Conversation strategies
Feb. 13th, 2007 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI had a think just now that everyone at Torchwood seems to be playing different conversation games.
Jack plays Anecdote. He fills up the conversation space telling stories. And for reasons unknown, he gets away with it. He gets to monologue. Nobody interrupts. And nobody plays anecdote back at him.
Do they?
Gwen asks questions. Even her team bonding game was a question. A rather poorly chosen question if her goal is being nice to people. Or hiding; questions incompatible with that.
Jack only rarely answers. Stories are not necessarily answers, especially when he can figure that the listener will fill in the context quite different than he could.
Tosh offers information. She knows things she wants to share with people. I realise that mostly this is her expositionary function or her as the computer interface (I have a whole thought about how Tosh is kinda cyborg, but it's being blobby at the minute), but also when she's chatting in the pub she tells shiny things, and when she wanted to show Gwen and Owen something when she got in to work they weren't surprised because it was part of a pattern.
This is different from anecdote because she doesn't do telling to get a reaction. Jack is trying to get a specific, usually emotional, reaction from a listener. Amuse or amaze or sometimes freak out a bit. Tosh is being amazed so she shares something she thinks is cool. Inform, not poke buttons.
Ianto is frequently right data right time dude too, exposition function. But it's usually for plot purposes, and harder to generalise to character. But he puts a spin on it, so it's somewhere between Inform and Anecdote - see King Ianto's Coffee Club. Call it Illustrate?
He also has a splash of snark in just about anything he says. He's trying to get a reaction, too, but not with quite the same tools as Jack.
Jack's anecdotes pretend to be self revelatory. Ianto talks about outside stuff. If I'm remembering right even in 1-04 he's talking about Lisa and Jack, even if it shows a lot about him. Exception being answering Gwen's direct question, but he still turns it around to make it a 'you' thing.
If Ianto joined in Anecdote, you could bet it would be dry, snarky, sound almost entirely factual, and while it might involve him he probably wouldn't be the star the way Jack tends to be.
If Owen was playing Anecdote, he'd be the 'top that' guy. The one who has to go one better. Except he's up against Jack, who generally has done more than pretty much everyone, and gone places Owen (and Owen's masculinity) isn't even willing to, let alone going to say he's gone further in.
Owen's conversation is... aggressive? Messy? Hints of violence, death, sex gets tangled with it. I mean even when he's talking about job stuff, the dead dude in 1-07 got explained by way of a loop through sexual practices of satanists. There's a bit of a habit loop there.
Jack talks about sex a lot, but usually it's "and aliens" not "and violence".
I can't think of a handy one word game for Owen's conversation.
And I had to resort to website data for Ianto's.
I don't know, might be a bit of a useless thought, then.
Jack plays Anecdote. He fills up the conversation space telling stories. And for reasons unknown, he gets away with it. He gets to monologue. Nobody interrupts. And nobody plays anecdote back at him.
Do they?
Gwen asks questions. Even her team bonding game was a question. A rather poorly chosen question if her goal is being nice to people. Or hiding; questions incompatible with that.
Jack only rarely answers. Stories are not necessarily answers, especially when he can figure that the listener will fill in the context quite different than he could.
Tosh offers information. She knows things she wants to share with people. I realise that mostly this is her expositionary function or her as the computer interface (I have a whole thought about how Tosh is kinda cyborg, but it's being blobby at the minute), but also when she's chatting in the pub she tells shiny things, and when she wanted to show Gwen and Owen something when she got in to work they weren't surprised because it was part of a pattern.
This is different from anecdote because she doesn't do telling to get a reaction. Jack is trying to get a specific, usually emotional, reaction from a listener. Amuse or amaze or sometimes freak out a bit. Tosh is being amazed so she shares something she thinks is cool. Inform, not poke buttons.
Ianto is frequently right data right time dude too, exposition function. But it's usually for plot purposes, and harder to generalise to character. But he puts a spin on it, so it's somewhere between Inform and Anecdote - see King Ianto's Coffee Club. Call it Illustrate?
He also has a splash of snark in just about anything he says. He's trying to get a reaction, too, but not with quite the same tools as Jack.
Jack's anecdotes pretend to be self revelatory. Ianto talks about outside stuff. If I'm remembering right even in 1-04 he's talking about Lisa and Jack, even if it shows a lot about him. Exception being answering Gwen's direct question, but he still turns it around to make it a 'you' thing.
If Ianto joined in Anecdote, you could bet it would be dry, snarky, sound almost entirely factual, and while it might involve him he probably wouldn't be the star the way Jack tends to be.
If Owen was playing Anecdote, he'd be the 'top that' guy. The one who has to go one better. Except he's up against Jack, who generally has done more than pretty much everyone, and gone places Owen (and Owen's masculinity) isn't even willing to, let alone going to say he's gone further in.
Owen's conversation is... aggressive? Messy? Hints of violence, death, sex gets tangled with it. I mean even when he's talking about job stuff, the dead dude in 1-07 got explained by way of a loop through sexual practices of satanists. There's a bit of a habit loop there.
Jack talks about sex a lot, but usually it's "and aliens" not "and violence".
I can't think of a handy one word game for Owen's conversation.
And I had to resort to website data for Ianto's.
I don't know, might be a bit of a useless thought, then.