That's Not What I Meant!

That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships is Deborah Tannen's first book presenting, for a general audience, her linguistic approach to explaining how ways of speaking affect relationships. Predating by four years her phenomenally bestselling book about gender differences in ways of speaking, You Just Don't Understand, this book approaches communication and miscommunication from a linguistic point of view rather than a psychological one, emphasizing differences between the genders. The book lays out the linguistic devices and rituals that constitute "conversational style", such as indirectness, pacing, pausing, humor, overlap, and interruption, and shows their effects when styles differ.^[1][2] Tannen contrasted her book with Suzette Haden Elgin's The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series by saying, "Hers is sort of a verbal war manual. Mine is about verbal peacemaking".^[3]

That's Not What I MEANT! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships

Author	Deborah Tannen
Language	English
Subject	Relationships
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	March 12, 1987
Published in English	March 12, 1987
Pages	224
ISBN	978-0-345-34090-0

See also

• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
• Nonverbal communication