A Jewish Life
Talking Jewish With Deborah Tannen
It was Thanksgiving 1978 in Berkeley. Some guests brought cranberry sauce, some brought sweet potato pie; Deborah Tannen—who was analyzing conversations for her doctoral dissertation in linguistics—brought her tape recorder. Over a turkey dinner that lasted two and a half hours, three Jews and three Gentiles, ages 29 to 35, discussed 38 topics that included New York geography, relationships, Quonset huts, piano hands and—of course—food.
When Tannen later listened to the tape of the lively discourse, it struck her: unlike the three Gentiles (whom she calls Sally, David and Chad), she and the other two Jews (Steve and Peter)—all of whom had grown up in New York City and were of Eastern European descent—spoke dramatically and rapidly and pursued a variety of topics simultaneously. In fact, so many distinctions between the two...