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" Birth order is fascinating, and it is forever. "
Deborah Tannen
Fascinating
Forever
Order
Related Quotes:
" I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships. "
Deborah Tannen
Study
People
Relationships
" We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has. "
Deborah Tannen
Language
Realize
Power
" For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it's just not as critical. "
Deborah Tannen
Just
Men
Our
" The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate. "
Deborah Tannen
Always
Dominate
Result
" A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life. "
Deborah Tannen
Sister
Life
Stars
" If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd. "
Deborah Tannen
Talk
Parents
Friends
" I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words change their functions in that way. It's one of the most common phenomena about words. They start as one thing, and they end up as something else. "
Deborah Tannen
Start
Woman
Words
" When women told me they'd always wished they had a sister, they were thinking of this ideal of mutual encouragement and support. Many of those who have sisters also yearn for this ideal because their relationships with their sisters don't always live up to it. "
Deborah Tannen
Support
Sister
Women
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Great
Society
People
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
You
Long
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. "
Deborah Tannen
Focused
Study
Language
" For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. "
Deborah Tannen
Language
Connections
Most
" If you understand gender differences in what I call 'conversational style', you may not be able to prevent disagreements from arising, but you stand a better chance of preventing them from spiraling out of control. "
Deborah Tannen
Gender
Stand
Style
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Family
Experience
Memories
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Government
Meaning
Death
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Think
Conversation
Nice
" One of the first studies in the field of gender and language, by Don H. Zimmerman and Candace West in 1975, found that in casual conversations between women and men, women were interrupted far more often. "
Deborah Tannen
Women
Casual
Gender
" When daughters react with annoyance or even anger at the smallest, seemingly innocent remarks, mothers get the feeling that talking to their daughters can be like walking on eggshells: they have to watch every word. "
Deborah Tannen
Walking
React
Anger
" The contrasting focus on connection versus hierarchy also sheds light on innumerable adult conversations - and frustrations. Say a woman tells another about a personal problem and hears in response, 'I know how you feel' or 'the same thing happens to me.' The resulting 'troubles talk' reinforces the connection between them. "
Deborah Tannen
Woman
Focus
Know
" Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women. "
Deborah Tannen
Women
Talk
Relationships
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Try
World
Support
" 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'? "
Deborah Tannen
Positive
She
Ethics
" I interviewed more than 100 women about their sisters, but if they also had brothers, I asked them to compare. Most said they talked to their sisters more often, at greater length and, yes, about more personal topics. This often meant that they felt closer to their sisters, but not always. "
Deborah Tannen
Said
Always
More
" In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents. "
Deborah Tannen
Some
Childhood
Parents
" Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. "
Deborah Tannen
Other
Power
Own
" I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conversational style'. That was my dissertation. "
Deborah Tannen
New
Three
Style
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Life
Women
Best
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Men
Early
Differences
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Children
Writing
Women
" My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail. "
Deborah Tannen
Discover
Why
Fail