For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.
Interpretation
Women often use conversation to build connections and maintain relationships.
Deborah Tannen's quote highlights the idea that for many women, conversation serves as a tool for creating rapport and fostering emotional connections. It suggests that women may prioritize relational dynamics in their communication style, using dialogue not just to convey information, but to nurture bonds and navigate interpersonal relationships.
In practice
In a workshop on effective communication, this quote can be used to illustrate how women may approach conversations differently.
Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference.
Sister relationships span a huge range, from best friends to worst enemies. From 'I adore her; I talk to her five times a day' to 'I decided to cut her out of my life.' For most women, it's in between.
The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.
Mothers and daughters find in each other the source of great comfort but also of great pain. We talk to each other in better and worse ways than we talk to anyone else.
Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention - an argument culture.
Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same.
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.
Is there discrimination against women? Yes. There's no denying that the old boys' network is alive and well. But there's also discrimination against men.
It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.
And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.
So she viewed time spent in the land of the normal as an investigation into the world of marriage-worthy men, even if she was unsure about her own interest in marriage. There must be one solid citizen who also had a spark of life, a sense of humor and adventure.
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
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