Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!' "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" You're not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from. "

" We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. "

" It's a particularly modern myth that married people are best friends. The best-friend concept is a uniquely female phenomena. "

" In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your parents. "

" 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'. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have two sisters; one is two years older, and one is eight years older. That helped me understand how completely different sister relationships can be. "

Deborah Tannen

Sister

Relationships

" There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact. "

" 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. "

" My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that linguistics has something to offer in understanding and improving relationships. "

" Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations. "

" I can't tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental. "

" Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own. "

" 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'? "

" I was one of those daughters who saw my mother as my enemy when I was a teen. "

" If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, it's seen as weak. But if they talk in ways associated with men or bosses, then they're seen as too aggressive. Whatever they do violates one or the other expectation: either you're not talking as you should as a woman or as boss. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. For part of my life, I was living in Detroit, and I remember a friend of mine commenting she could always tell when I had been speaking to my mother because my New York accent had come back. "

" The word 'sister' evokes an ideal of connection and support, like the friendships that made Rebecca Wells's 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' and Ann Brashares's 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' into best-selling novels and successful films. "

" There is probably no such thing as a level playing field in political campaigns. "

" Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Mothers and daughters find in each other the source of great comfort but also of great pain. We talk to each other in better and worse ways than we talk to anyone else. "

" 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. "