Quote

All communication is more or less cross-cultural. We learn to use language as we grow up, and growing up in different parts of the country, having different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, even just being male or female - all result in different ways of talking.

Deborah Tannen

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Deborah Tannen
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: June 7
Linguist
Professor
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Deborah Frances Tannen
Use
Growing
Crosses
Country
Grows
Parts
Different
Class
Result
Ethnic
Even
Religious
Communication
Backgrounds
Way
Talking
Female
Cultural
Less
Grow
Male
Learn
Results
Males
Language
Ways
Cross

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It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated.
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In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before.
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Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.
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Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight.
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To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more than just their ideas get heard. It's a sign of respect. It makes people feel valued.
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The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others.
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[T]he seeds of [the Argument Culture] can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea . . . setting up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate.
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The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.
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In dialogue, there is opposition, yes, but no head-on collision. Smashing heads does not open minds.
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When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they will look temporarily--in the end they turn away, we really need to develop other metaphors and not talk about two sides, but talk about all sides.
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any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life.
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Words can be like weapons of destruction: It takes so much effort, and the cooperation of so many people, to build something - and so little effort of so few to tear it down.
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Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women.
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Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.
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Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same.
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Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.
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All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence.
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Part of the reason images of women in positions of authority are marked by their gender is that the very notion of authority is associated with maleness.
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