Rules of Conversation Are Universal, Researcher Says

An anthropologist who has studied bartering in a remote Thai village and analyzed the dynamics of “chitchat” in a New York upholstery store says the rules of conversational speech are the same throughout all cultures.

Such a conclusion may seem somewhat presumptuous, but Michael Moerman, a UCLA professor, insists there are several pervasive universal rules that can be found in conversational speech no matter where the speakers live. Moreover, his studies suggest these rules may reflect a more subtle evolution based on the sensory development of the human nervous system.

“We can only hear and process so much information at a time,” said the professor, who has spent the past dozen or so years studying the way people talk to each other.

Speakers Take Turns

He has found that the way speakers take turns talking, the length of speech sequences, the way someone may react to interruptions and the speed with which people react with laughter to a humorous statement all tend to be about the same.

He even theorizes that it isn’t necessary to speak a language in order to grasp the rules of turn-taking when listening to speakers converse.

“I find it distressing that there are these universals,” he said jokingly. “I initially went into this hoping to hang out with people who were different. So, at first, all of this was rather shocking to discover.

“My guess is that these rules are a product of our neurophysiology on one hand, and the basic properties of the communication system (language) on the other,” he said.

Traveled the World

Moerman bases his theories on the hundreds of tape recordings he has gathered in travels over the world to listen to people talk to each other.

He has found that when two people are talking and there is a gap of two-tenths of a second after the speaker has expected a response, the speaker immediately knows that the listener is not interested.

The field of study is called conversational analysis and was started by the late UCLA sociologist Harvey Sacks about 15 years ago. Moerman now estimates that about two dozen researchers are in the discipline worldwide.