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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Deborah Tannen

Comfort

Pain

Better

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It might seem at first surprising that when I studied women and men talking at work, I found that women 'interrupted' each other more often than men did - when they were in all-women conversations. "

Deborah Tannen

Work

Men

" A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it's just not as critical. "

" 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. "

" Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think it is important to remember that there are so many different ways to be sisters. "

" The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer. "

Deborah Tannen

Shots

Bind

" It is easy to understand why conflict is so often highlighted: Writers of headlines or promotional copy want to catch attention and attract an audience. They are usually under time pressure, which lures them to established, conventionalized ways of expressing ideas in the absence of leisure to think up entirely new ones. "

" 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. "

" Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words. "

" For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. "

" I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conversational style'. That was my dissertation. "

" 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. "