Deborah Tannen

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Deborah Tannen.

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

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 Masters 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.

Writing career

Deborah Tannen has lectured worldwide in her field, and written or edited numerous academic publications on linguistics and interpersonal communication, but she is best known for her 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 (8 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, I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You're All Adults, and her most recent book, You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, which was also a New York Times best seller.

Tannen also has written many books for scholarly audiences within the field of linguistics. These books include Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, and Gender and Discourse. Her major theoretical contribution, presented in Talking Voices, is a poetics of conversation. She shows that everyday conversation is made up of linguistic features such as repetition, dialogue, and imagery, that are traditionally regarded as literary.

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 0345340906)
• Talking Voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse (Cambridge University Press, 1989, hardcover ISBN 0-521-37001-9, paperback ISBN 0-521-37900-8 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)
• The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words (Ballantine, 1998, ISBN 0345407512)
• 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 1400066328)

References

• "Biography", Web Page of Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University. (Retrieved September 6, 2006)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Deborah Tannen

• "Sisters Speak In 'You Were Always Mom's Favorite'". Susan Stamborg interview with Tannen. Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 8 September 2009. (Transcript and audio link.)