June 18, 1999

Best Seller by Deborah Tannen Criticized as Unscholarly; Psychology Association to Review Quality of Controversial Study It Published

As the author of popular books on styles of communicating, Deborah Tannen is used to reading between the lines. But her latest detractors have saved her the trouble: Hardly mincing words, they say she has flunked the basic standards of scholarship.

In You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (Ballantine, 1990), which has sold more than two million copies, the Georgetown University sociolinguist