Conversationalism
Let me assure you that conversationalism is quite different from Republicanism, Libertarianism, Democratism, or Obama-ism. It’s the one thing you can’t vote for this November. Although, if you’re politically minded, the art of conversation can help you in your local caucus.
I remember the day I discovered that conversation actually is an art. I was reading an article from the Economist (if you don’t read the Economist, Geoffry Pullum’s favorite magazine, you are a poor deprived wight), and the first sentence stood out like a healthy thumb:
Sir Isaiah Berlin, a Latvian-born Oxford philosopher who died in 1997, may well have ranked among the greatest conversationalists who ever lived.
The remainder of the article discussed conversation in detail, touching on the proper technique, history, famous movements, and eminent masters of conversation.
I was hooked. Not because conversation is my hobby, but because I am so bad at it. A certain Ezine article describes me quite well:
You can actually feel your heart pounding in your chest, and there is no way you’re going to be able to compete with a gifted chatterer that was lucky enough to be born with social interaction skills and instinctively knows how to be an interesting conversationalist. So unlike you!
So, after soaking in the Economist piece, I went hunting for tips and tricks. Typing “conversationalist into Google turned up a lot of hits. Matilija Press has a ten-step manual, which says, among other things, to “know when to speak and when to listen.” Easier said than done. SearchWarp.com says to moderate group conversations by stepping in when someone starts to monopolize. Psychology Today summarizes witty sketches of common conversationalist types from a book by Deborah Fine. One, for example, is the Interrogator (that would be me), who likes to bombard someone with little yes-or-no questions and doesn’t offer details about himself.
There’s a good store of lore outside cyberspace as well. Look up something like The Fine Art of Small Talk or The Art of Mingling on Amazon.com, and you’ll find a flood of related titles.
And if worse comes to worst, there is always the excellent advice of AMRunner, who recently commented on one of my posts (and whose blog I read regularly):
The language people choose when the first meet should be, in my opinion, lengthy enough to support the conversation until common ground can be found on which to base further interaction. “I am doing well” is five more syllables than “good” and four more than “I’m good,” making it a preferable greeting.
And, I might add, “Who’s going to win the Democratic nomination in this heck of a primary season?” has more syllables than all of those.