The (underrated) discursive art of going off-script
Clever improv isn't just for conversations, or the free market—but comedy, too. Image from Saturday Night Live's iconic Garth and Kat series.
Psyche mag explains that our innate preference for accommodation can upstage having authentic, meaningful conversations, like discussing what Churchill and Chaucer have in common or the Valley's political blind spots. But experimenting with the “rules” a bit—through unexpected candor, exploring new territory, or humor—produces some pretty great discussions.
Each conversation exists in a particular mode – chit-chat, small talk, professional, gossip, intimate, banter, and thousands of others. Figuring out which we are in is the first thing we do when we begin interacting with someone, since each mode comes with its own norms. …
The mode can, however, change through the course of the conversation. We might start with small talk, until I lean in and hold your hand to ask: Can I be honest with you? Now the trite remarks of small talk are outside the realm of acceptability; we have to at least pretend to be frank. And often these shifts happen without warning. …
In 1979, Lewis wrote a paper called ‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’. The point was to bring out the often-neglected rules underlying the dynamics of conversations, which have a ‘scoreboard’ like baseball games, keeping track of the various components of conversation. Unlike baseball, however, conversational games have a special set of rules: the rules of accommodation.
The general idea isn’t so different from the ‘Yes, and…’ rule of improv: conversations work like games, but the scorekeeping works in strange ways. Certain actions gain their validity just by being performed, similar to the way I can introduce objects to the scene in improv just by asserting their existence. There were no tracks on the stage until I yelled: ‘Watch out for the train!’ But now that I have, we will all pretend that they were always there.
Conversation is, similarly, a back and forth – a sort of tennis match, if you will. When you decide you want to talk to me, you decide to hit back the ball when I send it your way. So we begin. But there is one caveat: the rules of tennis are determined beforehand; we know how you can gain points, when a ball is out, how to win. The rules of the conversation instead evolve as we go, and so will our expectations of each other.
This means that, sometimes, I might end up making a move that you did not foresee, that you didn’t even think permissible. …
More likely, your ability to walk away is not the first thing that occurs to you. It is not how we are built. If I put down my racket and ask you to do the same, you probably will, and if I lean in and ask for honesty, you will nod, because the rules of accommodation are deeply engrained in all of us.
The fact that most of us are accommodators means that conversations are ready for hijacking. Lewis talks about the master and slave in a conversation – the master deciding what is permissible, the slave accommodating it. There are times when Lewis is right about the clear divide, like when you talk to your boss or your mum. More often, different people take the lead at different times, and assholes most of all.
An asshole is someone who generally does what they want to do. Someone who has freed themselves from the expectations and obligations of society, typically to our dismay. They are the person who talks about themselves too much, who keeps secrets only when it serves them, who brings up topics that interest only them. They are, in other words, someone who is not attuned to the mode of conversation or changes the mode to fit their purpose. But they are also people you can actually get to know in conversation; people who won’t just provide generic responses but will bring something of who they are into the conversation.
The key to impolite conversation is to learn how to be part asshole. To be able to play with the rules of conversation; to know that politeness and norms can be sacrificed for intimacy and connection, without becoming wholly insensitive. …
When we choose to talk, it is because we hope we see the world similarly enough that we can feel connected. Often we try to establish this through the content of what is being said, which reveals that we’ve had similar experiences and heartaches. But we can also do it by playing the conversational game, by jumping around the different modes, hijacking the rules. …
It is fun and good to play tennis, but when we begin to break the rules together, I can know that, in some sense, you are like me. You are a person who won’t call me out when I approach the net, who will laugh along when I start handing you the ball, who will start the intimate staring contest of your own volition. That’s how I know we can be close. It doesn’t work if I have to prespecify the rules, just like it won’t work if I first explain the background to a joke. I’m taking a risk: I don’t know if you are willing to play the game, if you might be uncomfortable. But I need to take the risk of being an asshole to see that you can play with the rules with me.
Read the whole thing here.
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