle of the night when you can't sleep or the one who doesn't want to hear about your problems unless you're ready to do something about them. She's the one who is there when you need her or the one whose absence when you need her hurts the most.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Sister
Absence
Ready
Hurts
Whose
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When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Different
Events
Play
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Compromise
Credit
Crucial
Debt
Debt Ceiling
Threat
Unshakable
Budget
Ceiling
Confront
Legislative
Meaning Of
Responsibilities
Stake
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If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, it's seen as weak. But if they talk in ways associated with men or bosses, then they're seen as too aggressive. Whatever they do violates one or the other expectation: either you're not talking as you should as a woman or as boss.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Aggressive
Boss
Demeanor
Feminine
Not Talking
Weak
Men Women Woman
Associated
Bosses
Expectation
Women Men Boss
Violates
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Sisters, to me, are fascinating because it is a unique connection of the coming together of connection and competition. The fact that you have these age differences is a built-in power struggle, and the fact that you're all trying to get attention and resources from the same parents creates competition.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Differences
Fascinating
Sisters
Connection
Creates
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Mothers subject their daughters to a level of scrutiny people usually reserve for themselves. A mother's gaze is like a magnifying glass held between the sun's rays and kindling. It concentrates the rays of imperfection on her daughter's yearning for approval. The result can be a conflagration - whoosh.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Daughter
Approval
Magnifying
Rays
Scrutiny
Sun
Yearning
Gaze
Glass
Held
Mothers
Reserve
Result
Subject
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We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we're talking to. And so I think it's kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you're speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Idiom
Politeness
Truth Is
Assume
Depending
Gesture
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One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Houston
Milwaukee
Native
Nice Things
San Francisco
Understood
People New Speak
Exactly
Francisco
New Yorker
San
Wherever
Yorker
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As a sociolinguist, I want to know how cultural differences affect the ways people talk and listen. My research method, inspired by the work of Robin Lakoff and John Gumperz of the University of California at Berkeley, is sociolinguistic microanalysis. I tape-record and transcribe naturally occurring conversations.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Berkeley
California
Differences
Method
Affect
Work People Research
Naturally
Conversations
Work Research People
Cultural
Robin
University Of California
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Absence
Attention
Audience
Conflict
Easy
Headlines
Ideas
Leisure
Pressure
Understand
Why
Established
Catch
Copy
Often
Entirely
Writers
Expressing
New Ones
Ways
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Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Annoyance
Goodwill
Joke
Interpreted
Notice
Speaker
Statement
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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.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Hierarchy
Response
Versus
Connection
Contrasting
Frustrations
Hears
Resulting
Same Thing
Sheds
Troubles
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Conversations with sisters can spark extremes of anger or extremes of love. Everything said between sisters carries meaning not only from what was just said but from all the conversations that came before - and 'before' can span a lifetime. The layers of meaning combine profound connection with equally profound competition.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Anger
Extremes
Layers
Lifetime
Profound
Sisters
Carries
Combine
Connection
Conversations
Equally
Meaning
Span
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The argument culture urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition over-weighted.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Agreement
Mind
People
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In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell others what to do, and taking orders is a marker of low status. Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Independence
Different Directions
Focus
Humans
Intimacy
Ran
Men Women Independence
Men Women Focus
Directions
Establishing
Women Men Independence
Lifeblood
Low
Orders
Primary
Second
Status
Taking
Tend
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The Pavlovian view of women voters - 'plug the words in, and they will respond' - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Communication
Adaptation
Chill
Spine
Voters
Respond
Plug
Sends
Sexes
Sounds
View
Understands
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Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Adoration
Corresponding
Criticism
Devilish
Interference
Matched
Overwhelming
Well Being
Attempts
Contradictions
Grown
Mixed
Mothers
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The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Power
Doors
Hands
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The Pavlovian view of women voters - plug the words in, and they will respond - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands. But there's a difference between a private conversation and a presidential election, between what we want from our leaders.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Women
Communication
Sex
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To say anything about women and men without marking oneself as either feminist or anti-feminist, male-basher or apologist for men seems as impossible for a woman as trying to get dressed in the morning without inviting interpretations of her character. Sitting at the conference table musing on these matters, I felt sad to think that we women didn't have the freedom to be unmarked that the men sitting next to us had. Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Men
Morning
Character
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The argument culture urges us to approach the world - and the people in it - in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as 'both sides'; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize.
Deborah Tannen / Professor
Ideas
Party
Thinking
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