You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation

Description

Deborah Tannen's No. 1 New York Times bestseller You Just Don't Understand revolutionized communication between women and men. Mothers and daughters often misunderstand each other as they struggle to find the right balance between closeness and independence. They both want to be seen for who they really are, but tend to see the other as failing short of who she should be. Each overestimates the other's power and underestimates her own. Deborah Tannen examines every aspect of this complex dynamic, from the dark side that can shadow a woman throughout her life, to the new technologies like e-mail and Instant Messaging that are transforming mother-daughter communication. With groundbreaking insights, pitch-perfect dialogues, and deeply moving memories of her own mother, Tannen untangles the knots daughters and mothers can get tied up in. Eye-opening and heart-felt, You're Wearing THAT illuminates and enriches one of the most important relationships in our lives.

Deborah Tannen is the acclaimed author of You Just Don't Understand, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly four years; Talking from 9 to 5, a New York Times bestseller; That's Not What I Meant!; and many other books. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, she lives with her husband in the Washington, D.C., area.

" The 'metamessages'--implications behind the spoken words--she decodes in You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation are so familiar, it hurts when you laugh." --Cathleen Medwick, "O Magazine" Deborah Tannen's groundbreaking book You Just Don't Understand improved male-female relationships about, oh, 100 percent. Now she's poised to do the same for moms and daughters in You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Listen, and get ready to make peace! --Kimberly Tranell, "Glamour" " The illuminating extracts from mother-daughter colloquies that she cites bring to life both the soothing ointment and the ripped-open scars possible in interchanges on ... age-old sources of conflict for this extraordinarily intense kind of relationship." --Whitney Scott " Tannen analyzes and decodes scores of conversations between moms and daughters. These exchanges are so real they can make you squirm as you relive the last fraught conversation you had with your own mother or daughter. But Tannen doesn't just point out the pitfalls of the mother-daughter relationship, she also provides guidance for changing the conversations (or the way that we feel about the conversations) before they degenerate into what Tannen calls a mutually aggravating spiral, a " self-perpetuating cycle of escalating responses that become provocations." - "The San Francisco Chronicle " "From the Hardcover edition." "The 'metamessages'--implications behind the spoken words--she decodes in You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation are so familiar, it hurts when you laugh." --Cathleen Medwick, "O Magazine" Deborah Tannen's groundbreaking book You Just Don't Understand improved male-female relationships about, oh, 100 percent. Now she's poised to do the same for moms and daughters in You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Listen, and get ready to make peace! --Kimberly Tranell, "Glamour" "The illuminating extracts from mother-daughter colloquies that she cites bring to life both the soothing ointment and the ripped-open scars possible in interchanges on ... age-old sources of conflict for this extraordinarily intense kind of relationship." --Whitney Scott "Tannen analyzes and decodes scores of conversations between moms and daughters. These exchanges are so real they can make you squirm as you relive the last fraught conversation you had with your own mother or daughter. But Tannen doesn't just point out the pitfalls of the mother-daughter relationship, she also provides guidance for changing the conversations (or the way that we feel about the conversations) before they degenerate into what Tannen calls a mutually aggravating spiral, a "self-perpetuating cycle of escalating responses that become provocations." - "The San Francisco Chronicle " "From the Hardcover edition."