词汇大师--Think Age Makes No Difference for Twins

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We're back with linguist¹ and author Deborah Tannen, discussing communication between sisters, the topic of her most recent book "You Were Always Mom's Favorite!"
RS: "Did you talk to twins?"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "I talked to quite a number of twins. One of the things that really amused me, every set of twins that I talked to, they knew who was older and they talked about it."
RS: "Like 'You're a minute older.'"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "It might be three minutes older. It might be five minutes older. Now, in cultures where the hierarchy² by age is taken very seriously, even more so than in American culture, that was very important.

　　"So, for example, I spoke³ to a Korean woman who was an identical twin. She had an older sister and a younger sister, and here were these identical twins in the middle. But because it was a Korean family, everything was ordered according to age.
"So her mother called, every week, called her four daughters starting with the oldest, going down, so she had to know which of the twins was older in order to call those kids."
RS: "So it still made a difference."
DEBORAH TANNEN: "It made a difference. And I was also amused -- I'm the youngest of three sisters, and I think there's a lot of ways that the oldest gets privileged as well as gets a lot more responsibility, and again I saw that especially in more traditional cultures. But as the youngest I was very aware of some privileges that come with the oldest. I love this quote from [author and anti-slavery activist] Harriet Beecher Stowe: "The first child is pure poetry, the rest are prose.'"
AA: "Well, I mean the title of your book 'You Were Always Mom's Favorite!' how often did you hear that?"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "I heard it very often. And when I spoke to more than one sibling⁴ in the same family, they didn't always agree on who was the favorite but they all had an idea about who was. There were very few cases, I'm thinking of two where the women said 'My mother was so great, she convinced each one of us we were her favorite.'"
RS: "Let me ask you a question about siblings⁵. Now, where does it depart -- your book is about sisters. Well, where do the sisters depart from siblings?"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "Yes, if the women I talked to had brothers as well as sisters, I always asked them to compare, and the pattern that emerged was that they tended to talk to their sisters more often, at greater length, about more personal topics.
"In some cases they were very close to the brothers as well. And I think of one woman who said 'I can talk to my brother about practically anything, but I can talk to my sister about absolutely everything.' In other cases, they felt that they were not as close to the brother, because that constant talk is what often creates a feeling of closeness."
AA: "You say in your book here, you say 'Several people told me they had sent conciliatory e-mails to their sisters following an argument and were surprised to receive belligerent⁶ responses.'"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "People often found e-mail to be problematic, and I believe you have to be very careful with e-mail. But several people told me that 'Yeah, you know, I tried to make up with her, I sent this nice e-mail.' I would say 'Well, show me the e-mail.'
"And very often what they thought was conciliatory really had metamessage, to use that term that we raised before, and that's m-e-t-a, meta, the metamessage was still blaming. So it might be something like 'I understand why you said what you did and I feel sorry for you.' Well, if you said to somebody 'I feel sorry for you,' that's not conciliatory, they take it as a put-down."
AA: "Are you working on anything currently?"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "I'm moving toward the area of how we use these new media in our relationships. I feel like the students I teach at Georgetown University are living in an entirely⁷ different world than any world I understand. And I would like to understand how their use of these texting and e-mail and instant messaging and cell phones and -- "
RS: " Facebook."
DEBORAH TANNEN: "Facebook."
RS: "And Twitter."
DEBORAH TANNEN: "And Twitter, how all of this is affecting their relationships. So I think that will be the direction I'll move in."
AA: "Did people ever used to communicate nearly as much as they do now?"
DEBORAH TANNEN: "That's such a great question because older people, like me, we think that young people are not communicating because they're not talking to us. You know, you're in the room with them and they're texting their friends and we think this is destroying communication. But, as you say, from another point of view, they're communicating more, maybe not with the people who are here, so I think it's an interesting combination."
RS: You can find the first part of our interview with linguist and best-selling author Deborah Tannen at our website, voanews.com/wordmaster.
AA: You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 linguist   

n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者

参考例句：

• I used to be a linguist till I become a writer.过去我是个语言学家，后来成了作家。
• Professor Cui has a high reputation as a linguist.崔教授作为语言学家名声很高。

2 hierarchy   

n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层

参考例句：

• There is a rigid hierarchy of power in that country.那个国家有一套严密的权力等级制度。
• She's high up in the management hierarchy.她在管理阶层中地位很高。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 sibling   

n.同胞手足(指兄、弟、姐或妹)

参考例句：

• Many of us hate living in the shadows of a more successful sibling.我们很多人都讨厌活在更为成功的手足的阴影下。
• Sibling ravalry has been common in this family.这个家里，兄弟姊妹之间的矛盾很平常。

5 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分

6 belligerent   

adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者

参考例句：

• He had a belligerent aspect.他有种好斗的神色。
• Our government has forbidden exporting the petroleum to the belligerent countries.我们政府已经禁止向交战国输出石油。

7 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。