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" I believe the switch from 'lady' to 'woman' was part of the women's movement. 'Lady' was a euphemism for 'woman,' and that was one reason that we wanted to move away from it. "
Deborah Tannen
Women
Believe
Woman
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" The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. "
Deborah Tannen
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" Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition overweighted. "
Deborah Tannen
Cooperation
Conflict
Balance
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Line
Gender
Shifts
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Say
Woman
Animal
" It's a particularly modern myth that married people are best friends. The best-friend concept is a uniquely female phenomena. "
Deborah Tannen
Best
Modern
Myth
" Mothers subject their daughters to a level of scrutiny people usually reserve for themselves. A mother's gaze is like a magnifying glass held between the sun's rays and kindling. It concentrates the rays of imperfection on her daughter's yearning for approval. The result can be a conflagration - whoosh. "
Deborah Tannen
Result
Daughter
Mother
" We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has. "
Deborah Tannen
Language
Realize
Power
" New Yorkers seem to think the best thing two people can do is talk. "
Deborah Tannen
Best
New
People
" When evidence emerged that Clinton was a devoted mother, Margaret Carlson writing in 'TIME' found her guilty of 'yuppie overdoting on her daughter.' "
Deborah Tannen
Guilty
Mother
Time
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Tea
Consequences
Compromise
" My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail. "
Deborah Tannen
Discover
Why
Fail
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Family
Childhood
You
" Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference. "
Deborah Tannen
Help
Feel
Responsibility
" Back when the powerful 19th-century senator Henry Clay was called 'the great compromiser,' achieving a compromise really was considered great. "
Deborah Tannen
Powerful
Achieving
Compromise
" 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
" We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. "
Deborah Tannen
See
Individuals
Others
" 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 long history of conversations that family members share contributes not only to how listeners interpret words but also to how speakers choose them. "
Deborah Tannen
History
Long
Words
" American popular culture, like individuals in daily life, tends to either romanticize or demonize mothers. We ricochet between 'Everything I ever accomplished I owe to my mother' and 'Every problem I have in my life is my mother's fault.' "
Deborah Tannen
Daily
Mother
Life
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I wouldn't say that it's hard for sisters to treat each other with respect. Many do. "
Deborah Tannen
Treat
Hard
Respect
" 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
" Why don't men like to stop and ask directions? This question, which I first addressed in my 1990 book 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation', garnered perhaps the most attention of any issue or insight in that book. "
Deborah Tannen
Book
You
Why
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
California
Know
People
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Must
Tough
Man
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
You
Life
Bond