Language in Thought and Action’: Tips for Effective Communication(Part 4)

Language in Thought and Action: Tips for Effective Communication(Part 4)

Why do we sometimes need to “find something to say” in social situations?

This is the fourth part of ‘Language in Thought and Action’: Tips for Effective Communication. For more tips, please read my other articles.

Language in Thought and Action

Edit description

On social occasions, we will always see this phenomenon: everyone is trying very hard to talk about something, “today’s weather is good,” “Last night’s game is really not bad,” “This movie is particularly wonderful! “…… Often this kind of conversation is more like ‘looking for words’, because the opinions expressed on these topics, from the point of view of exchanging knowledge, most of them are worthless and not worth talking about. However, these conversations are a necessity of social etiquette, and it is even considered rude to remain silent.

This situation arises because breaking the silence is itself an important function of speech.

At a glance, breaking silence is about building fellowship. There are many ways to build fellowship between people — eating together, working together, playing together, and so on — but of all these ways, talking together is the easiest to do.

And since the purpose of these conversations is to build friendship, people are usually careful to choose topics that are more likely to get them to agree immediately. Imagine two strangers wanting to have a conversation, they’re going to start with something like “nice day” and then move on. And no matter how simple the topic of conversation, as long as a few more times to reach an agreement, their **stranger to each other and suspicion **will be reduced by one point. If in the follow-up conversation, they find each other have common friends, in the interests of the same thing, then the two will likely become friends, and real friendship and cooperation will begin. On the contrary, if we wait until we are asked to speak before we speak in society, it will be very difficult for us to accomplish many things.

That is why it is important to realize that language in everyday life can be used only to set the mood and build friendships, not just to state or ask for facts. Therefore, ** not every sentence is necessary to pursue “talk”, or “no-nonsense”, for trivial or superficial topics of talk is very necessary, ** we should be more flexible and tolerant to look at it.

Think about it, suppose a tire leaks and we pull over to the side of the road to get it repaired, when a young man who doesn’t look too smart but has a friendly attitude asks, “Tire run flat?” If we were to take this literally, we’d think it was a knowing question, but if we understood what he was saying and responded in a friendly manner, regardless of what he said, maybe he’d change the tire for us. The reason why the young man did not say, “I would like to come over and help”, is that people can only trust each other and dare to express themselves directly when they hear each other’s heart and understand that the other person accepts or likes them.