Family Talk: Discourse and Identity in Four American Families

This contributed volume will be one of the first to look truly in-depth at the face-to-face interactions within the American family. Working with the same data -- audio tape recordings made in four family homes over the course of several years -- the contributors focus on extending our knowledge of family discourse and identifying new ways in which family members create and enact their identities. Several broad themes emerge: the underlying dynamics of power and solidarity in the family and how they are reinforced through language; the negotiation of gendered roles in conjunction with family identities, especially in dual-income families; and the ways in which famlies actively confirm their beliefs and values when children are present. This ground-breaking volume will be of interest in linguistics, anthropology, and communications.

Deborah Tannen is University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. Her twenty books include Talking Voices, Gender and Discourse, Conversational Style, You're Wearing THAT?, Talking from 9 to 5, That's Not What I Meant!, You Just Don't Understand, and The Argument Culture.

Cynthia Gordon is a postdoctoral fellow at the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) in Atlanta, Georgia. Her publications have appeared in Language in Society, Discourse & Society, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Narrative Inquiry, The Journal of Genetic Counseling, and Text & Talk.

Shari Kendall is Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Texas A & M University. Her publications include articles and chapters in Discourse & Society, Text & Talk, The Handbook of Language and Gender, and Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts.