Why do people feel the need to talk even when they don’t have anything useful to say?

This may sound like a strange question, but if you stop to ponder, you’ll realize that it makes good sense. Conver­sa­tion is the funda­mental neces­sity of human inter­ac­tion, and it manifests itself as such. Even when there is something impor­tant to discuss, people seldom get to the point immedi­ately, gener­ally initi­ating some kind of casual talk, and then gradu­ally making their way to the subject of discussion.

This is redolent of a man feeling his way in the dark, rather than walking forth confi­dently. What inter­ests me is, what kind of infor­ma­tion does one person gather from the other in this ‘initi­ating phase’?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 10:08 and is filed under Daily Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.