Chapter 10

Gossip, Shoptalk and Small Talk

Normally when a company of people get together, conversation is first about the weather and one another, then about mutual acquaintances, then it narrows into shoptalk, or widens into "small talk." When two people get together, or a number of old cronies get together, the conversation too often tends to hover about mutual acquaintances. The Irish Digest carried this illuminating item:

A woman wrote to a daily paper from a very lonely spot: "My sister and I aren't exactly lonely out here. We have got each other to speak to, but we need another woman to talk about."

This brings up the whole troublesome matter of gossip. Etymologically gossip meant related through God, namely godparents; then it came to mean cronies, and thereafter newsmongering or idle tattling. Essentially it is the category of conversation which concentrates on mutual friends and acquaintances. It falls between talk of one's self, the lowliest form of conversation, and discussion of ideas, the most exalted form. On the face of it, therefore, it is not intrinsically a bad thing. But because under the impact of original sin people who talk about their absent neighbors too easily stress their neighbors' weaknesses, gossip is in somewhat ill repute. As a cartoon in Collier's expressed it: "Of course, there's a lot to be said in her favor, but it's not nearly so interesting."

There speaks the Old Adam in us. Coping daily with the weaknesses of our own flesh, with temptations and sins, we get a curious moral satisfaction from learning and dwelling upon the foibles and sins of others. Our morale seems to be enhanced when we discover instances where others proved themselves weaker than we, or where those reputed to be particularly strong characters have shown symptoms of weakness like our own.

This urge to discuss the lapses of others is a sort of left-handed tribute to man's moral nature. It is evidence of his constant sub-surface concern with good and bad, right and wrong. Gossip is the daily expression of interest we feel in our neighbors. It is lip service to the injunction to be our brothers' keeper. But this expression of brotherly interest can be employed so as to increase charity and brotherhood in the world, or so as to promote discord and dissension. It may well serve as capillaries in the Mystical Body of Christ, or as pawns in the armories of Satan. One aesthetician writes,

There is malice enough in gossip, but most of it is the purest kind of mental and emotional satisfaction. . . . The stories which we tell about ourselves and our friends make up the ephemeral, yet real prose literature of daily life (DeWitt H. Parker, Principles of Aesthetics [1946, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.], p. 231).

It is important to note that gossip is one thing, spite and calumny quite other things. Tennyson, in Maud, writes of a village which "bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite." Spite is saying anything, whether true or false, for the purpose of irritating, hurting, or creating friction or ill will against someone. Conversationally it is in bad taste; morally it is a sin against charity. Slander and calumny are statements about anyone which are not only unfavorable but also false. They are harmful, lying, obviously utterly and always wrong.

Unfortunately their being sinful does not make them dull and uninteresting. If they were, people would probably not perpetrate them. They must be avoided, no matter how interesting, because the end never justifies evil means. Every conversationalist must be scrupulously careful never to impute wrongdoings or weaknesses to anyone which are not true. X° report that Tom called Susan a stupid thing if he did, is bad; but to report it when he actually did not do so is slander and calumny. It is a vile deed, conversationally and morally intolerable. But anyone inclined to this sort of thing is in need of a book on ethics and a serious conference with a priest.

A good Christian and a cultivated conversationalist neither indulges in it nor tolerates it in his presence. When he knows a remark to be slander he registers his protest. He may say, "Mr. Jones, in asserting that Mrs. Todd carries on with the iceman — or, that Manly does not pay his bills — you are misinformed. I am in as good a position as anyone to know the facts, and I assure you that is not true. I hope you will correct any impression to the contrary which you may have given elsewhere as well as here." Some sort of check to slander, it is your duty to give. If you are not positive of your facts but reasonably suspect slander, you may say, "Mr. Jones, while I am not in a position to be absolutely sure, I nevertheless strongly suspect that you have been misinformed in this matter. Do you have incontrovertible proof of this, or are you reporting it merely from hearsay?" This is usually enough to check the slander, or to discredit it.

