Quotes from Deborah Tannen

Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own.

An assumption underlying almost all comments on interruptions is that they are aggressive, but the line between what's perceived as assertiveness or aggressiveness almost certainly shifts with an interrupter's gender.

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.

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.

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.

In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away.

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

It's a particularly modern myth that married people are best friends. The best-friend concept is a uniquely female phenomena.

As a sociolinguist, I want to know how cultural differences affect the ways people talk and listen. My research method, inspired by the work of Robin Lakoff and John Gumperz of the University of California at Berkeley, is sociolinguistic microanalysis. I tape-record and transcribe naturally occurring conversations.

If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do.

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.

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.

A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life.

Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning.

Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention - an argument culture.

The death of compromise has become a threat to our nation as we confront crucial issues such as the debt ceiling and that most basic of legislative responsibilities: a federal budget. At stake is the very meaning of what had once seemed unshakable: 'the full faith and credit' of the U.S. government.

If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd.

My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that linguistics has something to offer in understanding and improving relationships.

The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words.

'Right' and 'wrong' aren't words a linguist uses.

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

Conflict can't be avoided in our public lives any more than we can avoid conflict with people we love. One of the great strengths of our society is that we can express these conflicts openly.