Why do so many women feel that men don't tell them anything, but just lecture an
d criticise? Why do so many men feel that women nag them and never get to the po
int? In this pioneering book Deborah Tannen shows us how women and men talk in d
ifferent ways, for profoundly different reasons. While women use language to mak
e connections and reinforce intimacy, men use it to preserve their status and in
dependence. Some have claimed that conversations are the forum of male power gam
es, but the author suggests that jockeying for attention is not the whole story
and that even when domination is the result, it is not always the intention.
