Source Evaluation - Tannen

Source Evaluation – Deborah Tannen

I was first introduced to Deborah Tannen in this English class when a piece of her work was provided for an assignment. After reading the short excerpt I found myself drawn to the topic of male vs. female communication. I decided to google Tannen to begin my research on her credentials and find out if she had any additional work that would be beneficial to my paper. What I discovered encouraged me to use her as one of the sources for my paper.

Tannen has a Ph.D in linguistics and is currently a professor at Georgetown University. She has published over 20 books and a hundred articles relating to communication issues that occur in everyday life. The book that Tannen is best recognized for is You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.

I have to say that after reading some of Tannen’s work I agree with her thought that neither male or female communication is superior, it is just a matter of each learning to interpret and understand the other’s methods of communication. She believes that “masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialect and miscommunication between men and women is all the more insidious because the parties usually don’t realize that they are in a cross-cultural encounter.” Throughout her career Tannen has developed theories, such as the above mentioned, as to why gender communication is an issue in so many relationships and she discusses them at length within her work.

“If my interpretation is correct, then readers, on hearing my explanation, will exclaim with their heads, “Aha!” Something they have intuitively sensed will be made explicit” (Tannen, in Griffin, 1997, p.455). This type of reaction is exactly what Tannen’s work received from me as I read it. I felt as if she was in my relationship with my husband and had been listening to us communicate for the past 13 years. As I read each of her statements I found myself wanting to learn how Tannen feels that communication obstacles within a relationship can be dealt with and overcome.

I believe Tannen is a great source for my paper because every single person that has been involved in any type of male-female relationship will be able to find at least one point that they can relate to and apply to their own personal communication issues.