64 Deborah Tannen Quotes on That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships and The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue - Quotes.pub

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Maybe most of all, Karl is like family because of how I feel when I’m around him: completely and unself-consciously myself.

The belief that sitting down and talking will ensure mutual understanding and solve problems is based on the assumption that we can say what we mean, and that what we say will be understood as we mean it. This is unlikely to happen if conversational styles differ.

While boys create connections through friendly competition, girls create connections by downplaying competition and focusing on similarities.

Second, there is a payoff in self-defense. If what we want or think does not meet with a positive response, we can take it back, or claim – perhaps sincerely – that that’s not what we meant.

Both women and men could benefit from learning each other’s styles. Many women could learn from men to accept some conflict and difference without seeing it as a threat to intimacy, and many men could learn from women to accept interdependence without seeing it as a threat to their freedom.

One reason it’s so difficult to decide what to say became immediately clear: comments and questions that some appreciated were not appreciated by others.

Communication is a system. Everything that is said is simultaneously an instigation and a reaction, a reaction and an instigation. Most of us tend to focus on the first part of that process while ignoring or downplaying the second. We see ourselves as reacting to what others say and do, without realizing that their actions or words are in part reactions to ours, and that our reactions to them won’t be the end of the process but rather will trigger more reactions, in a continuous stream.

Often, focusing on the words spoken precludes figuring out what sparked a crisis, because the culprits are not words but tone of voice, intonation, and unstated implications and assumptions.

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

It’s important to remember that others’ ways of talking to you are partly a reaction to your style, just as your style with them is partly a reaction to their style – with you.

The payoffs of indirectness in rapport and self-defense correspond to the two basic dynamics that motivate communication: the coexisting and conflicting human needs for involvement and independence. Since any show of involvement is a threat to independence, and any show of independence is a threat to involvement, indirectness is the life raft of communication, a way to float on top of a situation instead of plunging in with nose pinched and coming up blinking.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

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

We are more likely to respond according to our habits than to the specifics of the situation.

When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.

Relationships are made of talk – and talk is for girls and women.

One man commented that he and I seemed to have different definitions of gossip. He said, ‘To you it seems to be discussion of personal details about people known to the conversationalists. To me, it’s a discussion of the weaknesses, character flaws, and failures of third persons, so that the participants in the conversation can feel superior to them. This seems unworthy, hence gossip is bad.

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn’t feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.

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.

Knowing that somewhere in the world there is someone who cares what you wore, an insignificant detail of your life that would seem unimportant to anyone else, makes you feel more connected to that person and less alone in the world.

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other’s.

The danger of misinterpretation is greatest, of course, among speakers who actually speak different native tongues, or come from different cultural backgrounds, because cultural difference necessarily implies different assumptions about natural and obvious ways to be polite.

At every age, the girls and women sit closer to each other and look at each other directly. At every age, the boys and men sit at angles to each other – in one case, almost parallel – and never look directly into each other’s faces.

A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity – a ratification of one’s way of being human and one’s way in the world.

We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood – heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant.

A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn’t get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will.

But if you parry individuals points – a negative and defensive enterprise – you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true – a positive act.

It’s our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It’s a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.

Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions.

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument – as in having a fight.

In dialogue, there is opposition, yes, but no head-on collision. Smashing heads does not open minds.

Many men honestly do not know what women want, and women honestly do not know why men find what they want so hard to comprehend and deliver.

Many women feel it is natural to consult with their partners at every turn, while many men automatically make more decisions without consulting their partners.

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked.

The desire for freedom and independence becomes more of an issue for many men in relationships, whereas interdependence and connection become more of an issue for many women.

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence.

If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do.

The chivalrous man who holds a door open or signals a woman to go ahead of him when he’s driving is negotiating both status and connection.

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.

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.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord.

More men feel comfortable doing “public speaking,” while more women feel comfortable doing “private” speaking.

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.

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

The allure of love is to have someone who knows you so well that you don’t have to explain yourself. It is the promise of someone who cares enough about you to protect you against the world of strangers who do not wish you well.

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.

Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same.

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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