Episode 14: Conversational Style
We all want to be heard and understood for what me mean by what we say. But the style in which we converse flavors all of our interactions. How we participate. How we perceive others, and how others perceive us. Join us for a conversation with Deborah Tannen, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships. We dig into interactional sociolinguistics: how our skills at interacting depend on our conversational style rituals and habits, and how what we mean is often missed or misinterpreted when people with different styles interact. When I originally conceived of this podcast series on interruption, this was the interview at the top of my wish list! Please check the show notes at www.weinterruptthis.com for links to all of the resources mentioned.
Links
Deborah Tannen (2021) In Real Life, Not All Interruptions Are Rude. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-cooperative-overlapping.html
Deborah Tannen (2005) You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Ballantine Books: New York. ISBN 9780812972665
Deborah Tannen (1991, 2001) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. Quill: New York. ISBN 978-0-06-095962-3
Deborah Tannen (1986) That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships. Ballantine Books: New York. ISBN 978-0-34-537972-6
Deborah Tannen (1984, 2005) Conversational Style. Oxford University Press: New York. ISBN 13-978-0-19-522181-7
Frederick Erickson (2015). Oral Discourse as a Semiotic Ecology: The Co-construction and Mutual Influence of Speaking, Listening, and Looking. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (eds D. Tannen, H.E. Hamilton and D. Schiffrin). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118584194.ch20
Cynthia Gordon (2013). Beyond the observer’s paradox: the audio-recorder as a resource for the display of identity. Qualitative Research, 13(3), 299-317. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112442771
Steven Pinker (1994) The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Harper Perennial: New York. ISBN 978-0-06-133646-1
Jeremy Denk (2022) Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, In Music Lessons. Penguin Random House: New York. ISBN 978-0-81-298588-7
Credits
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website. Segue music is Looking for a way out by Paolopavan, licensed from Tribe of Noise BV (Certificate number 956ec9d5-c99f-48c5-b231-205e3a8a5546/23812), and intro/extro music is Bartok’s "Melody with Interruptions", played by Alan Huckleberry for The University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project. The podcast image is a public domain CC0 image from rawpixel, Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers’ Lunch) (1875) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
