Our Friends Deborah Tannen Quotes
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~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
If you come from, say, the northeastern part of the United States when you're listening you need to show you're alive. You need to talk along. That's the way you show you're interested. But in many parts of the United States if you talk along, that's rude, that's interruption. Now, we all agree interruption is rude. But we don't agree on what constitutes an interruption.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
I think it's that the same dynamics that go on between any close relationship go on here. It's just particularly intense between mothers and daughters.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote
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.
~ Deborah Tannen Quote