Deborah Tannen Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 53 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Deborah Tannen.
Famous Quotes By Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight. — Deborah Tannen
We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. — Deborah Tannen
When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure. — Deborah Tannen
In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before. — Deborah Tannen
Knowing that somewhere in the world there is someone who cares what you wore, an insignificant detail of your life that would seem unimportant to anyone else, makes you feel more connected to that person and less alone in the world. — Deborah Tannen
The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity--a ratification of one's way of being human and one's way in the world. — Deborah Tannen
We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood - heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant. — Deborah Tannen
The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn't likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you're doing - intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall. — Deborah Tannen
Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman. — Deborah Tannen
The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
Any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life. — Deborah Tannen
If women resent men's tendency to offer solutions to problems, men complain about women's refusal to take action to solve the problems. — Deborah Tannen
But if you parry individuals points - a negative and defensive enterprise - you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true - a positive act. — Deborah Tannen
The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way. — Deborah Tannen
[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. — Deborah Tannen
Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
The allure of love is to have someone who knows you so well that you don't have to explain yourself. It is the promise of someone who cares enough about you to protect you against the world of strangers who do not wish you well. — Deborah Tannen
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
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. — Deborah Tannen
All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence. — Deborah Tannen
For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women. — Deborah Tannen
It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated. — Deborah Tannen
Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked. — Deborah Tannen
In dialogue, there is opposition, yes, but no head-on collision. Smashing heads does not open minds. — Deborah Tannen
Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn't get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will. — Deborah Tannen
The Pavlovian view of women voters - plug the words in, and they will respond - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands. But there's a difference between a private conversation and a presidential election, between what we want from our leaders. — Deborah Tannen
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 ... — Deborah Tannen
If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do. — Deborah Tannen
Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict. — Deborah Tannen
It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it's because someone is dominating you. If you can't find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like "dominating" and "manipulative. — Deborah Tannen
Smashing heads does not open minds. — Deborah Tannen
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. — Deborah Tannen
More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking. — Deborah Tannen