Conversation

Conversation is basic to daily life. Throughout the day, in a wide variety of settings, we relate to others through talking informally with them. Originally the word referred to “a way of life”; now it means “a type of discourse.” Conversation overlaps but can be differentiated from discussion. Though one can easily move into the other, discussion is generally more focused and structured.

The Complexity of Conversation

Though conversation appears to be a simple activity, it is actually quite complex. First, not all conversation is the same. It is governed by unwritten conventions or codes particular to the settings in which it is taking place. We talk about conversations as being formal and informal, polite and frank, freewheeling and directed. What we talk about with a friend, and the way we talk, differs from the way we converse with a client or boss. Conversation at a party differs from what we talk about at a business lunch or over the dinner table at home. Face-to-face conversation differs in certain respects from that conducted over a telephone or a modem.

Second, women and men tend to converse differently. Men tend to discuss matters more abstractly, women more concretely. Women tend to discuss in order to connect with other people, men to express their point of view. Men tend to be more preoccupied with ideas about which they sometimes feel strongly, women with the cognitive content of their feelings. Women tend to listen and ask questions better, men to give answers and cut off others, especially women. One should not make too much of these tendencies, because they also occur between members of the same sex, because most, if not all, may be socially conditioned, and because people all too quickly erect gender stereotypes around such differences. In any case, all of these ways of talking are valid ways of conversing.

Third, cultures as a whole have different conventions governing how people converse. Among Australian aborigines, members of a group wait to speak until the most respected person among them has spoken or indicated that others may do so; women will wait until the men have spoken or given them the permission to do so; and each one will pause before speaking to examine whether he or she has something worthwhile to say. Even between Western societies there are noticeable differences. Most Americans speak more loudly and in a more uninhibited way than most Canadians. Australians are more democratic and colloquial in their conversations than most British people. There are even significant differences within countries, as between southerners and northeasterners in the United States.

In spite of these various conventions, conversation is the most spontaneous, versatile and open-ended way of communicating that we have. We enter into conversations with our partners, children, relatives and friends, as well as with fellow car-poolers, colleagues, salespeople, counter clerks and total strangers, sometimes even ourselves! We do it one on one and in small groups, casually and by arrangement. We chat about trivial matters yet also about major personal or social concerns. In prayer we converse alone or in company with God.

The Importance of Conversation

Conversation is fundamental to social life. It is central to (1) acquiring the necessary information to help us find our way around places or carry out our daily activities; (2) relating to other people in order to develop an understanding of who they are and how they function; (3) resolving problems that we find difficult to deal with individually; (4) enjoying the company of others and, through the “play” of conversation, just having a good time; (5) helping to determine our basic worldview, commitments and priorities. Conversation is so pervasive and common that it is easy to overlook its importance. This is especially true in relation to learning or teaching.

We seldom regard conversation as having educational value. We assume that serious or substantial learning can take place only in a formal teaching situation or in an educational institution. Interestingly, studies of lecturing suggest that a speaker is mainly effective when there is a conversational element or style in the address. In fact it is through conversation that infants primarily come to know and cooperate with others. Older children prepare for adult life by “playing grownups,” whether through conversing with adults or talking to each other like adults. It is by spending large amounts of time “hanging out” with their peers or talking over the telephone that teenagers formulate their views and develop their relationships. Popular television and radio programs—whether sitcoms or dramas, talk or talk-back shows—reflect life more than we acknowledge. As adults, many of our views on work, social issues and politics are formed by conversation with families, colleagues and friends. Studies suggest that the most effective evangelism also flows from informally sharing our experience with people we know.

The importance of conversation has been gaining serious academic attention. As a result of monitoring staged conversations in laboratories, psychologists began to categorize and quantify the various components and consequences of conversation. Over the last twenty years conversational analysis of ordinary exchanges between people—which always contain some level of theatricality—has undergone considerable development. Such analysis can be undertaken by any competent person, not just experts, recognizing that every detail in a conversation, such as utterances, exclamations, expressions, gestures and stance, is important.

