The Principles of the Art of Conversation

Mahaffy, John Pentland 1887. The Principles of the Art of Conversation. London: Macmillan and Co.

[The present author] has thought a long time and with much care about it, and this, for a theorist, is sufficient vindication. But it may fairly be added that a writer on the principles of conversation ought to live in a country where the practice of it is confessedly on a high level, and where the average man is able to talk well. (Mahaffy 1888: vii)

*disgruntled sign* - "national character" in the very first paragraph? // Less disgruntled by this when reading the second edition.

This is not so, each single case of general description being drawn from instances under the author's own observation, so that not a few will be recognised by those who have moved in the same society. But, if justly drawn, they ought to be found in every society. (Mahaffy 1888: viii)

Still on national character but on another rhetorical level: "savage and civilized alike" (PC 9.4), and "though the examples discussed were taken from savage life, we would find among ourselves exact parallels to every type of linguistic use so far discussed" (PC 8.1). // As a bold aside, I just thought of a subtitle for this work: "The Origin of Malinowski's Phatic Communion: An Adventure in Linguistic Anthropology

§1. There can be no doubt that of all the accomplishments prized in modern society that of being agreeable in conversation is the very first. It may be called the social result of Western civilization, beginning with the Greeks. Whatever contempt the North American Indian or the Mohammedan Tartar may feel for talking as mere chatter, it is agreed among us that people must meet frequently, both men and women, and that not only is it agreeable to talk, but that it is a matter of common courtesy to say something, even when there is hardly anything to say. (Mahaffy 1888: 1)

"Always the same emphasis on affirmation and consent" (PR 5.3), and "when they chat, resting from work, or when they accompany some mere manual work by gossip" (PC 1.2).

Every civilised man and woman feels, or ought to feel, this duty; it is the universal accomplishment which all must practice, ad as those who fail signally to attain it are punished by the dislike and neglect of society, so those who succeed beyond the average receive a just reward, not only in the constant pleasure they reap from it, but in their esteem which they gain from their fellows. (Mahaffy 1888: 2)

I don't have a trope for ostracizing yet - currently these quotes are under "the stranger". For 'contant pleasure" and "esteem [...] gain[ed]" cf. "social pleasure and self-enhancement" (PC 5.5).

And though men are supposed to succeed in life by dead knowledge, or by acquaintance with business, it is often by their social qualities, by their agreeable way of putting things, and not by their more ponderous merits that they prevail. (Mahaffy 1888: 2)

Agreeable way of putting things is related to affirmation and consent, again. For social qualities cf. Lemon's phatic qualia, particularly because the very following page says "In the high profession of diplomacy, both home and foreign, this is pre-eminently the case." (ibid, 3).

But quite apart from all these serious profits, and better than them all, is the daily pleasure derived from good conversation by those who can attain to it themselves or enjoy it in others. It is a perpetual intellectual feast, it is an even-ready recreation, a deep and lasting comfort, costing no outlay but that of time, requiring no appointments but a small company, limited neither to any age nor any sex, the design of prosperity, the solace of adversity [...] (Mahaffy 1888: 3)

Evidently this is a major source for the pleasure principle in PC. Though it is much more idealistic and hopeful. By the looks of it it even seems like Malinowsi did his usual thing with the "theory of conversation" here and turned it upside down, made it into something quasi-negative.

[...] the eternal and essential expression of that social instinct which is one of the strongest and best features in human nature. [↩] §2. If such be the universality and the necessity of conversation in modern society, it seems an obvious inquiry whether it can be taught or acquired by any fixed method; or rather, as everybody has to practice it [|] in some way, not as a mere ornament, but as a necessity of life, it may be asked: Is there any method by which we can improve our conversation? (Mahaffy 1888: 3-4)

Being "one of the bedrock aspects of man's nature in society" (P 3.1), it a universal necessity, though Malinowski appears to treat it as if it were a mere ornament, i.e. "mere sociabilities".

To assert that there is some such systematic analysis of conversation possible is to assert that it is an Art - a practical science like the art of reasoning called Logic, or the art of eloquence called Rhetoric. Now this runs counter to one of the strongest convictions of all intelligent men and women, that if anything in the world ought to be spontaneous it is conversation. (Mahaffy 1888: 4)

Hence the idiosyncracy of "formulae of greeting or approach" (PC 2.4), which runs counter to spontaneity.

