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DwightF
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

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Joined: 7 Dec 2008
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 224

15 Dec 2008, 5:18 pm

marshall wrote:
Nutterbug wrote:
I figured if you're a broad thinker, you can make smalltalk with anyone about anything anywhere anytime.


It seems what small talk requires is spontaneity, the ability to come up with clever sounding one-liners and jokes on the fly. I notice that a lot of NT’s are very good at making conversation this way. Sometimes they can be very proficient at coming up with clever banter but not good at providing any 'meat' to the topic. They always say things which are extremely obvious and trivial yet the say it in a funny way and that alone keeps people listening.

This sounds like you are missing the "meat" within small talk, the subtext. The subtext is usually about subjects that are contentious. The literal words of the small talk are cover for the meat of the underlying conversation. Why do this? Plausible deniability. For an example ripped from the news read the Fed's criminal complaint filed against Governor Blagojevich. Or if you don't want to spend an hour doing that here's a quick summation of the important parts for this example ( http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/12/ ... -what.html ). On the whole that's an article talking about what a poor reader (intentionally or not) a particular journalist is. But the pertinent part is how in [what is incorrectly assumed] privacy among people who he feels he can safely be open with Blagojevich is very open and clear about his intentions. But as soon at talk turns to discussions had outside that inner ring you get to the "small talk" region. The real message is left unspoken.

Small talk is about making it "safer" to broach questions like "are you willing to pay me to be a Senator?", "are you friend or foe?", "I want your job, are you willing to give it up or think you are too weak to stop me from taking it?", or "wanna &*(% ?" This is also called flirting if there are sexual tones laid into it, even if the ultimate goal is something other than sexual.

Of course that doesn't preclude real quality, intellectual humour in the literal text of the small talk too. The best small talk has both. But that's work and something that not everyone can muster, because as you mention it requires some on-the-fly work as you have to work in the encoded subtext too. Work in flirting on top of that and you've got a rich, subtle, and powerful masterpiece. :)

Of course if you have trouble identifying, processing, or keeping track of more than one thread in a conversation at a time you aren't going to like smalltalk, might not even be able to do it at all, because you can't totally ignore even the most banal literal text. If you screw up the banal literal text the illusion totally vanishes and/or confusion ensues. You'd probably rather people just say what they want to say, get it out in the open. *shrug*


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