Conversation Skills

Once you have successfully opened the conversation with one of the five types of openings and continued through one or more aspects of the typical greeting sequence, what do you do next? Depending on what your pursuit is, you will probably want to elicit (create) certain topics of conversation.

In this Module, you will learn some specific topic eliciting techniques for creating deeper and more exploratory conversation. You will learn elicitors that you can use as a speaker and as a listener. You will also learn about the process of topicalization, and the four layers of talk for building intimacy and rapport.

Topic Elicitors

As Initiator

Suppose you are in class and you are assigned a project that involves working with a partner who turns out to be shy. In your first meeting, you decide that you want to try to elicit conversation to get to know your partner. We will call you the “initiator” of conversation since you will be taking the active role in eliciting conversation.

As the initiator, there are three types of elicitors that you can use (Sidnell, 2010). First, you can use an open elicitor. An open elicitor is a broad question that does not suggest a particular topic. Examples of open elicitors would be “how’s life?”, “what’s up?”, or “anything new?”. There are many ways to answer these types of questions since they are so broad, so your partner must then narrow down from a list of possibilities to suggest something mentionable. Mentionable means that the topic is something that your partner projects as conversation-worthy in a particular context.

The key theme to open elicitors is that they are open-ended questions that do not suggest any topic in particular. In fact, they are so unspecific and open-ended, that they put the burden on your partner to actually suggest a topic. That is the advantage and also disadvantage to using open elicitors. If you have a partner who is talkative, then open elicitors should work well since your partner will not hesitate to suggest a topic. If you ask a talkative partner “anything new?”, they will probably have no problem mentioning what happened at work today or at their gym class. However, if you have a less talkative partner, open elicitors might not work well. If you ask your shy partner “anything new?,” they might reply with “nothing” or something that will not be topically expansive enough.

The second type of topic elicitor are itemized news inquiries. These are questions that inquire about a specific topic. Unlike open elicitors which are wide open as far as topic selection for the recipient, itemized news inquiries suggest a particular topic. Examples include: “how did you do on your final exam yesterday?”, “did you see the new Star Wars movie?”, or “what did you think of that thunderstorm last night?” You can see that the specific question will narrow down your partners list of options to respond, as opposed to the open elicitor where the list is wider. The three aforementioned examples prompt your partner to discuss exams, Star Wars, and thunderstorms accordingly.

The advantage to itemized news inquiries is that they inherently suggest a topic to your partner, which relieves them of the burden of finding a topic. But again, that is also the disadvantage to using an itemized new inquiry. If your questions suggest topics that your partner is not interested in or cannot say much about, then the answers might not be topically expansive.

The third type of topic elicitor are general news announcements, which are personal disclosures that you make as the initiator of conversation. Instead of asking your partner a question, you offer a topic by stating something. An example of a general news announcement would be “I found out how I scored on my final exam today.” The personal disclosure can then prompt your partner to ask for more information about how your exam went (an itemized news inquiry), to disclose how an exam that they took went (a general news announcement), or offer a related topic that tangentially relates the idea of doing well on exams.

The advantage to using general news announcements is that they are topics volunteered by you that do not “prod” your partner with questions. Your partner has the freedom to then reply how they want. The disadvantage is that these general news announcements might not elicit any kind of expansive response by your partner. Perhaps your partner has not taken any exams recently or has done poorly on them, and does not want to share. In that case, if you use general news announcements, be prepared to follow them up with another announcement or topic eliciting question to prompt conversation.

As Listener

Now let’s suppose that you are interacting with a more talkative partner who enjoys disclosing information to you. While your partner talks, you can use certain topic eliciting techniques as a listener. These techniques include summarizing, parroting, continuing, stare-nodding, and using questions.

Suppose your conversation partner says the following:

A: I really enjoy going on hikes at Lake Travis.

Summarizing involves restating what your partner is saying while they talk. Your reply might be, “Lake Travis is your favorite hiking spot then?” or “That’s cool that you’re a hiker.” The key principle is that you are simply stating what your partner said in your own words. Parroting is where you repeat word-for-word what your partner said, prompting them to then elaborate or continue with their disclosing. An example in this case would be, “You enjoy going on hikes at Lake Travis?” Notice that you just repeat or “parrot” what your partner said.

