Thirty-five years ago, Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen stepped into the public consciousness with her groundbreaking 1990 book, You Just Don’t Understand . This runaway bestseller dissected the linguistic differences between men and women. As she framed it there, “If women speak and hear a language of communication and intimacy, while men speak and hear a language of status and independence, then communication between men and women can be like a cross-cultural communication . . . .” Recently, the longtime Washingtonian told us about how her infatuation with language shaped her.

“I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers talk to everybody. So if you’re sitting next to somebody, you talk to them. You’re in an elevator, you talk to the person who’s there. As a child,

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