Can we talk? Lecture to explore mother/daughter relationship

She has saved marriages, helped mothers and daughters understand one another, and made it possible to get through a day on the job without alienating colleagues. Now, best-selling author of "You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation" will work her magic at 7:30 p.m. April 4 in the Michigan League Ballroom.

(Photo courtesy Farwell Photography)

Deborah Tannen is not a psychologist, although people find her books and talks therapeutic, and she isn't a magician either. A University Professor and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she teaches graduate students and serves on editorial boards of linguistics journals and a book series.

"Language has a critical role in human interactions, and Deborah Tannen is a prominent scholar who makes academic work on communication styles accessible to a wide audience," says Linguistics Department Chair Patrice Speeter Beddor.

"Mothers and daughters find in each other the source of great comfort but also of great pain," Tannen writes in her new book, one of her landmark studies of how ways of talking affect relationships. Her research has shown that this pain can be improved. "In doing this research, my primary goal is to understand like any other scientist," Tannen says, "but I learned early on that these insights are helpful to people in real life."

Even when she teaches research-driven seminars that don't pretend to be self-help workshops, students find her lectures useful.

Through her books and talks, Tannen helps people understand that language patterns may be influenced by a variety of factors age, class, gender, ethnic background, and more—and these patterns can change the meaning of communication.

Unlike psychologists who look for underlying pathology, Tannen says she searches for underlying normalcy and sees her work as "a first line of defense." Since "what you intend may not be what comes across," Tannen says, "instead of saying, 'Boy, is he hostile,' ask if speaking the way he does reflects regional style."

Tannen will present basic findings from earlier work on communication styles along with the way many problems in mother/daughter communication occur because both are women.

One woman thought her daughter hated her. "After I read your book, I changed the way I spoke to her, and now she's calling me," the woman told Tannen after one of the author's recent talks. "Thank you so much for giving my daughter back to me."

The Department of Linguistics in LSA invited Tannen to U-M on behalf of several departments—Anthropology, the Program in Women's Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Tannen's talk comes at an opportune moment for the department's language and aging research group, which currently is studying gender differences in interactions between people over 85 and their families, says Deborah Keller-Cohen, professor of linguistics and women's studies.