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2014-07-02 01:56:20
Many social commentators lament how the art of conversation is being lost as
people prefer to use email, texts and tweets to communicate. But, as BBC
Newsnight's Stephen Smith reports, spoken word enthusiasts are fighting back.
Can we talk? It's an invitation to gossip, to dish.
But it's no longer just a rhetorical question. "Can we talk?" has become one of
the most pressing social, cultural - even philosophical - issues of our day to
some social commentators.
People such as psychologist and professor Sherry Turkle warn that we're in
danger of losing the power of speech as we once understood it.
Free minutes
They point to how the mushrooming ubiquity of digital interaction - through
emails, texts, tweets and other apps - is replacing conversation, and even
degrading our facility for it.
Some mobile phone companies report that many customers no longer use up their
entitlement of "free minutes" - instead it's all about the texting and online
services
In other words, we have arrived at the extraordinary position in which we have
more digital conversations than "real" ones, as borne out by figures from UK
communications industry regulator Ofcom.
Four people on phones Ofcom's 2012 report set out how texting had overtaken
talking
Prof Turkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been
investigating how the smartphone has struck us dumb - or at the very least,
mute.
"I ask people what is happening with conversation," she says, "and they tell
me: 'What is wrong is it takes place in real-time and you can't control what
you are going to say.'
Psychological lockjaw
"What they mean by that is that they'd rather have control and be able to do
their little side of the conversation when they are relaxed, when they can edit
and also, they sort of want to broadcast their little side of the
conversation."
She paints a heartbreaking picture of youngsters who are afflicted with a kind
of psychological lockjaw when confronted with the once-everyday experience of
talking to another human being on the phone.
How on earth do they date?
Young love graphic How does young love get off the ground these days?
Prof Turkle says that when boy finally meets girl, having first made contact
online, they are supported by friends who act like a boxer's seconds.
In the corner of these putative sweethearts, they offer advice on those
all-important final tweets and texts, right up until the moment when
old-fashioned speech and body language take over
But the professor says the young aren't wholly to blame.
Emotionally absent
At least one generation has grown up with phone-toting patents who are
emotionally absent - at the playground, over the dinner table: wherever - so
distracted are they by their online lives.
But all is not lost.
In the hushed surroundings of a London private members' club, etiquette guru
Diana Mather is reviving the gentle art of conversation, one afternoon tea at a
time.
Etiquette expert Diana Mather: "Texting and talking is so rude"
Over sandwiches with their crusts cut off, she enlightens her clients about the
right way to embark on small talk, and the even more ticklish dismount.
Ms Mather's tip for exiting a conversation? Why not try something like: "It's
been lovely meeting you, but I'm sure you have lots of other people to talk
to."
Brownie points
In polite society, it's simply not done to fidget with your phone while
chatting, Ms Mather tells me with a shudder.
It shows your interlocutor that they don't have your full attention - and it
could well cost you valuable business, not only social brownie points.
"Texting and talking is so rude. It's like me having a conversation with you
and a completely different conversation with somebody else - totally ignoring
you - coming back to you when I felt like it," she says.
line
OFCOM FINDINGS
Three friends Older generations are the lowest users of mobile devices for
communication, Ofcom reports
Ofcom's 2012 communications market report found:
People in the UK were more likely to text than to make a phone call
While 58% of people communicated via texts on a daily basis in 2011, only 47%
made a daily mobile call
It said the shift away from traditional ways of keeping in touch was being led
by young people aged 16-24
Its 2013 report, Ofcom found:
Respondents were most likely to use text messages at least once a day to
communicate with friends and family
More than half (54%) stated that they used text messages to communicate
49% said they communicated face to face and 45% using voice calls on a mobile
line
You might imagine that separating Spencer Kelly, the presenter of the BBC's
gadget show Click, from his mobile would require an industrial-strength
solvent.
In fact, he jokes that it's only a matter of time before he becomes
curmudgeonly about technology.
The trouble is that much of it is so "irritatingly convenient" that we can't
help adopting it.
He believes it has made conversation "wider, shallower and longer".
'New conversation'
We are in touch with more people but our correspondence is also more clipped;
that said, over time a text or email thread can become the modern equivalent of
a 19th Century exchange of letters, albeit rather more terse and perhaps less
well punctuated.
Like the Click host, Oxford academic and author Theodore Zeldin has identified
a "new conversation".
Person texting on an iPhone The rise in texting has also raised concerns about
language use
For him, it's the opposite of traditional parlance: chit-chat intended to oil
the wheels of social intercourse.
The new conversation seeks nothing less than to know the world by means of a
thorough-going understanding of other people, and this can be achieved by
talking to them at length about thought-provoking matters.
"The old [conversation] was to pass the time, to show respect, to do what
etiquette demanded," Mr Zeldin explains.
Closely guarded recipe
"The new conversation has a different purpose - it is to discover who other
people are. Our goal now is to know who inhabits the world, individually, one
by one."
Under the auspices of Mr Zeldin's Oxford Muse project, strangers are invited to
converse with one another on topics chosen from a menu.
It's a closely guarded recipe, to preserve the wow-factor, but suffice to say
the subjects up for discussion among his volunteers include their fears - and
loves.
Theodore Zeldin Theodore Zeldin invites strangers to pick topics from a menu
The mainly 20-something participants whom we met said the session was a
stimulating change from being in the pub with their mobile-fixated friends.
It's certainly an admirable experiment, but watching these bright, young things
filling an elegant salon in Oxford with their talk, I was struck by how
old-fashioned, even quaint, it might appear to some.
In other words, the conversation was in danger of becoming what antique dealers
call a conversation piece.