Monty Python, conversation and turn-taking

Monty Python’s Flying Circus was originally broadcast at a time when a small number academics in Britain (e.g. me) were becoming very excited by the methodology and findings of conversation analysis, a new approach to analysing interaction that was becoming established at various campuses of the University of California in the early 1970s.

Some of the Python humour played around with some fundamental aspects of the way conversation works, like turn-taking – even though it’s very unlikely that any of those who wrote and performed the sketches had ever come across the defining paper on the subject by Sacks, Shegloff and Jefferson*, which wasn’t published until the final year of the Monty Python series in 1974.

When talking about turn-taking in my courses, I sometimes use the following example. The first version of the sketch isn’t particularly funny and sounds like a fairly ‘normal’, if excessively polite and hearty, conversation. But this is because some crucial turns from Idle and Palin have been edited out of the sequence:



Put the missing turns back in, as in the original version, and the fun begins:



(* Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, 'A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation', Language, Vol. 50, No. 4. 1974, pp. 696-735).

Margaret Thatcher, body language and non-verbal communication

Here's a simple exercise for anyone who really believes that only 7% of communication comes from the words we actually use.

In the first of these clips, according to purveyors of the Mehrabian myth, you'll miss out on the words (7% ) and tone of voice (55%), but at least you'll get 38% of Mrs Thatcher's message from her body language alone - or will you?



Now ask yourself, whether the words alone -"The Lady's not for turning" - convey any more than 7% of her message.

Then watch the second clip and ask yourself whether her body language and tone of voice add a further 93% to the intelligibility and/or power of her message:



And, if you'd like to know more about modern myths about body language and non-verbal communication, have a look HERE, HERE or read more on 'Physical Facts and Fiction' in my book Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations.

NLP: No Linguistic Proof

It's more than 40 years since I started doing research for a PhD. Ever since then, I've naively thought that you really shouldn't go around making claims about the workings of human behavior and interaction for which there is little or no empirical justification. And that means, among other things, that there have to be methodological procedures that are clear enough for any other researcher to be able to check out the validity of whatever it is you're claiming.

In previous postings, I've already touched on some of the grossly exaggerated claims about the supposedly overwhelming importance of body language and non-verbal behavior in human communication.

But however flawed the empirical basis for some of these may be, they pale into insignificance compared with what's on offer from proponents of Neuro Linguistic Programming.

If only I'd realised how much money can be made if you don't hold yourself bound by what can be established through careful observational research, I could have not only got my hands on part of the action but also, at the same time, could have saved myself huge amounts of time.

But I don't think I could have lived with my conscience - unless, of course, I'm missing out on something when I see stuff like this (which really hots up after about 60 seconds):



Now, some questions:

Q1. Did you manage to watch it through to the very end?
Q2. Can you summarise what the point of it all was?
Q3. What empirical research is 'the point' based on?