5Ws Wednesday
What was it really like to have a conversation in different eras and generations?
I forgot what made me think of this recently, but I think it’s a valid question for anybody really, no matter what generation you hail from. And I’m not even really talking about slang words and phrases. I mean, an honest to goodness conversation. What kind of tone did people use? Inflections? What did emphases on certain words sound like?
They made movies in the 60s and 70s (and other years) but those movies and television shows were scripted. Granted, the scripts were written to sound like natural conversation. But is that what it really sounded like? What did a conversation between two coworkers standing around a water cooler really sound like? What did it sound like for two flappers from the 20s to gab while hanging out at a bar?
Most of the time I write how I talk. My journals are a prime example of that. What I write in my journals has certainly evolved since I was 13 and started writing in one. What would the journal from a 13 year old in 1958 read like?
This is one of those “oh to be a fly on the wall” kind of things. To truly document what it was like to hear people talk, you would have to record them without knowing they were being recorded. Even in interviews, the way you answer questions are more formal.
This is probably not something I will ever really get an answer to. But I definitely pondered it for a good while one evening just completely randomly. One final thought on it…while I am curious what it sounded like to have a conversation in the past, before my time, what will conversations in the future, long after my time, sound like?
What do you all think? Has conversation changed all that dramatically from generation to generation? Do you think conversation in the future will become more intelligent or devolve like in the movie “Idiocracy”?
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