Deborah Tannen Quotes (18 Quotes)


    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.

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

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

    The reaction to the book has been so overwhelming it has totally blown me away. It's clear there's been a need out there.

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


    Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

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

    The repercussions are so deep because our responses are emotional. When you think you're being snubbed, what does that mean It means your 'humanness' is not being acknowledged. When you feel you're being imposed on, your reaction of 'Give me some space' is so automatic.

    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.

    Many of us dismiss talk that does not convey important information as worthless - meaningless small talk if it's a social setting or empty rhetoric if it's public. Such admonitions as Skip the small talk, Get to the point, or Why don't you say what you mean may seem to be reasonable. But they are reasonable only if information is all that counts. This attitude toward talk ignores the fact that people are emotionally involved with each other and that talking is the major way be establish, maintain, monitor and adjust our relationships.

    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.

    When you feel that the people you are dealing with day to day don't have manners, it gives you the feeling that the world is somehow coming apart. It makes you feel that everything is out of control.

    The 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.

    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.

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

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

    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.

    It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship. I think it's because women really are struggling, because it's a very important relationship in your life.


    More Deborah Tannen Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Relationship - People - World - Life - Emotions - Woman - Custom & Convention - Space - Baseball - Listening - Language - Error & Mistake - Daughters - Teachers - Books - Reasoning - Manner - Liberty & Freedom - Facts - View All Deborah Tannen Quotations

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