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Title details for I Only Say This Because I Love You by Deborah Tannen - Available

I Only Say This Because I Love You

Talking In Families

by Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen
Audiobook
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Why does talk in families so often go in circles, leaving us tied up in knots? Linguist Deborah Tannen reveals why talking to family members is so often painful and problematic — even when we're all adults.
Searching for signs of acceptance and belonging, we find signs of disapproval and rejection. Why do the seeds of family love so often yield a harvest of criticism and judgment? In I Only Say This Because I Love You, Tannen shows how important it is, in family talk, to learn to separate word meanings, or messages, from heart meanings, or metamessages — unstated but powerful meanings that come from the history of our relationships and the way things are said.
Presenting real conversations from people's lives, Tannen explores what is actually going on in family talk, including how family conversations must balance the longing for connection with the desire for control, as we struggle to be close without giving up our freedom.
This eye-opening audiobook explains why grown women so often feel criticized by their mothers — and why mothers feel they can't open their mouths around their grown daughters, why growing up male or female, or as an older or younger sibling, results in different experiences of family that persist throughout our lives. BY helping us to understand and redefine family talk, Tannen provides the tools to improve relationships with family members of every age.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 1, 2004

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780743548588
      • File size: 125776 KB
      • Duration: 04:22:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      With vignettes and examples that will be familiar to everyone, the author explores how the many aspects of caring for one another can get jumbled up when expressed within the confines of language. "Did you see that there is salmon on the menu?" and "You put onions in your dressing?" are messages that seem innocent enough, unless they are asked of someone who has high blood pressure or who makes terrible dressing. She calls the unspoken feelings "the metamessage" and provides a marvelous guide for understanding these messages in marriages and extended families. Tannen's humility takes nothing away from the importance of these ideas, and her natural speaking rhythm is a delight. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 9, 2001
      Tannen's You Just Don't Understand
      set tongues wagging across the country in the early 1990s with its analysis of gender differences in speaking styles. Now the linguist and author of numerous other books turns her attention to patterns of speech within families. Though the subject is not as sexy as in her mega-bestseller, most readers are apt to hear themselves in these pages. For example, Tannen asserts, in many situations the mother serves as "Communications Chief" as well as chief critic. Drawing on sample conversations from an ongoing study at Georgetown University, from memoirs and from TV documentaries (including An American Family, which examined the Loud family of Santa Barbara in 1973 and reveals how little family interactions have changed in the past 30 years), she convincingly shows how threads of family history and emotion add weight and complexity to everyday exchanges. Each conversation, she argues, carries meaning both in its actual words and in the underlying relationship and attitudes it expresses (e.g., "I didn't criticize you. I just asked a question"). She also shows how speakers may use language for connection and control, influencing shifts in family alignment. Like its predecessor, this book is neither scholarly nor overtly self-help–oriented. Its advice is embedded in its examples, though occasionally Tannen offers explicit guidelines, such as rules for fair fighting: stick to the facts; avoid insults, sarcasm and exaggeration. Parents of teenagers may also find some good insights in Tannen's clear-sighted analysis of how clashing frames of reference undermine communication. Agent, Suzanne Gluck; first serial to Good Housekeeping and Modern Maturity. (May 10)Forecast: Tannen's 13-city author tour (including a May 14 appearance on the
      Today Show) will help ensure this book's visibility, but it's more likely to match the respectable (but not stellar) numbers for
      Talking 9 to 5, her book on workplace speaking styles, than those for
      You Just Don't Understand.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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