Deborah Tannen

Oral and Literate Strategies in Spoken and Written Narratives

Comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative demonstrates (1) that features which have been identified as characterizing oral discourse are also found in written discourse, and (2) that the written short story combines syntactic complexity expected in writing with features which create involvement expected in speaking. Quintessentially literary devices (repetition of sounds and words, syntactic structures, and rhythm) are shared by written literary language and ordinary spontaneous conversation because both are typified by subjective knowing and by focus on interpersonal involvement. In contrast, expository prose and content-focused oral genres, such as lectures and instructions, may be typified by objective knowing and by focus on content.*

Gender Differences in Topical Coherence: Creating Involvement in Best Friends' Talk

Analyzing videotapes recorded by Bruce Dorval in which 2nd‐, 6th‐, and 10th‐grade same‐sex best friends talked to each other for 20 minutes in an experimental setting, the study examines gender differences in topical coherence through the lens of John Gumperzs framework for cross‐cultural communication. The girls exhibit minimal or no difficulty finding something to talk about, and they talk about a small number of topics, all related to troubles. There is more concern among the girls with avoidance of anger and disagreement. The boys exhibit more discomfort with the situation. The two younger pairs of boys produce small amounts of talk about a great number of topics. The 10th‐grade boys talk about highly personal topics, but each develops his own topic and minimizes the others. These differences in ways of creating involvement can account for frustrations in cross‐gender conversations without blaming either gender for communication failure.

Indirectness in discourse: Ethnicity as conversational style∗

This paper focuses on indirectness in discourse as a feature of conversational style. Reported research emphasizes social differences in expectations of indirectness in the context of conversation between married partners. To discover patterns of interpretation, findings are drawn from (1) interviews with Greeks and Americans about their interactional experience and (2) a pilot study consisting of a questionnaire based on a conversation reported in (1) and including (a) paraphrase choices (b) short answers and (c) open‐ended interview/discussions with respondents. Results suggest that Greeks are more likely to expect indirectness in the context presented, and that Greek‐Americans who may not speak Greek have retained the influence of Greek communicative strategies. Discussion of differences in interpretive strategies focuses on 1) the discourse function of questions and 2) the significance of ellipsis, yielding a brevity effect, associated for Greeks with an enthusiasm constraint. Theoretical implications...

Talking the Dog: Framing Pets as Interactional Resources in Family Discourse

Based on examples drawn from tape recordings of two middle-class, dual-career White couples with children who audiotaped their own interactions for a week, I examined how family members mediate interpersonal interaction by speaking as, to, or about pet dogs who are present in the interaction. Analysis demonstrates that dogs become resources by which speakers effect a frame shift to a humorous key, buffer criticism, deliver praise, teach values to a child, resolve potential conflict with a spouse, and create a family identity that includes the dogs as family members. In this analysis, I contribute to an understanding of framing in interaction, including the relevance of Bakhtins (1981) notion of polyvocality for conversational discourse and demonstrate how family members use pets as resources to mediate their interactions while constituting and reinforcing their identity as a family.

The Myth of Orality and Literacy

In my research on discourse over the last few years, I became aware that theoretical work done in the fields of anthropology, rhetoric, and psychology on oral and literate tradition sheds light on a variety of discourse phenomena. In investigating how this is so, I concluded that it is not orality and literacy per se that accounts for the findings of the oral/literate research, but rather that typically oral and typically written discourse reflects relatively more focus on interpersonal involvement and content, respectively. However, there is something very tantalizing about dichotomies, and something catchy about the notion of orality versus literacy. People continued to walk away from my talks and my articles with the oral/ literate split more prominent in their minds than what I intended as my main idea: that it is not orality vs. literacy per se that is the key distinction, but relative focus on involvement vs. content.

Ordinary conversation and literary discourse: coherence and the poetics of repetition.

ORDINARY CONVERSATION achieves coherence through linguistic features generally regarded as quintessentially literary: use of, and repetition and variation of, rhythm; phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse structures; ellipsis (“indirectness” in conversation); imagery and detail; constructed dialogue; and figures of speech and tropes. This is so because literature, like conversation, both creates and depends for its meaning on interpersonal involvement. Although conversation and literature operate on the same constraints, they are not the same. I have been trying, in recent research, to identify and compare the form, frequency, and functionb of the patterns listed above, in conversational and literary discourse. Thus far, I have focused analysis on indirectnesdellipsis (or silence) in conversation as well as drama (for example in the plays of Pinter) (Tannen 1990), repetition (Tannen 1987a,b), and constructed dialogue (what has been called reported or direct speech) (Tannen 1986,1988). In this paper I begin by discussing the larger framework and practical significance of this research in terms of the study of conversational coherence, and the sense in which this can be thought of as an aesthetics or poetics of conversation. I then summarize the aspects of discourse I have been looking at, giving brief illustrations of a number of them. The bulk of the paper then presents extended analysis of one aspect of discourse patterning, repetition, as seen in a short segment of conversation. Finally, I examine some aspects

Framing and Face: The Relevance of The Presentation of Self to Linguistic Discourse Analysis

analytic focus specifically toward language until later in his career (in the 1981 Forms of Talk), his work, beginning with The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, has been crucial for discourse analysts and interactional sociolinguists who study language in social context. Perhaps most influential have been his concepts of framing and face, which Goffman developed more fully in later work but presaged in Presentation. Moreover, these specific concepts refine and develop the approach to interaction that Goffman lays out in Presentation: the fundamental notion of self as social construction; the observation that expressions of self can be given off, that is, inadvertently communicated while an interactant is focusing on information intentionally given; and that conventions for such selfexpression can be understood as socially agreed-upon rituals. In order to show the influence and continuing relevance of Presentation of Self, I’ll briefly define and illustrate the concepts that are key for discourse analysts: framing and face, and explain their relation to the theoretical underpinnings outlined in Presentation. I will then suggest the roles they play in discourse analysis, with specific reference to the work of John Gumperz, Robin Lakoff, Deborah Schiffrin, and myself. After that, I’ll relate a personal encounter I had with Goffman and explain the insight and inspiration this encounter afforded me. Finally, I’ll briefly note another source of inspiration: the wry inventiveness of Goffman’s writing style in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Conversational Patterns across Gender, Class, and Ethnicity: Implications for Classroom Discourse

Tannen (1984) introduces the term “conversational style” to refer to the unique collection of communicative habits that individuals develop — all the ways they say what they mean — influenced by regional and cultural background, ethnicity, class, age, and gender, as well as numerous other influences such as sexual orientation, profession, and personality. According to Tannen, when individuals’ systems for signaling meaning and framing interaction are relatively similar, meaning is likely to be understood more or less as intended. When they are relatively different, speakers’ meaning, interactional intentions, and abilities may be misjudged.

The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy

Paul Friedrich: An Appreciation, by William Bright Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. A Background History of Linguistic Relativism 3. Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy: A Reformulation of Sapirs Position 4. Indeterminacy in Linguistic Fieldwork 5. The Poetry of Language in the Politics of Dreams 6. The Unheralded Revolution in the Sonnet: Toward a Generative Model 7. The Poem as Parallactic Position: Seven Poems 8. Linguistic Relativity and the Order-to-Chaos Continuum 9. Toward an Improved Theory of Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy Notes Bibliography Permission Notices Index of Names and Titles Subject Index