Best Selling Books by Deborah Tannen

Women and men live in different worlds...made of different words. Spending nearly four years on the New York Times bestseller list, including eight months at number one, You Just Don''t Understand is a true cultural and intellectual phenomenon. This is the book that brought gender differences in ways of speaking to the forefront of public awareness. With a rare combination of scientific insight and delightful, humorous writing, Tannen shows why women and men can walk away from the same conversation with completely different impressions of what was said. Studded with lively and entertaining examples of real conversations, this book gives you the tools to understand what went wrong -- and to find a common language in which to strengthen relationships at work and at home. A classic in the field of interpersonal relations, this book will change forever the way you approach conversations.

Deborah Tannen''s You Just Don''t Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen''s insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women''s "essential nature.") The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants'' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman''s Scenes from a Marriage. Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen''s work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.

The bestselling linguistics professor examines how we communicate with each other and how you can maintain an effective conversation. At home, on the job, in a personal relationship, it’s often not what you say but how you say it that counts. Deborah Tannen revolutionized our thinking about relationships between women and men in her #1 bestseller You Just Don’t Understand. In That’s Not What I Meant!, the internationally renowned sociolinguist and expert on communication demonstrates how our conversational signals—voice level, pitch and intonation, rhythm and timing, even the simple turns of phrase we choose—are powerful factors in the success or failure of any relationship. Regional speech characteristics, ethnic and class backgrounds, age, and individual personality all contribute to diverse conversational styles that can lead to frustration and misplaced blame if ignored—but provide tools to improve relationships if they are understood. At once eye-opening, astute, and vastly entertaining, Tannen’s classic work on interpersonal communication will help you to hear what isn’t said and to recognize how your personal conversational style meshes or clashes with others. It will give you a new understanding of communication that will enable you to make the adjustments that can save a conversation . . . or a relationship. “Tannen combines a novelist’s ear for the way people speak with a rare power of original analysis. . . . Fascinating.” —Oliver Sacks “We are, all of us, foreigners to each other: editor and writer, man and woman, Californian and New Yorker, friend and friend. Dr. Tannen shows us how different we are, and how to speak the same language.” —Jack Rosenthal, Pulitzer Prize winner and editor, The New York Times “Tannen has a marvelous ear for the way real people express themselves and a scientist’s command of the inner structures of speech and human relationships.” —Los Angeles Times

THE WORLD''S MOST FAMOUS LINGUIST OFFERS A COMPLETELY ORIGINAL ANALYSIS OF THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE--AND A REVOLUTIONARY LANGUAGE TO LIVE BY! In her #1 bestseller You Just Don''t Understand, Deborah Tannen showed why talking to someone of the opposite sex can be like talking to someone from another world. Now Tannen is back with another groundbreaking book, this time widening her lens to examine the way we communicate in public--in the media, in politics, in our courtrooms, and classrooms--once again letting us see in a new way forces that have powerfully shaped our lives. The war on drugs, the battle of the sexes, political turf combat--in the argument culture, war metaphors pervade our talk and influence our thinking. We approach anything we need to accomplish as a fight between two opposing sides. In this fascinating book, Tannen shows how deeply entrenched this cultural tendency is, the forms it takes, and how it affects us every day--sometimes in useful ways, but often causing damage. The Argument Culture is a remarkable book that will change forever the way you perceive--and communicate with--the world.

Your project went off without a hitch--but somebody else got the credit...You averted a crisis brilliantly--but no one noticed...You came to the meeting with a sensational idea--but it was ignored until someone else said the same thing... HOW CAN YOU GET CREDIT & GET AHEAD? In her extraordinary international bestseller, You Just Don''t Understand, Deborah Tannen transformed forever the way we look at intimate relationships between women and men. Now she turns her keen ear and observant eye toward the workplace--where the ways in which men and women communicate can determine who gets heard, who gets ahead, and what gets done. An instant classic, Talking From 9 to 5 brilliantly explains women''s and men''s conversational rituals--and the language barriers we unintentionally erect in the business world. It is a unique and invaluable guide to recognizing the verbal power games and miscommunications that cause good work to be underappreciated or go unnoticed--an essential tool for promoting more positive and productive professional relationships among men and women.

A study of the mother-daughter relationship examines every aspect of this complex bond and shows how to improve communication within a family by developing an understanding of the other''s point of view.