Conversation in the Bible and History

In the Bible, conversation is not only central to the way people relate to each other but also characteristic of the way we learn about God. The Old Testament contains a number of conversations between God and key figures in the divine drama. For example, God converses at length with Abraham (Genesis 18:22-33), Moses (Exodus 3:1-4:17), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 14:1-15:2) and, in a more one-sided way, with Job (Job 38-42). These conversations range over a wide number of concerns—the fate of people involved in wrongdoing, the nature of a call to ministry, why difficult times have come upon the nation and the point of apparently innocent suffering.

In these writings conversation is also central to the way the people of God were to pass on their faith. For example, the people of Israel should not only memorize or recite the Ten Commandments to their children but “talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road” (Deut. 6:7; compare Deut. 6:20-25). At the Passover the meaning of this basic ritual was to be discussed with children during the meal (Exodus 13:1-10). In fact, conversations were to take place within families about the whole range of God’s instructions to Israel (Deut. 6:20-21).

The Bible also contains numerous conversations that consciously or unconsciously reveal people’s motives, attitudes and intentions; their beliefs, standards and practices; their problems, fears and longings. Others focus on God’s character, actions and purposes. In many of the psalms—especially those that take the form of a conversation between the worshiper and God—we find a combination of the two (explicitly in Psalm 32; Psalm 81; and implicitly in many others, for example, Psalm 85; Psalm 89); sometimes we also come across the psalmist having a conversation with himself as well as God (Psalm 42; Psalm 77). Elsewhere people fulfill God’s wider purposes through engaging in conversations with influential people (compare Neh. 2:1-8; Esther 5-7).

In the New Testament we often find Jesus talking with his disciples as they ate a meal together or journeyed from place to place. Sometimes outsiders generate a discussion on some important topic (Matthew 19:1-12); sometimes one or more of the disciples generate it (Matthew 20:20-27); sometimes Jesus himself generates the conversation (Matthew 16:13-28). After Jesus’ death we read of two disciples on the road to Emmaus whose conversation about the events of the past week Jesus joined, though it was only later that they realized how much their hearts burned within them as he “talked” with them and opened up the Scriptures to them (Luke 24:13-32).

In the early church purposeful conversation continued to play an important role. The only narrative we have of an early church meeting describes Paul as first dialoguing with (not preaching to) the people at length and then conversing with them after their common meal (Acts 20:7, 11). In those days both the sermon and the Lord’s Supper had a strongly conversational character, one that was lost in the following centuries as churches got larger and clergy emerged as a separate group. Paul also trained people such as Timothy, Titus, Priscilla and Aquila for missionary service largely through working and talking with them on his various journeys, not through formal classes in an educational institution.

Although in subsequent Christian history more formal approaches to learning and teaching tended to predominate, key figures continued to affirm the role of conversation in Christian formation and education. In the third century Clement of Alexandria instructed his students through both informal conversation and more structured discussion. Augustine taught mainly through dialogue with his students in informal surroundings and sometimes even out of doors. Martin Luther’s collected Table Talk shows how he supplemented his formal lectures with regular theological and practical conversations over meals. Dietrich Bonhoeffer followed a similar pattern at his underground seminary in Germany during the Nazi era, as reflected in a discussion of the ministry of listening and communicating in his book Life Together.

During the Reformation influential converts in the universities were won over to the Protestant cause initially through conversation in taverns and pubs. In the eighteenth century it was through conversations initiated in one household after another that John Woolman induced Quakers throughout America to abandon slavery, just as later in England regular and lengthy conversations over many years in the homes of William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham Sect formed the basis for the antislavery movement there. During and after World War II, the regular conversations among members of the Inklings group, which was made up of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and others, played a seminal role in shaping the books for which they have become famous. These are just a few examples of many that could be given.

The Demise of Conversation

For at least two main reasons conversation today has fallen on difficult times. It is a victim of the increased busyness and noise that afflict modern society. We have less and less time for others generally, whether extending hospitality to them or visiting with them, and so less time for simply talking together in a regular or leisurely way. Settings where we could talk have become too noisy with traffic or Muzak. The individualism and fragmentation of people in the West are also a problem. A century and a half ago the French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville commented that Americans do not so much converse as speak to one another as if they were addressing a meeting. Instead of conversation there is either a discussion with a particular shape and goal or a series of individual presentations by people more interested in expressing their own ideas than participating in a genuine group experience in which people take their cues from one another.

