Nonsense and rubbish – more about language and to silence people...

From the book whose title would be something in the style “To the appraisal of nonsense talk” by Viveka Adelswärd.

A relative of mine (younger than I am) once said:

“What is that to talk about?”

when I had written a letter to my aunt and her husband about what I had done when I came back from a trip to them (where I for instance wrote that I had been washing my car). That this relative actually is quite good at talking is beside the point, and much better than I am I think!? :)

In a forum of therapeutic character a new moderator made new rules, where chatting became forbidden.

Both those things made me react and think.

How natural can or will the conversation become if you hear this and there are such rules, at least all of a sudden, with no real explanations on top why those new rules have become introduced?

Can this be (is it) to silence people? And does this support recovery in the end? Of course there are people who never get to the point, so in a way I can understand that you have to intervene as responsible...

I work with people too, and have to deal with these things too. And no, it isn't easy.

Adelswärd writes in my maybe a little free amateur translation from Swedish:

“Think if we only should talk with each other when we had guaranteed important information to come with. The world would be very silent and gloomy then./.../

There are also those who adopt a moral aspect on the 'nonsense talk'. It's considered to steal too much time from more substantial ways of talking and from valuable thinking./.../

It's much we can do with the help of language. Many think that one of the most important functions (if not the most important) is to help the human being to think.

The language helps us to inform, persuade, convince, amuse, influence, affect, describe and awaken feelings and thoughts in other people./.../

A little harmless/inoffensive nonsense can work as bonding agent between human beings.

Some people think that if you don't have anything important to say you can as well stay silent. But we don't always have so many wise things to say. Sometimes it's enough just to strengthen the social community and resort to a little nonsense (page 10).”

And research has found that our apprehension (perception) of how much different persons are talking depends on what sex you belong to too! So that we experience a woman's talk as taking much more space than a man's.

Teachers in a classroom (and all the students) apprehend that when a girl raise her voice she is talking a lot. But researchers have proven that this isn't true, by measuring the speaking time and compared it with how we apprehend boys talking. Even the researchers were surprised over their apprehensions.

I guess this has something with very early experiences to do, where parents treated girls and boys differently because they in turn had been treated differently.

“And sometimes it isn't easy to separate ordinary nonsense talk and important conversations. It can be important to talk nonsense for a while to stumble upon the important./.../

We are talking to get opinions, viewpoints and facts, not just to deliver, supply or provide already ready-thought truths./.../

Opinions and arguments are not always lying there ready-thought and ready-worded in our heads, but are often something we get ourselves through talk.

Through 'nonsense-talking' for a while we can test-drive new models of opinions. We drive on for a while to hear how it sounds, listen to how it's adopted and make changes and improvements together.

Test-drivings sometimes crashes. But they can also lead onto new roads and show us that we in fact are making it gallantly and splendidly on those new roads.

It's [sometimes] not until we have spoken nonsense for a while we suddenly realize what we think, consider, feel.

A little nonsense-talk and chatting can be important to see how the land lies and to 'let the mouth go' till the brain has caught up (page 11).”

“But I am not that naive that I am unaware that there is nonsense-talk that is pure rubbish, things that strengthens prejudices and stupidities or that constitutes malevolent gossip and pompous utterances without substance.

Babbling has a downside too./.../ But first and foremost I want to show that our usual talks around the kitchen-table, in the cash desk or with the dog can be both more important and funnier than we realize./.../ I want to show that exciting things can happen when we simply let our mouths go (page 12).

One of the human being's fundamental traits is the ability to create relations. The newborn baby seeks contact and the life as human being starts when the contact-trials succeeds./.../

The voice's tone or timbre and the rhythmical quality is the emotion's language./.../

...an important ability in a human being to create emotional bonds to other people can be through talking nonsense.

During the last years we have understood that animals can have stronger emotional lives than we have had feelings or presentiments about. Animals can mourn, animals can become disappointed. And they can have their own ways of chatting (page 14)./.../

...glimpses from the monkeys lives. We can see then how they with kind faces devote themselves to picking and taking on each other for hours. This trimming or cleaning behavior is not only to keep each other clean; but it is also a way of acquainting and strengthening relations.

The trimming or cleaning behavior is a sort of social language that gives the monkey society's members a happy solidarity-feeling; it namely stimulates the production of the morphine like endorphines. But the trimming doesn't occur randomly. One preferably and for the longest time trims ones friends./.../

... [However] there's a decisive difference [between monkeys and human beings]. The monkeys can't talk. The question when and why we started to use language has been posed during all times.

The English psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar has come with the hypothesis that the language developed through our ancestors trimming behavior. Through encouraging calls and greeting signals, through chatting and gossip – oral trimming – the primitive man could tie emotional bonds with more and more individuals./.../

When we started to keep together in larger groups it was easier to defend ourselves against enemies. This was one of the factors that laid the foundation for our species spreading [and 'success' in this world].

Dunbar means that it is the language's social function, it's task to help us keep together, that is the primary (page 15). The monkeys maintain their contact with each other and tie social bonds through trimming each other. This can be done if the group isn't too big.

When human beings started to live in larger groups they needed a new way of tying the life important social bonds. Therefore the language arose (page 16).

That the language's social function should be the primary is of course a theory among others. One of the language's important functions is that it helps human beings to imagine/visualize and talk about what's going to happen. The language makes it possible to imagine the next day.

Many of the researchers who has been thinking on the origin of language has earlier thought that the language's most important role is to transmit knowledge.

The human being didn't became unconquerable until language made it possible to coordinate the life important hunting.

Chatting and gossip are probably as original occupations as planning of hunting and strategy talks. Nonsense talk has ancient roots.

The thesis that the language was needed for discussing removal plans and hunting – i.e., planning and coordination – has a manly lopsidedness.

But Dunbar is also interested in the females. They are important for the group's continued existence because it is above all the females whom are keeping the flock together in monkey societies.

...females' friendship and the language as social cement or putty plays a big role for the development of the human being (page 16)./.../

[Many] apprehend nonsense and chatting as unnecessary. I think this apprehension is resting on an usual and as I think, erroneous image on how we human beings function.

The image wants to mediate the idea that we are walking around with a lot of facts, knowledge and opinions in the head which we distinctly and easily can put words on when we are talking with other people./.../

All don't manage sitting and thinking elevated, noble and out of the ordinary thoughts in loneliness. Many, maybe most of us, need other people as sounding boards to get the thoughts going. Chatting can be a way into something important: it doesn't always have to be an expression for that we are idling (page 18).”

See “To create common views – the role of the language in the human beings development.” And a reader's letter to Alice Miller on talking.