The Art Of Conversation 談吐的藝術(2)

Courtesy counts

禮貌爲重

The Brown and Levinson model says, roughly speaking, that Person A probably does not want to be rude to Person B, but in the way of things, life may sometimes require Person A to contradict or intrude on Person B, and when that happens, Person A has a range of "politeness strategies" to draw on. There are four main possibilities, given in ascending order of politeness. The first is a "bald, on-record" approach: "I'm going to shut the window." The second is positive politeness, or a show of respect: "I'm going to shut the window, is that OK?" The third is negative politeness, which presumes that the request will be an intrusion or an inconvenience: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I want to shut the window." The fourth is an indirect strategy which does not insist on a course of action at all: "Gosh, it's cold in here."

大致講來，Brown和Levinson模型說到，人物A大概並不想讓人物B覺得自己粗俗，但就事論事，生活有的時候會讓人物A與人物B兩相牴觸或者是強弱相施。而當這種情形發生之時，人物A會採取一系列的"禮貌策略"。按照禮貌不同程度來上升排列，主要有四種可能的策略。首先是"不加掩飾的，記錄在案的"方式："我會要關上這個窗子"，第二個是積極的禮貌，或者以示尊重："我會要關上這個窗子，好嗎？"，第三種是消極的禮貌，這種情形下，假定了要求會受到打擾或者引起不便："很抱歉打擾你，但我要關上窗子"。第四種是一種間接的策略，並不完全堅持對行爲的導向："哎呀，這裏冷呀"。

The first three of those options are plain instrumental speech, and are the sort of approaches that the conversation manuals warn you against. The fourth one alone leads into the realm of conversation as such. Here the purpose of speaking is not so much to get a point across, more to find out what others think about it. This principle of co-operation is one of the things that sets conversation apart from other superficially similar activities such as lectures, debates, arguments and meetings. Other qualities which help to define conversation include the equal distribution of speaker rights; mutual respect among speakers; spontaneity and informality; and a non-businesslike ambience. The last of these was well caught by Johnson when he defined conversation as "talk beyond that which is necessary to the purposes of actual business".

以上選擇的前三種都是平鋪直敘式的功能性語言，都歸屬在會話手冊上警告過的不要違反的方式類型之中。單隻有第四種在談吐的王國內登堂入室。比起找出其他人對某種觀點是怎麼想的來，演講的目的並不是那麼注重把某種觀點講得通透這一點。從某一個方面出發，將會話與其它某些膚淺的類似活動：講課，辯論，討論和會議有所區別的是合作的原則。其它有助於明確定義"會話"的特徵包括：說話人之間的相互尊重；自然隨意性和非正式性；非商務式的環境。這些中的最後一條爲Johnson所捕捉到，在他對"會話"的定義中"言談，必須是超越商業實務目的之上的"。

If conversation, and politeness, do have common features across time and culture, it is not all that surprising that newer manuals will find little to add in terms of fundamental principles. They can, however, offer specific tips which are useful in the right circumstances, and these, too, change little with the years. "Never recount your dreams in public," wrote the anonymous author of "Maximes de la Bienséance en la Conversation", one of the first manuals of conversation published in France, in 1618. Margaret Shepherd, author of "The Art of Civilized Conversation", a manual published in America in 2006, offers the same prohibition. Among the ill-judged remarks that she calls "saboteurs of small talk", she includes "self-absorbed comments like ‘I had the strangest dream. You were in it. Uh, let me try to remember it’."

如果談吐和禮儀在時間和文明之間有着共同的特徵；也就是完全不用對新近的手冊裏對基礎性原則幾無增益感到吃驚。他們能夠做到的是提供特定的環境之下的具體招術——而這，也是多年未有變化了。1618年，無名氏在第一本以法語刊佈會話手冊《言談禮儀格言（Maximes de la Bienséance en la Conversation）》中寫到："絕不要在公共場合不厭其煩的大談特談自己的夢想"。《文明會話的藝術（The Art of Civilized Conversation）》於2006年在美國出版，手冊也提供了同樣的禁止事項，作者爲Margaret Shepherd。Margaret Shepherd把那些偏頗（欠思量）的評論叫做"一帶而過的消極分子"，把"自顧自的評論"總括爲"像是’我做過的最稀奇古怪的夢，你就在這個夢裏頭，嗯，那就讓我試着記住它吧’"。

The more modern the manual of conversation, the more concrete its advice is likely to be. Ms Shepherd offers seven quick ways to tell if you are boring your listeners, which include: "Never speak uninterrupted for more than four minutes at a time" and "If you are the only person who still has a plate full of food, stop talking." Her checklist of things best not said to the parent of a newborn baby should be memorised for future use. It comprises: "What's wrong with his nose?" "Should he be that colour?" "Isn't he awfully small?" "Shouldn't you be breast-feeding?" "Did you want a boy?" "Is he a good baby?" "He looks like Churchill!/She looks like ET!" "It's really cute!"

會話手冊越是摩登現代，建議也就越有可能具體實在。Shepherd女士提供七大捷徑，以判斷"是不是在讓聆聽者變得厭煩無聊"，這包括："絕不要一發言就口若懸河、滔滔不絕，一說就超過4分鐘"和"如果你是唯一盤子裏還盛滿了食物的一個，停下來，別說了"。她給那些應該記憶下來以備將來使用的，最好別對幼子孩童的父母說的事宜開立了覈查清單。其內包括："他的鼻子怎麼啦？""她該穿着這個色嗎？""他不是個頭太小了吧？""你就不能母乳餵養嗎？""你想要個男娃嗎？""小男孩乖嗎？""他看上去像丘吉爾！/她看上去像外星人（ET）！""真的很機靈（cute ：Q）！"

It is easy enough to see the usefulness of such tips, but they capture none of the joy which comes from the mastery of conversation. For enthusiasts conversation is an art, one of the great pleasures of life, even the basis of civilised society. Mme de Staël, a great talker and intellectual of the French ancien régime, called conversation "a means of reciprocally and rapidly giving one another pleasure; of speaking just as quickly as one thinks; of spontaneously enjoying one's self; of being applauded without working...[A] sort of electricity that causes sparks to fly, and that relieves some people of the burden of their excess vivacity and awakens others from a state of painful apathy".

能看出這些提示的有用之處是很容易的，但這些提示一點也沒有捕捉到來自高超的會話技藝上的歡樂。對於癡心之人（好這一口的人）來說，談吐就是一種藝術，就是人生最大樂趣之一，甚至還是文明社會的基礎。舊法國政權下的知識分子和偉大的言談家Mme de Staël就將會話稱爲"一種交互的快速的給予對方快樂的途徑；一個人的談吐就如他的思考一般的敏捷；一個人對自我的自發陶醉；一種不勞而獲的稱譽……一種激發出四溢的火花，它釋放某些人的過量的活躍力的負擔、從痛苦的冷漠狀態中喚醒另外一些人的電流。"

The Athens of Socrates and Plato, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, is often seen as home to a first golden age of conversation. That view has relied mainly on the writings of Plato, whose dialogues, often with Socrates as speaker, constitute "a search among the divine ideas of the true, the beautiful, the good", says a modern French scholar, Marc Fumaroli.

公元前5世紀和4世紀的蘇格拉底和柏拉圖所在的希臘，通常被視作是談吐的第一次黃金時代的家園。這一觀念主要的基於柏拉圖的著作《對話錄》，書中的蘇格拉底通常是說話人，構建出"一種在朋友之間的搜尋……對真善美的神聖觀點"。現代法國學者Marc Fumaroli如此說到。