There is no such thing as small talk
Conversation is remarkable. Somehow, by blurting out a stream of sounds, pulling a few faces and waving our hands around a bit, we are able to make meaning together. In a conversation, something appears amongst us that was not there before. There is a vast range of meanings we might make, everything from sweet nothings to bitter truths, but we do it all the time, everywhere — casually and formally, from the bus stop to the boardroom.
There is so much going on in conversation, on so many levels — physical, sensory, psychological, emotional, even metaphysical. It is so complex that it is amazing it works at all, and yet it does, in myriad ways. Exchanging information is only part of it. Conversation generates kaleidoscopic patterns that serve many purposes: we use it to think (and feel) together; develop relationships; play around; discover and learn; challenge authority; test and flesh out ideas; build worlds and forge identities. It goes to the heart of who we are. Conversation allows us to bridge the unfathomable gap between one experience of being human and another. It helps us cope with what philosopher John Gray calls ‘the abiding disquiet that goes with being human’.
No wonder conversation is a source of both joy and anxiety. A lot rides on it. How I converse is part of what makes me, me. It shapes how others see me. Feeling loved and doing well may hinge upon it. Whatever you think or feel about conversation, whichever language you speak, whether you say a lot or a little, how you converse is part of who you are. In one sense, you are your conversation.
There is so much going on in conversation, on so many levels — physical, sensory, psychological, emotional, even metaphysical.
At home and at work we are entangled in elaborate webs woven with threads of conversation. More and more of our jobs are conversational not physical. Even if you dig ditches, you still talk about where and how to dig. And whilst you are digging, you can pass the time in conversation. Modern technology allows people to work at a distance from each other but only because it connects them virtually, creating new forms of conversation. The need may be met in different ways, but it doesn’t go away. No one is an island.
Yet even though it is so common, we can feel anxiety about conversation. People often talk as if there is a knack to it that they somehow missed out on, as if there were a gene they lack but everyone else has, or were sick on the day it was taught at school. There is a nagging feeling that if only you could just find the key, you would gain access to a land of ease and grace, where you are never stuck for words and you always come across as intelligent, accomplished and witty.
But it isn’t genetic and there wasn’t a class you missed. There is no secret sauce, no universal list of perfect conversation starters, no keys to a kingdom of effortless conversational brilliance — not for you, or anyone else. The illusion that there is can lead you to squander time and energy in a futile pursuit. Or it might depress you so much that you give up before you start — deciding you just don’t have what it takes, so there is no point in trying.
Yet you are amazing at conversation already. We all are. I want to celebrate that. To be able to converse at all, at whatever level, is an extraordinarily complex and sophisticated skill we take almost entirely for granted. The intricate dance of words and gestures we routinely engage in is a delightful human capacity, hiding in plain sight.
No other beings or intelligence (whether animal or artificial) can converse the way we do. We often fail to appreciate how difficult the ‘easy’ things are and how remarkable it is that we learn them at all. Acknowledging this is important. To get more from conversation, you first need to accept how astonishingly complex it is.
This is no excuse for complacency. As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said to his students: ‘Each of you is perfect the way you are: and you can use a little improvement.’ Something similar applies here. You might baulk at this and be convinced of your own ability (or lack of it) but your capacity for conversation isn’t fixed. You don’t either possess it or not, like brown eyes or black hair. There are times when you feel awkward and others when you light up. In conversation, disaster and triumph are both impostors. This is true for everyone. We are all works in progress, immersed in and sensitive to a context that has many layers, able to wield a wide array of skills and stratagems, consciously and unconsciously, to navigate our way across the messy yet magical terrain of conversation. That’s what I’m talking about.
It’s not what it used to be
Conversation appears to be under siege — from technology, globalism and the pace of modern life in general. It is often said that conversation is not what it used to be: but then it never was. Thinkers and writers throughout history, including Nietzsche, Montaigne and Cicero, all expressed concern about the decline of conversation.
How we talk together, what we talk about, what we make of (and with) our conversation is always shifting. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a capacity we are about to lose. In fact, conversation itself is the cause of much of the change that we (and it) are subject to. It is the ceaseless, bubbling brew of conversations in fields, homes, offices, bars, coffee shops, workshops, laboratories and garages all over the world that gives birth to new ideas, discoveries, technologies, movements, protests or identities. These, in turn, change conversation itself.
