[lg policy] Decoding the Rules of Conversation

Tue Mar 17 21:31:28 UTC 2015

Decoding the Rules of Conversation

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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.

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.

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.
   Pamela Druckerman <http://www.nytimes.com/column/pamela-druckerman> France,
family, cross-cultural issues, daily life.

 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.)
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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.

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.”
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Recent
Comments
Grant Wiggins 39 minutes ago

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...
Marisheba 57 minutes ago

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...
Max Cornise 57 minutes ago

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...

   - See All Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Pamela Druckerman, a contributing opinion writer, is the author of
“Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French
Parenting.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 17, 2015, on page A27 of
the New York edition with the headline: Decoding the Rules of Conversation.

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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