“We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we're talking to. And so I think it's kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you're speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.”

American author and linguist

Deborah Tannen is an American author and linguist, associated with Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is best known for You Just Don't Understand, and has 105 quotes on the site. She has also served as a McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. Her work and academic roles place her in the study of language and communication, especially the ways people understand one another.