You're Wearing That?

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, March 2006; written by Lisa Pearson.

I don’t usually spend a lot of time perusing the Sociology and Relationships section here at the library (the early 300s for you library geeks), and those titles rarely grab my eye on the New Book shelf. But this week is an exception, as I was intrigued by a new book by Deborah Tannen entitled “You’re Wearing That?: Understanding mothers and daughters in conversation”. Let me start off by saying that this is not a book aimed solely towards women. This is not a book about parenting or love. This is a book about the way people talk to each other, the words they use, and the messages they send.

Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, and many of the examples that she cites in this book come from her students. And although all the examples are concerned with the conversational missteps and hidden messages that occur when mothers and daughters talk to each other, Tannen points out that these miscommunications happen with mothers and sons, and with fathers and daughters: they are a part of any deep, lifelong relationship.

Now, I have a wonderful relationship with my mother (and I’m not just saying that because I know she reads this column). We talk almost daily, go out for coffee, and schedule our shopping trips together. We can finish each other’s sentences. But we can also set each other off with the most innocuous gestures and words, simply because of the history behind our conversations. Tannen’s book focuses on this ability of mothers and daughters to simultaneously read one another’s minds and completely misunderstand each other. One of my favorite examples (and her book is full of them), concerns a daughter who is cooking dinner. Her mother comes into the kitchen and asks, “Are you going to quarter those tomatoes?” The daughter instantly becomes defensive, and an argument ensues. As Tannen explains, “I am willing to wager that Kathryn’s mother thought she had asked a question about cutting a tomato. What could be more trivial than that? But her daughter bristled because she heard the implication ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. I know better’.” On the other side of the coin, Tannen discusses the fact that because of the closeness of the mother-daughter relationship, daughters often feel comfortable talking to their mothers in a ruder, more aggressive way than they would talk to anyone else.

There are a fair amount of ups and downs in this book. The majority of the time, the anecdotes bring up a smile of recognition or even a laugh. I guarantee you have had or heard a conversation somewhere in this book. There are a few sections, however, that deal with abuse and true hatred between mothers and daughters. I found these parts a little unsettling, and it seems odd to lump the physical and sexual abuse of a child in with disagreements over which dress to wear to a party. It’s a jarring addition to what is otherwise a lighthearted book about communication. My only other complaint is the frequent use of the word ‘metamessage’, but that is a strictly personal dislike of the current fad for tacking ‘meta’ on the front of everything.

The book finishes with some very good recommendations about how to stop the cycles of miscommunication. I think they’re completely unrealistic, since the whole point of the book is that conversations between parents and children are imbued with decades of tension and history and are often composed of knee-jerk reactions. But it’s nice to finish the book with some feeling of purpose – an intention to make your life better – regardless of the fact that you will never actually use these techniques.