Busyness, noise, individualism and fragmentation make it all the more important to recover conversation in significant areas of life. In this matter we can learn from those who are marginal in our society. For different reasons African-Americans, women and children all seem to converse easily with one another: the first perhaps because they have become skeptical of discussions, the second because they are less linear and more person-oriented, the third because they are so unself-conscious. There are excellent examples of people conversing in literature—from Shakespeare’s plays to A. R. Gurney’s theater pieces. But these are carefully contrived artifices and therefore do not provide the best models of ordinary conversation.

Recovering Conversation

Restoring conversation to a central place in life has many advantages.

For repairing marriages and families. Psychologists suggest that the main problem in marriages today is the lack of communication between the partners. This stems partly from people’s inability to talk with and hear from one another, partly from issues arising in which highly emotive factors take control, and partly because people do not spend enough time talking with one another (less than twenty minutes a week in meaningful conversation, according to one Australian study!). Time spent by parents with their children has also decreased, as the preoccupation with spending quality, rather than quantity, time with children testifies.

Behind such problems lie poor modeling and training during people’s upbringing, the overly volatile place financial matters occupy in our lives and the emphasis on achievement in both school and workplace at the expense of personal and relational growth. When couples and families reorder their priorities, and where necessary learn some communication skills, the threat of marriage breakdown and of the generation gap diminishes. One step in reordering is to restore the evening family meal to its rightful place, free from the intrusion of television and telephone. Also helpful are regular opportunities for partners, while walking or relaxing, to talk about their dreams and frustrations, ideas and feelings.

For understanding and relating the Christian faith. When people engage in conversation about an interesting book, a film or a program, they tend to become enthusiastically caught up in discussion. They talk about how wonderful, exciting, stimulating or moving it was, what part they liked most or least or just didn’t understand, who or what they really identified with. They may also talk about the values or ideas it was projecting and how it challenged or confirmed certain attitudes or convictions. The same degree of involvement and excitement can be generated in studying the Bible or learning about the Christian faith.

Though not as ordered an approach to learning as more formal study of the Bible, church history or theology, good conversation does lead to greater understanding and self-challenge. It can bring to life stories and figures from the Bible, as well as ones that come out of the pages of church history. Even the lives and writings of Christian thinkers, past and present, can come alive in people’s minds and wills if they are approached in this way. Formal classes or structured programs are not necessarily the best way for most people to learn and apply the basic elements of the Christian faith.

For deepening and extending the church. Small groups have brought into church life a more relational, supportive and practical dimension. But in comparison with early Christian meetings and our own contemporary needs, they are still too structured and limited. Most commonly these groups are led and directed by one person and thus do not provide opportunities for all to share with and care for one another according to their God-given gifts and experience. They generally meet for an hour or an hour and a half and do not provide time for extended interaction or in-depth bonding. If they met longer and focused on dialogue or Christian conversation, more holistic learning and community building would take place.

Part of the answer is building into such gatherings a full meal—preferably carrying the full significance of the Lord’s Supper—during which conversation on a wide range of concerns, small and large, to individuals and to the group as a whole, can take place. But recovering the importance of a meal, this time with unbelievers rather than believers as guests, is central to the task of extending as well as deepening the church. The early church grew largely through the act of ordinary Christians extending hospitality to others in their homes. It was around the dining-room table in a conversational way that the gospel was most effectively shared. This is a challenge and a direction for all Christians and churches that are serious about evangelism today.

Conversation is a multisided phenomenon with multiple uses. Though often familiar or standardized, and in turn both comfortable and comforting, it is also full of the most extraordinary possibilities and consequences. As Erving Goffman says, “The box that conversation stuffs into us [or that we present to others] is Pandora’s” (p. 74).

» See also: Fellowship

» See also: Gossip

» See also: Listening

» See also: Speaking

» See also: Storytelling

References and Resources

W. R. Baker, Sticks and Stones: The Discipleship of Our Speech (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996); E. Goffman, Forms of Talk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); R. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington, 1985). G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); C. Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton, 1995) 117-28; D. Roger and P. Bull, Conversation: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, 1988); D. Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: Ballantine, 1990).

—Robert Banks