how not to be a bore

Dilbert creator Scott Adams keeps a really excellent, eclectic and always stimulating blog. His last couple of posts have been musings on the unwritten rules of conversation:

A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I've never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person's expense, you're doing it wrong. You might think that everyone on earth understands what a conversation is and how to engage in one. My observation is that no more than a quarter of the population has that understanding.

Adams says he used to be part of the other three-quarters until he did a course that included a section on conversation, and he realised he'd been doing it all wrong.

I'm often surprised at how often I come across people who barely grasp the basics. In fact just this weekend I went to the (very excellent) Port Eliot festival in Cornwall, and one night - as you do at these things - found myself plunged into conversation with a couple of absolute strangers in a bar; one male, one female, both young (early to mid-twenties). In both cases, the briefest of questions from me ("What brings you here?" or "What do you do?" or something like that) unleashed a torrent of self-description that went on and on and on and contained a superabundance of pointless detail. As I listened (or struggled to listen) I thought, I can't even imagine imagining any stranger would be interested in this. I mention their age because I have a fogeyish anxiety that social networking sites are corroding the conversational skills of a generation.

Other times, you meet people who - like Scott - are clearly not natural conversationalists or listeners but have, to their credit, realised that and now make a conscious effort to ask questions of the other person. Trouble is, some of them still can't help but look painfully bored as soon as you start answering them.

It's certainly a more complex skill that we sometimes give it credit for. For one thing, you have find a way of actually being interested in the other person rather than seeming interested (although the latter is a good first step). As Scott says, that sometimes requires a couple of conversational "bounces" until you get to an area of mutual interest. And when you're doing the talking, you have to operate at two levels at once: making sure that what you're saying is coherent and interesting, whilst paying close attention to the other person's facial expression and eye movements to check on their attention and interest levels, and adjusting course as necessary (a lot of people, even quite good conversationalists, forget this last bit). No mean cognitive feat. Good conversation is hard.

Comments

[peter]

One of the odd features of our culture is that someone as smart, well-read and erudite as Scott Adams should be so ignorant of so much. It is not the case that the rules of conversation (in English) have not been stated anywhere. Forty years ago, the philosopher Paul Grice proposed some maxims of conversation, details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gricean_maxims

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/

and these maxims have been much debated since by linguists, philosophers of language, philosophers of argumentation, and computer scientists.

[Scott]

Isn't flippancy the most appropriate way to deal with bores? Honing in on precisely those unimportant details they seem unable to filter and making a conversation out of that?

[ejoch]

Leaving is the best way to deal with bores :)

[Richardarnatt]

I guess Chuck Palahniuk had it right when he described modern conversation as people "waiting for their turn to speak".

[Gus]

So you went to a festival, asked a couple of youngish people a question, and they responded with interminable personal anecdotes. And you blame social networking sites?

Tell me - did you by any chance notice whether they were sniffling a lot, or did they have any touches of fine, white powder around their nostrils?

[Marbury]

Yes, good point Gus.

[Gus]

;)

[IPAD CASE]

That's great, I never thought about Nostradamus in the OR (Insights from Eugene Litvak at IHI) like that before.

[gemstone beads]

It’s the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.

[European Beads]

Every man's work, whether it be literature of music of pictures or architecture of anything else, is always a portrait of himself