Deborah Tannen presented a lecture at GW's Mt. Vernon campus on the night of Friday, November 11, 2000 to a large gathering. Tannen presented some of her extensive body of work on the way women and men communicate and how rather different styles of communication often lead to misunderstandings.

Deborah Tannen offered an interesting defense for the pragmatic importance of her work. While she recognizes the necessary over-generalizing, she said, she feels that the risk of ignoring certain patterns is greater. That is to say, male patterns in our society are still taken as normative, and not trying to explain different patterns often causes them to be pathologized. Also, recognizing and confronting these different patterns, Tannen argued, creates a more productive environment within which the problems can be worked out. Her goal is to promote the importance of trying to understand the reasons behind the differences in male and female communication.