Deborah Tannen Quotes

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.

A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn't get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will.

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.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.

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.

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.

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.

Smashing heads does not open minds.

[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.

One reason it's so difficult to decide what to say became immediately clear: comments and questions that some appreciated were not appreciated by others.

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord.

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.

The desire for freedom and independence becomes more of an issue for many men in relationships, whereas interdependence and connection become more of an issue for many women.

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.

Any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life.

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence.

Knowing that somewhere in the world there is someone who cares what you wore, an insignificant detail of your life that would seem unimportant to anyone else, makes you feel more connected to that person and less alone in the world.

A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity--a ratification of one's way of being human and one's way in the world.

Many women feel it is natural to consult with their partners at every turn, while many men automatically make more decisions without consulting their partners.

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.

But if you parry individuals points - a negative and defensive enterprise - you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true - a positive act.

But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.
As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.
In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the othe

More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.

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.

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight.

If women resent men's tendency to offer solutions to problems, men complain about women's refusal to take action to solve the problems.

Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same.

Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict.

One man commented that he and I seemed to have different definitions of gossip. He said, 'To you it seems to be discussion of personal details about people known to the conversationalists. To me, it's a discussion of the weaknesses, character flaws, and failures of third persons, so that the participants in the conversation can feel superior to them. This seems unworthy, hence gossip is bad.

The chivalrous man who holds a door open or signals a woman to go ahead of him when he's driving is negotiating both status and connection.

It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it's because someone is dominating you. If you can't find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like "dominating" and "manipulative.

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.

In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before.

The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn't likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you're doing - intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall.

We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood - heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others.

Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women.

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 ...

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.

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.