During the election of a new leader for the new party formed after the merger of the SDP and the Liberal Party in 1988, there was talk of a possible smear that could have gone either way.
Those of us on Paddy Ashdown’s campaign team got wind of the fact that supporters of his opponent, Alan Beith, had recruited a handwriting expert to analyse a sample of Paddy’s writing without revealing whose writing it was - in the hope that it might reveal some character flaw that might damage his chances of winning.
But the expert apparently disappointed them by saying that he/she had never before seen ‘leadership’ jumping so forcibly off the page - which meant that they had more reason to hide the news than to leak it to the media.
Needless to say, we thought this was hilarious, but it did raise the question of whether or not it would be to our advantage to let the media know that the Beith camp had been cooking up a dirty trick that had rebounded on them by showing that our candidate’s handwriting oozed ‘leadership’.
I’m pleased to say that our decision not to leak the story to the press was unanimous.
Two decades later, and in the light of recent smear stories, I find myself wondering whether we would have been quite so virtuous had the polls and projections not already been showing that Paddy was almost certain to win - a luxury not enjoyed by Gordon Brown's entourage.
Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
This year is the 35th anniversary of the publication of a foundational paper that established conversation analysis as a new and serious force across several disciplines in the area of language and social interaction. *
The paper is a defining analysis of how turn-taking works in everyday conversation, central to which is the most basic rule of all, namely ‘one speaker at a time’ – a rule so basic that we even have words in our language – ‘interruption’ and ‘interjection’ – for referring to breaches of it (i.e. speaking while someone else is speaking).
The fact that there are such words in our vocabulary means that the ‘one at a time’ rule must get broken quite often in conversations, as indeed it does.
But the point is that if you make a regular habit of speaking while someone else is speaking, you’re taking quite a risk because it involves, in effect, putting your reputation on the line - for the simple reason that others will not only notice what you’re doing but will also use such behaviour as evidence for coming to negative conclusions about your character and personality. That’s why we often hear complaints about someone being ‘pushy’, ‘domineering’, ‘hogging the conversation’, ‘never letting anyone get a word in edgeways’, ‘liking the sound of their own voice’, etc.
Having just got back from a skiing holiday, I was reminded about this while trying to catch up on the ‘Smeargate’ affair, which included watching Andrew Neill interviewing Derek Draper and Paul Staines.
Try watching the edited sequence below (or the whole interview HERE) and ask yourself three questions:
1. How many times does Mr Draper break the 'one at a time' rule?
2. What impression of him as a person is conveyed by Mr Draper’s repeated breaches of the rule?
3. How often have you seen an interviewer appeal to the ‘one at a time’ rule to restore normal turn-taking, as Neill does when he finally intervenes with “will you shut up for a minute and let him answer” ?
And, as an incidental footnote (given the Berkeley shirt worn by Mr Staines and his reason for wearing it) all three authors of this seminal paper really did have PhDs from the University of California, two of them from the Berkeley campus, where Sacks and Schegloff were supervised by the late great Erving Goffman.
* A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation by: Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Language, Vol. 50, No. 4. (1974), pp. 696-735.
The paper is a defining analysis of how turn-taking works in everyday conversation, central to which is the most basic rule of all, namely ‘one speaker at a time’ – a rule so basic that we even have words in our language – ‘interruption’ and ‘interjection’ – for referring to breaches of it (i.e. speaking while someone else is speaking).
The fact that there are such words in our vocabulary means that the ‘one at a time’ rule must get broken quite often in conversations, as indeed it does.
But the point is that if you make a regular habit of speaking while someone else is speaking, you’re taking quite a risk because it involves, in effect, putting your reputation on the line - for the simple reason that others will not only notice what you’re doing but will also use such behaviour as evidence for coming to negative conclusions about your character and personality. That’s why we often hear complaints about someone being ‘pushy’, ‘domineering’, ‘hogging the conversation’, ‘never letting anyone get a word in edgeways’, ‘liking the sound of their own voice’, etc.
Having just got back from a skiing holiday, I was reminded about this while trying to catch up on the ‘Smeargate’ affair, which included watching Andrew Neill interviewing Derek Draper and Paul Staines.
Try watching the edited sequence below (or the whole interview HERE) and ask yourself three questions:
1. How many times does Mr Draper break the 'one at a time' rule?
2. What impression of him as a person is conveyed by Mr Draper’s repeated breaches of the rule?
3. How often have you seen an interviewer appeal to the ‘one at a time’ rule to restore normal turn-taking, as Neill does when he finally intervenes with “will you shut up for a minute and let him answer” ?
