What is the Purpose of Conversation?

Post Reply New Topic

My friend and I are both auties. Yesterday I said to him "The weather is nasty, I almost slipped on the ice walking to my car." He said, "I don't know where the ice would have come from, the temperature is above freezing."

The response I was expecting was something along the lines of "Oh, I better be careful." The one I got ended in a referral to the weather network to determine if what I experienced was possible. Now, I've been around long enough to know that what you expect is not usually what you get, but this exchange got me to thinking.

Is conversation an exchange of facts? Or are there other elements . . . perhaps more along the lines of social preening?

What do you think is the purpose of conversation?

This appears to be one of the differences between Aspie processing and communication styles, and NT communication styles.

It is my unsupported understanding that the Aspie style is more geared towards communication of information and ideas, and the NT style is geared towards group membership and status.

if the weather where you were was only slightly above freezing, then it would be intellectually derelict to presume that there were no local variations of temperature that oscillated between above and below freezing.

i always feel the need to internally ascertain the truth of what people say to me.
so many people just talk lies or rubbish, and i always need to situate what they say inside my mental rehearsal of what they are saying to test if it is true.




why should he be more careful when it was only you that nearly fell over? if that is actually true.




conversations between other people that i am not involved in i can not comment on.

conversations that involve me must be aimed toward an agreed plan of action. i never talk to people unless they are involved with some aspect of my unfolding day.

in my life, i speak when i want something and i stay quiet whilst i am content.

if you told me you slipped on your driveway, i would not really care enough to reply anyway, so maybe you should reconsider your attitude to his relevant comments pertinent to what you told him.
maybe you should learn to love yourself without having to be "completed" by the encouragement of another person who is no more valuable to the universe than you are.

bye.

You might get a lot out of this thread, "NTs do THINGS with conversation":
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt87241.html

Ann, I think conversation is multi-purpose; depending on the situation, it can have both a function of information exchange or one of social preening. At its heart, however, I think conversation is always exchange of information, even if the information exchanged is more trivial, as in small talk. But all conversation involves an element of relating information, otherwise people could suffice with meaningless sounds like grunting, growling, or squealing to serve the social purposes. But you won't see that very often; people tend to use words.

I disagree. I believe normal conversation style is all-round; most normally social people are well capable of switching between a mode of conversing geared toward social affirmation and a mode that serves the purpose of information/knowledge exchange. And where normal people are all-round, autistics are usually lacking in the area of conversing for purely social purposes, like small talk. So I think it's more like we're missing a piece of the puzzle in that regard.

Thanks! Just read through it. Lots of great insights. Greentea left before I joined; too bad, she is very insightful.

It makes me realize how little I know of what's actually going on in conversations.

He should be more careful (than he usually would be) because of black ice, which he probably wouldn't know was there if he wasn't warned.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ice



It's called Black Ice because it appears black on black paved roads, causing many traffic accidents. I am guessing this does not happen where you live.

Because black ice is invisible, people often find out about it by falling (if walking) or sliding (if driving). In areas where this is common (such as where I live) it is considered a conversational courtesy to warn others that black ice is currently on the ground/road/sidewalk. The OP did just exactly that, fulfilling the norms of conversational courtesy. The usual reply is an acknowledgemnt of the warning, perhaps a thanks. She expected that reply but what she got instead was evidence that the other person doesn't entirely understand the black ice phenomenon and thinks there won't be ice if the ambient air is above freezing tempurature.

As CyclopsSummers noted, conversation can have multiple purposes. In this case, ironically, there really was an attempted exchange of information (the information being a warning to use caution you might not otherwise use). The information wasn't recieved because the other person doesn't know enough about ice. Ironic.

Last edited by Janissy on 30 Jan 2013, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Quite so.

Interesting take . . . I think this gets to the core of my concerns. I often feel I am missing out on something that I can't quite put my finger on. Like I'm only partially fluent in the language and am not complete.


It is like a piece of the puzzle is missing. I think NTs are able to blend information exchanges with social communication. I have tried to break this code, but it is beyond me.
My friend is not interested in breaking the code. Like b9, he is content the way he is (at least as far as I know.) But I want to know what I'm missing.

Yes it is ironic. I totally missed that. Maybe that is why the exchange stuck with me. He disregarded my warning which was both informational and social (in that I was concerned for him) and instead turned it into a discussion about the accuracy of my experience.

You have already succeeded in breaking at least part of the code. It is an NT conversation convention to warn others of potential danger by using a personal anecdote. (The anecdote part isn't necessary if the danger is immediate. People expect you to yell "look out!" if they are about to get hit.) You did that. The expected response is an acknowledgement of the warning, and you expected that. So you did follow the conventions exactly.

Thanks for that. Perhaps I spend too much time trying to figure out things that are beyond me. But I am fascinated by NT behaviour. It's like I'm looking in a window at people enjoying a feast when I'm hungry but unable to gain entrance.

Most likely he did understand your warning and will be more cautious. He probably assumes that you know he got the message, which was obvious, but at the same time, he was analyzing the situation and trying to understand the reality of how the ice forming works.
It is also possible that he didn't know how to respond to your statement and his answer was all he could come up with at the moment.
I often respond to things in that way and people assume I didn't understand what they were trying to tell me, although I actually did.

I can see why your friend would have answered that way because I would not recognize a personal story as a warning for me unless the other person explained it directly. Ex. You might want to be careful walking today because I tripped on the ice.

Chances are that your friend would have responded the same way even if you explained it more directly. It is probably more a matter of not knowing or obeying the normal rules of back and forth conversation.
But even if he didn't understand it as a warning, I am sure the warning was communicated.

I'm editing this to make what I am saying more clear.
Whether or not the statment was intended as a warning, It was obviously a warning because If someone tells you they almost slipped on the ice than you would know to look out for the ice. The way the person responded doesn't change that.

Last edited by Marybird on 30 Jan 2013, 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is possible.


Perhaps it would have helped if I'd been more explicit. Sometime I assume people know more than they actually can.

A conversation is all about the exchange of knowledge...sharing what you know and learning what the other person knows. Even if you look at something such as telling a joke...one person is sharing his knowledge of the joke, the other person is learning the joke and humor associated with it.