A Tale of Two Conversations (and Mrs Thatcher)
I was catching up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while the other day when I noticed something unusual about our conversation. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
We were sat outside a pub by the Thames gazing out across the river with one eye on the famously changeable British summer. Each black cloud charging in from the west looked as though it would be the one to send us scurrying inside. But none of them did.
Then it hit me.
It was the uncanny precision with which our utterances meshed. We hadn't seen each other for a long time and yet we seemed magically to know when to start and stop talking. In three hours of turn-taking we hadn't interrupted each other - our conversation was perfectly choreographed.
Admittedly this wasn't that unusual in itself, but it was to me because of a conversation I had earlier in the day. This one, although with someone I know quite well, couldn't have been more different. There were awkward gaps, we talked over each other, we accidentally interrupted. It was as though our conversational choreographer had gone on holiday.
It all put me in mind of the former British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, whose interactions often mirrored my own awkward stop-start conversation. Indeed, a study published in Nature by Beattie, Cutler and Pearson (1982) asked: "Why is Mrs Thatcher Interrupted So Often?"
Their in-depth analysis revealed the reason might not be just because she wanted to dominate conversations. It was, they argue, a particular facet of her speech that caused her to be interrupted so often.
They found she often displayed turn-yielding signals in the wrong places. She would lower the pitch of her voice and slow the rhythm of her speech - both classic signs you're about to hand over the conversational reigns - and then she would carry on talking. Hence, all the accidental interruptions.
Perhaps, I wondered, the difference between my two conversations partly came down to tiny turn-yielding signals of which we are normally completely unconscious. In one these signals were being picked up loud and clear, in the other they were lost - and so was the smoothness of our conversation.
Further proof of how an ordinary conversation is actually a highly skilled performance. Even tiny imperfections in nonverbal signals can throw the whole thing off. It's a wonder any of us can manage it at all.
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Loved the post!
Perhaps reading this is like making someone aware of his breathing... Once you start noticing the tiny gestures that signal cadence in conversation, it may be difficult to go back!
Keep up the good work, always bringing interesting subjects up for debate.
FA
Thank you Francisco, I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Why do use 'we were sat' instead of [..] sitting?
Great post! I have noticed similar things in conversations and figured it was a function of how much empathy there is between people. If someone is really "getting" you, they don't misread your cues as often, and you're less likely to give off false cues as a result of moments of anxiety (those times when you're not sure if your partner is understanding, or you start worrying about saying the wrong thing etc.). I have found the most awkward conversations are when the participants aren't sure where they stand with the other, and are negotiating for position, rather than communicating. In a business setting with larger numbers of people this dynamic even more complicated and might explain why in many organizations meetings are so unproductive.
i have this predicament too. i always think 'ok it is my turn to speak' but as i start, i feel i am cutting the other person off. so i started waiting patiently for the other person to come to a conclusion 'so, we should do this blah blah', before i speak up and convey my thoughts. but i don't know whether i cut off the other person often appearing impatient or whether it is a normal conversation. (it is a different matter that i try to convey too much in a short time lest i forget to mention any of my points/opinions)
~ganesh
Thanks for your comments Anonymous and ganesh. There's no doubt conversation is a very complicated phenomenon.
I have heard a very different description of Thatcher's speach patterns - thay they were deliberate. Whilst she was often interrupted, these interruptions did not often hold. what she did was to take her breaths (and therefore pauses) in the middle of sentences, rather than at the end. this allowed her to continue what she was saying and run sentences together without leaving a pause where it would seem more natural to interrupt!