Gender and Discourse - Softcover

Tannen, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195101243 ISBN 13: 9780195101249

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

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in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns.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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for nearly four years. Clearly, Tannen's insights into women's and men's conversational styles have touched a nerve. For years an internationally known and highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how language both reflects and affects relations between men and women. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships - including relations between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together five of her essays on language and gender to elaborate the theoretical and empirical framework that underlies her bestselling book. She has written an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies associated with her field as well as some misrepresentations of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her 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, indirectness, and silence - and shows that, contrary to earlier work on language and gender, no strategy is linked inflexibly to dominance or powerlessness in conversation. Interruption (or overlap) can be supportive as well as dominant; silence and indirectness can express control as well as powerlessness. The interactionalcontext, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, all influence the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and 25 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 a deeper and more detailed understanding of 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.

About the Author:

Deborah Tannen is University Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is the author of the best-selling You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, That's Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations With Others, Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, and most recently, Talking From 9 to 5: Women and Men in the Workplace: Language, Sex, and Power.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0195101243
• ISBN 13: 9780195101249
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240