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Gender
and
Language
Review
You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters
in Conversation. Deborah Tannen (2006)
New York: Ballantine Books, pp. 272
Reviewed by Ashley M. Williams
Deborah Tannen, as Michael Billig (2000: 129) noted in his review of her 1998
book The Argument Culture, has a particular knack for writing best-sellers
that ‘can outstrip the celebrity biographies, cookery books and sex manuals
that dominate the non-fiction book trade’. Indeed, Tannen’s latest addition to
her oeuvre meant for popular consumption, You’re Wearing That? a New York
Times bestseller, is no different.
Focusing on mother-adult daughter conversations and the tensions that can
arise from these relationships, Tannen’s goal is to help readers understand and
overcome these problems. In addressing her readers, assumed to be women,
she writes that:
our deepest wish is to be understood and approved of by our mothers and
daughters. We can get closer to that goal by listening to the ways we talk to
each other, and by learning to talk to each other in new ways (p. 32).
In privileging mother-daughter relationships, Tannen often mentions that these
relationships are like any other, only more so – and thus the tensions, disagreements and arguments involved are more intense, personal, and potentially
damaging. As in her previous popular works, her evidence of the difficulties
in these relationships draws heavily on recorded interactions, anecdotes, focus
group discussions, interviews, literature, and more. Tannen also uses examples
from her own relationship with her mother throughout, adding a personal and
Affiliation
American Studies, Department of English, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400121, Charlottesville, VA
22904–4121, USA
email: [email protected]
G&L vol 2.1 2008 123–127
©2008, equinox publishing
doi : 10.1558/genl.v2i1.123
LONDON
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poignant note to the book that serves as a memorial to her mother (who passed
away during its writing).
In Chapter 1 (Can we talk? Mothers and daughters in conversation), Tannen
introduces the concepts of message and meta-message (the ignorance of which,
as she has argued in her other popular works, leads to misunderstanding) and
the power tensions resulting from mothers’ and daughters’ needs to have both
connection and control.
Chapter 2 (My mother, my hair: Caring and criticizing) focuses on what
Tannen considers the ‘Big Three’, topics that are often the source of contention
between mothers and daughters: hair, clothes, and weight. This focus suggests
that gender role differences, particularly the importance placed on a woman’s
appearance, contribute to mother-daughter tensions. Tannen argues a mother
who loves her daughter cares about how the daughter is perceived in society.
Since society expects a woman to appear in particular ways, a mother criticizes
her daughter in an attempt to influence her and ensure that her appearance is
acceptable, thus creating tension.
In Chapter 3 (Don’t shut me out: The importance of being female), Tannen
revisits the arguments she put forth in her other popular works, such as You
Just Don’t Understand (1990) and Talking 9–5 (1994), that women and men
have different conversational styles. In particular, she stresses the importance
of talk for women (‘for girls and women talk is the ‘glue’ that holds relationships together’ (p. 63). She argues that women work through relationships and
problems with talk, whereas men do not as much. Since mothers and daughters
are women in close relationship with each other, they talk more, leading to more
problems to talk through.
Chapter 4 (She’s just like me, she’s nothing like me: Where do you end and I
begin?) lays out examples of what happens when mothers and daughters negotiate between considering themselves the same as or different than each other and
the closeness and distance (both emotional and physical) that can result.
Chapter 5 (Stop this conversation, I want to get off), the most intensely
conversation analytic chapter, introduces theoretical concepts such as complementary and symmetrical schismogenesis (borrowed from anthropologist
Gregory Bateson and applied to individuals) and Goffman’s view of alignment to
illustrate the tensions and disagreements that can result from mother-daughter
conversations.
In Chapter 6 (Wanted: Mother – a job description), Tannen gives an extensive
(although certainly not exhaustive) list of often conflicting responsibilities
(including ‘chief adviser’, ‘best friend’, ‘chief interrogator’, and ‘head of the PR
department’) mothers have according to the expectations of society, mothers
themselves, and their children – a reminder of the pressures on mothers to be
perfect.
Ashley M. Williams 125
Chapter 7 (Best friends, worst enemies: A walk on the dark side) is dedicated
to the negative aspects of the mother-daughter relationship. Tannen explains,
‘Although I have tried… to avoid the trap of demonizing mothers, I don’t want
to fall into the trap of romanticizing them either. To do so would be to deny
the very real experiences of many women’ (p. 162). The chapter includes cases
of abuse, anger, envy, and competition.
