the player

Deborah tannen

By Veena Trehan

July 2008

Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen is discussing our argument culture and expectations of women.

In the wooded McLean residence where she lives with her husband, Tannen gestures animatedly and laughs. Golds and rusts glow from her shirt, blending with the southwestern color palette of her home. As she talks, her short sandy hair and glittery earrings bob - wait, rewind!?

Tannen is describing how women’s appearances are often dissected by the media. For example, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s clothing and cleavage sparked discussion in a way that Sen. Barack Obama’s suits or ankles never would, she said. 

“A woman’s options for hair and clothes are endless except we don’t have the option to be neutral,” she said, pointing out my long hair and jeans skirt versus Bob’s – well I can’t even remember what he wore.

“There is nothing a woman can do that doesn’t tell us something,” Tannen announces.

Just a few minutes with the 63-year-old illustrate why she’s been recently called on to analyze Clinton’s media play on Reuters TV and The Colbert Report. The loquacious academic convincingly answers questions many of us ask, using research from 20 years of bestselling books that explain communication from the bedroom, boardroom, and podium.

Tannen notes that Clinton had a broader challenge described in her New York Times bestseller of almost four years, “Talking 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work.” Women, she said, are caught in a bind – our expectations for good female behavior are often at odds with those for good leaders. She cites The New York Times editorial that endorsed Clinton as the “brilliant if sometimes harsh sounding senator from New York.”

 “Is a presidential candidate expected to sound soft?” she asks with scorn.

***

While Tannen is comfortable in the public eye, her work more typically immerses her in private lives.

Her latest book and bestseller - “You’re Wearing That: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation” - relies heavily on interviews to describe a uniquely fraught bond.

The seeds for intimacy and alienation are sowed early, as shown by the friendships of girls worldwide. The childless Tannen has collected pictures from around the world of little girls whispering in eachothers’ ears, but she has never encountered one of boys.

Girls – and women - define connections by their closeness or distance versus men who are more likely to assess their relative status (up or down). For women, telling secrets is the coin of the realm.

 “When the daughter is little, the mother will know all her secrets … when the daughter hits her teenage years, she’ll often stop telling her mom things,” she explains of the developing dynamic.

“The mother-daughter relationship is a setup for the mother to be hurt because the worst thing is to be left out,” Tannen said.

***

Tannen’s fluttering hands, frequent laughter and flowing conversation are characteristic of her high involvement style of communication. Interruptions are expected: “If I’m talking, you should be talking along, jumping in with examples, finishing my sentences,” she said.

 “Do I have to check to see if you’re alive?” she laughs.

The style - and her interest in communication - owes much to her childhood in Brooklyn where she was raised as an Eastern European Jew.

After visits from friends, her Polish immigrant dad would dissect the discussions.

 “My father would say, ‘remember when she lifted her right eyebrow? That meant …’”
she remembers.

 “He always loved words,” she adds.

Yet it took him decades to settle into a career that capitalized on this interest. At 14, he started working to support his mother and sister. As he toiled as a cutter in a New York factory, he earned his high school equivalency and law degree at night, eventually practicing as a lawyer during the Great Depression.

 “He once said he would have liked a life like mine,” she said softly of the man who died four years ago.

Tannen too appreciates her area in part because she found it after a career that didn’t fully satisfy her. After she divorced and moved back from Greece, she worked as a teacher. But soon she hungered for – and indulged – an intellectual bent that led her, at age 30, to start graduate school in linguistics.

***

It’s the challenge and reward of understanding communication that keeps her going, Tannen said.

Others could find it depressing, reading as case after case of well-meant generosity, advice and support are met with outrage, puzzlement or hurt. But, documenting communication successes wouldn’t be as useful, she said.

 “People don’t need to read a book on all the positive things that are working. They want something to understand what frustrates them.”

The books, rife with examples of miscommunication, do aid others. She used to cringe when they were described as “self help” but now she basks in emotional thanks like “you gave my daughter back to me” and “if it weren’t for you I’d be divorced.”

What does seem to make her uncomfortable is conflict, something she – naturally – tackled in a book. “The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words” was prompted in part by an interview that had more in common with the crosstalk of Hannity & Colmes than her usual show mood of insight and empathy.

In the green (prep) room of the now defunct San Francisco-based television show “People Are Talking,” she was approached by a man with waist-length hair outfitted in a shirt and tie, and floor-length skirt. He told her he had liked her book but would attack her once the show started – that was his role. During the anti-Oprah experience, he yelled at her, insulted women for exploiting men and drove the audience to venomously insult female guests.

 “To get one on each side and let them fight it out suppresses the inclination to be reflective,” says Tannen, a Democrat frustrated with the current public discourse.

***

Her books have also led her to personal revelations and recalibrations in her communication style. “I’ve learned to count to seven. It’s amazing! The other person might start to talk.”

They’ve also helped her appreciate her oldest sister (sisters are the subject of her next book) and her mother, who Tannen felt undervalued her accomplishments and priorities.

Their bond was deepened through several years of intense caretaking by Tannen of both parents. By the time of her mother’s death two years ago, her parents had become a major focus of her life.

“If people asked me how I was, I’d tell them how my parents were,” she remembers with a wry grin.

Today she describes what gives her life meaning by quoting Sigmund Freud: “love and work.”

For others, she sums up by urging them to realize their perspective is unique and to be willing to try something new.

“The assumption is that other people must intend for us to feel what we feel,” she said. “Realizing there is such a thing as a different conversational style … that’s huge.”