<div dir="ltr"><h1 itemprop="headline" id="story-heading" class="">Decoding the Rules of Conversation<a><span class=""></span></a></h1><div id="byline-sharetools-container" class=""><div id="sharetools-story" class=""><ul><li class=""><span class=""></span><br></li></ul><div id="Frame4A" class="">
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<p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-1">PARIS
— MY kids have recently picked up a worrying French slang word: bim
(pronounced “beam”). It’s what children say in the schoolyard here after
they’ve proved someone wrong, or skewered him with a biting remark.
English equivalents like “gotcha” or “booyah” don’t carry the same sense
of gleeful vanquish, and I doubt British or American kids use them
quite as often.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">As
an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I’ve spent
much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in
three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.
So much bubbles beneath what’s said, it’s often hard to know what anyone
means.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">I
had a breakthrough on French conversation recently, when a French
sociologist suggested I watch “Ridicule,” a 1996 French movie (it won
the César award for best film) about aristocrats at the court of
Versailles, on the eve of the French Revolution.</p>
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<h2 class=""><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/column/pamela-druckerman">Pamela Druckerman</a></h2>
<h3 class="">France, family, cross-cultural issues, daily life.</h3>
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<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Life
at Versailles was apparently a protracted battle of wits. You gained
status if you showed “esprit” — clever, erudite and often caustic wit,
aimed at making rivals look ridiculous. The king himself kept abreast of
the sharpest remarks, and granted audiences to those who made them.
“Wit opens every door,” one courtier explained.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">If
you lacked “esprit” — or suffered from “l’esprit de l’escalier”
(thinking of a comeback only once you had reached the bottom of the
staircase) — you’d look ridiculous yourself.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Granted,
France has changed a bit since Versailles. But many modern-day
conversations — including the schoolyard cries of “Bim!” — make more
sense once you realize that everyone around you is in a competition not
to look ridiculous. When my daughter complained that a boy had insulted
her during recess, I counseled her to forget about it. She said that
just wouldn’t do: To save face, she had to humiliate him.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-2">Many
children train for this at home. Where Americans might coo over a
child’s most inane remark, to boost his confidence, middle-class French
parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone
listening. “I force him or her to discover the best ways of retaining my
attention,” the anthropologist Raymonde Carroll wrote in her 1987 book
“Cultural Misunderstandings: The French-American Experience.”</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">This
is probably worse in Paris, and among the professional classes. But a
lot of French TV involves round-table discussions in which well-dressed
people attempt to land zingers on one another. Practically every time I
speak up at a school conference, a political event or my apartment
building association’s annual meeting, I’m met with a display of someone
else’s superior intelligence. (Adults don’t actually say “bim,” they
just flash you a satisfied smile.) Jean-Benoît Nadeau, a Canadian who
co-wrote a forthcoming book on French conversation, told me that the
penchant for saying “no” or “it’s not possible” is often a cover for the
potential humiliation of seeming not to know something. Only once you
trust someone can you turn down the wit and reveal your weaknesses, he
said. (I think the French obsession with protecting private life comes
from the belief that everyone’s entitled to a humiliation-free zone.)</p><div class=""><a class="" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/opinion/decoding-the-rules-of-conversation.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0#story-continues-3">Continue reading the main story</a>
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</div><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-3">At
least it’s not boring. Even among friends, being dull is almost
criminal. A French entrepreneur told me her rules for dinner-party
topics: no kids, no jobs, no real estate. Provocative opinions are
practically required. “You must be a little bit mean but also a little
bit vulnerable,” she said.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-4">It’s
dizzying to switch to the British conversational mode, in which
everyone’s trying to show they don’t take themselves seriously. The
result is lots of self-deprecation and ironic banter. I’ve sat through
two-hour lunches in London waiting for everyone to stop exchanging quips
so the real conversation could begin. But “real things aren’t supposed
to come up,” my husband said. “Banter can be the only mode of
conversation you ever have with someone.”</p>
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<h2 class="">Recent Comments</h2>
<div class="">
<h2 class="">Grant Wiggins</h2>
39 minutes ago
<p class="">C'est pas possible!The most common phrase I
heard while living in Paris. If it's covering for potential humiliation
or seeming not to know...</p>
<h2 class="">Marisheba</h2>
57 minutes ago
<p class="">As an American, I find it much harder than I
would expect to shift the conversation from "how was your week" to a
discussion of ideas, a...</p>
<h2 class="">Max Cornise</h2>
57 minutes ago
<p class="">It's not that hard to poke through that veneer
of esprit, if you want to bother with it, that is. I went to many
parties when I lived in...</p>
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See All Comments
</li></ul>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-5">Earnestness
makes British people gag. Viewers respond to the “gushy, tearful”
speeches of American actors at the Oscars with a “finger-down-throat
‘I’m going to be sick’ gesture,” writes Kate Fox, author of “Watching
the English.” Moralizing politicians get this, too.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Even
British courtships can be conducted ironically. “ ‘You’re just not my
type,’ uttered in the right tone and in the context of banter, can be
tantamount to a proposal of marriage,” Ms. Fox writes.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody" id="story-continues-6">Being
ridiculous is sometimes required. The classic British hen night — a
bachelor party for brides — involves groups of women wearing feather
boas to a bar, then daring one another to “kiss a bald man” or “remove
your bra without leaving the room.” Stumbling around drunk with friends —
then recounting your misadventures for months afterward — is a standard
bonding ritual.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">After
being besieged by British irony and French wit, I sometimes yearn for
the familiar comfort of American conversations, where there are no
stupid questions. Among friends, I merely have to provide reassurance
and mirroring: No, you don’t look fat, and anyway, I look worse.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody">It
might not matter what I say, since some American conversations resemble
a succession of monologues. A 2014 study led by a psychologist at
Yeshiva University found that when researchers crossed two unrelated
instant-message conversations, as many as 42 percent of participants
didn’t notice. A lot of us — myself included — could benefit from a
basic rule of improvisational comedy: Instead of planning your next
remark, just listen very hard to what the other person is saying. Call
it “mindful conversation,” if you like. That’s what the French tend to
do — even if it ends with “bim.”</p>
<div class="">
<div class=""><p>Pamela Druckerman, a
contributing opinion writer, is the author of “Bringing Up Bébé: One
American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting.” </p></div>
<p class="">A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 17, 2015, on page A27 of the <span itemprop="printEdition">New York edition</span> with the headline: Decoding the Rules of Conversation. <span class=""><span></span>
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</div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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