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| Deborah Tannen (Head Shot by Steven Voss) |
There are a series of scholars and researchers who have made an important contribution to the fields of anthropology, and one of the most influential and well known is Dr. Deborah Tannen, University Professor at Georgetown University. She is a sociolinguist whose work on gender and language has greatly affected not only academics but also personal, professional, and family communication. Her research on the cultural language differences focuses largely on American culture but within the framework of distinguishing linguistic patterns among men and women and among regionally different speakers. She has always been particularly interested in not just what is said but how it is said. Her work, which has been widely published for both academic and popular audiences, has brought attention to linguistic style differences, which refers to a person's speaking patterns and the culturally taught signals that aid in interpreting meaning among speakers and listeners. Through Tannen's most popular work,You
Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, audiences realized the stark differences in how men and women are taught to communicate and how specifically that affects interpersonal communication. Her work on gendered communication within the workplace has also been instrumental in improving the acknowledgement of women's contributions to the professional world by aiding men in realizing that women's communication styles often cause them to be overlooked in favor of men. Tannen has recently moved on to studying language and communication within families, which is sure to improve relationships within families among those who listen and heed her words.
References
DeborahTannen.com. Bio. 2018. Electronic. 20
December 2019.
Georgetown University. Deborah Tannen
Biographical Information. n.d. Electronic. 20 December 2019.
Tannen, Deborah. "The Power of Talk: Who Gets
Heard and Why." Harvard Business Review September-October 1995.
Electronic.
9 comments:
Hi,
I find this post to be very interesting. In particular, the part about "women's communication styles often cause them to be overlooked in favor of men." I see this as definitely a setback to the many women that I know who communicate with the highest level of intelligence.
Thank you for sharing!
Joell Davis
What an interesting topic and concept. Sociolinguistics is a discipline I had not heard of until taking your course, Dr. Boston. I suppose the average person does not think much about the communication differences, subtle and great, between women and men. Once it is pointed out though, I can see how the two sexes do communicate differently and how we are taught from birth different ways of speech and gendered communication.
In a gender course I am currently taking, a clip was shown of an experiment. Male babies were dressed as female, and female as male. Then, random strangers were put in a room with the babies and overserved for how they interacted with the children. One thing that was noted is the babies thought to be female were spoken to in a gentler, softer, more higher-pitched tone and experienced more "baby language" from the adults.
Very interesting topic all around.
Melissa Vernon
Before this blog I haven't heard of Deborah Tannen but she sounds like a very educated woman. Her writings seem to be really helpful in communication especially for closer relationships. I want to more into those writings, I like the fact that you put her information on here as well.
Ashley Puckett
Reading about Dr. Deborah Tannen was very interesting, and I find it very amazing that she is reaching all different types of people with her work and information, and that she works for both academics and popular audiences. I never realized that there was such a difference in the way men and women were taught to communicate. I also found the the comment women's communication styles often cause them to be overlooked in favor of men was very interesting and never thought of it that way.
Jessica Salmons
WWow, this is my first time hearing about Dr. Tannen, she is phenomenal. I have never even heard of a sociolinguist, I had to google it. But it is truly fantastic, her work really seems to be impactful for men and women to understand and communicate with each other. I wish this topic was taught more and people knew of her and her work. I for one am putting You Just Don't Understand on my reading list this quarantine.
Briana Simpson
The study of sociolinguistics seems quite interesting. I do hope that Dr. Tannen makes some breakthroughs in her study of family communication as I'm sure most parents who want to understand their children as people would appreciate it. This does make me wonder if the same study could be applied to the education system?
When you brought up Dr. Tannen's Book. You just don’t understand, it kind of hit home women are notorious for being more quiet or pushed aside more because we don't seem to have as much to say to as men do, why yes anytime that we are in now those names are being slowly broken it’s still a huge thing. And when it was said the women’s communication styles often caused them to be overlooked in favor for me and I completely agree we’re quieter in some aspects. Mostly secretaries taking orders rather than giving them.
Dr. Tannen's has an interesting field of study in not only understadning the outward communication of men and women but understanding the interpersonal communication of others and building toward families.
Qwynn Marquez
It's good that Dr. Deborah Tannen's important contributions to anthropology through her gender and language studies have been acknowledged. It emphasizes how influential she has been in the area and how crucial her study is to comprehending language variances and communication styles. Tannen's concentration on language differences between speakers from different geographic locations and genders, with a special interest in variances within American culture, is succinctly described in the post. This displays the scope and profundity of her study as well as how applicable it is to comprehending social and cultural processes.
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