The instant any one is felt to be talking by rules all the charm of his society vanishes, and he becomes the worst of social culprits - a bore. For it is the natural easy flow of talk which is indeed the perfection of what we seek. (Mahaffy 1888: 5)

The case of one Dale Carnegie, and "After the first formula, there comes a flow of language" (PC 5.1).

Didacting teaching, humorous anecdotes, clever argument - these may take their part in social intercourse, but they are not its perfection. (Mahaffy 1888: 5)

An odd stretch of the peripatetic triad. Note that Malinowski doesn't view conversation in its "perfection" but on the contrary as the most imperfect means of communication (asymmetry later attributed here to the humourist).

To take up what others say in easy comment, to give in return something which will please, to stimulate the silent and the morose out of their vapours and surprise them into good humour, to lead while one seems to follow - this is the real aim of good conversation. (Mahaffy 1888: 5)

PC tropes are here maligned: something pleasing in return instead of slightly veiled impatience; stimulating the silent into good mood rather than viewing him as an enemy.

How can such a Protean impalpable acquirement be in any way an art depending on rules? Does it not altogether depend on natural gifts, on a ready power of expression, on a sanguine temperament, on a quick power of sympathy, [|] on a placid temper? Is there not a risk, nay a certainty, that is dissecting it we shall slay its life and destroy its beauty? (Mahaffy 1888: 5-6)

Perhaps an aspect of why Malinowski views sympathy and expression of it as a negative thing (e.g. "avowedly suprious on one side", PC 2.3).

§3. However natural and reasonabel this objection, it is based on the mistake that art is opposed to nature, that natural means merely what is spontaneous and unprepared, and artistic what is manifestly studied and artificial. (Mahaffy 1888: 6)

If PC is the primitive function of speech, "primitive" can probably read as "natural" in this sense, though in sociabilities and formulae spontaneity and unpreparedness is twisted somehow: spontenaous because always ready, unprepared because unthinking.

This is one of the commonest and most widely-spread popular errors. If such were the real meaning of natural, it might be argued that nothing was natural in man above the condition of the lowest savage - the Naturmensch, as the Germans call him. (Mahaffy 1888: 6)

Malinowski's savage, primitive, and natural are confusingly entangled. TBH the point of this utterance eludes me. Is it rhetorical?

It is a curious reflection that conventionality and awkwardness seem the most universal inheritance, and so far thoroughly natural to men, that it requires either conscious art or the unconsciousness attending some violent emotion to keep them clear of it. (Mahaffy 1888: 6-7)

I'm reading this as nothing is more natural to humans than conventionality and awkwardness, which would have profound implications on the general outline of PC.

The savage has it strongly marked in him; the most enlightened societies are encumbered with it. (Mahaffy 1888: 7)

Cf. "savage and civilized alike" (PC 9.4).

Yet the best reasoner is not the man who parades his logic and thrusts syllogism upon his opponents, but he who states his arguments as if they came spontaneously and followed one another by natural suggestion. In fact, the man who parades his logic is one of those poor and narrow thinkers whose over-attention to form mars his comprehension of the matter, and so leads him astray. [...] The fact that he goes wrong on every practical question is not due to logic, but to the man's narrowness of vision or his vanity in parading an art that does not admit of parade in its proper use. (Mahaffy 1888: 8)

Vanity. Neither too much "communicating ideas" nor excessive vanity is the proper mode of conversation is Mahaffy's point.

The case is still clearer with Rhetoric, or the science of speaking persuasively in public. (Mahaffy 1888: 8-9)

The case of the demon of oratorical inspiration.

[...] the fact of this very conquest shows that a fund of power or of passion lay concealed beneath these hindrannces. No stupid or idle person, no person without any flow of ideas ever was, or could be made, an effective speaker by studying rhetoric. (Mahaffy 1888: 9)

Similar to "passion for power and wealth" (PC 3.3).

