It is really fascinating to watch people communicate. The ability to communicate is one of the first skills we attempt to acquire and spend a lifetime accumulating language skills. Yet we can be so very bad at getting it right.
I always thought of myself as a good listener, with experience interviewing people for articles and personal profiles. No easy task, since you have take notes, think ahead to ask appropriate questions and guide the interview.
Years ago I participated in three oral history projects. Since I wanted to capture the way people spoke or described an experience, their regional dialects and the cadences of storytelling, I asked participants’ permission to record our conversation. Listening to those recordings became an important lesson in active listening. Even when I thought I was paying close attention, I still missed important cues, because I was to fixated on the type of information I wanted to retrieve.
We do even less listening in everyday conversations, especially when we are talking to people we know very well. If we were to transcribe the conversations we have with friends and family members, the dialogues will come across as fairly chaotic, filled with competing topics, dead ends, space fillers and a lot non-verbal communication.
Conversations in public spaces
It is not polite to eavesdrop in public spaces; but sometimes you cannot help yourself. I have heard the strangest sentence fragments while walking my dog. Like a cryptic crossword puzzle, the clues appear random, ambiguous and rarely sense until you know the answer. Walkers seem to fall into three categories: those who exercise with intent, couples who rarely talk to each other but will greet you when you pass, and then the high-energy talkers who pour out their domestic dramas and petty frustrations at work in fast, animated conversations without showing any signs of running out of breath.
In coffee shops, eavesdropping is intentionally difficult. A good coffee shop achieves just the right balance between conversational hum, white noise and music. This is very important if you are someone who works in coffee shops. The best coffee shops have a quiet corner that allows working people sit quietly with the laptops. We rarely talk, simply nod a greeting on arrival, try to respect each other’s preferred table, and take conversations with clients outside (knowing that someone will keep an eye on your laptop).
Sometimes when a coffee shop is very quiet, it is impossible to avoid eavesdropping on a conversation.
One day I was sitting in a wonderful window seat with my back to the coffee shop’s interior. A rather loud group (woman and two men) arrived and for some reason decided to sit behind me. It was impossible to concentrate on work, so I decided to eavesdrop while finishing my cup of coffee.
The woman immediately launched a lengthly discussion about the carrot cake, clearly anxious that it would not meet her expectations. Once they had placed their orders for coffee (and carrot cake), the conversation seemed to run out of steam. It was difficult to make any sense of their fragmented half-sentences. One of the men spoke of a stomach bug doing the rounds, the other about ‘the problem with having children’ but did not elaborate. They seem to be treading water with no real motivation to listen or engage in a new topic. It is almost painful to listen to their non-conversation. Topics veered from one subject to another without any cues to the next topic. I suspect they were all on their mobile phones.
Then there is the antithesis of conversation. I have watched couple sit at a table and say nothing more than ‘pass the menu’. What is it with couples who go to all the trouble of having a shower, putting on a fresh set of clothes, driving to a restaurant, only to spend all their time staring at the mobile phones. Oddly enough, this type of behaviour is fairly rare in a coffee shop. If people are sitting around a table and not talking, they are usually typing away at their keyboards in a companionable atmosphere. Maybe it has something to do with caffeine.