The Parameters of Conversational Style

Deborah Tannen
Georgetown University

There are several dimensions along which verbalization pressive intentions. One more example w i l l be presented,
responds to context, resulting in individual and social based on spontaneous conversation taped during Thanks- •
differences in conversational style. Style, as I use giving dinner, amongnative speakers of English from
the term, is not something extra added on, l i k e decora- different ethnic and geographic backgrounds.
tion. Anything that is said must be said in some way;
co-occurrence expectations of that "way" constitute In responding to stories and comments told by speakers
style. The dimensions of style I w i l l discuss are: from Los Angeles of Anglican/Irish background, speakers
I. F i x i t y vs. novelty of New York Jewish background often uttered paralinguis-
2. Cohesiveness vs. expressiveness t i c a l l y gross sounds and phrases ("WHAT!?.... How INTer-
3. Focus on content vs. interpersonal involvement. esting! . . . . You're KIDding! .... Ewwwwww!"). In this con-
t e x t , these "exaggerated" responses had the effect of
F i x i t y vs. novelty stopping conversational flow. In contrast, when similar
Any utterance or sequence must be i d e n t i f i e d ( r i g h t l y or responses were uttered while listening to stories and
wrongly, in terms of interlocuter's intentions) with a comments by speakers of similar background, they had the
recognizable frame, as i t conforms more or less to a effect of greasing the conversational wheels, encourag-
familiar pattern. Every utterance and interaction is ing conversation. Based on the rhythm and content of
formulaic, or conventionalized, to some degree. There the speakers' t a l k , as well as t h e i r discussion during
is a continuum of formulaicness from u t t e r l y fixed playback ( i . e . listening to the tape afterwards), I
strings of words (situational formulas: "Happy b i r t h - could hypothesize that for the New Yorkers such "ex-
day," "Welcome home," "Gezundheit") and strings of pressive" responses are considered business as usual; an
events ( r i t u a l s ) , to new ideas and acts put together in enthusiasm constraint is operating, whereby a certain
a new way. Of course, the l a t t e r does not exist except amount of expressiveness is expected to show interest.
as an idealization. Even the most novel utterance is to I t is a cohesive device, a conventionally accepted way
some extent formulaic, as i t must use f a m i l i a r words of having conversation. In contrast, such responses
(witness the absurdity of Humpty Dumpty's assertion that were unexpected to the Californians and therefore were
when he uses a word i t means whatever he wants i t to taken by them to signal, "Hold i t ! There's something
mean, and notice that he chooses to exercise this l i - wrong here." Consequently, they stopped and waited to
cense with only one word); syntax (again Lewis Carroll find out what was wrong. Of course such differences
is instructive: the "comprehensibility" of Jabberwocky); have interesting implications for the ongoing interac-
intonation; coherence principles (cf Alton Becker); and t i o n , but what is at issue here is the contrast between
content (Mills' "vocabularies of motives," e.g.). All the cohesive and expressive use of the feature.
these are limited by social convention. Familiarity
with the patterns is necessary for the signalling of Focus on content vs. interpersonal involvement
meaning both as prescribed and agreed upon, and as cued Any utterance is at the same time a statementof content
by departure from the pattern (cf Hymes). (Bateson's 'message') and a statement about the rela-
tionship between interlocutors ('metamessage'). In
For example, a situational formula is a handy way to other words, there is what I am saying, but also what i t
signal familiar meaning, but i f the formula is not known means that I am saying this in this way to this person
the meaning may be lost e n t i r e l y , as when a Greek says at this time. In interaction, talk can recognize, more
to an American cook, "Health to your hands." I f mean- or less e x p l i c i t l y and more or less emphatically (these
ing is not e n t i r e l y lost, at least a level of resonance are d i f f e r e n t ) , the involvement between interlocutors.
is lost, when reference is i m p l i c i t to a fixed pattern I t has been suggested that the notion that meaning can
which is unfamiliar to the interlocutor. For example, stand alone, that only content is going on, is associa-
when l i v i n g in Greece and discussing the merits of buy- ted with l i t e r a c y , with printed text. But certainly
ing an icebox with a Greek Friend, I asked, "Doesn't the r e l a t i v e focus on content or on interpersonal involve-
iceman cometh?" After giggling alone in the face of his ment can be found in either written or spoken Form. I
puzzled look, I ended up feeling I hadn't communicated suspect, for example, that one of the reasons many people
at a l l . Indeed I hadn't. find interaction at scholarly conferences d i f f i c u l t and
stressful is the conventional recognition of only the
Cohesiveness vs. expressiveness content l e v e l , whereas in fact there is a l o t of involve-
This is the basic l i n g u i s t i c concept of markedness and merit among people and between the people and the content.
is in a sense another facet of the above distinction. Whereas the asking of a question following a paper is
What is prescribed by the pattern for a given context, conventionally a matter of exchange of information, in
and what is furnished by the speaker for this instance? fact i t is also a matter of presentation of self, as
To what extent is language being used to signal "busi- Goffman has demonstrated for a l l forms of behavior.
ness as usual," as opposed to signalling, "Hey, look at
this!" This distinction shows up on every level of A reverse, phenomenonhas been articulated by Gall Drey-
verbalization too: lexical choice, pitch and amplitude, fuss. The reason many people feel uncomfortable, i f not
prosody, content, genre, and so on. For example, i f scornful, about encounter group talk and "psychobabble"
someone uses an expletive, is this a sign of intense is that i t makes e x p l i c i t information about r e l a t i o n -
anger or is i t her/his usual way of talking? I f they ships which people are used to signalling on the meta
reveal a personal experience or feeling, is that evi- level.
dence that you are a special friend, or do they talk
that way to everybody? Is overlap a way of trying to Relative focus on content gives rise to what Kay (1977)
take the f l o o r away from you or is i t t h e i r way of calls "autonomous" language, wherein maximal meaning is
showing interest in what you're saying? Of course, ways encoded l e x i c a l l y , as opposed to signalling i t through
of signalling special meaning -- expressiveness -- are use of paralinguistic and nonlinguistic channels, and
also prescribed by cultural convention, as the work of wherein maximal background information is furnished, as
John Gumperz shows. The need to distinguish between opposed to assuming i t is already known as a consequence
individual and social differences is thus intertwined of sharedexperience. Of course this is an idealization
with the need to distinguish between cohesive and ex- as well, as no meaning at a l l could be communicated i f

