The Science Of Analysing Conversations - Elizabeth Stokoe

Um's and ah's are quite often thought of as errors that you want to get rid of. They're very commonly littered through our talk, and it's quite difficult to totally erase them. But what they're doing is quite a specific thing. So sometimes they're doing, "I'm thinking," "I'm searching for a word." Sometimes they are showing difficulty in putting this thing together. They're showing an orientation to delicacy. They're doing lots of different things in talk.

(wind blowing) What's your problem with asking people, "How are you?"

(laughs) I have a problem with people how they are. But it is a very interesting thing to examine as it unfolds in real conversations, in real time, in different settings.

Why?

Hmm. So, "Hi, how are you?" "Fine, how are you?" is a really common way in which conversations start. It's a kind of no problem, very mundane, routine way in which conversations typically start between people who know each other fairly well. Um, and those how are yous can sound like they're just fiddler talk, that they're not really doing anything very much. That people kind of lie in response. They say, "Fine, how are you?" Not, not, you know, "My life is horrendous." They don't do it at that point (laughs) in the conversation. And so, the fact is when you see loads of those conversations starting in that way, it can just look like nothing special is happening. But when- once you start to contrast those with other kinds of conversations, and the very start of them, you can start to see that that apparently pointless fiddler talk is actually telling you a lot about the kind of interaction this is, that's about to happen. So for example, how do you convey, "I'm in a rush," something's an emergency. You stop people doing those how are yous and you say immediately, "Oh, did, I just need to check, did you leave the oven on?" Um, I've got some nice examples where people immediately start a conversation, not with, "Hi, how are you?" But, "Chris, Liz, what, what's the deal?" And you can immediately see, hey, there's no how are yous, they're about to have a huge argument. (laughs) Um, and then I've got an, an amazing example where, um, a woman calls 999, um, and in order to convey to the, the dispatcher, somehow my life is in danger, but I need you to hear as, hear that I'm talking to a f- I need, I need the person who might be actually threatening my life in the house to sa- to h- to sort of hear, "Oh, they're talking to a friend." Then you do those, you, you do those how are yous and you hope that the person on the other end of the phone kind of catches on, which they do pretty quickly too. "Oh, this person is pretending to have a conversation with a friend by doing that thing that always happens at the start of a call," which is quite amazing to see. How are you