![]() And yet the cachet of conversation, with its connotations of open-mindedness and open-endedness, also encourages an overly broad application. As the philosopher Michael Oakeshott observed, in conversation “there is no ‘truth’ to be discovered, no proposition to be proved, no conclusion sought.” What matters, he continued, is the “flow of speculation.” Conversation is casual it isn’t a chat (too noncommittal), a debate (too contentious), or a colloquy (too academic). In its ideal form, it involves no audience or judge, just partners no fixed agenda or goals, just process. And, whether or not you agree with her description of the current climate, there’s something deeply appealing about her commitment to conversation. Conversation was once an end in itself now it is the stuff of self-help gurus and business-school strategy.Īmid all these forces, Cohen returns to true conversation as a kind of sanctuary. College was once a zone of free-flowing experimentation today, it is dominated by ideological orthodoxy. Families today appear to be increasingly unstable, requiring an ever-expanding cheat sheet of inoffensive talking points for navigating Thanksgiving. No spaces seem safe for the frictions or disagreements that make conversation go. People would rather regurgitate “predetermined positions,” she fears, than wrestle with ambiguity. “Our society abounds in bad conversation,” Cohen writes, in part because it makes for more entertaining content on the Internet and television. ![]() In Cohen’s view, the practice of experiencing “uncertainty and open-endedness in a safe environment” has become imperilled by a variety of forces: political polarization, a mediascape that profits from dissent, the conformity of groupthink, even campus drinking culture. Read our reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction, updated every Wednesday.Ī defense of conversation, of course, is necessary only if one feels it is under attack. “I have felt this not only for friends and even strangers with whom I’ve had a probing or even a fleeting conversation but also for whole classes of students where it can seem that the group has merged into one deeply lovable and loving body.” “Surely, my readers can identify with that welling of positive feeling-that almost-falling-in-love-with someone with whom we engage on an authentic level,” she writes. But she doesn’t prize these types of decades-long exchanges over others she always remains open to new connection. She writes of the special “synthesis” that occurs in marriage or other long-term partnerships, in which one’s lexicon merges with that of another, producing shorthand terminology and a distinct rhythm and style. But her primary qualification here is that she is a self-professed “talker,” the sort of person who lives for chatty checkout lines, leisurely coffee dates, vigorous college seminars, and spirited dinner parties-as well as spirited daydreams about whom you would invite to your fantasy dinner party of historical figures. Her inspirations draw heavily from her areas of academic expertise, as she explores how conversation is woven into the fabric of French intellectual culture (the salon) or élite English life (the gentleman’s club). A 2018 study showed that participants who had more substantial conversations reported relatively high levels of satisfaction with life.Ĭohen considers models of good, entertaining conversation throughout literary history and popular culture, from Jane Austen to Abbott and Costello. There’s some social-science research on her side. Conversation can change our minds while sustaining our souls. She makes the case that talking to others-sharing our stories-is how we learn things and sharpen our belief systems, how we piece together what it means to be funny or empathetic. What we need is to return to the basics: to brush up on the art of conversation.Ĭohen, a professor of English at Drexel University, is the author of “ Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation” (Princeton). Nowadays, she argues, we are sectarian and “self-soothing,” having fallen out of such practice. Maybe because life moved at a slower pace, and every interaction wasn’t so freighted with political meaning, we had the opportunity to recognize our full humanity. There were no smartphones, message boards, or online factions. In those moments of unpredictability and serendipity, we confronted difference. “In past eras, daily life made it necessary for individuals to engage with others different from themselves,” Paula Marantz Cohen explains. ![]() There was once a time when strangers talked to one another, sometimes eagerly.
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