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" 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. "

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" 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

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

" Our ways of relating to each other become like habits. "

Deborah Tannen

Our

Ways

" 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

" 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. "

" We all feel wistfulness or regret about roads not taken. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For many women, and a fair number of men, saying 'I'm sorry' isn't literally an apology; it's a ritual way of restoring balance to a conversation. "

" Birth order is fascinating, and it is forever. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Conversations with sisters can spark extremes of anger or extremes of love. Everything said between sisters carries meaning not only from what was just said but from all the conversations that came before - and 'before' can span a lifetime. The layers of meaning combine profound connection with equally profound competition. "

" I've long believed that if you understand how conversational styles work, you can make adjustments in conversations to get what you want in your relationships. "

" The long history of conversations that family members share contributes not only to how listeners interpret words but also to how speakers choose them. "

" When evidence emerged that Clinton was a devoted mother, Margaret Carlson writing in 'TIME' found her guilty of 'yuppie overdoting on her daughter.' "

" Back when the powerful 19th-century senator Henry Clay was called 'the great compromiser,' achieving a compromise really was considered great. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The dynamic of fathers and sons seems to be more around competition regarding things such as knowledge, accomplishments, expertise. "

Deborah Tannen

Competition

Things

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "