Deborah Tannen Quotes

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

Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication

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.

To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more than just their ideas get heard. It's a sign of respect. It makes people feel valued.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

Words can be like weapons of destruction: It takes so much effort, and the cooperation of so many people, to build something - and so little effort of so few to tear it down.

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.

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.

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

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

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord.

[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.

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

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

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