That's Not What I Meant! Quotes

“The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn’t likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you’re doing—intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it’s because someone is dominating you. If you can’t find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like “dominating” and “manipulative.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“It’s important to remember that others’ ways of talking to you are partly a reaction to your style, just as your style with them is partly a reaction to their style—with you.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Often, focusing on the words spoken precludes figuring out what sparked a crisis, because the culprits are not words but tone of voice, intonation, and unstated implications and assumptions.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“the ways of doing things or speaking can be judged incorrect by some external standard. But often critics—male and female—want their intimates to adhere to standards that are not absolute but simply reflect their own cultural conventions, or even their individual habits and styles. And what seems “illogical” is often an expression of a different rather than a lapsed logic.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Communication is a system. Everything that is said is simultaneously an instigation and a reaction, a reaction and an instigation. Most of us tend to focus on the first part of that process while ignoring or downplaying the second. We see ourselves as reacting to what others say and do, without realizing that their actions or words are in part reactions to ours, and that our reactions to them won’t be the end of the process but rather will trigger more reactions, in a continuous stream.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“The belief that sitting down and talking will ensure mutual understanding and solve problems is based on the assumption that we can say what we mean, and that what we say will be understood as we mean it. This is unlikely to happen if conversational styles differ.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“the platitude “If you love each other, you can work it out” is not necessarily true. Instead, the more you love each other, the more unrealistic your expectations of perfect understanding, and the more painful the metamessage of misunderstanding. And that, in turn, is why so many people, finding that they can’t work it out, conclude that they don’t—or even less logically, never did—love each other.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn’t likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you’re doing—intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior,”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“We are more likely to respond according to our habits than to the specifics of the situation.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Whereas it might seem as though the right to go ahead gives one the upper hand, that is only the message level. On the metamessage level, the one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way. Most of us tend either to resist or to yield to frames. Those who instinctively resist frames set by others tend to balk when they feel pushed. Those who instinctively fit inside the frames set by others tend to yield when they feel pushed. We are more likely to respond according to our habits than to the specifics of the situation.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“The payoffs of indirectness in rapport and self-defense correspond to the two basic dynamics that motivate communication: the coexisting and conflicting human needs for involvement and independence. Since any show of involvement is a threat to independence, and any show of independence is a threat to involvement, indirectness is the life raft of communication, a way to float on top of a situation instead of plunging in with nose pinched and coming up blinking.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Second, there is a payoff in self-defense. If what we want or think does not meet with a positive response, we can take it back, or claim—perhaps sincerely—that that’s not what we meant.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Why can’t we just say what we mean? Why is so much communication indirect, hinted at in metamessages, picked up in tones of voice and glimpsed in facial expressions instead of confronted head on and clearly stated in words? First, there is a payoff in rapport. It is far better to get what we want, to be understood, without saying what we mean. It makes us feel the fine pleasure of being on the same wave length. This is the pleasure of those magical conversations when we say just a few words—or no words at all— and feel completely understood.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“The danger of misinterpretation is greatest, of course, among speakers who actually speak different native tongues, or come from different cultural backgrounds, because cultural difference necessarily implies different assumptions about natural and obvious ways to be polite.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Linguist Robin Lakoff devised another set of rules that describe the motivations behind politeness—that is, how we adjust what we say to take into account its effects on others. Here they are as Lakoff presents them: 1. Don’t impose; keep your distance. 2. Give options; let the other person have a say. 3. Be friendly; maintain camaraderie.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“American men’s information-focused approach to talk has shaped the American way of doing business. Most Americans think it’s best to “get down to brass tacks” as soon as possible, and not “waste time” in small talk (social talk) or “beating around the bush.” But this doesn’t work very well in business dealings with Greek, Japanese, or Arab counterparts for whom “small talk” is necessary to establish the social relationship that must provide the foundation for conducting business.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“These are the signals that combine with what is said to make up the devices we use to show we’re listening, interested, sympathetic, or teasing—and that we’re the right sort of people.”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

“Thus conversational signals can get crossed when well-intentioned speakers have different habits and expectations about using pacing and pausing, loudness, and pitch to show their intentions through talk—”
― Deborah Tannen, That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships