Whatever you say,
YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE I CAN TELL: INSIDE THE LANGUAGE OF WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS by Deborah Tannen (Virago, £12.99)
CONSIDERING that most women rely on their BFFs to be proxy therapists, cheerleaders, coconspirators, babysitters, career advisers and marriage counsellors, it’s surprising how little has been written on the nature of female friendships. In the unofficial hierarchy of relationships, friends seem to fall behind lovers, children and parents on the priority list.
The prevailing wisdom is that friendships should “just work”. But as any woman knows, these are often the most fraught and demanding relationships. Recounting a story of nine-year-olds at play, Deborah Tannen reflects on how females are as creative in causing each other pain as they are in providing succour. When one girl asked if she could join in a playground role-play game, another replied: “You can be the baby brother but you aren’t born yet.”
Tannen has made understanding women’s friendships — “how they work or fail, how they help and hurt, and how we can make them better” — the focus of her latest book. A professor of interactional sociolinguistics at Georgetown University, she’s known for her bestseller You Just Don’t Understand (1990), which analysed the differing communicative styles of men and women. Using the same case-study method, she interviewed girls and women from around the world to uncover how patterns of communication and miscommunication affect friendships.
One of Tannen’s overarching themes is that it is the exchange of secrets and intimacies that holds female friendships together. When men talk about their problems they’re usually in search of a solution. Women, however, like to talk for the sake of talking (even if they do ultimately want a solution). That a friend is prepared to listen to you sends what the author calls a “metamessage”: they care about you and want to create a connection. Tannen also observes that while males take pleasure in outdoing each other in conversation — riffing, bragging, bantering — females place value in “precious sameness” because “sameness implies equality”. We enter into verbal rituals (“me too!”) that affirm how similar we are, even when we’re attracted to a friend because they’re different.
But the juiciest bits come where Tannen recounts tales of women who have fallen out. Common complaints include unwanted comments about weight or race; flaking out of holidays or arrangements; being flippant about a friend’s personal problems; discovering you haven’t been invited to a party through Instagram.
If Tannen has one message, it’s that the successes and failures of our friendships come down to our styles of communication. A friend who frequently interrupts is not necessarily rude but simply indicating engagement (a “highinvolvement” approach to conversation). Her friend, however, may prefer longer pauses and be more comfortable with silence (a “high considerateness” style).
At times Tannen’s framework feels simplistic. Still, this is a useful manual for navigating friendships, a touching account of the various ways women connect — and a welcome non-fiction counterpart to novels such as Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet or the TV series Girls and Big Little Lies, which put conversations between female friends front and centre of the drama. It prompted me to send out a few affectionate emails to my closest girlfriends. Give it to a teenager and it may spare her a lot of confusion.
The juiciest bits come where Tannen recounts tales of women who have fallen out