Born June 7, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York, Deborah Tannen received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1966; an M.A. in English Literature from Wayne State University, in 1970; and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1976. She teaches in the Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Tannen has received a number of awards for her writing, including the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition from University of California in 1976 for the short story "Last Car on the BMT," and the Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Lyric Poetry from University of California in 1977 for "Siesta in Crete" and "Now You See Him." She has also taught at the Greek-American Cultural Institute, Herakleion, Greece; at the Hellenic American Union, Athens, Greece; at the Institute of Technology, Detroit, Michigan; at Mercer County Community College, Trenton, New Jersey; and at the Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her published works include: Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, 1984; That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations With Others, 1986; The Argument Culture, 1999; and I Only Say This Because I Love You, 2001.

State University of New York

Visit the web site of the university where Tannen earned her bachelor's of science degree in 1966.

University of California

Visit the web site of the university where Tannen earned her doctoral degree in 1979.

Georgetown University: Deborah Tannen's home page

Visit the web site of the university where Tannen is a member of the Linguistics Department.

Gender Gap in Cyberspace