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Deborah Tannen
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, New Jersey.
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.
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.
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 called Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow . 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.
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 in everyday discourse 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.
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Deborah Tannen
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, New Jersey.
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.
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.
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 called Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow . 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.
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 in everyday discourse 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.