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Deborah Tannen Biography & Facts

Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American author and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Best known as the author of You Just Don't Understand, she has been a McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences following a term in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Tannen is the author of thirteen books, including That's Not What I Meant! and You Just Don't Understand, the latter of which spent four years on the New York Times Best Sellers list, including eight consecutive months at number one. She is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Time magazine, among other publications. Education Tannen graduated from Hunter College High School and completed her undergraduate studies at Harpur College (now part of Binghamton University) with a B.A. in English literature. Tannen went on to earn a master's in English literature at Wayne State University. Later, she continued her academic studies at UC Berkeley, earning an M.A. and a Ph.D. in linguistics (1979) with a dissertation entitled "Processes and consequences of conversational style". She took up a position at Georgetown in 1979 and subsequently became a Distinguished University Professor in Linguistics there. Writing career Tannen has written and edited numerous academic publications on linguistics, discourse analysis, and interpersonal communication. She has published many books including Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends; Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse; Gender and Discourse; and The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Her major theoretical contribution, presented in Talking Voices, is a poetics of conversation. She demonstrates that everyday conversation is made up of linguistic features that are traditionally regarded as literary, such as repetition, dialogue, and imagery. Tannen has also written nine general-audience books on interpersonal communication and public discourse as well as a memoir. She became well known in the United States after her book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was published in 1990. It remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for nearly four years, and was subsequently translated into 30 other languages. She has written several other general-audience books and mainstream articles between 1983 and 2017. Two of her other books, You Were Always Mom's Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives and You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation were also New York Times best sellers. The Argument Culture received the Common Ground Book Award, and I Only Say This Because I Love You received a Books for a Better Life Award. Research Overview Deborah Tannen's main research has focused on the expression of interpersonal relationships in conversational interaction. Tannen has explored conversational interaction and style differences at a number of different levels and as related to different situations, including differences in conversational style as connected to the gender and cultural background, as well as speech that is tailored for specific listeners based on the speaker's social role. In particular, Tannen has done extensive gender-linked research and writing that focused on miscommunications between men and women, which later developed into what is now known as the genderlect theory of communication. However, some linguists have argued against Tannen's claims from a feminist standpoint.Tannen's research began when she analyzed her friends while working on her Ph.D. Since then, she has collected several naturally occurring conversations on tape and conducted interviews as forms of data for later analysis. She has also compiled and analyzed information from other researchers in order to draw out notable trends in various types of conversations, sometimes borrowing and expanding on their terminology to emphasize new points of interest. Gender differences in US family interaction Tannen highlighted the "Telling Your Day" ritual that takes place in many U.S. families, in which, typically, the mother in a two-parent family encourages a child to share details (about their day which the mother has typically already heard about) with the father. She also emphasizes the common occurrence of the "troubles talk" ritual in women. This ritual involves a woman sharing details about "a frustrating experience" or other previously encountered problem with a confidant. She cites this ritual as an example of how, for many women, closeness is established through sharing personal details. As one example of gender-linked misinterpretations, Tannen points out that a man who is on the receiving end of "troubles talk" from his wife will often take the mention of a problem and how it was handled as an invitation to pass judgment, despite the fact that "troubles talk" is simply an expository experience meant to enhance emotional connections. Interplay of connection maneuvers and power maneuvers in family conversations Tannen once described family discourse as "a prime example…of the nexus of needs for both power and connection in human relationships. She coined the term "connection maneuvers" to describe interactions that take place in the closeness dimension of the traditional model of power and connection; this term is meant to contrast with the "control maneuvers", which, according to psychologists Millar, Rogers, and Bavelas, take place in the power dimension of the same model. Tannen challenged the conventional view of power (hierarchy) and connection (solidarity) as "unidimensional and mutually exclusive" and offered her own kind of model for mapping the interplay of these two aspects of communication, which takes the form of a two-dimensional grid (Figure 1). In this model, the vertical axis represents the level of power in the interaction, and the horizontal axis represents connection. Having presented this model, Tannen proposed that in the American paradigm, a sibling relationship would be mapped in the bottom left quadrant, as there is a high level of closeness and a relative equality that is not comparable to the power dynamic in an American parent/child relationship. Using this new model, Tannen argues that connection maneuvers do not only occur independently of control maneuvers. Among other examples, she mentions a wife who refuses to let her husband take over making popcorn by saying "You always burn it". According to Tannen, the wife's resistance to her husband's request is a control maneuver, but by citing a potential undesirable effect for her family (i.e. burnt popcorn), she ties a connection maneuver into her attempt to enforce a decision. Tannen also highlights ventriloquizing – which she explains as a "phenomenon by which a person speaks not only for another b.... Discover the Deborah Tannen popular books. 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