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" The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate. "
Deborah Tannen
Always
Dominate
Result
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" 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
" Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because they emphasize harmony. "
Deborah Tannen
Value
Conflict
Great
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Children
Writing
Women
" 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
" 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. "
Deborah Tannen
Support
Sister
Successful
" Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning. "
Deborah Tannen
Meaning
Say
Serious
" 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
" For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together - and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation. "
Deborah Tannen
Together
Women
Yourself
" 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
" 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
" There are those who believe that the existence of gender differences at very early ages is evidence that these differences are biological or generic in origin. "
Deborah Tannen
Who
Believe
Differences
" 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
" I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships. "
Deborah Tannen
Study
People
Relationships
" The dynamic of fathers and sons seems to be more around competition regarding things such as knowledge, accomplishments, expertise. "
Deborah Tannen
Competition
Things
More
" 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
" For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it's just not as critical. "
Deborah Tannen
Just
Men
Our
" 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
" Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own. "
Deborah Tannen
Power
Underestimate
Mother
" 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
" Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. "
Deborah Tannen
Other
Power
Own
" Birth order is fascinating, and it is forever. "
Deborah Tannen
Fascinating
Forever
Order
" 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
" 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
" There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that impact. "
Deborah Tannen
First
Born
Impact
" In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away. "
Deborah Tannen
Try
World
Support
" I think it is important to remember that there are so many different ways to be sisters. "
Deborah Tannen
Remember
Think
Different
" 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
" 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