English Question about Social Life
English Question about Social Life
What are you looking for when you converse with people? What kinds of things do you usually discuss? Are there other things that would be more interesting to you?
Please respond to this question in the interactive comment form below to have a detailed discussion over it and receive useful feedback.
Actually I love to discuss about games because it’s my favorite and I love it.
I see. That’s interesting! However, you should consider other people’s interests, too. What if the person you’re in a conversation with was not interested in games?
It really depends on the other person. For instance, if the other person is one of my classmates our conversations hardly go further than casual stuff. And I usually never talk about personal issues except for my family members. And I don’t enjoy long conversations or aimless ones.
I see. As you implied, a conversation is a two-sided communication channel that should be based on mutual interest and respect. According to Grice’s 4 maxims of conversation, each successful conversation should have 4 principles or characteristics as listed below:
1. Quality: the state of being truthful
2: Quantity: the length and depth of conversation
3: Relation: being relevant and talking to the point
4. Manner: the state of being clear
For me it could be anything, The subject usually is brought up with others. In this way at least I know they like to talk about that subject which warms the conversation a little bit. Also, I don’t talk about subjects which are important for myself with someone who has no idea about it. The best conversations that I had were with people who had same questions in their mind. When I meet them I just bring up those questions for starting conversation.
Being a taciturn person, I rarely break the ice and start a conversation unless there’s something really important to talk about. A topic that is relevant to the context or discourse is often worth mentioning. Then in the middle of the discourse or conversation, I automatically analyze whether the other person is interested in or informed about the topic being discussed or not.