Deborah Tannen, "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue"

Deborah Tannen became interested in cross-cultural communication after she graduated from college in 1966 and taught English in Greece for two years. After earning a master's degree in English from Wayne State University and teaching writing in the United States for a few years, Tannen decided to pursue a doctorate in linguistics at Berkeley. It was just Tannen's luck that the first linguistics institute she attended focused on language in a social context. "Had I gone another summer," Tannen has said, "it's quite likely I would have concluded linguistics was not for me."

Tannen is currently University Professor on the faculty of the linguistics department at Georgetown University. Tannen, who has published sixteen books and more than eighty-five articles and is the recipient of four honorary doctorates, is best known as the author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1991), which is credited with bringing gender differences in communication style to the forefront of public awareness. This book was on the New York Times Bestsellers list for nearly four years, including eight months as number one, and has been translated into twenty-five languages.

"The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue" is drawn from one of Tannen's most recent books, The Argument Culture (1998), which examines the social, political, and emotional consequences of treating discussions as battles to be won or lost. Tannen's goal in this work is to get her readers to notice "the power of words to frame how you think about things, how you feel about things, how you perceive the world. The tendency in our culture to use war metaphors so pervasively, and to frame everything as a metaphorical battle, influences how we approach each other in our everyday lives."

Tannen, Deborah. "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue." The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Random House, 1998. 256-290.
Biographical information from Deborah Tannen's home page on the Georgetown University web site.
Quotation from Deborah Tannen, interview by Michael Toms, "Agreeing to Disagree: The Culture of Argument in America." New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network.

Links to Explore:

Deborah Tannen's home page: Tannen's home page includes biographical information on her publications in scholarly and popular venues. Interestingly, Tannen is also a creative writer. Visit PBS NewsHour Online for a 1998 David Gergen interview with Deborah Tannen; visit Ann On-Line to listen to Tannen discuss The Argument Culture.

'Thank You for Not Fighting: Deborah Tannen wants us to be nice' (requires free registration):a critical review of Tannen's recent work by Larissa MacFarquhar.

State of the Debate: The Case Against 'Civility': In this 1998 essay, Randall Kennedy explores the issue of civility in the context of recent American history and politics and argues that "invigorated liberalism" requires "a willingness to fight loudly, openly, militantly, even rudely for policies and values that will increase freedom, equality, and happiness in America and around the world."

The Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought defines 'agonism' in ways that might complicate Tannen's treatment of the concept in her essay.

Questions for Learning:

• In Tannen's conversation with David Gergen in her PBS NewsHour Online interview, she makes a case that debate is not a very effective learning tool in the university classroom. In your experience, can debate work to cultivate learning in the classroom? In what ways might debate in the classroom help students locate their own positions on issues of relevance to the course? How can it undermine genuine learning?

• What do you make of MacFarquhar's critique of Tannen's book? If you put Tannen and MacFarquhar into a conversation, would it be possible for them to have a dialogue? How might you encourage a dialogue between these authors without spoiling MacFarquhar's 'fun'? How can we have a dialogue without ending in some 'mushy middle' in which we all agree but none of us has any convictions.

• Read Randall Kennedy's "case against civility" in the context of Tannen's ideas about dialogue. What do you think about Kennedy's argument that "the civility movement is deeply at odds with what an invigorated liberalism requires?" Can Tannen's position rightly be placed in the context of this "civility movement"? How might Tannen respond to Kennedy? How might dialogue of the sort Tannen promotes contribute to Kennedy's hope for an "invigorated liberalism"?

• Visit the Encyclopedia of Democracy site and read the discussion of agonism. Consider the potential connections between Tannen's call for dialogue in politics and academia and the origins of agonism in Greek thought and action. Does the treatment of agonism in the Encyclopedia help you better understand what Tannen means by agonism in her essay? How might the Encyclopedia's treatment of agonism complicate Tannen's decision to equate agonism with debate and argument?

Question for Connecting:

• How might Martha Nussbaum respond to Tannen's argument? Would Nussbaum agree with Tannen that agonistic responses to the beliefs of others truncate discussion and arrest the pursuit of knowledge? Might we say that Nussbaum puts into practice an ethic of principled or righteous intellectual violence, or would that be going too far? Do you believe that she does justice to the perspectives of her opponents? Are they likely to be persuaded by her practice of critique? If her opponents are not likely to find her persuasive, then who might?

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