Top 55 Deborah Tannen Quotes

Our ways of relating to each other become like habits.

I was one of those daughters who saw my mother as my enemy when I was a teen.

For many women, and a fair number of men, saying ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t literally an apology; it’s a ritual way of restoring balance to a conversation.

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.

The dynamic of fathers and sons seems to be more around competition regarding things such as knowledge, accomplishments, expertise.

Sisters, to me, are fascinating because it is a unique connection of the coming together of connection and competition. The fact that you have these age differences is a built-in power struggle, and the fact that you’re all trying to get attention and resources from the same parents creates competition.

The culture of critique undermines the spirit not only of people in public roles but of those who read about them, afraid to believe in anyone or anything because the next story… will tell them why they shouldn’t.

People vary. You change your style, your hair, and the way you dress. Talking differently will be a part of that.

New Yorkers seem to think the best thing two people can do is talk.

A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other.

Asian cultures… place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony.

If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, it’s seen as weak. But if they talk in ways associated with men or bosses, then they’re seen as too aggressive. Whatever they do violates one or the other expectation: either you’re not talking as you should as a woman or as boss.

The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.

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

In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.

It might seem at first surprising that when I studied women and men talking at work, I found that women ‘interrupted’ each other more often than men did – when they were in all-women conversations.

When Clinton first appeared on the national stage back in 1992, the young wife of the Arkansas governor running for president, she kept her natural-brown hair off her face with a headband.

When did the word ‘compromise’ get compromised? When did the negative connotations of ‘He was caught in a compromising position’ or ‘She compromised her ethics’ replace the positive connotations of ‘They reached a compromise’?

We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that’s going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we’re talking to. And so I think it’s kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you’re speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.

The long history of conversations that family members share contributes not only to how listeners interpret words but also to how speakers choose them.

‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ aren’t words a linguist uses.

My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early in my career on conversations between speakers of different ethnic and regional backgrounds.

A sister is someone who owns part of what you own: a house, perhaps, or a less tangible legacy, like memories of your childhood and the experience of your family.

In my own writing, I avoid ‘female’ and try to say ‘woman’ because I feel that the word ‘female’ has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of ‘female’ to me is more appropriate for a female animal.

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.

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

Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition overweighted.

Everything you say in a family carries meaning from all that was said before. So with friends, there is less likelihood of a few words triggering associations from childhood, where our deepest emotions often are rooted.

Sister relationships span a huge range, from best friends to worst enemies. From ‘I adore her; I talk to her five times a day’ to ‘I decided to cut her out of my life.’ For most women, it’s in between.

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.

While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leader and a good woman are mutually exclusive. A good leader must be tough, but a good woman must not be. A good woman must be self-deprecating, but a good leader must not be.

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

There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact.

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

There is probably no such thing as a level playing field in political campaigns.

For each other, at each other: Sisters can be either or both. The same could be said of people in any close relationship. Yet there is something special about sisters – specially gratifying and specially fraught.

For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it’s just not as critical.

I can’t tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental.

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

My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail.

I’ve long believed that if you understand how conversational styles work, you can make adjustments in conversations to get what you want in your relationships.

It’s an interesting point about sisters not getting the same attention as parents and children, and even brothers. I suspect it’s just because women didn’t count that much and weren’t the ones writing the accounts.

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.

The political Right is particularly vehement when it comes to compromise. Conservatives are now strongly swayed by the Tea Party movement, whose clarion call is a refusal to compromise regardless of the practical consequences.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. For part of my life, I was living in Detroit, and I remember a friend of mine commenting she could always tell when I had been speaking to my mother because my New York accent had come back.

Maybe we’re kind of predisposed to think that anything a politician does is calculated and therefore suspect.

Most non-New Yorkers, finding themselves within hearing range of strangers’ conversation, think it’s nice to pretend they didn’t hear. But many New Yorkers think it’s nice to toss in a relevant comment.

There’s the bond of a connection and the bond of bondage… When you are connected to somebody, everything each one does affects the other, and it’s a kind of bondage. You’re not as free as you would be if that person wasn’t in your life.

Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women’s styles of friendship and conversation aren’t inherently better than men’s, simply different.

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

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

The double bind lowers its boom on women in positions of authority, so those who haven’t yet risen to such positions have not yet felt its full weight.

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

The study of gender and language might seem at first to be a narrowly focused field, but it is actually as interdisciplinary as they come.

I wouldn’t say that it’s hard for sisters to treat each other with respect. Many do.