When slander and calumny enter conversation, one can no longer dignify it even as gossip; it has become sin. Conversation, intended by God to weave a thread of brotherhood about mankind, is through these delivered to the father of lies and made the engine of harm and discord. It is too unspeakable to be a problem for decent people.

But the factor of detraction in gossip is a real problem even for them. Detraction is saying things about our acquaintances, our neighbors, and people in the news which, while true, are unfavorable, belittling, uncomplimentary. The problem is that in some instances unfavorable truths need to be told. We indicated above that in informal reference to ascertain a particular person's suitability for social or business engagements, a pertinently unfavorable character-tisic must be stated. There is also another curious social value in detraction and the resultant scandal.

Scandal is the shock or disapproval expressed in talk over the misdoings of anyone, be he humble or famous, near or far. Oscar Wilde cleverly said, "Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality." However, he is wrong in designating gossip as made tedious by morality. Juvenal more correctly wrote,

. . . there's a lust in man no charm can tame, Of loudly publishing his neighbor's shame.

Wilde, who himself was finally ruined by a scandal, should more correctly have said, not that it is made tedious by morality, but that it is the terror of the wicked. It is generally a greater deterrent to wrongdoing than the police or the dungeon. The fear that "people will talk" has kept more girls virgins than the fear of the maternity ward. Scandal is the vote of the people against sin. There is, therefore, some value in it. No tyranny can stop it, no dictatorship can ultimately withstand it. It is a sort of mob judgment on sin, or what the age and clime conceives as sin. It tends to keep one's neighbor proper and one's congressman respectable. But like all mob action, it is arbitrary, ruthless, frequently misdirected.

Yet one need not altogether abstain from expressing shock and condemnation of public wrongdoing which comes to one's attention. Silence might even be construed as approval. St. Paul, hearing that one among the Corinthians was guilty of incest, rebuked them collectively for not reproving it, and expelling the man guilty of such a deed from their company (1 Cor. 5:1, 2). But before acting scandalized, one must sternly ask one's self, "Is it true? Is it as serious as it is represented? Is it truly an offense against the moral law, and not a perhaps wholesome breach of prejudice? Is the offense a public concern, or strictly a private matter?" If the answer to these questions cannot be an unqualified affirmative, a good conversationalist will have none of it. If the scandal will tend to induce others to imitate it rather than avoid it, he will suppress it. If the sin was one that but for some metaphorical wire tapping would not be known and should not concern the public, he will suppress talk of it.
He will also be keenly conscious of the fact that people's mob judgments are not necessarily synonymous with correct moral theology. It was the people who preferred Barabbas the thief to Jesus the denouncer of the eye-for-an-eye principle. People have been known to be more shocked when a girl smoked than when a man committed adultery. They are often more aroused against a conscientious objector than against a bank-robber. They have been known to be more scandalized to see a Negro and a Caucasian dance together than to learn that their ' 'respectable" neighbors committed abortion. One must analyze the scandal, and if it is not in fact based on the moral law but on a prejudice, one must try to counteract it, not express shock with the mob. If it is a comparatively minor delinquency, one may not accept a reaction to it as if it were a criminal matter sufficient to deprive the guilty forever of his good name or position.

Still another danger is that certain scandals take on a kind of glamour. Certain sins found in successful people, such as movie stars for example, when talked about very much, tend to decline rather than to wax in heinousness. Rather than be deterred by the scandal, some will rather begin to think, "If everybody's doing it, why might not I? If such a star can get away with it, except for a little talk which does not make him poorer, then why might not I?" As the poet Pope truly and beautifully says,

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As  to  be  hated needs but  to be  seen; Yet seen  too  oft,  familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

For all these reasons, while one recognizes a certain moral function in scandal, a good conversationalist will analyze it carefully before joining with it, and in any case will not dwell upon it. He will express his rebuke and condemnation, shortly and definitely, and then pass on to something else. But we are not yet done with gossip. We quoted an aesthetician above as saying that much of it is the "real prose literature of daily life." When is gossip harmless? It seems to me the standard should be: "Would I seriously object to being talked about the way I am talking to someone about our absent neighbors?" Dean Swift, in a sentence that bears repeating, admirably said, "Surely one of the best rules of conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had rather left unsaid." This should be supplemented by the further notion that we ought never to say anything which anyone being talked about can reasonably wish had not been said of him. If a person applies this criterion honestly and determinedly, and if he is clever enough and willing to discourage others from violating it, too, then he may safely assume that the so-called gossip is harmless. Such talk of one's acquaintances, while it is not a high form of conversation, is yet a warm and natural one. It can well indicate a charitable and kindly interest in one's neighbors and fellow men.

