Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends (Language and Learning for Human Service Professions)

Deborah Tannen's book hit me with what should have been obvious years ago. During a recent conversation, a fellow student at the American University voiced some hesitation about applying for a master's degree in Sociology, because her undergraduate degree was in Music. Lacking a background in Sociology, she felt inadequate for the task. I replied that she might be surprised how much she her previous degree might open unusual research fields for her in Sociology. I commented that she could draw on her background in music to do some kind of research on the impact of music in people's lives or the similarity diversity of music across cultural lines. She then commented that finding funding was difficult and again, I said, "You can." Just search the Internet. There are so many scholarships and grants. You can do it.
Oddly, her body language when she shook my hand and said good-bye gave me the impression that she felt more assaulted than assured by our brief conversation.
Deborah Tannen's book explains in large measure what may have been happening. Tannen's book takes a simple dinner conversation between six people and shows what works and why as well as what fails and why. Among her examples is a matter of differing opinions about turn-taking. The "New Yorkers" in Tannen's book feel uncomfortable with silence. The British girl in the book feels a need for silence in order to contribute.
Tannen examines differing views of conversation pace, overlap, rate of speech, personal and non-personal topics and more. Tannen shows that some people feel discussion of personal topics is a method for building rapport, while others feel it is an invasion of privacy. Some feel more comfortable when discussing impersonal topics and this allows them to relax more and allows rapport to be established. Some of the participants in Tannen's study felt that a rapid response implied an interest in the topic, others felt that a rapid response implied a desire to move on to a more interesting topic.
Although Tannen's research did not touch on cross-cultural gaps, it inspired me to think about how conversations went wrong in Japan and in Egypt and why. What expectations were different between myself and my international friends. The woman thinking about seeking a master's degree in Sociology was an upper class Egyptian. Her sense of timing, ideas about appropriate topics for discussion, sense of physical space and ideas about appropriate tone are very different from mine. Interestingly Tannen notes that speech behavior patterns are learned early and remain largely unchanged throughout a life-time. While much of the data in this book was useful, this aspect seems invalid when examined in relationship to learning new languages. B.F. Skinner and Pavlov have shown how behaviors can be modified. No doubt that for the participants of Tannen's study who appear to spend most of their time within an American culture, her statement seems valid. However, taken to Marine Corps boot camp, where behaviors in general are changed radically, I believe a more detailed linguistic study would show a marked change in behavior patterns of participants before and after military training. Moreover, taken internationally, speech patterns learned through cultural immersion into a foreign language might also have a marked impact on speech behaviors. My Japanese is considerably lighter in tone and accompanied by a mild body language compared to my English. Similarly, my Arabic is considerably louder in tone and accompanied by a more expressive body language than my English.
Tannen notes at the end of her study that there is much more work to do in this field. Cross-cultural studies are one of the topics that she mentions as specifically worthwhile. Her concluding notes about rhythm, poetry and the literary parallels of spoken language made me think of the movie Matrix where the aliens enemy agents speak English, but with a decidedly odd and uncomfortable rhythm. Her comments about appropriate content make me think of most of the dialog in the movie Pulp Fiction. This movie was decidedly odd because it addressed issues in unusual contexts, such as religious discussions between gangsters participating in an assassination. These are, of course, extreme examples of odd content and form, but being extreme, they make the topics in Tannen's text easier to grasp.