Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents. "
Deborah Tannen
Some
Childhood
Parents
Related Quotes:
" Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women's styles of friendship and conversation aren't inherently better than men's, simply different. "
Deborah Tannen
Better
Work
Women
" 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
" My mother cared a lot about clothes. It was a point of friction because when I was a teenager, and I only wanted to wear my father's shirts, and I never wanted to wear makeup, she would say: 'Put on lipstick.' That was her thing. "
Deborah Tannen
Makeup
Father
Clothes
" The double bind lowers its boom on women in positions of authority, so those who haven't yet risen to such positions have not yet felt its full weight. "
Deborah Tannen
Weight
Who
Women
" 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
" There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact. "
Deborah Tannen
First
Born
Impact
" 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
" Our ways of relating to each other become like habits. "
Deborah Tannen
Our
Ways
Like
" If you talk to your friends the way your parents talk, they will think you are stiff and odd. "
Deborah Tannen
Talk
Parents
Friends
" Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. "
Deborah Tannen
Other
Power
Own
" 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
" 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
" The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. "
Deborah Tannen
Relationship
Conversation
Mistake
" Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women. "
Deborah Tannen
Women
Talk
Relationships
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When Clinton first appeared on the national stage back in 1992, the young wife of the Arkansas governor running for president, she kept her natural-brown hair off her face with a headband. "
Deborah Tannen
Young
Back
Wife
" Many mothers or daughters assume that words only mean one thing. 'If I feel criticised, that has to be the whole story', and 'if I feel I am being helpful, that has to be the whole story'. "
Deborah Tannen
Words
Feel
I Am
" 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
" All of us aspire to be powerful, and we all want to connect with others. "
Deborah Tannen
Powerful
Want
Us
" We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we're talking to. And so I think it's kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you're speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom. "
Deborah Tannen
Truth Is
Change
People
" The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate. "
Deborah Tannen
Always
Dominate
Result
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The culture of critique undermines the spirit not only of people in public roles but of those who read about them, afraid to believe in anyone or anything because the next story... will tell them why they shouldn't. "
Deborah Tannen
Spirit
Believe
Culture
" I think it is important to remember that there are so many different ways to be sisters. "
Deborah Tannen
Remember
Think
Different
" 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