The influential linguistics expert and author ofYou Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation discusses the good and bad of electronic communication, the growth of ‘argument culture,’ and the importance of downtime in conference scheduling.
By Susan Sarfati, CAE L
inguistics expert Deborah Tannen, author of several influential books on how lan- guage affects relationships — including You
Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conver- sation, a New York Times best-seller for nearly four years — is one of very few faculty in Georgetown University’s College of Arts and Sciences to hold the rank of University Professor, reserved for those who have made extraordinary achievements. She is also the recipient of five honorary doctor- ates. Not bad for a Brooklyn native who had no interest in going on to graduate school after earn- ing a B.A. in English literature. “When I graduated from college,” Tannen told
Convene in a recent in-person interview, “I trav- eled to Europe and ended up in Greece, where I
taught English. That experience created the seeds of my interest in cross-cultural communication.” After she returned to the United States, she earned a master’s degree in English literature. At 30, Tannen said, she “became bored and decided to do something different,” so she got a Ph.D. in linguistics — “a compromise between my interest in English and literature. English was too rarified, and I actually became very interested in using linguistics to understand face-to-face com- munication — language in context. That’s how I got the idea to focus on linguistics: to understand people in the real world.” Tannen spoke with me about how communication styles differ among the sexes and across cultures and generations, and what that means for face-to-face meetings.