The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [32]
Whatever is going on, it is sick (if happy news to Pharm-Corps).
It is time to speak up for silence.
➺ Rule one: Confidence not talking increases confidence talking
That those who fear silence also grasp its strength is clear from the popular belief that quiet people are arrogant, with some justice in the case of U.S. President “Silent” Cal Coolidge, whose disdain spayed many a conversation.
“How could they tell?” asked Dorothy Parker, on hearing he was dead, and it’s thought that it was she who enlivened a dinner by saying she’d bet on getting more than two words out of him. His reply? “You lose.”
But the prejudice is more often a projection of self-doubt, as when American Vogue’s Anna Wintour became a target to murderous ex-reporter Peter Braunstein:
There were many high-profile editors and God knows they had big egos. . . . But Wintour? She just never talked to peons like us. It was beneath her.
Braunstein’s inadequacies reflect a widespread (fortunately rarely homicidal) malaise. In individualist society, if self-promotion seems nigh on compulsory, those who don’t play the game may seem above it all, and above us.
Hence a newspaper interviewer felt moved to note that Churchill’s biographer, Martin Gilbert, was unafraid “to leave long pauses as he mulls over a thought or searches for a precise word”—correctly implying that self-restraint and pedantry, handy traits in a historian, are eccentric nonetheless, signs of social deviance and awesome self-assurance.
Are silent people a danger to polite society? The unconfident ones are, according to research that finds that lonely people fear silence most, with anxiety about how to fill it, or seeming needy, compounding the problem by cramping their conversational style: Too scared to ask questions, offer opinions, their introverted habits of speech pretty much guarantee more silence.
Perhaps the chief conversational threat of a quiet person, however, is that his sphinx-like bearing acts as a verbal laxative on those less able to keep their own counsel. Believe me, I know. A former boss was a clam. During one of his rare after-work outings, desperate to fill a void, I began riffing (I knew not why) on the unlikely, not to say barking, possibility that a business rival’s bizarre taste in white, pointy loafers had contributed to his recent coronary.
Then I glanced down. What did I see on my boss’s feet?
Yes, it’s worth getting to grips with silence.
➺ Rule two: Silence is meaningful
You may imagine that silence says nothing. In fact, in any spoken communication it plays a repertoire of roles. Just as, mathematically speaking, earth should be called sea, since most of the planet is covered in it, so conversation might be renamed silence, as it comprises 40 to 50 percent of an average utterance, excluding pauses for others to talk and the enveloping silence of those paying attention (or not, as the case may be).
Outside speech, silence serves as background, frame, or cue to talk (like the white page around the words of a script, plus added capacity to give emphasis or tug the playwright’s sleeve and beg further and better particulars, if anything’s unclear). And within speech, it can be a unit of communication or punctuation to pace, pattern, and shade meaning.
Conversation gourmet La Rochefoucauld distinguished between the “eloquent,” the “mocking,” and the “respectful” silence, as if there were clear-cut types. However, no silence is inherently good or bad. Yes, sometimes it expresses empathy and promotes good talk; others, confusion and distance. Then there are silences of power—as a shield, weapon, or to encourage others to speak. But silence never comes with a label attached, and ambiguity multiplies, since each instance is custom-made. We each have a personal dictionary for interpreting the unsaid, and while your pause may be devoid of intent—say, you’re thinking or breathing—it always conveys a message if a listener interprets it as meaningful. All of which increases silence’s potential to wound and confuse.