Customer Reviews

TALKING FROM 9 TO 5 HOW WOMEN'S AND MEN'S CONVERSA: How Women's and Men's Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work

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I feel that this book was very informational and useful with many instances in my life. It really gave me an insight to the reasons why people act how they do, and it made me comprehend my boyfriend and friends more. I have misunderstood them many times, and after reading parts of this book, I have realized what went wrong.

Deborah Tannen has effectively shown the differences between the communication styles of men and women. Although it doesn't tell either sex how to better their communication styles to close the gap, the book uses many examples of situations that people have encountered and can relate to which will help them better understand things that have happened in their life. It answers a lot of questions for a lot of people. This book is fairly easy reading, but you have to be mature to understand what is being said. If anyone is having problems with the opposite sex, then I strongly recommend this book.

This is a useful, interesting, provocative description of differences between men's and women's speech behaviors. Tannen takes an essentially socio-cultural stance in explaining the reasons for these differences. Not only does she present coherently her ideas, her speech is crisp and animated; thus, it is a delight to listen to her. This audio is an excellent introduction to Tannen's work on this subject. I ask students enrolled in my Gender and Communication course to listen to this edited tape in lieu of purchasing the book, as this proves to be an efficient alternative to reading the entire book. For instructors similarly inclined, I recommend purchasing two or three copies to be placed on reserve in the university library.

First, it would be nice to explain, that this book is targeted to (a) women, (b) women suffering from the lack fo self-confidence, (c) women suffering from the lack of self-confidence and comfortable with blaming men for sexism on a working place. It's just too much time spent on sexes relations instead of real communications problems. Of course, difference of male and female styles of communication is a problem, you have to keep in mind, but this is not the ONLY problem. Reading the review on a boook I expected advice on improving my communication skills, not to hear a bunch of regular feministic stream of accusations of the business world. It's just misleading, useless and very unpleasant. So if you want feminist propaganda, this book is for you, if you really want improve your skills, go somewhere else.

Not only I did I personally enjoy the content of this book, but I sincerely wanted my boyfriend, co-workers, and family to read it as well. Her insight is easily applied to everyday life and I appreciate her many references demonstrating her research instead of "pop psychology."

Deborah Tannen is not only highly respected by her colleagues in linguistics and communications around the world, but respected by readers everywhere!