In general, good public speakers are also agreeable in conversation; the art of persuading people from a platform is nearly akin to that of pleasing them in social discourse, [...] (Mahaffy 1888: 12)

"This is the explanation of the particular attitude of a man speaking to a crowd, at least if he has succeeded in entering into communion with it." (Durkheim 1915: 210

But in the case of conversation, except to point out some notable examples in great authors, any teaching by special cases is quite illusory. It would at once tempt the learner to force the train of the discourse into the vein he has practiced, and to force conversation is in other words to spoil it. (Mahaffy 1888: 13)

The case of one Dale Carnegie, who used "techniques of speaking" consciously (taught to do so), and recited passages from his book in everyday conversation. As to the feeling of being forced for PC in general cf. Malinowski on the puzzle of obligatory pleasure.

The broad foundations of logic are nothing but truisms; the rules of rhetoric are founded on these truisms, combined with psychological observations neither subtle nor deep. (Mahaffy 1888: 13)

A valid criticism of Malinowski's PC in general, similar statements from others (explicitly about Malinowski's writing or style).

So we may be certain that the laws of good conversation, being such as can be practiced by all, are no witchery, but something simple and commonplace, perhaps neglected on account of their very plainness. (Mahaffy 1888: 13-14)

Approximating "free, aimless".

What are called natural gifts start one man far ahead of another. And yet these external qualities may be outrun by a larger mental gift, which overcomes weakness of voice, and poverty of frame, and makes a man whose presence is mean, and whose speech at first contemptible. (Mahaffy 1888: 14)

Natural enemy, awkwardness.

We will not define what this peculiar quality is in the case of conversation, but it is necessary to feel its presence from the very outset. (Mahaffy 1888: 14)

Intuitiveness. Atmosphere.

The old Greeks set it down as an axiom that a loud or harsh voice betokens bad breeding, and any one who hears the lower classes discussing any topic at the corners of the streets, may notice not merely their coarseness and rudeness in expression, but also the loudness and harshness of their voices, in support of this observation. (Mahaffy 1888: 16)

Cf. "directly a bad character" (PC 4.3), and "our own uneducated classes" (also PC 4.3).

The habit of wrangling with people who will not listen without interruption, and who try to shout down their company, nay even the habit of losing one's temper, engenders a noisy and harsh way of speaking, which naturally causes a prejudice against the talker in good society. (Mahaffy 1888: 16)

"The stranger who cannot speak the language" (PC 4.2), and "waiting till his own turn arrives to speak" (PC 5.4).

Even the dogmatic or over-confident temper which asserts opinions loudly, and looks around to command approval or challenge contradictions, chills good conversation by setting people against the speaker, whom they presume to be a social bully and wanting in sympathy. (Mahaffy 1888: 16)

"Always the same emphasis on affirmation and consent" (PC 5.3) and "personal accounts of the speaker's views and life history" (PC 5.4).

[...] a soft and sweet tone of voice [...] is to be classed with personal beouty, which disposes every one to favour the speaker, and listen to him or her with sympathy and attention. (Mahaffy 1888: 17)

A clue as to how to achieve a connection between Mal-Jak.

Similarly the presence of a strong local accent, though there are cases where it gives raciness to wit and pungency to satire, is usually a hindrance in conversation, especially at its outset, and among strangers. (Mahaffy 1888: 17)

The qualities of the stranger. Here linguistic, as opposed to the ideological in Zygmunt Mauman's Culture (1973).

§7. There is yet another almost physical disability or damage to conversation, which is akin to provincialism, and which consists in disagreeable tricks in conversation, such as the constant and meaningless repetition of catchwords and phrases, such as the unmeaning oaths of our grandfathers, such as inarticulate sounds of assent, such as contortions of the face, which so annoy the hearer by their very want of meaning and triviality as to excite quite a disproportionate dislike to the speaker, and to require great and sterling qualities to counterbalance it. (Mahaffy 1888: 19)

This is where mere "formulae of greeting and approach" becomes "a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas" (Jakobson 1960d: 24).

The handsomest man or woman, even with the sweetest tones of human voice, will soon be found out, if dull or unsympathetic, and then there advantages all go for nothing. (Mahaffy 1888: 20)

Psychological symptoms.

Intelligent questions will draw from the astronomer, from the chemist, possibly from the pure mathematician, curious facts and interesting views on the progress of discovery, which will pleasantly beguile the time even in a light-minded and frivolous company. (Mahaffy 1888: 22)

Similar conclusion reached through Malinowski's PC by Kenneth Burke: "The asking of questions is obviously a masterly shortcut for the establishment [of personal union]" (Attitudes Towards History, 1937: 80).

