It's good to talk: how the art of conversation is under threat

Gillian, the owner of The Coffee Cup, has learned to spot the signs. “They’ll be by themselves, and they’ll wait that extra five or 10 minutes after they’ve finished their coffee,” she says.

“They’re not looking for a long conversation, just for someone to come over and say ‘how are you, how’s your day been?’ They just want five minutes to have a little chat.”

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Over the coffee, cake and conversation, she’s seen friendships blossom. It’s not deliberate; she doesn’t make a point of encouraging people to sit together and chat. Rather, it seems, it’s human nature to just want to talk.

“We’re just a small café, but we’ve become a bit of a community hub where people meet, have a chat and develop relationships,” she adds.

Anyone who tuned in to watch Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag’s meltdowns, crises and wry observations on modern Britain, would have spotted the secret to her once woeful guinea pig-themed café’s sudden success. As her sister rolls up to the typically empty café, and can barely hide her shock to find it positively buzzing with conversation flowing.

Why, she asks suspiciously, is everyone talking to each other?

Fleabag’s Chatty Wednesday concept – “If you buy something you have to a chat with someone you don’t know” – may well resonate with Tom Pow, a Dumfries-based poet and the creative director behind a nationwide arts-backed project to get us talking, A Year of Conversation.

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He fears that like the Scottish wildcat or the humble honey bee, the every-day art of holding a conservation – at home, at work, in restaurants, cafes and at events - is fading in front of our eyes.

And without a gentle nudge in the right direction, our once natural ability to just talk to each other, to offer calming words of advice, to gently challenge other’s opinions, to debate, comfort, empathise and joke, could be lost in a digital world of texts, updates and emails.

In short, like Bob Hoskins in the old BT advert, he believes it really is good to talk.

“Conversation is all around us . . . in the street, the park, the supermarket, the pub,” he says. “Yet it seems conversation is under threat - from the digital world, the political shout-fest, the tribal and social groupings that divide us.

“That’s strange when the opportunities for conversation are so many and the benefits of conversation are so clear: the pleasure of sharing ideas and experiences, the nurturing of empathy, friendship and love.”

To help us overcome our tongue-tied ways, the project, has declared next Saturday (May 11) as ‘A Day of Conversation’, when we’ll be gently encouraged to switch off our screens, step away from the social media – where conversations can be limited to a short, sharp, sometimes shouty bursts or cat video ‘likes’ – and take time to sit face to face, and talk.

And if that’s too tricky, the project has issued a set of prompts to help us get talking, with conversation starters such as “If you were lost in a forest, which animal would you trust?”, “What does heaven look like?” and “If your house was on fire, what would you save first?”.

Which may seem strange things to suddenly ask the chap at the bus stop or the woman opposite on the train, but Pow suggests just a nod, a smile and a bog-standard observation about the weather could just as easily get the ball rolling.

While a chat with a stranger at a café may be all it takes to alleviate someone’s crushing loneliness – café boss Gillian points out that some customers may spend all day with no-one else to talk to –others are quick to point out the potential seriousness of losing the art of conversation – and the benefits that it can bring.

Research last year by Cancer Research UK found young people are rapidly forgetting how to hold a proper conversation, preferring to use social media or talk online to people they do not know rather than speak face-to-face.

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More than a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds questioned said they had never spoken to someone they don’t know on public transport, while nearly half said they were more comfortable using social media, online and messaging apps to talk to strangers.

That raises issues in the workplace, where young employees raised on digital conversations are being found to be increasingly reluctant to make phone calls or to meet face to face with clients or colleagues.

And when it comes to building friendships and finding partners, breaking the ice in a club or pub has been replaced by swiping left or right.

Apart from putting the world to rights, face to face conversation minimises the risk of misunderstanding and, says Pow, helps open our minds to others’ opinions, encourages empathy and binds us closer.

According to Dr James Moir, senior lecturer in sociology at Abertay University, the art of conversation – however mundane – is fundamental to us as human beings.

“Conversation is part-and-parcel of our actions in the world: to ask for something, praise someone, blame them, offer an account of one's actions, invite someone, criticise something, offer an assessment, make a persuasive case for something, rationalising something, telling a joke,” he says.

“These are things we do on a daily basis through conversation and they are 'out there' so to speak, in the intelligibility of what we say or when listening to others.

“And I really do mean the most mundane stuff: from giving an evaluation of a meal to talking about Game of Thrones. Talking is not simply about displaying our understandings, but rather is about doing things that constitute our ways of living.”

There is, he adds, a certain irony around today’s conversation-free world. “If you go back far enough in human history, there’s an argument that being able to communicate through talk freed up people’s hands to do other things. Now people are too busy with their hands on their phone to talk.”

According to Pow, what we need most is a conversation about the future of conversation. “We need to celebrate conversation, initiate conversation, and explore it. We should ask what does conversation mean to us?

“This change in the way we communicate is happening before we even notice. We should pay more attention to how to encourage conversations, face to face.”

www.ayearofconversation.com

Stuck for words? For tongue-tied would-be conversationalists who just can’t seem to get the words out, help is at hand.

A Year of Conversation has produced a toolkit designed to inspire chatter – with tips on topics to spark a conversation, to situations which can help get the words flowing.

It has these suggestions to get the chat started:

• Arrange an outing to a film, play, concert or sports event with friends. Make a point of talking about it before and after.

• Invite friends for a meal. Pop a note with a topic written on in each wine glass. Ideas include ‘What’s your favourite part of your body’, ‘What would you do to change the world?’, ‘The biggest risk I’ve ever taken’, ‘Was Goldilocks a robber?’, and ‘What keeps me awake at night’.

• Hold a ‘list event’. Write two or three words on pieces of paper that can act as the start of a list – such as Eighties pop groups, Sixties dance moves, school dinners. Get the conversation flowing about each as you add to the list.

• Sit outside more, take a game of chess, snakes and ladders or a glass of wine and make a point of greeting people as they pass. Invite them to sit with you.

• Make a point of using A Day of Conversation to have that difficult conversation with a friend or colleague that’s been tricky to get started.

• Think about the digital world. Leave your mobile phone at home or avoid using it in company. Have a conversation about how that felt to go without digital contact.