Why does talk in families so often go in circles, leaving us tied up in knots? In this illuminating book, Deborah Tannen, the linguist and and bestselling author of You Just Don''t Understand and many other books, reveals why talking to family members is so often painful and problematic even when we''re all adults. Searching for signs of acceptance and belonging, we find signs of disapproval and rejection. Why do the seeds of family love so often yield a harvest of criticism and judgment? In I Only Say This Because I Love You, Tannen shows how important it is, in family talk, to learn to separate word meanings, or messages, from heart meanings, or metamessages —unstated but powerful meanings that come from the history of our relationships and the way things are said. Presenting real conversations from people''s lives, Tannen reveals what is actually going on in family talk, including how family conversations must balance the longing for connection with the desire for control, as we struggle to be close without giving up our freedom. This eye-opening book explains why grown women so often feel criticized by their mothers; and why mothers feel they can''t open their mouths around their grown daughters; why growing up male or female, or as an older or younger sibling, results in different experiences of family that persist throughout our lives; and much, much more. By helping us to understand and redefine family talk, Tannen provides the tools to improve relationships with family members of every age.

This warm, wise exploration of female friendship from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of You Just Don’t Understand will help women lean into these powerful relationships. A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK • “Celebrates friendship in its frustrations and its rewards and, above all, its wonderful complexity.”—The Atlantic Best friend, old friend, good friend, bff, college roommate, neighbor, workplace confidante: Women’s friendships are a lifeline in times of trouble and a support system for daily life. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist, or confessor—or she can be all of these at once. She’s seen you at your worst and celebrates you at your best. Figuring out what it means to be friends is, in the end, no less than figuring out how we connect to other people. In this illuminating and validating new book, #1 New York Times bestselling author Deborah Tannen deconstructs the ways women friends talk and how those ways can bring friends closer or pull them apart. From casual chatting to intimate confiding, from talking about problems to telling what you had for dinner, Tannen uncovers the patterns of communication and miscommunication that affect friendships at different points in our lives. She shows how even the best of friends—with the best intentions—can say the wrong thing, and how words can repair the damage done by words. Through Tannen’s signature insight, humor, and ability to present pitch-perfect real-life dialogue, readers will see themselves and their friendships on every page. The book explains • the power of women friends who show empathy, give advice—or just listen • how women use talk to connect to friends—and to subtly compete • how “Fear of Being Left Out” and “Fear of Getting Kicked Out” can haunt women’s friendships • how social media is reshaping communication and relationships Drawing on interviews with eighty women of diverse backgrounds, ranging in age from nine to ninety-seven, You’re the Only One I Can Tell gets to the heart of women’s friendships—how they work or fail, how they help or hurt, and how we can make them better. “At a time when the messages we give and get have so many more ways to be misconstrued and potentially damaging, a book that takes apart our language becomes almost vital to our survival as friends.”—The Washington Post

This revised edition of Tannen''s first discourse analysis book--first published in 1984--presents an approach to analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her extensive body of work in discourse analysis.

A radical contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis, Talking Voices shows how conversation provides the source for linguistic strategies that are shaped and elaborated in literary discourse and other spoken and written, public and private genres. She explores the scenic and musical basis of both textual meaning and interpersonal involvement in discourse. Repetition establishes rhythm and meaning by patterns of constants and contrasts. Dialogue and imagery create scenes peopled by characters in relation to each other, doing things that are culturally and personally recognizable and meaningful. Our understanding of how discourse works--whether it is spontaneously uttered by conversationalists or carefully structured by the novelist or public speaker--is significantly advanced by this book.

The second edition of the highly successful Handbook ofDiscourse Analysis has been expanded and thoroughly updated toreflect the very latest research to have developed since theoriginal publication, including new theoretical paradigms and discourse-analytic models, in an authoritative two-volumeset. Twenty new chapters highlight emerging trends and the latestareas of research Contributions reflect the range, depth, and richness of currentresearch in the field Chapters are written by internationally-recognized leaders intheir respective fields, constituting a Who’s Who ofDiscourse Analysis A vital resource for scholars and students in discourse studiesas well as for researchers in related fields who seek authoritativeoverviews of discourse analytic issues, theories, and methods

A #1 New York Times bestselling author traces her father’s life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell. “An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary.”—Forward Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having “a novelist’s ear for the way people speak,” Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she’d write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father’s life and her parents’ marriage. In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers’ compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father’s—and her own—relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined. Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen’s life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.

In this course, Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen addresses the various aspects and implications of conversational style.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTELLER Conversations between sisters reveal a deep and constant tug between two dynamics—an impulse toward closeness and an impulse toward competition. It takes just a word from your sister to start you laughing, or to summon up a past you both share. But it also takes just a word to send you into an emotional tailspin. For many women, a sister is both a devoted friend and a fierce rival. Wise and witty, You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! will leave you with a profound new understanding of the unique and precious sister bond, as well as provide practical advice that will open up communication, dispel tensions, and make a vital connection even stronger, deeper, and more resilient.

