You just don't understand : women and men in conversation

Why do so many women feel that men don't tell them anything, but just lecture and criticise? Why do so many men feel that women nag them and never get to the point? In this pioneering book Deborah Tannen shows us how women and men talk in different ways, for profoundly different reasons. While women use language to make connections and reinforce intimacy, men use it to preserve their status and independence.
Some have claimed that conversations are the forum of male power games, but the author suggests that jockeying for attention is not the whole story and that even when domination is the result, it is not always the intention. She shows how many frictions may arise because girls and boys grow up in essentially different cultures. Where women use language to seek confirmation, make connections and reinforce intimacies, men use it to protect their independence and negotiate status. The result is that conversation becomes a cross-cultural communication, fraught with genuine confusion.

Author Notes

Deborah Tannen is the bestselling author of "The Argument Culture", "Talking from 9 to 5", "That's Not What I Meant", & "You Just Don't Understand", which was on "The New York Times" bestseller list for nearly four years, including eight months as number one. She is a professor at Georgetown University, in Washington D.C. "I Only Say This Because I Love You" is her seventeenth book.

Her latest book is entitled, "You Were Always Mom's Favorite: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives." (Publisher Provided)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Georgetown University linguistics professor Tannen asserts that misunderstandings between the sexes often arise because women like to connect emotionally in conversation while men prefer to impart knowlege. ``Tannen examines the functioning of argument and interruption, and convincingly supports her case for the existence of `genderlect,' '' said PW. Author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Here, Tannen expands relentlessly upon a single chapter in her That's Not What I Meant! (1985)--the one that dealt with gender differences in conversational style and that, she says, prompted 90% of the subsequent requests for interviews, articles, and lectures. It all begins, Tannen Finds, in childhood. Boys tend to congregate in hierarchal groups, play competitive games, and engage in one-upmanship and jockeying for status. Gifts relate one-on-one or in small groups and tend to play games (hopscotch, jump-rope) in which everyone gets a turn. Gifts also spend much time gossiping or negotiating differences. As adults, women's language, Tannen says, is usually nondemanding and negotiable. ""Would you like to do such and such?"" a woman typically asks, and is then hurt when the response is ""no."" A woman will discuss life's ""downers,"" expecting sympathy, and will be turned off when her man comes up with a solution. Tannen ranges widely through linguistic research, poetry, and fiction to document her points. Most interesting: transcripts of a series of videotaped conversations of school-age, same-sex groups, which bolster Tannen's observation that girls and boys speak and act as though they belong to ""different species."" Persuasive--but Tannen hammers home her limited number of points with such force that the reader cries uncle halfway through the book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

You'll recognize yourself in Tannen's many entertaining examples of skewed conversations between men and women. Why do women feel offended when men offer advice instead of commiseration? Why do men sometimes think of women as nags? Tannen, a sociolinguist and author of both popular and scholarly books about communication, claims that males and females grow up in different cultures, even within the same family. While she's aware of the pitfalls of generalization, Tannen can still make a good case for gender categorization, and no one will deny that women and men frequently find themselves arguing over how things are said rather than the substance of the statement. Culling examples from her personal experiences, studies of communication of all age groups, even fiction and films, Tannen describes many situations in which people talk at cross-purposes. She suggests that understanding these ingrained habits of conversation will improve relationships. Free of jargon, this is a successful hybrid of sociology and self-help. References; to be indexed. --Donna Seaman

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