This opens a field for conversation which is inaccessible if there be no one present to explain or to speak with authority, and so no invitation is more frequent or more welcome than to come and meet a man celebrated in his own line and of wide reputation. The very fact of meeting such a man disposes the company to be sympathetic, and to draw from him the secrets of his knowledge. (Mahaffy 1888: 22)

To the astronomer, chemist, or pure mathematician we can probably add "ethnologist":

This kind of vantage-ground may be occupied by a man of no original capacity or deep learning, if accident has made him intimate with some exciting or absorbing subject of the day. The man who has just escaped a shipwreck, or fought in a famous battle, or survived some catastrophe, has for the moment the advantage of being endowed with special knowledge, which everybody wants to talk about, and to learn particulars from the actual eyewitness. (Mahaffy 1888: 23)

Pair this with Ashley Montagu's first meeting of Malinowski and the feeling of discovering human nature together. The general point vies with Malinowski's field-work materials where people discuss with interest the merits of canoes and other such stuff (gossip without the negative connotations).

If other topics flag an appeal to this abundant source will always introduce a new current of talk, and often of th most agreeable kind. (Mahaffy 1888: 24)

Relevance for the three-legged stool: the actual rough ground of conversation can present such flags of appeal to all three legs and inspire a new current of talk.

§10. We come now to the broader condition of General Knowledge. This, in the minds of many, sums up in itself all the conditions of good conversation, and yet it is so partial a truth as to be practically misleading. A great mistake lies at the root of such an opinion, which assumes that the first object of conversation is not to please but to instruct. I could produce one hundred Irish peasants more agreeable than many a highly-informed [|] Englishman, and yet these peasants might in many cases be unable to read or write. (Mahaffy 1888: 26-27)

This amounts to the general point of PC, that it "does not serve any purpose of communicating ideas". Here, Malinowski is in one mind with Mahaffy, wheres on the concrete details he appears contrarian.

If therefoe we exclude the object of gaining information, which many people estimate above its importance in our present subject, we must decide that general information is the better condition to promote agreeable social intercourse. (Mahaffy 1888: 27)

The same point in different garment. This is oddly in line with the rather simplified approaches which take the opposite of phatic communion to be the communication of "information", e.g. "not in order to inform" (PC 2.2).

There is often a man of no great learning or ability whose official position, tact, or private means have brought him into contact with the great minds about whom every detail is interesting. Such a man's general knowledge should always make him an agreeable member of society. Akin to this man is the experienced traveller who has wandered through many lands and seen the cities and the ways of men. (Mahaffy 1888: 29)

More on the enchanting ethnologist. If I were to construct a narrative of PC in line with Malinowski's style I'd use this phraseology.

§12. What has hithero been said about knowledge in a man of conversation has left out of all account the way of producing it, and merely considered the mental store from which conversation may be supplied. But almost as important as these materials, is the faculty of producing them without effort. This quality may be called intellectual quickness, as distinguished from solidity; and of all the conditions we have yet discussed, this seems most due to nature, and unattainable by education. It is indeed sometimes a characteristic of nations. (Mahaffy 1888: 32)

National character and the economy of mental effort or habit in the dimension of conversation topics.

But quite apart from it, a selfish man, who has no sympathy for his company, may, by the quickness of his intellect, show brilliantly in conversation, while his more solid and worthy fellow is considered a bore. (Mahaffy 1888: 33)

On "the man linguistically active" (PC 5.5).

Let me illustrate it by an extreme case. Who would think of introducing a young brilliant flashing sceptic into a society of grave and sober orthodoxy? If the conversation did not soon degenerate into acrid controversy - the very lees of social intercourse - it would result in contemptuous [|] silence on one side or other, probably with the contempt so transparent as to challenge harsh over-statement from the talker by way of challenge or reply to unspoken censure. Could anything be more ruinous to the object we have in view? (Mahaffy 1888: 34-35)

"I made on or two coarse jokes, and one bloody [native] made a disapproving remark, whereupon I cursed them and was highly irritated."

