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" I can't tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental. "
Deborah Tannen
Older
Heard
How
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" 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
" Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony. "
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Value
Conflict
Great
" Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention - an argument culture. "
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Culture
Argument
Atmosphere
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Straightforward
Two
You
" My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail. "
Deborah Tannen
Discover
Why
Fail
" 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
" The dynamic of fathers and sons seems to be more around competition regarding things such as knowledge, accomplishments, expertise. "
Deborah Tannen
Competition
Things
More
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Many mothers and daughters are as close as any two people can be, but closeness always carries with it the need - indeed, the desire - to consider how your actions will affect the other person, and this can make you feel that you are no longer in control of your own life. "
Deborah Tannen
Desire
You
People
" A sister is the one person you can call in the middle of the night when you can't sleep or the one who doesn't want to hear about your problems unless you're ready to do something about them. She's the one who is there when you need her or the one whose absence when you need her hurts the most. "
Deborah Tannen
She
Night
Problems
" People vary. You change your style, your hair, and the way you dress. Talking differently will be a part of that. "
Deborah Tannen
People
Hair
Dress
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Man
Woman
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
" 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
" I wouldn't say that it's hard for sisters to treat each other with respect. Many do. "
Deborah Tannen
Treat
Hard
Respect
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I was one of those daughters who saw my mother as my enemy when I was a teen. "
Deborah Tannen
Saw
Who
Mother
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Age
Power
Struggle
" This idea that we should be best friends with our partner of the opposite gender leads toward tremendous frustration. Did you ever notice that while men often refer to their wives as best friends, women usually refer to another woman in that way? "
Deborah Tannen
Frustration
Men
Best
" 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
" In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell others what to do, and taking orders is a marker of low status. 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
Women
Men
Independence
" 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
" We all feel wistfulness or regret about roads not taken. "
Deborah Tannen
Taken
Feel
Regret