On the Art of Conversation

Back in the olden days, higher-class women were judged on their accomplishments:

Painting
Drawing
Embroidery
Hemming
Fancy-work
Designing furniture
Playing the harp
Playing the pianoforte
Singing
Speaking Italian
Speaking French

and many other things I'm sure I don't know about because they haven't featured in Jane Austen novels. But one of the important ones was the art of conversation. The young ladies in society were expected to be able to support wide and varied conversation with anyone who came their way in society.

Speaking personally, I'm not very adept, socially. I've come a long way from how I was in high school or even college. Being part of a big church and working at a big company have a lot to do with that. But new situations make me anxious. I'm exquisitely conscious of saying the wrong thing, which I do frequently. I hear all my own mistakes. So when social interactions go badly, I assume they're my fault.

But I'm beginning to think maybe it isn't my fault all the time. Because I've realized the art of conversation boils down to interaction. It's about one person saying one thing, and the other person saying something related to that thing or asking a question about that thing, then the other person saying something else related to what the second person just said, etc.

I think that's why in the past I've noticed there are some people I can just talk to. With whom conversation is easy and effortless. People who come to mind include my sister, friends from high school, the guy from my heat transfer project sophomore year at Tech whose Facebook profile was him passed out drunk in a mini-fridge, and the ChemE I designated NewGraham to differentiate him from the Graham I already knew from band. When you say something and someone responds based on what you said, and you have a chance to respond to what they said? That's conversation!

The opposite, which is what I'm recognizing now, is monopoly. Where one person doesn't hold up their end of the bargain on responding based on what the other person said. I've noticed a few different flavors:

1. Classic Monologue-ing. This variety includes one person talking only about themselves, their activities, and their interests. They will answer questions but will not ask any. They will not respond based on a comment the second person makes, but will instead continue their initial topic.

2. Monopoly Through Silence. This variety, often masquerading as shyness, is one person's refusal to "reply in kind". They also will answer questions but will not ask any. They will also not respond based on a comment the second person makes, but instead stays silent or makes at most a minimal response like, "Mm," or "Interesting". This forces the second person to continually ask questions to draw the first person out. This might occasionally be legitimate shyness, but can also be laziness or passive-aggression.

3. Disconnected/Superficiality. This specialized variety at first bears the appearance of a real conversation because there appear to be related responses. However the responses don't follow the same vein as the original topic, derailing the conversation the second person wanted to have. For instance, "I had a rough week. My grandfather died on Tuesday. We were really close." "I had a rough week too. I'm supposed to alphabetize a whole drawer of files and I really don't want to." A symptom of this is when one person drops conversational breadcrumbs, but the other person won't follow the trail. "I forgot to buy pears at the store today. I've been very distracted. Work was busy, and also I'm looking for realtors because I've decided to buy a house." Here, a conversational response would be "You're looking for a house? How exciting! What type of house are you looking for?" or "My aunt is a realtor. Would you be interested in working with her? She's a fantastic businesswoman." A disconnected response would be, "Pears are awesome" or "I'm so glad I bought my house four years ago and am done with it. It was a horrible process." Thus, in order to continue the conversation, the second person has to abandon their topic and switch to the first person's topic.

And I'm also realizing how exhausting it is to deal with monopolizers. With type 1, you never get to talk. Less effort, but unless you're intensely interested in every single thing that person has to say, you're going to be bored silly the entire time. With type 2, you talk a lot, but it's only questions. Type 2 is energy-sapping. Type 3 is emotionally exhausting because you never get to say what you want to say.

I tried to make Excel graphs illustrating these but it didn't work.