Verbal Communication

Travis:
“How are you?”
Wanda:
“Did someone tell you I’m sick?”
Darrell:
“I just wanted to let you know the meeting has been moved to
three o’clock.”
Leigh:
“I had cake for breakfast this morning.”
Some conversational elements are highly scripted or ritualized, especially the
beginning and end of an exchange and topic changes.David Crystal,
How Language
Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die
(Woodstock,
NY: Overlook Press, 2005), 268. Conversations often begin with a standard greeting
and then proceed to “safe” exchanges about things in the immediate field of
experience of the communicators (a comment on the weather or noting something
going on in the scene). At this point, once the ice is broken, people can move on to
other more content-specific exchanges. Once conversing, before we can initiate a
topic change, it is a social norm that we let the current topic being discussed play
itself out or continue until the person who introduced the topic seems satisfied. We
then usually try to find a relevant tie-in or segue that acknowledges the previous
topic, in turn acknowledging the speaker, before actually moving on. Changing the
topic without following such social conventions might indicate to the other person
that you were not listening or are simply rude.
Ending a conversation is similarly complex. I’m sure
we’ve all been in a situation where we are “trapped” in a
conversation that we need or want to get out of. Just
walking away or ending a conversation without
engaging in socially acceptable “leave-taking behaviors”
would be considered a breach of social norms. Topic
changes are often places where people can leave a
conversation, but it is still routine for us to give a
special reason for leaving, often in an apologetic tone
(whether we mean it or not). Generally though,
conversations come to an end through the cooperation
of both people, as they offer and recognize typical
signals that a topic area has been satisfactorily covered
or that one or both people need to leave. It is customary
in the United States for people to say they have to leave
before they actually do and for that statement to be
dismissed or ignored by the other person until additional leave-taking behaviors
are enacted. When such cooperation is lacking, an awkward silence or abrupt
ending can result, and as we’ve already learned, US Americans are not big fans of
silence. Silence is not viewed the same way in other cultures, which leads us to our
discussion of cultural context.
Chapter 3 Verbal Communication
3.4 Language, Society, and Culture
168

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