Who Is Deborah Tannen

     

Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American academic and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She has been 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.

Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American academic and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. She has been 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.

Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. has lectured all over the world. Her audiences have included corporations such as Corning, Chevron, Motorola, and Rolm (Siemens), McKinsey and Co., Delta, as well as the Board of Trustees of The Wharton School and a gathering of U.S. senators and their spouses. Uniquely entertaining as well as enlightening, with videotaped real-life footage of office interaction, Dr. Tannen gives her audiences a new framework for understanding what happens in conversations both in the workplace and at home.

Deborah Tannen has been a member of the Linguistics Department faculty at Georgetown since 1979; she is one of six in the College of Arts and Sciences who hold the distinguished rank of University Professor. Her 24 books have addressed such topics as interactional sociolinguistics, conversational interaction, cross-cultural communication, frames theory, conversational vs. literary discourse, gender and language, and new media discourse. She has been McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

Outside of the academy Deborah Tannen is best known as the author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, which was on the New York Times best seller list for nearly four years, including eight months as No. 1, and has been translated into 31 languages. This is the book that brought gender differences in communication style to the forefront of public awareness. Her book Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work did for the workplace what the earlier book did for conversations at home, and was a New York Times Business best seller. Her two most recent 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

 

Education

• Tannen graduated from Hunter College High School
• Ph.D. (1979) University of California, Berkeley, Linguistics
• M.A. (1976) University of California, Berkeley, Linguistics
• M.A. (1970) Wayne State University, English Literature
• B.A. (1966) Harpur College, English Literature

Occupation
      

• Academic and professor of linguistics

Languages

• Greek, Modern (1453- ) (speak, read, write)

Writing career

Tannen has lectured worldwide in her field, and written and/or edited numerous academic publications on linguistics, discourse analysis, and interpersonal communication. She has written and edited 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 shows 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 several general-audience books on interpersonal communication and public discourse. 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 (eight months at No.1) and was subsequently translated into 30 other languages. She has written several other general-audience books including:

• That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships;
• Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work;
• The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words; and
• I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You're All Adults.

Her two most recent 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. Among her 19 other books, 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.

Overview

Deborah Tannen's main research focus is 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; however, some linguists have argued against Tannen's claims from a feminist standpoint^.

Tannen's research began when she analyzed with her friends while working on her Ph.D. Since then, she has collected several naturally occurring conversations on tape^[5] 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.


 Bibliography

• Lilika Nakos (Twayne World Authors Series, G. K. Hall, 1983)
• Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends (1984; 2nd Edition Oxford University Press, 2005)
• That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships (Ballantine, 1986, ISBN 0-345-34090-6)
• Talking Voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse (Cambridge University Press, 1989, hardcover ISBN 0-521-37001-9, paperback ISBN 0521379008, 2nd edition 2007)
• You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Ballantine, 1990, ISBN 0-688-07822-2; Quill, 2001, ISBN 0-06-095962-2)
• Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work (Avon, 1994, ISBN 0-688-11243-9; ISBN 0-380-71783-2)
• Gender and Discourse (Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-508975-8; ISBN 0-19-510124-3)
• The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words (Ballantine, 1998, ISBN 0-345-40751-2)
• I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You're All Adults (Ballantine, 2001, ISBN 0-345-40752-0)
• You're Wearing THAT?: Mothers and Daughters in Conversation (Ballantine, 2006, ISBN 1-4000-6258-6)
• You Were Always Mom's Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives (Random House, 2009, ISBN 1-4000-6632-8)

Best sellers

Deborah Tannen is a frequent guest on television and radio news and information shows, including The Colbert Report, 20/20, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Rachael Ray Talk Show, PBS NewsHour, Charlie Rose, Oprah, Hardball, Nightline, and many shows on CNN and NPR such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, The Diane Rehm Show, and Fresh Air. She has been featured in and written for most major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, USA Today, People, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review