Gender and Discourse

By Deborah Tannen

Book Overview

Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women.
Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's "essential nature.") The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage.
Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen's work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195101243
• ISBN13: 9780195101249
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Amazing and Brilliant

Dr. Tannen is a brilliant author and the "go to" researcher on matters concerning gender differences in communication. This book is research-based and a more difficult read when compared to her more popular books. I read this book cover to cover in graduate school and I recommend it highly for any adult learner. Brilliant!

Not Pop Psych

Gender and Discourse is not the easiest read, but if you like the nitty gritty, this is a fascinating book. If you don't, I would recommend her book You Just Don't Understand which is on the same topic but a bit more accessible to the layman.