16 Deborah Tannen Quotes

Deborah Tannen quotes

1. 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.

2. 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.

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

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

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

2. In dialogue, there is opposition, yes, but no head-on collision. Smashing heads does not open minds.

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Communication is a continualbalancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacyand independence. To survivein 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.

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

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

10. 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.

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

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