Through everyday talk, individuals forge the ties that can make a family. Family members use language to manage a household, create and maintain relationships, and negotiate and reinforce values and beliefs. The studies gathered in Family Talk are based on a unique research project in which four dual-income American families recorded everything they said for a week. Family Talk extends our understanding of family discourse and of how family members construct, negotiate, and enact their identities as individuals and as families. The volume also contributes to the discourse analysis of naturally-occurring interaction and makes significant contributions to theories of framing in interaction. Family Talk addresses issues central to the academic discipline of discourse analysis as well as to families themselves, including decision-making and conflict-talk, the development of gendered family roles, sociability with and socialization of children, the development of social and political beliefs, and the interconnectedness of professional and family life. It provides illuminating insights into the subtleties of family conversation, and will be of interest to scholars and students in sociolinguistics, discourse studies, communications, anthropological linguistics, cultural studies, psychology, and other fields concerned with the language of everyday interaction or family interaction.

Por que, al hablar en el seno de la familia, se suele caer en los mismos circulos una y otra vez, y casi siempre nos metemos en embrollos? En este libro revelador, Deborah Tannen nos cuenta por que hablar con los miembros de nuestra familia suele ser problematico, incluso cuando ya somos adultos. Buscamos signos de aceptacion y pertenencia y solo encontramos reprobacion y rechazo. Por que las semillas del amor familiar suelen dar cosechas de rencor y maledicencia? En B!LO DIGO POR TU BIEN!, Tannen muestra cuan importante es, en el habla, aprender a separar el significado de las palabras, o mensajes, de los significados del corazon, o metamensajes, esos significados ocultos y poderosos que son fruto a la vez de la historia de nuestras relaciones y del modo en que decimos las cosas. Basandose en conversaciones reales de la vida cotidiana, Tannen analiza todo lo que esta en juego en el habla familiar, incluyendo el modo en que las conversaciones equilibran comunicacion y control, y responden a nuestros deseos de proximidad sin renunciar a nuestra libertad. Este libro le revelara por que las hijas se sienten censuradas por sus madres y por que las madres creen que no pueden abrir la boca ante sus hijas; por que crecer como un hombre o como una mujer, o ser el hermano mayor o el menor, conlleva una experiencia distinta de la familia, y como esta percepcion persiste a lo largo de toda nuestra vida... Ayudandonos a comprender y a redefinir la comunicacion familiar, Tannen nos proporciona los instrumentos imprescindibles para mejorar la relacion con los miembros de nuestra familia sea cual sea la edad que tengamos.

Estudio sobre la estructura del discurso y el crecimiento de la comunicación a través de los modos hablados y escritos.

This revised edition of Deborah Tannen''s first discourse analysis book, Conversational Style--first published in 1984--presents an approach to analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her extensive body of work in discourse analysis, including the monograph Talking Voices, as well as her well-known popular books You Just Don''t Understand, That''s Not What I Meant!, and Talking from 9 to 5, among others. Carefully examining the discourse of six speakers over the course of a two-and-a-half hour Thanksgiving dinner conversation, Tannen analyzes the features that make up the speakers'' conversational styles, and in particular how aspects of what she calls a ''high-involvement style'' have a positive effect when used with others who share the style, but a negative effect with those whose styles differ. This revised edition includes a new preface and an afterword in which Tannen discusses the book''s place in the evolution of her work. Conversational Style is written in an accessible and non-technical style that should appeal to scholars and students of discourse analysis (in fields like linguistics, anthropology, communication, sociology, and psychology) as well as general readers fascinated by Tannen''s popular work. This book is an ideal text for use in introductory classes in linguistics and discourse analysis.

Get what you really want from your career. As a woman, you may face unfair challenges in the workplace--from being passed over for promotion to being ignored in conversation. Unconscious bias and negative assumptions are working against you. HBR''s Women at Work Collection will help you break through these barriers and help you get what you want from your career. This two-book set includes HBR''s 10 Must Reads on Women and Leadership and the HBR Guide for Women at Work. The Must Read volume brings together the 10 best articles from Harvard Business Review, curated by our editors, on gender dynamics in the workplace, while the HBR Guide provides practical and useful tips for how to identify and overcome the factors holding women back. This unique compilation offers insights from world-class experts including Herminia Ibarra, Joan Williams, Sheryl Sandberg, and others. It will inspire you to: learn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women; better understand the path women must take to leadership; check your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence; manage a more effective gender-diversity program; advocate for yourself; and demonstrate your leadership skills. HBR''s Women at Work Collection is an invaluable resource for any woman seeking to reach her true leadership potential and for anyone--man or woman--looking to create a more gender-balanced workforce.

