The Science of Conversation - A Primer on small talk
Professor Newman’s Extraordinary Study of Human Nature #5
As humanity works through its list of things to get done before the end of the week, it falls upon this humble study to provide relief to the multitudes and cross off a big one. Bears, on the most part have been dealt with, smallpox took a good socking in the last century and, according to the latest journals, it is now safe to leave the house and pop to the supermarket without worrying about caped figures pointing flintlock pistols at you and your bicycle. With those matters taken care of, a scientific understanding and guide to conversation looms large on the horizon of all intellectuals as the next global issue to be tackled, and I therefore have compiled the following thoughts as my first contribution towards the subject.
The first thing I submit for my readers to consider is the depth of conversation to pursue. Significant analysis suggests we suffer not because we have too little to say, but instead too much to share, and difficulty in picking out the good bits to serve up to your partners. Too far into intimate and personal topics and you overwhelm your partner, too far into the minute and you bore them half to death.
At one end of this extreme we can find seated the Oliver Cromwells, Bismarcks, and Joan of Arcs of the world. These commanding types will trap as many guests into a conversation as possible and give them their gale-force manifestos all the way from the soup course through to the coffee and desserts. The result of such a manner of conversation is exhausting and startling, and usually benefits only the speaker. The Joan of Arcs will go away from the evening rolling on about how much they enjoyed themselves, meanwhile those left behind are wondering whether this whole business with the English, is really worth it after all. The smallest talk these figures can approach is usually a comprehensive and damming, albeit qualified, analysis of the ignorance that can be found in their significant others, as to what a good and proper hat looks like, and all the crippling failings of character such opinions reveal in those apparent ‘loved ones’.
The other end of the metaphorical table of conversational styles contains those which fail to lift their talk from the minute and mind-numbing details that immediately surround them. You will recognise them from their observations on meteorological conditions, the state and status of public roads, and if you are very unlucky, an account of irritating, yet ultimately trifling medical conditions which they are familiar with. Elizabeth Cromwell was very likely a member of this group of people. Current thinking suggests that when she had been steered away from a detailed description of her husband’s encounter with kidney stones, she would absolutely go on without end on her intimate familiarity of the various claps, buttons, and various decorative shapes which should or should not be made out of fabric and worn on top of one’s head.
So who, you ask, is sitting in the middle of this conversational table? Who is holding together the talking, engaging the quiet ones, deflecting the loud ones? Who is passing around the salt and pepper, and warning Emily Pankhurst to watch out for her sleeves in the chutney? To this I would reply that you have become a little too engrossed with my metaphor and that it’s not a real table, but is merely designed to illustrate the dangers of conversational extremes. Having said that, dear reader you could do worse than to observe the capacity for small talk seen in Oscar Wilde. Especially when he said that thing about the British public and that bloke with the painting. But then again, he died pretty lonely somewhere in Paris, mumbling about a wallpaper, so you may want to chart your own course instead.
With the concept of moderation duly expressed, I will provide you with an exercise so that you may employ the idea in practice yourselves. Follow these steps and while you may not immediately achieve the social grace that would qualify you as the host of an all-knitting, all-baking talent show for bickering duchesses, you will be one up on Otto Von Bismarck and there’s not many people who can say that.
In your next conversation, when a lull ensues in the exchange, look around at your surroundings, point at someone nearby, sigh dramatically, channel your inner aesthetic poet and rattle off something about how if everyone could but apply the resourcefulness and self-confidence of this person wearing thing on his head which he clearly believes is a hat, we might be able to make something of the world after all.
