Conversational Analysis (4)
Conversation Analysis (4)*
4. ‘Banal’ Explanations
Conversation works in two ways. First, we are influenced by what others say (as with memory and others controlling our minds). But, second, their talk can provide us with a set of resources for interpreting and influencing what they will say and do (reading others’minds).
Take the case of observing that somebody is looking glum. How do you read their minds in order to find the source of their gloom?
Sacks* suggests a common response to such an observation: ‘If you’re sitting with somebody and they look glum, then one of the things you routinely do is try to figure out what it is about here and now that they might be glum about’.
Wherever possible, then, we will seek what Sacks calls ‘a local explanation’ for anything untoward that happens. Moreover, this search for the ‘here and now’ extends from such trivial events as a gloomy expression to large-scale happenings. For instance, the intial reports of bystanders in Dallas at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy were not of shots but of hearing a car backfiring.
Why do people work at producing banal explanations as their first thoughts? When interpreting a gloomy expression we probably look fors ome local cause because in the presence of the gloomy person we have a lot of clues to hand. But what about events like assassinations or, say, UFO sightings?
It seems that, although mental patients may be correct about some of their interpretations, few of us want to appear as crazy or even stupid people. Thus in any explanation we give we have an incentive to show that we have first sought the obvious, mundane reason for an out of the way event**.
It is also probably the case that such large-scale happenings take on a special meaning when we can relate them to something local or personal. For instance, many older people will still talk about the Kennedy assassination in relation to what they were doing on that day in 1963. In this regard, Sacks asks us why people resond more to tragedies when they involve local people? For instance, for the American people during the Vietnam War, the deaths of local soldiers ‘brought home the war’. As Sacks suggests:
It turns out that a major way that a war comes to hurt the government doing the war, is by it happening that people from small places die…It’s about the only way that they can come to seriously feel about it. For one, if everybody knows the parents of the person who died, then everybody has occasion to be told about it, and in talkin gabout it come to talk about the war.
Sacks is showing us that, when we tell a story (unless we are bore), we try to find an audience to whom the story will be relevant. Indeed, without such an audience, we may not even remember the story.
Storytellers also prefer to display some kind of ‘first hand’ involvement in the events they describe. Indeed, people are only entitled to have experiences in regard to events that they have observed and/or which affect them directly. For instance, in telephone calls, events like earthquakes are usually introduced in terms of how you survived it, and they become newsworthy less in terms of when they happened but more in relation to when we last talked – our ‘conversational time’.
In this way, Sacks notes, we seek to turn events into experiences or ‘something for us’. However, this shows that telling someone our experiences is not just emptying out the contents of our head but organizing a tale told to a proper recipient by an authorized teller. In this sense, experiences are ‘carefully regulated sort of things’.
Introducing the notion of ‘regulation’ into something so apparently personal as ‘experience’ is just one surprise that Sacks has in store for us. Moreover, for Sacks, in everyday life, we cannot even count on an objective realm of ‘facts’ to balance apparently subjective ‘experience’
Scientists usually assume that first they observe facts and then seek to explain them. But, in everyday life, we determine what is a ‘fact’ by first seeing if there is some comvincing explanation around. For instance, coroners may not deliver a verdict of suicide unless there is some evidence that the deceased person had a reason to take their own life. In that sense, in everyday life, only those ‘facts’ occur for which there is an explanation***.
* Silberman, David. Harvey Sacks Social Science and Conversation Analysis. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0-19-521472-2
**Beniers, C.J.M. Bridging the Cultural Gap. http://www.slideshare.net/beniers/bridging-the-cultural-gap-1136131
*** Beniers, C.J.M. Barriers To Communication. http://web.me.com/beniers/Barriers_To_Communication-1/Film.html
Prof. C.J.M. Beniers
NL Zoetermeer
029-08-2010
© Copyright 2010
About Professor C.J.M. Beniers
Prof. C.J.M. Beniers is a well known authority in the field of modern and international communication techniques. He developed the Six-Component-Model. This model enables companies, institutions and politicians to communicate and negotiate with counterparts from all over the world successfully. His career began as international manager at Philips and later he earned his doctorate as professor in communication. He has more than 35 years experience as manager and management trainer. Thus he knows both sides – theory and praxis – very well. As scientist, Prof. Beniers conducts frequently research in the field of intercultural communication. The results of his interesting research can be found in news articles, free pod casts, audio books and his E-books such as “Bridging The Cultural Gap.” Here, modern managers learn how to prepare for business meetings with people from different cultures; they acquire the techniques and tools to handle situations in times of crises successfully, master intercultural barriers, country-specific communication patterns, looking into personal cultural values & systems. Knowing all this, men can prevent cultural misunderstandings and misinterpretations – not only in business but also in private life.
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