Continuers are utterances (grammatical or ungrammatical) that can be used as a stand-alone turns or as backchannel feedback as your partner speaks (ten Have, 2010). Common continuer phrases are response cries like “uh huh,” “mmhmm,” or “yeah” which can help the listener build affiliation or rapport with the speaker (Lindstrom & Sorjonen, 2013). You may notice that continuers are used more frequently when you are talking on the phone since there are no visual cues shared between you and your partner.

When speaking face-to-face, you can use a stare-nod where you maintain your eye contact with your partner will nodding your head. As you and your partner gaze at each other during conversation, you mutually establish a “gaze window” where your gaze serves not only to monitor your partner, but as a method of eliciting a response from them (Rossano, 2013). Silence will prompt your partner to keep talking since you are still displaying a listening status through the gaze window with your eye contact and nodding.

You can also ask questions that probe for more disclosure from your partner. Going back to the hiking statement, you can ask questions like “When do you like to go hiking?,” or “How long have you been hiking?”

Lastly, you can offer statements, such as “I enjoy hiking too” or any other statement related to theirs. Of course, if you offer statements, your partner may then yield the speaking to you for extended turns. Schegloff (2007) discusses statements as being a method of topic proffering, which serves as an offer for the respondent to “buy in” to the statement by expanding upon it through reciprocal questions or statements.

In any case, all of these elicitation techniques can prompt and encourage your shy partner to converse with you. In the next section, we will tell you more about topicalization; specifically expansion and curtailing, which either can keep conversation alive or keep it from going.

Topicalization

Conversation rests on the expansion or curtailing of topics. The process of turning an idea or phrase into a conversation topic is known as topicalization. One of the most common ways topicalization happens is through topical pivots (Holt & Drew, 2005). A topical pivot a specific idea or phrase in a statement that leads to either further expansion upon it or the introduction of a related topic to it. Let’s go back to the hiking example from earlier:

A: I really enjoy going on hikes at Lake Travis.

Depending on what interests you in that statement, there many ideas that can be topicalized. Here are a few possible responses:

B: What’s Lake Travis like? (Topical pivot: Lake Travis)

B: How long have you been hiking? (Topical pivot: hiking)

B: What else do you enjoy doing? (Topical pivot: “enjoy” and other favorite hobbies)

There are many more possible responses to the statement. The main idea of topical pivots and topicalization generally is that it rests on logical expansion of something mentioned in the conversation. If your partner enjoys talking about Lake Travis, for example, then they should embrace answering the question about what it is like.

Now there may be times when you will try to prompt your partner to expand on a topical pivot, but your partner will not add much. See the conversation below as an example:

A: What did you think of the movie last night?

B: It was good.

A: What was your favorite part?

B: The beginning.

A: What did you do afterward?

B: Went home.

You can see that A is asking open-ended questions that can prompt a range of answers from B. However, B’s answers are generally short and difficult to expand upon. The practice of limiting topic expansion by using short answers is known as topic curtailing. In colloquial terms, you might have heard this practice as “ being short” with someone.

Your partner might topic curtail for many reasons. Perhaps they are not interested in the topic, or it contains private or sensitive information, or they are just not in the mood for conversation generally at that moment. In relational contexts, part of intimacy is having our partners be “open” with us, as suggested by Social Penetration theory. Topic curtailing might be seen as a sign of trouble if no contextualization is given.

Overall, the life of a conversation rests in the introduction and expansion of topics. The more partners are willing to disclose, the more expansive their topic selections are, leading to longer and “deeper” conversations. When you learn about Social Penetration Theory in Unit 10, you will see how this ties in with the concept of permeability.

Four Layers of Talk

Not only do conversations move among topics logically, but are more emotional and psychological level, they also move between layers of each person’s personality. Altman and Taylor (1976)’s Social Penetration Theory suggest that the human personality has three layers: peripheral (biographical information), intermediate (attitudes/opinions), and central (core beliefs, values). Correspondingly, there are four layers of talk: clichés, facts, feelings, and personal layers. Each of these layers of talk speak to a deeper layer of one’s personality that exist according to Social Penetration Theory.

The first layer, clichés, are statements that are generally scripted and mundane in everyday talk. They reveal very little about the person and are used more or less as just pleasantries. Examples of cliché statements can include questions about how one’s day is going, statements about the weather, etc.

The second layer, facts, speaks to specific facts about the person. When you talk about facts with someone, you are sharing things that are verifiable or measurable. Examples of a fact question might be: “where are you from?,” “what do you do for work?”, or even “how many kids do you have?” Notice that these questions call for declarative answers and merely allow for the exchange of biographical information.