What will it take to create a more gender-balanced workplace? If you read nothing else on leadership and gender at work, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We''ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you understand where gender equality is today--and how far we still have to go. This book will inspire you to: Better understand the path women must take to leadership Learn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women in the workplace Check your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence in your colleagues Manage a more effective gender-diversity program Recognize the issues women face when speaking up about bias or harassment Help women reenter the workforce after taking time off--and create opportunities for them to reach their ambitions. This collection of articles includes "Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership," by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli; "Do Women Lack Ambition?" by Anna Fels; "Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers," by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb; "Women and the Vision Thing," by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru; "The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why," by Deborah Tannen; "The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk," by Kathleen Reardon; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev; "Now What?" by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock; "The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid; "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce; and "Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview," by Sheryl Sandberg and Adi Ignatius.

A critical biography of Lilika Nakos and her works.

Ten contributions from American academics discuss recent research on linguistic analysis. The volume opens with Frederick Erickson''s (UCLA) theories on the musical nature of speech. Next, Wallace Chafe (UC- Santa Barbara) describes a phonetics of laughter and examines its uses in conversation. Other contributors analyze discourses ranging from ordinary medical interactions and family conversations to testimony before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Este libro aborda la enrarecida atmosfera belica que actualmente nos envuelve y nos empuja a contemplar cualquier empresa que debamos llevar a cabo como si se tratara de una peligrosa mision. Esta B+cultura de la polemicaB; nos obliga a contemplar el mundo y sus habitantes como si fueran nuestros enemigos, basandose a la vez en la premisa de que, para conseguir una meta, lo mejor es desplegar una enconada actitud de oposicion frente a todo y frente a todos. Hoy en dia, la mejor forma de profundizar sobre un tema es organizar un debate, y la forma ideal de comunicar una noticia es encontrar portavoces que manifiesten opiniones extremas, pues ello significa presentar B+las dos carasB; del problema. Para resolver una discrepancia, es preciso litigar y situar a los oponentes frente a frente. Para escribir un articulo, lo mejor es empezar rebatiendo a algun autor. Y, para demostrar que se sabe pensar, parece indispensable criticar y atacar. Este tipo de enfoque puede funcionar en algunas ocasiones,pero no por norma general, pues aporta mas problemas que soluciones. Asi, nuestros debates en publico se asemejan cada vez mas a las disputas domesticas: en lugar de intentar comprender al otro, solo pretendemos ganar la batalla. Y, de este modo, cada dia se hace mas necesario un tipo de polemica que exija la elaboracion de argumentos a partir de los diversos puntos de vista y sin que medie la disputa, es decir, sin tener que recurrir a la agresividad. Deborah Tannen es profesora de Linguistica en la Universidad de Georgetown Washington, D.C. . Ademas de escribir en publicaciones como Newsweek, Time, The New York Times o The Washington Post, es tambien autora de libros como B!Yo no quise decireso! o Genero y discurso, ambos igualmente publicados por Paidos.

Our everyday lives are increasingly being lived through electronic media, which are changing our interactions and our communications in ways that we are only beginning to understand. In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, editors Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester team up with top scholars in the field to shed light on the ways language is being used in, and shaped by, these new media contexts. Topics explored include: how Web 2.0 can be conceptualized and theorized; the role of English on the worldwide web; how use of social media such as Facebook and texting shape communication with family and friends; electronic discourse and assessment in educational and other settings; multimodality and the "participatory spectacle" in Web 2.0; asynchronicity and turn-taking; ways that we engage with technology including reading on-screen and on paper; and how all of these processes interplay with meaning-making. Students, professionals, and individuals will discover that Discourse 2.0 offers a rich source of insight into these new forms of discourse that are pervasive in our lives.

Consists of proceedings of the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics.

The best leaders know how to communicate clearly and persuasively. How do you stack up?If you read nothing else on communicating effectively, read these 10 articles. We''ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you express your ideas with clarity and impact--no matter what the situation. Leading experts such as Deborah Tannen, Jay Conger, and Nick Morgan provide the insights and advice you need to: Pitch your brilliant idea--successfully Connect with your audience Establish credibility Inspire others to carry out your vision Adapt to stakeholders'' decision-making style Frame goals around common interests Build consensus and win support