Chapter 8 (‘Oh Mom… BRB’: How e-mail and instant messaging are changing relationships) discusses how new communication technology can and is
changing mother-daughter relationships, mostly for the better, by allowing
women to think carefully about how to phrase conversations, to avoid tensions and arguments, and to communicate frequently about daily occurrences,
becoming and remaining close, and equalizing the power between them.
Finally, Chapter 9 (Blending intimacy and independence: New ways of talking) stresses the importance of balancing the protection and caring of an adult
daughter with her desire for freedom and privacy, and of finding ways of talking
to demonstrate this balance.
Despite Tannen’s careful use of language in order to avoid sweeping generalizations (‘many women’, ‘more often’, ‘may’, ‘sometimes’), a reader could
easily overgeneralize, and perhaps become confused. This gets particularly
tricky in Tannen’s characterization of mothers’ and daughters’ conversational
styles as being similar and yet different. Their conversational styles are similar
in that mothers and daughters, as women, use language in similar ways. At
the same time, Tannen considers their conversational styles to be different
because mothers and daughters belong to two different generations, and thus
two different cultures, leading them to use language differently. Compounding
this is the needed acknowledgement of different individual conversation styles.
In balancing these seeming contradictions, Tannen writes:
though all relationships between mothers and daughters share many characteristics… each relationship is unique, so no easy solutions will work for
all, as daughters and mothers try to find the amount of connection that feels
right (p. 243).
Tannen particularly stresses that both mothers and daughters should change by
being aware of their own and others’ conversational styles, and of the importance of message versus meta-message in conversation. Tannen’s chapter on
modern communication technology has an especially fresh approach, going
beyond the typical complaints in popular media about how modern technology is detrimental to the written language, and instead suggesting that new
technologies can help to alleviate and even avoid conversational tensions.
The suggested solution that I found most odd, even troubling, however, was
the following:
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…rather than just sitting and talking, [mothers and daughters should] do
something together. In other words, women can learn from men, for whom
friendship is more often built on doing things together than on talking to
each other, just as men can benefit from adopting some of women’s ways of
creating close relationships by talking more (p. 239).
While this suggestion is different than the blanket claim that women simply
talk more than men, and while studies have suggested that women rely on talk
to build relationships while men do not, I still worry it treads dangerously close
to the language myth that women talk too much (Holmes 1998). And although
Tannen does cite the benefit of each gender learning from the other’s relationship style, it seems unlikely that men will be reading a book that obviously
targets women (and I’m not sure that relationship troubles can necessarily be
alleviated by shopping, as Tannen suggests soon after).
Another limitation is that, as Tannen mentions in the introduction to the
paperback edition of the book, her examples are mainly from middle class
Americans. However, Tannen writes that she draws on examples from several
ethnic groups from middle class America. These are not flagged as such in
the text, perhaps to emphasize their universality. Additionally, she gives a
few examples from countries other than the U.S. (e.g. Sweden and Oman),
languages other than English (e.g. Spanish and Yiddish), and even a case or
two (perhaps token) of lesbian mothers. Indeed, in her introduction to the
paperback edition she mentions receiving e-mail and comments from women
in other countries and other cultures with similar mother-daughter experiences
and problems as those outlined in the book, suggesting that the tensions and
solutions discussed are not restricted to middle class America. Still, the book is
written from a middle class American perspective, with middle class American
assumptions (perhaps including the idea that mothers and daughters should
be best friends in the first place), and clearly targeting an audience of middle
class American women.
Despite these limitations, Tannen has once again succeeded in writing a
popular book that resonates with her readers. As Tannen writes in her introduction to the paperback edition, many women who read this easily relate to the
examples given, and Tannen cites the relief many feel that they are not alone
in having conversational breakdowns and difficult relationships with their
mothers or daughters. Tannen should be commended for educating the public,
and more linguists should join her and the few others who have attempted to
link linguistic research to people’s everyday lives. Still more remains to be done
to increase public awareness of the power of language ideology and myths
targeting women’s language use.
Ashley M. Williams 127
References
Billig, Michael (2000) Review of The Argument Culture: Changing the Way We Argue and
Debate. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(1): 129–131.
Holmes, Janet (1998) Women talk too much. In Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill (eds)
Language Myths 41–49. London: Penguin.
Tannen, Deborah (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.
New York: Morrow.
Tannen, Deborah (1994) Talking 9–5: How Women’s and Men’s Conversational Styles Affect
Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work. New York: Morrow.
Tannen, Deborah (1998) The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Discourse. New
York: Random House.