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there were no common experience, as Fillmore (197g) the distinction between individual and cultural differ-
amply demonstrates. It ~s crucial, then, to know the ences. We need to know, for the understanding of our
operative conventions. As much of my own early work own lives as much as for our theoretical understanding
shows, a hint {i.e. indirect communication) can be miss- of discourse, how much of any speaker's style -- the
ed if a listener is unaware that the speaker defines the linguistic and paralinguistic devices signal)ing meaning
context as one in which hints are appropriate. What is -- are prescribed by the culture, and which are chosen
intended as relatively direct communication can be ta- freely. The answer to this seems to resemble, one level
ken to mean f r more, or simply other, than what is further removed, the distinction between cohesive vs.
meanS if the listener is unaware that the speaker de- expressive features. The answer, furthermore, must lie
fines the context as one'in which hints are inappropri- somewhere between fixity and novelty -- a matter of
ate. A common example seems to be communication between choices among alternatives offered by cultural convention.
intimates in which one partner, typically the female,
assumes, "We know each other so well that you will know References
what I mean without my saying it outright; all I need do Basso, K. 1972. To give up on words: Silence in Western
is hint"; while the other partner, typically the male, Apache culture, in P.P. G i g l i o l i , ed., Language in
assumes, "We know each other so well that you will tell social context. Penguin.
me what you want." Brown, P. & S. Levinson. 1978. Universals in language
usage: Politeness phenomena, in E. Goody, ed., Ques-
Furthermore, there are various ways of honoring inter- tions and politeness. Cambridge.
~ersonal involvement, as service of two overriding hu- Fillmore, C. 1979. Innocence: A second i d e a l i z a t i o n for
man goals. These have been called, by Brown and Levin- l i n g u i s t i c s , Proceedings of the f i f t h annual meeting
son (1978}, positive and negative politeness, building of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
on R. Lakoff's stylistic continuum from camaraderie to Goffmen, E. 1967. Interaction r t t u a l . Doubleday.
distance (1973) and Goffman's presentational and avoid- Kay, P. 1977. Language evolution and speech s t y l e , in B.
ance rituals (1967). These and other schemata recog- Blount & M. Sanches, eds., Sociocultural dimensions of
nize the universal human needs to l) be connected to language change. NY: Academic.
other people and 2) be left alone. Put another way, Lakoff, R. 1973. The logic of politeness, or minding
there are universal, simultaneous, and conflicting hu- your p's and q's. Papers from the ninth regional
man needs for community and independence. meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society.
Scollon, R. 1980. The machine stops: Silence in the
Linguistic choices reflect service of one or the other metaphor of malfunction. Paper prepared for the A~er-
of these needs in various ways. The paralinguistically ican Anthropological Association annual meeting.
gross listener responses mentioned above are features in
an array of devices which I have hypothesized place the
signalling load (Gumperz' term) on the need for commu-
nity. Other features co-occurring in the speech of many
speakers of this style include fast rate of speech; fast
turn-taking; preference for simultaneous speech; ten-
dency to introduce new topics without testing the con-
versational waters through hesitation and other signals;
persistence in introducing topics not picked up by oth-
ers; storytelling; preference for stories told about
personal experience and revealing emotional reaction of
teller;'talk about personal matters; overstatement for
effect. (All of these features surfaced in the setting
of a casual conversation at dinner; it would be pre-
mature to generalize for other settings). These and
other features of the speech of the New Yorkers some-
times struck the Californians present as imposing, hence
failing to honor their need for independence. The use
of contrasting devices by the Californians led to the
impression on some of the New Yorkers that they were
deficient in honoring the need for community. Of course
the underlying goals were not conceptualized by partici-
pants at the time. What was perceived was sensed as
personality characteristics: "They're dominating," and
"They're cold." Conversely, when style was shared, the
conclusion was, "They're nice."

Perhaps many of these s t y l i s t i c differences come down to

d i f f e r i n g attitudes toward silence. I suggest that the
fast-talking style I have characterized above grows out
of a desire to avoid silence, which has a negative value.
Put another way, the unmarked meaning of silence, in
this system, is evidence of lack of rapport. To other
speakers -- for example, Athabaskan Indians, according
to Basso (1972) and Scollon (1980) -- the unmarked mean-
ing of silence is positive.

Individual and social differences

All of these parameters are intended to suggest pro-
cesses that operate in signalling meaning in conversa-
tion. Analys'is of cross-cultural differences is useful
to make apparent processes that go unnoticed when sig-
nalling systems are shared.

An obvious question, one that has been i n d i r e c t l y

addressed throughout the present discussion, confronts

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