In the above criterion I very consciously used the expression, can reasonably wish. With that phrase I reserve the right to twit a friend a bit behind his back, as I do it to his face. How much? Only to the extent that I do not seriously mind being so twitted myself. I know many people will protest that of absent friends one must never speak except in compliments. Nevertheless, I don't think charity demands that one must always and everywhere go around solemnly eulogizing one's friends, in the manner of de mortuis nil nisi bonum, of the dead nothing but compliments. I actually fear that sort of mealy-mouthed approach to friendship. I cannot but feel like Mr. Bennett in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. He said, "For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and to laugh at them in our turn."

Surely all of us ought to accept the fact that everyone of us has such a fair share of foibles and peculiarities, and makes so many blunders and miscalculations, that all his friends should be privileged genially to talk a little about them. Jane Austen, one of the finest people in the world, said that if she could "never relax into laughing at myself or at any other, I am sure I should be hung."

But she also said, "I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good." It seems to me that there lies the secret and the norm of happy and wholesome gossip. After all, life is bad enough without making it still worse by being stuffy. I would not trust conversational rules which tended to make one stuffy either about one's self or about one's friends. If a fellow is trying to cover his galloping baldness by pulling elongated wisps of hair all the way across his head, I cannot believe that it is wrong for me and my friend to have a little fun over his foible and smile a bit at his harmless vanity. But let it be good-natured. If a person is honest with himself, he knows very well whether what he is about to gossip comes from a kind and loving heart or not. If it does not, then he ought not to say it. But if it does, then I don't think it will hurt one's absent "victim."

The truth is, a truly loving person can mention his friend's foibles in such a way, that, while it may make people smile, it will also make them like him more than ever. That is the great tact of the perfect conversationalist. Charles Lamb in his essay, "Imperfect Sympathies," reveals the right technique for doing this. He pretends to describe and castigate the shortcomings of the Scotch. He complains that a Scotchman's "conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. . . . He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country," yet somehow with every new charge we like the Scotch better. That, in all seriousness, must be and is the effect of twitting when a greathearted Christian and good conversationalist indulges in it. If you can do that kind of twitting, you need not hesitate to do some of it. You would not mind that kind about yourself. For most people, however, it is safer to confine their gossipy comments about their absent neighbors and friends to obviously harmless, indifferent, human interest items. You will know if you are doing the right thing if more and more people will like you for it, and more particularly, if more and more people will like one another on account of your "gossiping."

A rung higher in the art of conversation but more restricted in interest is shoptalk. There is, it seems to me, much misdirected criticism of shoptalk. Actually it can represent man at his very best. When a group of philologists have a convention, what are they actually doing but having a vast "shoptalk" extending over several days? What is a teachers' convention but educational shoptalk? If a huge expenditure of time and money is justified to bring people together for such formal shoptalks, then surely informal ones are equally to be encouraged. They perform the useful function of raising the general level of knowledge and efficiency in the various trades and professions. Shoptalk is of a high plane when it gets away from personalities to the real problems —mechanical, economic, social — of the "shop." If, for example, a half-dozen nurses get together and merely talk about the characteristics and affairs of the personnel, they are staying on the low level of shop gossip. But if they talk about new techniques in hosptalization or new theories on patient-nurse relationships, theirs is shoptalk of a high and valuable kind.

Since, then, shoptalk performs a valuable social function, why does it seem to be in conversational disrepute? One is that shoptalkers frequently flout the principle that one must not talk shop unless everyone is of the same shop. When three bricklayers and one watchmaker meet for lunch, only such part of the conversation may be about bricklaying as might interest any average man who owns or rents a house.

