Norms, codes, and discontent

Turn-taking is one of those rules that differs in interpretation by the gender you are. "Rules" are really the norms established by socialization with your peers. So, when learning conversational norms, socialization happens. When people violate established societal norms for conversation, then stigmas are assigned to that person, such as "Oh no, here comes the guy that never shuts up," or "you don't want to talk with him - he never says more than two words." Somewhere in the middle is the norm. We all learn the norm when we socialize through the years. This also means that the peer group teaches us the norm, not the adult population. If you're a deep adult, you have probably noticed that the norms are slightly different for you than they are for people 20 or more years younger than you.

Since socialization occurs from peers, then another observation needs to be made. Girls are socialized by girls, boys by boys. As young people approach puberty, socialization takes on greater importance. One reason is that young people begin striving for independence from parents, even in the way they talk. However, boys hang around boys and girls around girls until mid-to-late adolescence. The socialization process, then, is left to the same sex peer group.

Therein lies the rub. The norms, or rules, for girls differ from the norms for boys. These norms are not easily shaken and continue into adulthood. These norms actually reach codified status for many adults because norms from childhood tend to become codes in nearly all areas of life, like religious values or beliefs, work ethic, role-orientation of culture. So, when a boy meets a girl or a girl meets a boy, the norms for engaging in conversation are different.

Building off of the previous blog, a great illustration can be seen. Turn-taking among girls requires that another girl show her interest in the conversation by giving minimal responses as the conversation continues. Words such as uh-huh, yes, right are sprinkled throughout the turn of the speaker by the listener. Boys, on the other hand, say nothing while another speaker has the floor because one of the norms in boys' conversations is not to take the floor away from the speaker. The minimal response is considered an attempt to take the floor away since it is a way to agree with someone and to then continue building on the conversation. Imagine what happens when boy meets girl. Girls would come away from the conversation saying, "he's not a good conversatinalist because he just sits there." Boys would come away from the conversation saying, "I hate talking with her because she interrupts all the time." This continues into adulthood. Women say, "He just sits there. It's like talking to a brick wall." Men say, "Talking with her is useless. She won't listen and tries to take the floor constantly." Different norms have been mentioned even as a cause for divorce by some.

Norms become codes. Codes become expectations. Expectations breed discontent. Discontent leads to separation or warfare. Thus we have language as a part of the greater "Gender Wars." One would think that understanding the other gender's point of view would uncomplicate matters. But the truth is stated in the first 4 sentences of this paragraph for most, so understanding gets nowhere. I'll write more on this matter in three blogs from this one.

Rules for (word) engagement

Turn-taking is one of the rules of conversation. When a conversation is a purely friendly, casual conversation. The turn-taking is fairly equal in two areas: number of turns for each conversant and number of words by each conversant. What happens when the balance is broken? If one conversant asks for something to be elaborated, then the conversation is still a friendly one, but even the elaboration would have its limits in number of words. Then the conversation returns to the balance it had before the elaboration happened. If one person is taking a dominant position in either the number of turns or the number of words, then the conversation is not friendly any longer. The person on the short end of the stick has tuned out. Interest lags, and if a convenient way of escape lies at hand, the person takes the way of escape. If not, then the person "appears" to listen, but in reality the mind's wheels are turning to get out of the conversation.

Once in a while, one comes across another who is asocialized in turn-taking. The asocialized person misses all the cues of the other conversant tuning out and really has no concept of the "rules" of turn-taking. Asocialized people are avoided like the plague. Word gets around about them. Causes for asocialization in conversation abound, but the next time you get stuck talking with such an asocialized person, just interrupt (you don't have to worry about being rude. They're asocialized remember. They wouldn't recognize rude if it bit them.) and make the way of escape for yourself. Don't wait for the person to draw breath. It is not going to happen.

I hear that women sometimes say that talking to a mate is like talking to a brick wall. That's another subject altogether. Men and women have different rules to converse by and cross-gender speech is a special field (ignored largely by psychologists). When you add intimacy to the cross-gender equation for happy talking, then it's like Einstein's theories of relativity. There's the general theory of relativity, then there's the special theory of relativity. That's a whole blog by itself. Which might be next if I can find the time.

Looking through layers in time

There is nothing like a little drive time through the rolling foothills to notice that the earth has been around a long time. A really long, long, long time. Roads cut throught the sides of these hills expose the ages of the rocks showing layer upon layer. I don't have the layers memorized, but I can appreciate how long the layers have to be on the surface, then undergo some atmospheric change, then get buried for a new surface to be layered on top, then that surface gets buried with time, and so on. It takes my mind a little while to go back in time with each of the layers. It would take thousands of years for the what's on the surface, maybe tens of thousands of years. If I look at the lowest layer it could represent hundreds of thousands, maybe a million years.

Then I look at my own few decades of life here on the earth. It seems that If the earth could sneeze for the same one second that I sneeze, my life would be over. The ancients on the earth liked to use the analogy of life being a vapor and then gone. When I'm gone, my bones return to dust, get buried with the rest of the surface for that ten thousand year era, then continue to compress with each ensuing surface of the crust and get further down in the layers. If people did go extinct somewhere in thefuture, then whoever might see the earth after that would never know that billions and billions of the species of humans filled this teeming earth.

There's a great poem called Ozymandias that expresses the sentiment I just mused about in prose form. Its text is below.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
(Percy Shelley, 1818)

Thoughts like these don't argue well for a creator. Why should someone care when years from now, my remains will not really speak from the dust. They'll be part of a layer of earth buried 100,000 years down. Then again, that could be why there is an after-life. We don't have to remain buried 100,000 years down. Some part of us lives on past the sands revealing a colossal wreck. And that appeals to my thirsty soul.