Talking the Talk
Talk is a process, you didn’t know that? It is, just as life is a process. Interesting right? It should be because developing and using the many facets of talk add new dimensions and give depth to our lives. Infact for talk to be effective it ought be flexible so that it’s ‘usable’ in any situation.
You know, I have a number of friends (apologies in advance to those who know who they are!) who will not, under any circumstances engage in small talk. Fair enough! But to me, it’s sort of like eating all the jelly babies in the packet EXCEPT your favourite ones! Low blow guys, sorry but you know how I think!
“Many of us don’t realise just how intimately we’re involved with the drama of talk, of how in reality we are our own producer, playwright, director, and star performer. As speakers we use many phrases and expressions that seem to have no obvious logical relationship to what we are saying but this isn’t actually the case.
Those phrases and expressions are meaningful, we call this meta-talk or the hidden meanings behind what people say. It’s that process I was talking about earlier, where we can go from a standing start to 100km in 3.4 seconds, from static to dynamic in an all out race for the finish line. It’s what we do without even thinking but sometimes I think we should.
Talking’s structure may be made up of interactions that produce meaningful transactions. We can evolve in our talk-life from being an observer to an interactor and finally to becoming a fully involved participant.” It’s a challenging but exciting process wouldn’t you say? And you thought it was all JUST talk!
Understanding how meta-talk is used enables us to read between the lines and allows us to tease out the meaning of what a person is really saying to us. My old friend Mon told me once, he was “a mouth man”, it’s taken me years to fully understand what he meant! I’m slow, like the snail.
Heard the one about the guy who was watching TV and he hears a knock at the door. When he answers, there’s no one to be seen! Just as he’s about to close the door, he hears a small voice say, “Excuse me sir, could I interest you in a set of Encyclopaedias?”
He looks down and sees a snail on his doorstep. Mad at being dragged away from the NSW v Qld State of Origin match on the tele by a snail selling Encyclopaedias he kicks the poor snail off his front steps and into the garden before returning inside.
Six months later, there’s a knock at the door. When he answers, there’s no one there again. He looks down and sees the snail who asks, “What did you do that for?” I’m that slow too!
Mon was the Director of a Regional Art Gallery in the middle of New Zealand’s North Island where the ability to talk about artists and their works was critical. His words were the bridge for ordinary people like me to walk across to the other side and discover them. I’m always reminded of how he saw his role, he’d say, “I teach people how to look at art.” If that isn’t the darnedest thing!
So while they say that talk is cheap, it’s a fallacy you know because it’s an everyday diamond in the rough. It’s valuable and worth our using better than we do. We go along with walking the walk so let’s talk better talk too!