The third layer, feelings, speaks to how a person feels about something either emotionally or intellectually. Feelings questions elicit a person’s opinion or viewpoint about something. Examples of a feeling question, “how do you feel about traveling without an itinerary?”, or “what do you think of cold weather?” This layer of talk will prompt your to share deeper thoughts and feelings about a topic, which can lead to you sharing yours in exchange.

The fourth and final layer is the personal layer, which speaks to how a person views their personality in totality. Examples of a personal question might be “Are you more of a warm weather or cold weather type of person?” Or “are a deeply religious person?” The personal layer can prompt your partner to share not only their feelings but their own self-perceptions, which you can share your views of them along of the ones about yourself.

There are some complications to the four layers of talk. For one thing, context may drive what is considered personal versus factual. When you go to a doctor’s office, questions about your medical history are common and may be among the first topics addressed (although HIPPA ensures that the information stays private). Second, there are some fact questions that can still be seen as deeply personal. Asking someone how much money they make per year or how old they are could still be considered very private to someone even though it is only a fact-layer question.

It is best to use the four layers of talk then as a guideline and tool for evoking deeper conversation, while recognizing some grey areas between each layer. If you are merely sticking to cliché and fact questions, you may want to throw in a feelings or personal question if you want to evoke more personal conversation, such as when you are on a date with someone. If you are wanting to keep someone at “arm’s length” intimately, then sticking to facts and clichés would work well. Use the layers according to your relational goals.

Conclusion

Overall, you learned several techniques for eliciting conversation with your partner. You learned techniques for asking questions, disclosing, and listening. Conversations rest on the life of topics, so you learned more about topicalization and how to pivot accordingly.

Ultimately, the greatest listeners are the greatest conversationalists, so make sure you study Unit 7 on Listening for further mastery. Topic elicitation is a listening enterprise, so it will further enhance you to master all aspects of listening and eliciting. Conversations are the “building blocks of social life” (Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2011, p. 24) and being able to elicit them enables you to build relationships, business opportunities, and a better life. In the next and final Module for this Unit, you will learn how to properly end a conversation.

Activity 1: Speed Networking

Have your students form a row of desks facing each other. Then create a “speed networking event” where each pair of students holds a conversation for 2-3 minutes. When time is up, one row rotates one seat to the left or right, and the other row stays constant. Do a couple of rounds of this. Then discuss how openings and elicitation went in their conversations.

Activity 2: Listening Drill

Have your students break into pairs. Have one person be assigned the “speaker” role, and the other as the “listener.” The speaker’s job will be to talk about anything they want. The listener’s job is to try to use all of the passive eliciting techniques (summarize, stare-nod, etc.) except for personal disclosure. The speaker should do most of the talking, but the listener should do most of the eliciting. Set a time limit and then have the partners switch roles. Then discuss how the techniques went.

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc.

Holt, E., & Drew, P. (2005). Figurative pivots: The use of figurative expressions in pivotal topic transitions. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38, 35–61. https://doiorg.bakeru.idm.oclc.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3801_2

Lindstrom, A., & Sorjonen, M.-L. (2013). Affiliation in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 350–369). Wiley-Blackwell.

Rossano, F. (2013). Gaze in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 308–329). Wiley-Blackwell.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis I (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation analysis: An introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

ten Have, P. (2010). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Wilkinson, S., & Kitzinger, C. (2011). Conversation analysis. In K. Hyland & B. Paltridge (Eds.), The continuum companion to discourse analysis (pp. 22–37). Continuum.

General news announcements: Personal disclosures that you make as the initiator of conversation.

Itemized News Inquiries: Questions that inquire about a specific topic

Mentionable: A topic projected as conversation-worthy in a particular context.

Open elicitor: A broad question that does not suggest a particular topic.

Topic Curtailing: The practice of limiting topic expansion by using short answers.

Topicalization: The process of turning an idea or phrase into a conversation topic.

Topical Pivot: A specific idea or phrase in a statement that leads to either further expansion upon it or the introduction of a related topic to it.

1. Breaking the habit of small talk

Watch this Ted Talk about how to get past small talk, aka: elicit deeper conversation. How do the principles relate to this Module? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkrWneKlNwM

2. The art of asking questions

Watch this Ted Talk about how to ask beter questions in conversation. Questions are used to elicit topics, and better questions lead to better topics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZSY0PssqH0