The study of gender and language might seem at first to be a narrowly focused field, but it is actually as interdisciplinary as they come.

If you understand gender differences in what I call 'conversational style', you may not be able to prevent disagreements from arising, but you stand a better chance of preventing them from spiraling out of control.

This idea that we should be best friends with our partner of the opposite gender leads toward tremendous frustration. Did you ever notice that while men often refer to their wives as best friends, women usually refer to another woman in that way?

An assumption underlying almost all comments on interruptions is that they are aggressive, but the line between what's perceived as assertiveness or aggressiveness almost certainly shifts with an interrupter's gender.

TV's a wonderful medium: this intimate way of observing how a successful family operates and deals with each other.

The only honourable work my parents knew was blue-collar. But while my father Robert ran a pawnbroker's shop, and my mother was a waitress, I moved into a middle-class world with a level of security they never knew.

I would love four children because I have a very small family, so I want those big Thanksgiving dinners.

It takes a lot of help - nature, friends, family, craftsmen - for me to make what I make.