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You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Paperback)

by Deborah Tannen (Author), Tannen (Author) "Many years ago I was married to a man who shouted at me, "I do not give you the right to raise your voice to..." (more)

4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (Jun 1991)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0345372050
ISBN-13: 978-0345372055
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13 x 2 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 417,547 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

'Tannen combines a novelist's ear for the way people speak with a rare power of original analysis ... fascinating' OLIVER SACKS --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

Why do so many women feel that men don't tell them anything, but just lecture and criticise? Why do so many men feel that women nag them and never get to the point? In this pioneering book Deborah Tannen shows us how women and men talk in different ways, for profoundly different reasons. While women use language to make connections and reinforce intimacy, men use it to preserve their status and independence. Some have claimed that conversations are the forum of male power games, but the author suggests that jockeying for attention is not the whole story and that even when domination is the result, it is not always the intention. She shows how many frictions may arise because girls and boys grow up in essentially different cultures. Where women use language to seek confirmation, make connections and reinforce intimacies, men use it to protect their independence and negotiate status. The result is that conversation becomes a cross-cultural communication, fraught with genuine confusion. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Many years ago I was married to a man who shouted at me, "I do not give you the right to raise your voice to me, because you are a woman and I am a man." Read the first page

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	86% buy the item featured on this page: You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation 4.9 out of 5 stars (10)
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	4% buy Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work - Language, Sex and Power 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) �9.07
	2% buy The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages? 5.0 out of 5 stars (4) �5.50

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4.9 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for anyone hoping to understand the opposite sex., 20 Jul 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Paperback)

"You just don't understand" is a very well written book explaining the differences displayed by men and women in conversation. Some of it is common sense but a lot of what Tannen writes about is very eye-opening and explained a lot to me about how my comments would come across to a man and what his comments might mean. Helped me to believe that men are not simply evil, as one may suspect, they just have different styles of conversation.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive guide to avoiding misunderstandings with the opposite sex, 22 April 2007

By	Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Paperback)

This is one of the most usuful books ever written, and far and away the most helpful I have seen on the topic of how men and woman can understand each other better.

Dr Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics; her first book on the subject of communications was called "That's not what I meant." That book had ten chapters about alternative aspects of differing conversationsal styles and the misunderstandings they can cause: one of those ten chapters dealt with gender differences. But as Dr Tannen explains in the preface to this book, 90% of the feedback and requests for interviews or follow-up articles concerning that first book concentrated on 10% of it - the chapter on male-female differences.

The reason is not hard to seek. Differences in geographical origin, profession, race, class or ethnic background can easily be associated with differing communication styles which can lead to misunderstandings. However, we are not forced to build our most important and intimate relationships with people from whom we have such differences, though some choose to. But none of us can avoid having relationships central to our lives with people of the opposite sex. All of us have one parent of the other gender, the 90% of us who are heterosexuals have to look for our life-partners among the other gender, anyone who has a child has a 50% chance of having to raise someone of the other gender.

So Dr Tannen set out to explore communications and misunderstandings between men and women, and this book was the result.

I had been married less than two weeks when my wife and I managed to almost exactly act out one of the first examples of a male-female misunderstanding given in this book. Dr Tannen had presented in a Washington Post article a real-life conversation between a couple in their car.

The wife had asked "Would you like to stop for a drink?" The husband, taking the question literally and precisely at its face value, answered "No". The woman, who had expected her husband to realise that she did want to stop for a drink, was upset because it appeared to her that he ignored her wishes. The man, when it came out later that his wife was upset by this, was equally frustrated, wondering "Why didn't she just say what she wanted?"

Luckily when my wife and I enacted an almost identical conversation, (substituting a chinese takeaway for a drink) she added the comment "I really fancied a chinese" before it was too late to get one. If I had not read this book I might well have been hurt or confused and asked something like "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" As I had, I recognised at that we had fallen into the same pattern as the example in the book and that the problem was easily rectified; we stopped the car to get the takeaway, and avoided what could have developed into a completely unnecessary row. This was the first of a number of occasions when the book has helped us communicate better.

Dr Tannen is at pains to emphasise that she is not suggesting that men's or women's ways of speaking are necessarily better, just different, and that both sexes will be able to communicate more effectively if they have an understanding of those differences.

This book helped me for one to do that, and I strongly recommend it.

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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Should be part of the National Curriculum, 28 Dec 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Paperback)

A fantatstic book which we should all read. Most of the subject matter is so relevent in daily converstation its a must read.

The discussions and examples of the points is extremely interesting and there are 'so' many issues that can be seen in almost every conversation you have ever had.

My only criticism is that its quite heavy going and 'feels' more like a text book - but then again it probably is!

Well worth reading - some if not all.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh My God ... It Is Excellent!
After reading this book, I watched a TV drama and placed a bet with my fellow viewers that the drama was written by a male. We waited for the credits at the end AND BOOM ... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Hassans

5.0 out of 5 stars Revelation
"You just don't understand", was a source of real satisfaction to me. I was surprised, amused - indeed shocked by some of its revelations. Read more

Published 4 months ago by June Flowers

5.0 out of 5 stars Women and men talking - ouch!
this is a classic book - lots of life-enhancing insights and ideas for getting through the 'am I getting through/what are they on about/why dont they get me?' moments in life!

Published 8 months ago by Anne M. Bennett

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionally Well Researched and Written!
I read this book several years ago and found it well researched, written and easy to understand.

Deborah Tannen is a linguist who clearly addresses how and why women... Read more

Published 14 months ago by C. Clayton

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be handed out with the marriage vows!
First thing first, I bought this book by recommendation, and have been really excited by what I found, but in a way I was not expecting. Read more

Published on 7 Jul 2007 by D. O'Halloran

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
This is a most enlightening and comforting book.

All those WEIRD things about the other sex that confused and irritated you are suddenly seen to be aspects of the different ways... Read more

Published on 30 Oct 2005 by Mr. F. L. Dunkin Wedd

5.0 out of 5 stars Deborah Tannen's book
Definately definately worth buying! is a bit dry in places but is such a reflection of real life! good if just want 2 read about it, also fantastic for Eng Lang AS gender topic!

Published on 11 Jun 2005 by powell666

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