Most of the conversation should be on a higher, more universal level, where bricklayers and watchmakers meet. It might be sports, politics, or economics. Shoptalk for that reason is usually out of place in mixed company. When three professors and their wives get together, the wives are not likely to appreciate the shoptalk of their husbands. Conversation should bring everybody into the circle, not exclude some of them. Common sense as well as courtesy, therefore, demands that the majority will not force their specialty, their shop problems, on the minority.

Among people of the same shop, some of the more progressive members will urge that they all get away from the "shop" now and then. This is right. However, the good conversationalist, rather than explicitly calling for a change of topic, will so try to raise the level from personalities to broader problems that the smell of the shop will practically be lost. In short, the only important rule about shoptalk is not to indulge in it when anyone is not of the shop.

When people of different shops, of different trades and professions, meet, they should at first properly indulge in what is called small talk. It is a sort of sparring for each other's interests. It is talk which flits back and forth on harmlessly personal or insignificantly impersonal topics. When three strangers are introduced and sit at the same table, they will talk a bit about the dining room, the city, the transportation system, the food, until by degrees, coming to know each other well enough, they will rise to more significant topics like the income tax, socialized medicine, and existentialism. Until they reach this level, they are indulging in small talk. It is an important art.

It is in technique like the comments about the weather. It is this technique applied to the dozens of other things besides the weather by which people are constantly surrounded. It offers a common ground for the most diverse people, and scope for wit and charm and information. Small talk, to quote Edwin Muir, may be said to be "a world in itself, and there we are perfectly safe from the things we are talking about."

The first source of small talk is the day's news. You comment on matters the others, too, may have read or seen. Small talk is factual, not opinionative. You simply state that congress today passed the rent law or that new parking meters were voted in by the city fathers or that a fire destroyed a warehouse. You mention certain shows or movies being advertised. You may add which of these you have seen recently. Athletic events, contests, certain religious ceremonies — all these if commented upon factually are good small talk.

Your comments ought to rotate upon such a number of topics that everyone may contribute something — something he knows about, has attended, or wants to know more of. Since small talk is an art, it does not come as naturally when it is well done as it looks. A good conversationalist, before going to a party, will review in his mind some of the things he has seen, read, or heard in the past week, which might give rise to interested comments and questions. He will also try to be accurate and specific, because even small talk will best further mutual acquaintance if it contributes to everybody's information, as well as to their pleasure.

He will also tend to take a pleasant viewpoint. He will rather seem glad that he got there than upset and fatigued because he got lost on the way. If it is a public dinner, he will remark that the pie is good rather than that the soup was bad. If it is a dance, he will be glad that some of the musical numbers are good rather than critical of those which are bad. If he mentions a movie he has seen, he will stress what was interesting about it, not what was dull.

There is no room in small talk for a conversational kill-joy. If one likes nothing, one should stay home. While there is a place for an honest criticism of things, that place is not in small talk. It is not in that preliminary conversation when people are just beginning to know each other. It belongs in the "conversazione" the talk of the salon, where the talk has reached the level of ideas.

While small talk is the conversational appetizer in any party, it has also a steady place in more established relationships. Much family talk is small talk — comments on daily events and the news. It can be dull or lively. In Personality and Successful Living, Father James A. Magner aptly writes:

The stale conversation of the family dinner table, as an example, beginning with the supposition that none of the group has anything worth while to offer, ranges from the condition of the weather to the latest scandal, and then lapses into a deadly silence or breaks out into mutual vituperation — unless definite outside interests are cultivated and introduced for discussion as part of a preconceived program (p. 131).

Some families are happy in their lively small talk, others crawl through life on a bed of bromides and inanities. The secret of revitalizing small talk is bringing better information, more specific data, and greater variety to it, cultivating, as Father Magner says, "definite outside interests" and introducing them for discussion. Many a dull marriage, a bored family, a stagnating circle of friends can be given a new vitality, can be enriched, if someone starts injecting more variety and better information into the small talk.

So much for this category of conversation: gossip, shoptalk, and small talk.

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