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
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
The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words. – Deborah Tannen
One of the first studies in the field of gender and language, by Don H. Zimmerman and Candace West in 1975, found that in casual conversations between women and men, women were interrupted far more often. – Deborah Tannen
Many mothers or daughters assume that words only mean one thing. ‘If I feel criticised, that has to be the whole story’, and ‘if I feel I am being helpful, that has to be the whole story’. – 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
It might seem at first surprising that when I studied women and men talking at work, I found that women ‘interrupted’ each other more often than men did – when they were in all-women conversations. – Deborah Tannen
The dynamic of fathers and sons seems to be more around competition regarding things such as knowledge, accomplishments, expertise. – 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
My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early in my career on conversations between speakers of different ethnic and regional backgrounds. – Deborah Tannen
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
A sister is someone who owns part of what you own: a house, perhaps, or a less tangible legacy, like memories of your childhood and the experience of your family. – Deborah Tannen
When evidence emerged that Clinton was a devoted mother, Margaret Carlson writing in ‘TIME’ found her guilty of ‘yuppie overdoting on her daughter.’ – Deborah Tannen
It’s a particularly modern myth that married people are best friends. The best-friend concept is a uniquely female phenomena. – 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
If you understand gender differences in what I call ‘conversational style’, you may not be able to prevent disagreements from arising, but you stand a better chance of preventing them from spiraling out of control. – Deborah Tannen
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
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
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
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
Asian cultures… place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony. – Deborah Tannen
We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. – Deborah Tannen
Maybe we’re kind of predisposed to think that anything a politician does is calculated and therefore suspect. – Deborah Tannen
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
In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents. – Deborah Tannen
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
