by Liam Kloef

Created on: November 28, 2009   Last Updated: November 29, 2009

Whether conversation is becoming a lost art is matter of personal preference; it's questionable whether conversation ever was an art. Superficially, there is nothing artful about conservation in the workplace, on the street, or in the home.

Conversation as an art is, I suspect, an example of what some sociologists are talking about (although not necessarily in conversation but through articles, monographs, lectures, and these days posts and blogs) when they criticize misconstruing a social fact for a law of social order: conversation among people of any cultures is a social fact; the notion of conversation as an art implies a stability of elements in all conversation; a law, if you will, of social order.

Construing social facts with some norm of social order is something only humans do. That beavers build dams is a social fact and readily observable. That beavers are, as we say, hard-wired to build dams is a theoretical construct, which 1.) impugns on the social fact a law of social (and neurological) order and 2.) is not readily observable.

Conversation in the workplace, in my recent experience, is especially troublesome. In an intensely computerized environment like the office workplace, a simple question to a fellow worker about how to do something in, say, Microsoft Word, can elicit countless responses. One popular response is another question: Do you mean you want to do such-and-such? This is an example of what some sociologists long ago called a remedy, which means, more or less, to clarify the topic at hand. Whether the topic indeed needs clarifying can be discovered by participants in ensuing exchanges; conversely, one may recognize that the topic (or question) needs no clarifying and either so state or resist so stating.

Another example of the remedy in conversation is found in the well-known weekly meeting, usually moderated by a supervisor or senior in a department of division. A participant's sometimes earnest but undisciplined and ill-timed straying off topic is met with the remedy of caution: OK, we're not here to discuss that. Of course, there is nothing artful about this either: despite the degree of formality implied in the word meeting, one cannot expect all (especially a steadfast malcontent) to observe that precise degree of formality. Even the moderator is prone to stray off topic with an anecdote he or she sees as pertinent to the topic at hand (and that others may or may not) or with allusions to demands, desires, and wishes of higher-ups.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>