Further details of speaking patterns

“Communication involves more than just the words that are uttered.”

Professor Deborah Tannen, You just don’t understand: women and men in conversation. New York: Quill, 2001. There is also a 2007 paperback version. [Tannen 2001]

http://www.deborahtannen.com/ Links to an external site.

Slide Notes

[Tannen 2001] Deborah Tannen, You just don’t understand: women and men in conversation. New York: Quill, 2001, ISBN: 978-0-06-095962-3.

Transcript

[slide109] Now, there's a wonderful book by Professor Deborah Tannen from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the title of the book is called "You Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation" it came out in 2001 and later paperback. And the key point of her book, is that communication that involves more than just the words that are said. And in particular, she looks at men talking to men, women talking to women, and men and women talking, and looks at it in different cultures and looks at the pattern, the timing between the speech. So if you're from some places, and I won't particularly pick on Brooklyn, NY, where there are specific ethnic varieties, having two people speaking is perfectly acceptable. The one person speaking and before the other one is even finished starts speaking, that's considered okay. In other cultures that would be just absolutely verboten. You wouldn't do it. In some cultures, if there's a very long gap, that's perfectly fine. Now why does this matter so much? We better make our services deliver what it is that the people expect. Or they're going to be unhappy, even if we say oh, but we have only blah, blah, blah, you know, percentage packet loss rate, and they said, but it didn't sound right.