Deborah Tannen

Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American academic and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. She has been McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences following a term in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

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

Tannen has lectured worldwide in her field, and written or edited numerous academic publications on linguistics, discourse analysis, and interpersonal communication. Books she has written or edited include Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, Gender and Discourse, and The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 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.

Tannen has also written several 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, and 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. Her two most recent books, You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! (about sisters) and You're Wearing THAT? (about mothers and grown daughters) were also New York Times best sellers. Among her 19 other books, The Argument Culture, received the Common Ground Book Award, and I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You're All Adults, received a Books for a Better Life Award.

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)
• Gender and Discourse (Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-508975-8; ISBN 0-19-510124-3)
• 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", Faculty Page for Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University.

External links

• "Sisters Speak In 'You Were Always Mom's Favorite'". Susan Stamberg interview with Tannen. Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 8 September 2009. (Transcript and audio link.)
• Interviews with Deborah Tannen. From The Open Mind archive at The Internet Archive
• Official website
• Communicating With Style-An Interview with Deborah Tannen.

Persondata
Name	Tannen, Deborah
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	June 7, 1945
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death