Author Deborah Tannen on How Her Love for Language Began

"If women speak and hear a language of communication and intimacy, while men speak and hear a language of status and independence, then communication between men and women can be like a cross-cultural communication . . . ."

"I'm a New Yorker, and New Yorkers talk to everybody. So if you're sitting next to somebody, you talk to them. You're in an elevator, you talk to the person who's there. As a child, I learned to talk to everybody and to find it all interesting. Sometimes I think about this: If I was on an airplane when I was younger, I'd always talk to the person next to me, and I really had some of the most fascinating conversations-personal stuff. I don't do it anymore. Sometimes I wonder why. Is it because I got older? Is it because the culture has changed, that people are more suspicious of each other? I don't know."

"I was always a literary type. My BA and MA were in English literature; I was on the board of the literary magazine in high school and the editor of the literary magazine in college. You might say, 'With this literary bent, how did you end up being an academic?' Well, I realized that I could study conversation in the same way that I'd previously studied literature-that is, looking at the details of language and trying to see patterns in them. So when I was 29, I began grad school in linguistics."

Women commonly use language to create connection and intimacy, whereas men commonly use language to assert status and independence, which can produce cross-cultural-like communication breakdowns. New Yorkers frequently initiate conversations with strangers in public spaces, resulting in diverse and personal exchanges, though such openness may decline with age or cultural shifts toward increased suspicion. A background in literature fosters attention to linguistic detail and pattern recognition, enabling the study of everyday conversation with the same close analysis applied to literary texts. An observational inclination combined with active conversation supports identification of speech patterns and nuances.

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