How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable: Getting Your Point Across with the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense
by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D.

Recommended for:
- those times when you need a really short course in how to handle difficult conversations
- an introduction to the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

Like all the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense books Dr. Elgin has written, How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable is first rate. Not only is it well written, it is clearly and concisely informative.

In How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable, Dr. Elgin covers the basics of hostile language, listening, metaphors, managing the verbal attack patterns, and using Satir Modes and presuppositions, as well as discussing detachment and how to reduce tension and increase rapport.

Dr. Elgin’s discussion (starting at p. 67) about how we think other people talk longer than they actually do is interesting and informative.

I would respectfully alert readers that the discussion about hostile language and the law (starting at p. 31) is incomplete. For example, threatening to beat someone up or to kill them is a criminal offense as well as a civil wrong. Dr. Elgin does examine language and the law issues in more detail in The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work (Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 2000). See Chapter 12 Staying Out of Court and Out of Trouble.

How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable is a very useful book to read and to have as a resource.

About the author:
Dr. Suzette Haden Elgin is a well known and highly respected linguist, teaching linguistics at San Diego State University until she retired in 1980. She founded the Ozark Center for Language Studies. Dr. Elgin discovered the verbal attack patterns in language and developed The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. Her first GAVSD book, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense, was published in 1980 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. In addition to the many scholarly articles, texts and books that she has written on language, she also writes science fiction and is an artist. Her website can be found at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York in 1997
ISBN 0-471-15705-8

Review by Anne E. McTavish