The Argument Culture Deborah Tannen Summary

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“War vs. Dialog” Professor of linguistics, and author of “The Argument Culture”, Deborah Tannen is trying to get people to “think of argument not as war or a fight but as a dialogue among a variety of different positions” (Tannen 475). Tannen convinces her readers that “adversarial debates which typically represent only two sides of an issue and thus promote antagonism, creates problems in communication” (Tannen 475). In this writing, Deborah Tannen is also trying to persuade that our argument culture is a problem. Even though there’s at time to fight and defend your point, The Argument Culture of Americans today is bad, waste of time, negative for the community and can worsen the relationship of the two arguing. To support her focus, Deborah goes about it and gives realistic, everyday life examples. “The war on drugs, the war on cancer, and the battle of sexes and politicians turf battles” are mentioned (Tannen 475). She explains and reasons how “everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern.” The author gives two examples of how…show more content…
Tannen says that a “breakdown of a sense of community is partially to blame for the argument culture” (Tannen chap. 23). This shows how Tannen really wants our culture to get better for the benefit for all. She’s just not writing for fun, she’s serious with persuaded her readers. The problem now, is that people feel too much of themselves. Everyone wants to be independent and an individual but they have to see that one day they’re going to need assistance from someone else. We would rather criticize and attack instead of rationally discussing our differences of opinion. We see this every day in our culture. Our community as a whole loves to be argumentative. I truly agree with Deborah and she couldn’t get her point across any clearer. After the reading, I’m not going to try to “win the war” all the

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