Human society is a vast constellation of intricate conversational niches, with contrasting, competing, conflicting and complementary conversations in all kinds of languages, in a gloriously complex and entangled babble. But we don’t normally think of conversation this way (if we think about it at all).
Psychologist Adam Mastroianni studies ‘how people perceive and misperceive their social worlds’. Much of his work focuses on what happens when people talk face-to- face. The images he uses to describe conversation have been helpful and illuminating for me. He says: ‘Talking to another person is like rock climbing, except you are my rock wall and I am yours. If you reach up, I can grab on to your hand, and we can both hoist ourselves skyward. Maybe that’s why a really good conversation feels a little bit like floating.’
I love this idea — that through conversation we can help each other up, to a place we could never reach alone, where we don’t even touch the ground.
An everyday miracle
Conversation is bafflingly complex. There are so many different layers to it. To start with, we have to be able to hear a stream of sounds as meaningful words, something technology still struggles with. The voice recognition software I use frequently hears ‘Business School’ as ‘business cool’. You wouldn’t make that mistake: people turn sound into living units of meaning immediately and effortlessly.
Occasionally, some of the complexity we routinely deal with in conversation becomes visible. Many years ago, as I stood in a queue in a bank in rural China, an old man approached me, ranting and shouting, grabbing at me and waving his arms. At least, that was what I experienced. It turned out he was trying to help me, by pointing out that the bank for foreigners was across the road. Ignorant of Chinese and deaf to its tonal inflections, all I heard was a barrage of noise.
When I was learning Spanish I remember the magical moment when words started to appear out of a stream of meaningless sound, like road signs emerging from thick fog. And yet as soon as I passed that point I forgot there ever was any fog. With our native tongue we hear a flow of meaningful words that have always had shape and colour and we can’t stop hearing this way any more than we can see a scrolling display as a series of stationary blinking lights.
Hearing sound as distinct and meaningful words is hard enough, but it is only the beginning of the complexity we have to navigate in conversation. The number of cues and clues we pick up is immense and the precision with which we do so is extraordinary. Whether we realise it or not, we are sensitive to the feel of the words we hear, as well as their meaning — to the tone in which they are said: the volume, pitch, rhythm, cadence and inflection. We make sense of what isn’t there — the pauses and the silence. We begin to learn the music of the human voice when we are still in our mother’s womb. We read physical cues such as the angle, position and movement of the head, hands and body, including tiny dynamic details of posture, gesture and eye movement. We pick these up even if we can’t see the other person — you can sense someone’s physicality, even on the phone. Conversation is intimate, personal and only possible at a small scale.
Conversation is also always contextual. ‘Silly man’ could be a reproach or a term of endearment, depending upon the circumstances. We weigh up a host of contextual questions without conscious thought. Questions like: Who are you talking to? What for? What hopes, intentions and expectations are in play? Are you at home or at work? Are you next to the person you are talking to, in front of them, across the room from them or online? Are you standing, sitting, lying? We take all of this (and more) into account and make constant adjustments to our behaviour, many of them microscopic. Much of conversation happens below the threshold of consciousness.
Almost nothing, then: yet we make light of it.
This doesn’t mean we necessarily get it ‘right’. There is still plenty of room for misunderstanding. Nonetheless, we make sense of what is said — even if the sense we make isn’t always quite what the person speaking had in mind.
One natural response to all this complexity is to try and reduce it to something simpler. Lists like ‘seven ways to speak up at work’ or ‘five questions to break an awkward silence’ make it too simple, offering advice like ‘always start a conversation with a question that has a definite numerical answer’. However, whilst there may be occasions when that will help, if you aren’t able to judge when that moment is, it is as likely to kill the conversation as nourish it. You can’t make it a rule.
Expecting a checklist to produce good conversation is like expecting painting by numbers to produce a work of art. If I am in conversation with you, I can’t be following a list, I need to be paying attention to you and me, here and now. Conversation doesn’t work by rote. It is a living, breathing flow.
Extract from Do Conversation: There is no such thing as small talk by Robert Poynton. Text copyright © Robert Poynton 2024. Published by The Do Book Co.
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