Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen
Deborah Frances Tannenis an American academic and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She has been McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences following a term in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth7 June 1945
CountryUnited States of America
men public-speaking feels
More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking.
party thinking views
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.
men understanding want
Many men honestly do not know what women want, and women honestly do not know why men find what they want so hard to comprehend and deliver.
mother father men
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.
looks language realizing
We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has
morning character men
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.
frustration men offering
If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do.
communication female males
Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication
communication independence world
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.
reason gender authority
Part of the reason images of women in positions of authority are marked by their gender is that the very notion of authority is associated with maleness.
mistake communication believe
The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.
close dynamics intense mothers relationship
I think it's that the same dynamics that go on between any close relationship go on here. It's just particularly intense between mothers and daughters.
advice bugs cannot daughters mothers obvious powerful reason
Part of the reason (motherly advice) bugs us as daughters is because our mothers are so powerful in our lives. They loom like giants. The reason mothers keep at it is because they're so powerless. They cannot get you to do what is so obvious to them you should do.