It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

All communication is more or less cross-cultural. We learn to use language as we grow up, and growing up in different parts of the country, having different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, even just being male or female - all result in different ways of talking.

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence.

any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life.

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord.