Foils in chatting

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I often sit on public benches (alone) and listen at what people say. There there is no serious communication between twos talking to each other, but what passes are a kind of alternate monologues. Moreover, I observe this common structure of the conversation: there is nearly always a foil and a comedian. Not that there is much fun in the product, but there is an actor (like Hamlet, normally more pedestrian than Hamlet), and a listener (like Horatio at best), some friend who says something now and then to help the talker and gives some advice, but remains a foil.

Nice to see that I'm not the only Shakespeare fan on the board

When I was recovering from my nervous breakdown I spent hours watching and listening to others conversations with a psychiatric social worker. It was the only way I could learn to communicate with people again.

Ed Almos

Do you think people's conversations are fascinating? People say such odd things sometimes, like when you walk past them in the street and you just hear one sentence when they're talking to someone. And when you're in a train and you hear someone talking on their phone, I try and figure out what the person they are talking to is saying.

No, not at all, I am just trying to find some juice in human shallowness. Having trained myself as a sociologist, I look for the structure of conversations as they reflect communication among persons.
"The Presentation of Self" is a half amusing, half pedantic book by the late Canadian anthropologist Erving Goffman who thrives on this approach.
As for conversations on mobiles I hate them, hate them, hate them, and they should be authorized only for plumbers. I abhor people dealin business on mobiles. I hate also glacksons which are now pestering me from my window.

What are glacksons, Paolo?

They are carhorns which in Italian are called clacksons, i don't know why because they are an English word.

Oh, yes of course, klaxons. Sorry, my brain is on a go-slow this evening.

Yes, the Italians use their car horns much more than we do here, I think. In programmes showing Italy, and France, motorists seem much noisier! Or maybe it is because here we are not supposed to use our car horns between 11pm and 7am (I think!) unless absolutely necessary. (A bit off topic )

Paolo,
I agree with you. The world is awash in mindless palaver. People do not engage in phatic communion; they don’t think; they don’t question; they don’t listen; and most frightening of all they don’t self-reflect. Hoi polloi now fashions their thinking around the trendiest set of agendas they happen upon. They regurgitate these banalities ad nauseam. Worst still they are ever ready to hurdle their arsenal of stock epitaphs at anyone who challenges their acquire beliefs; particularly if the transgressor’s view may in any way be interpreted as tainted by political correctness. It seems to vary tremendously by continent. It’s a sad time for mankind.