Deborah Tannen - That's Not What I Meant! (1987)

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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

In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before.

Deborah Tannen

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.

Deborah Tannen

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence.

Deborah Tannen

The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.

Deborah Tannen