One of the most challenging branches of Linguistics is that which describes the mechanisms that regulate our everyday conversations. When I explain to my students how a conversation works, I often liken it to a dance. As in a choreography rehearsed to infinity, the interlocutors coordinate their actions to make the miracle of dialogue possible. Conversation is not only necessary for children to learn to speak, but it is at the core of the very social nature of our species. By talking we communicate with others, but also, and above all, we learn to cooperate.
The miracle of human conversation
Experts have described in detail how a conversation works: a culturally determined model that regulates when to speak and when to be silent, how to ask and give the floor and even how long it is polite to keep it.
We learn it from childhood as part of our socialization process. And while small malfunctions can sometimes be identified (unexpected interruptions or overlapping shifts), most of the time it works with the precision of a Swiss watch.
However, however admirable this miracle may be, we cannot ignore that it has certain limitations. Thus, writing arose in part to compensate for the evanescence of the spoken word. And from smoke signals to the telegraph, many technological devices serve to communicate beyond where sounds come naturally.
Eternal and multiple digital conversation
In the digital age our communication capacity seems to have no limits. However, it should be remembered that for a conversation to work it is not enough to be heard, we also have to be heard. And for this the interlocutors must be attentive and mutually available. We live hyperconnected and immersed in an eternal conversation that takes place in parallel and simultaneously on different devices and applications. And it is precisely for this reason that our attention seems to be more dispersed than ever.
It is worth meditating on the way in which technological mediation is changing the way we communicate. On Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Sherry Turkle reflects on the consequences of digital culture in our interpersonal relationships to stand up for face-to-face exchanges as a way of getting closer to the other. He wonders if we haven’t sacrificed true conversation for a seemingly limitless connection that leaves us more alone than ever.
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Chat in WhatsApp time
Beyond the inevitable value judgments, in my latest research I have been wondering about how the characteristics of applications aimed at interpersonal communication influence our way of talking.
The case of WhatsApp is especially interesting. In its more than ten years of life we have witnessed numerous changes. We have lived the irruption emojis O stickers to replace the coldness of the written text or the incorporation of audio messages. Each of these changes has been incorporated into our routines of use. Some have been greeted with surprise and even controversy.
We cannot forget the stir caused by the introduction in 2014 of the double check blue. Since then, the silences on WhatsApp are more significant than ever and what was one of the main advantages of the application, discretion, was heavily damaged.
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Expressions such as nail the seen O leave in seen to account for the anxiety produced by the awareness that a message has been received and read but not answered:
And here the controversies do not end. For a few months, when we receive an audio from WhatsApp, we can decide between listening to it at normal speed or accelerating it. This thread brilliantly summarizes the highlights and shadows of this new functionality.
Authentic conversations?
WhatsApp messages are produced in the absence of our interlocutor, which limits the operability of one of the basic principles of communicative interaction: regulation. The possibility of adapting our speech to the reaction of our interlocutor is lost, something natural in face-to-face conversation.
So why do we use instant messaging so much? For some, WhatsApp is an efficient alternative when other types of interactions cannot be maintained. However, for others it is not a substitute option, but a priority. They belong to the large group of fans of the no calls, just WhatsApp.
Despite the hours spent connected to their instant messaging applications, getting the youngest to make or answer a phone call is very difficult. If the absence of regulation can be a source of communication conflicts and misunderstandings, why do millennials so shy away from the conversation to take refuge in WhatsApp?
It is clear that WhatsApp exchanges do not demand the same attention as telephone or face-to-face exchanges. In fact, we can have several at the same time, something that, except in very exceptional situations, is very difficult and also tremendously impolite in face-to-face conversations.
No matter how instantaneous WhatsApp may seem, there will always be a few seconds that separate the moment in which our words are produced from the moment in which they are received. And these seconds can turn into hours or days. Conversations begin and end, are resumed and abandoned without there appearing to be very clear rules.
At the end of the day, with few exceptions, almost all digital exchanges are carried out concurrently with another activity: I reply to a WhatsApp while brushing my teeth, for example.
This liquid conversation model offers a lot of freedom and requires very little commitment. Unlike an authentic conversation that demands our attention and availability, WhatsApp allows us to regulate the times as we please, silence the exchanges that bore us and leave messages on hold for when we feel like it.
Thus, while boomers (the generation in their sixties and seventies) eagerly await their phones to ring, young people have them forever silenced. And the messages they receive have to wait until they decide to look at their mobiles (even if it’s something they do more than 150 times a day).
Given this lack of availability, can we continue talking about authentic conversations? We have to go back to the dance metaphor to answer this question. Do you remember the song of Eurovision 1991? If dancing from afar is not dancing, to converse like this, through WhatsApp, can be, at least on more than a few occasions, like talking to yourself.
Let’s dance together, let’s talk more.
Cristina Vela Delfa does not receive a salary, nor does she work as a consultant, nor does she own shares, nor does she receive financing from any company or organization that can benefit from this article, and she has declared that she lacks relevant links beyond the academic position cited.
Video | Expelled for refusing to put her phone in airplane mode before the flight
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