Deborah Tannen Quotes

• Relationships are made of talk – and talk is for girls and women.

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Integrity/Individuality, Interdependence, Communication, Community

• If you come from, say, the northeastern part of the United States when you’re listening you need to show you’re alive. You need to talk along. That’s the way you show you’re interested. But in many parts of the United States if you talk along, that’s rude, that’s interruption. Now, we all agree interruption is rude. But we don’t agree on what constitutes an interruption.

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Diversity, Language, Communication

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

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Integrity/Individuality

• 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.

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Advice, Mother, Power

• Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other’s.

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Power

• We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Language

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

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Relationships, Communication

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

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Diversity, Relationships, Communication

• 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

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in War, Language

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

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Connections, Women, Relationships, Communication

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

  Deborah Tannen

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Perception, Understanding, Communication

Deborah Tannen (12)

Birth:	7th June, 1945
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Author, Professor

About

Deborah Frances Tannen is an American author and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. She earned B.A. degree in English Literature. She went on to earn a Masters in English Literature at Wayne State University. Later, she continued her academic studies at UC Berkeley, earning an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She has written and edited many books including Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends; Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse; Gender and Discourse; and The Handbook of Discourse Analysis.

Related Authors

• Robert Reich
• Anthony Ryan
• Kate Chopin
• Diane Cilento
• Dinesh D'Souza
• Mika Waltari
• Jeremy Paxman
• Shirley MacLaine
• James Bovard
• Margaret Sackville

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 15th January

Births

• 1897 - Xu Zhimo
• 1915 - Alan Lomax
• 1970 - Will Oldham
• 1947 - Pete Waterman
• 1841 - Sarah Doudney

Deaths

• 1996 - Les Baxter
• 2011 - Susannah York
• 1917 - William De Morgan
• 1982 - Red Smith
• 1947 - Victor Robinson