And, as an incidental footnote (given the Berkeley shirt worn by Mr Staines and his reason for wearing it) all three authors of this seminal paper really did have PhDs from the University of California, two of them from the Berkeley campus, where Sacks and Schegloff were supervised by the late great Erving Goffman.
* A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation by: Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Language, Vol. 50, No. 4. (1974), pp. 696-735.
INTERLUDE until Easter
As I may not be able to post anything for the next few days, normal service will be resumed after Easter, when I hope you'll keep on coming back to the blog.
Meanwhile, and in the noble tradition of early days of BBC Television 'Interludes', you might enjoy the following, which arrived recently by email (and make sure you have the sound on).
Meanwhile, and in the noble tradition of early days of BBC Television 'Interludes', you might enjoy the following, which arrived recently by email (and make sure you have the sound on).
Gordon Brown’s G20 address ignores an important tip from Winston Churchill
Whenever I’m asked about the biggest single problem I’ve come across since migrating from academia into training and coaching, my answer is always the same, namely the sight and sound of speakers trying to get far too much information across – aided and abetted by programs like PowerPoint that implicitly encourage presenters to load up the screen with far too much detail.
It’s something that was very well understood by Winston Churchill, who said:
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.”
But it’s never been very well understood by Gordon Brown, as was evidenced yet again in his address at yesterday’s pre-G20 press conference.
Announcing that there are five tests for the G20 summit may not have been quite as daunting to the audience as showing a slide listing seventeen items to be covered, as was once tried by someone I was trying to cure. But it hardly makes you sit up eagerly waiting to hear what’s coming up.
If you can bear to test this out for yourself, try watching the segment below, wait ten minutes and then see how many of his 5 points you can remember (and this clip, by the way, only took up 28% of the full statement, which serious anoraks can watch HERE ).
Other recent postings on Gordon Brown's speeches include:
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences
It’s something that was very well understood by Winston Churchill, who said:
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.”
But it’s never been very well understood by Gordon Brown, as was evidenced yet again in his address at yesterday’s pre-G20 press conference.
Announcing that there are five tests for the G20 summit may not have been quite as daunting to the audience as showing a slide listing seventeen items to be covered, as was once tried by someone I was trying to cure. But it hardly makes you sit up eagerly waiting to hear what’s coming up.
If you can bear to test this out for yourself, try watching the segment below, wait ten minutes and then see how many of his 5 points you can remember (and this clip, by the way, only took up 28% of the full statement, which serious anoraks can watch HERE ).
Other recent postings on Gordon Brown's speeches include:
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences
Is there an open-mouthed school of acting?
When I was a child, I remember being told that it wasn’t a good idea to walk about with my mouth open, or even partially open – advice that sometimes came with dire warnings about the dangers of allowing oral access to flies and other marauding insects.Now I don’t know if it’s just me (and the small, unrepresentative sample of people I’ve consulted on it so far), but it does seem that film and television actresses are spending more and more time with their mouths open – both when there’s no dialogue and when they’re listening to one of the other actors saying something – than used to be the case.
Nor are those of us who’ve noticed it particularly impressed by it.
For one thing, once you’ve spotted someone doing it early on in a film, it becomes a big distraction - because you go on noticing the same actor doing it again and again. For another, it can be quite confusing trying to work out just what emotions and feelings all these open mouths are supposed to be conveying
So here are five questions on which I'd welcome feedback:
1. Has anyone else noticed it?
2. Is it a recent trend?
3. Am I alone in finding it irritating/distracting?
4. Is open-mouthed acting being taught in drama schools?
5. If so, why?
And, if your answer to Q1 is 'No', have a look at these clips of Keira Knightley in action, as she'd surely be the odds-on favourite to win if there were an Oscar for this style of acting.
P.S. Since first posting this, I've had this supporting email from a friend, who also happens to be a professional actress:
"Yes! I too have observed the (female) open-mouth school of acting. KK is the main offender who’s come to my notice, but I remember Scarlett Johansson adopted it in Girl With a Pearl Earring. Mind you, the girl in the painting by Vermeer is doing the same thing – I’ve just checked!
"The other perpetrator is Andrea Riseborough, she whom you admired so much in The Devil’s Whore! I think it’s considered sexy by the young actresses. Or, possibly, the (male) film directors encourage it for the same reason. To me it says ‘vacuous’, which is a shame, as I believe Johansson and Riseborough are both intelligent young women."
Her point about it being considered sexy by young actresses and male directors may be getting to it, as I've just typed 'Brigitte Bardot' into Google Images and noticed that most of the shots of the young Bardot (on the first two pages) show her with her mouth open!
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