But if the quality under consideration is valuable at all times, it is so peculiarly when a number of strangers meet together, or when it is the lot of men and women to be obliged to talk together in dialogue, upon a stray or sudden occasion. Then it is, when for example you go down to dinner with a strange man or woman whose name you have not caught, that quickness of intellect becomes the prime agent in starting a pleasant conversation. There are, indeed, even here many easy rules which may help to get over the initial difficulty, without those initial chords about the weather whereby so many people, otherwise really intelligent, hide themselves at the outset under the prelude of commonplace. (Mahaffy 1888: 35-36)

A lot of PC tropes but the most significant is probably the weather.

But as they are qualities enjoined upon us by moralists, and are in any case analogous to moral virtues, we may in this book, which does not affect precise philosophy, class them as moral. (Mahaffy 1888: 37)

Not precise philosophy, no, but some crucial points in this book have made their way, through Malinowski and Jakobson, to Foucault and even Žižek, who may be said to practice loose philosophy.

For example, the instinct of sociality, which is really the same as the gregarious instinct in birds and animals, is not the same as the love [|] of our neighbour enjoined by the Gospel, but is closely connected with it, for to be social without being civil is not possible, and civility is at least the imitation of friendship, if it be not friendship or benevolence in outward acts of social intercourse. This, too, appears to be the reason why a particular class of social instincts is so agreeable to men, and so honoured in society - their close relationship to moral virtues. (Mahaffy 1888: 37-38)

First Aristotle on friendship (civility - goodwill); secondly Dorothy Lee's futility of gifts in Trobriand culture.

[...] the children of incessant talkers are so bored with this social vice that they never think of practicing talk [...] (Mahaffy 1888: 39)

The slightly veiled patience. The whole situation described by Malinowski in that instance is a social vice, a contrarian approach to the theory presented here.

§17. There are of course cases of children who are allowed to run away whenever a stranger appears, as if nature were a state of war, and man the natural enemy of man. (Mahaffy 1888: 50)

"A world of living creatures that fear and hate, shun and attack one another without restraint, is not a fact of observation. It is a pure a priori creation of the "pure" reason." (Giddings 1896: 79)

Or else you may find a youth, who jumps over a hedge to avoid meeting a party of his acquaintances on a country road, anything but modest in low society, thus showing that it is a consciousness of unfitness for good company and a fear of being criticised which dominate him. (Mahaffy 1888: 51)

The opposite pole of Giddings' consciousness of kind. "[Malinowski" was, as he often noted, filled with "Dostoevskian thoughts," extremely ambivalent feelings of longing and aversion" (Payne 1981: 433).

In almost all the cases whcih cocur there is therefore modestry without simplicity, a conscious and almost guilty air; it is often nothing better than vanity which fears the result of conversation, which desires to be thought well of, and which from mistrust of itself puts on the garb of modesty. (Mahaffy 1888: 51-52)

Finally, vanity in detail, and a the psychological symptom of internalization. To be thought well is D. Lee's renown".

How can any conversation be easy and natural, how can it range from topic to topic, and bring out the tempers and the characters of the speakers, if any of them displays this vice by dogged silence, by consciou blushing when any personal topic arises, or by the awkwardness which always accompanies this noisome preoccupation with one's self? If then the capital conditions of pleasant intercourse are modesty and simplicity, this defect which always contradicts the latter, and generally both of them, is to be regarded as the most prevalent and destructive anti-social vice. (Mahaffy 1888: 52)

Again, Mahaffy's message is positive and uplifting (anyone can have something interesting to say) while Malinowski's is negative, almost a praise of this social vice (egocentric speech, collective monologue).

§18. Reserve, which few venture to claim for themselves, is a far higher and better feeling, for it implies that the unwillingness to enter upon conversation arises from some deliberate judgment as to the relative positions of the speaker and his company - often a correct judgment, saving us from the vice of familiarity, which is an inferior is offensive, in a superior uncomfortable, in either case distinctly vulgar. (Mahaffy 1888: 63)

Curiously in line with Malinowski's sentiment around "a tone of jocular familiarity".

It may indeed act as a check on licence, and so by bringing the company back from some aberration, start it afresh on nobler and pleasanter topics. This is so indirect a mode of action, and may be so much more easily attained in other ways, that I need only mention it for completeness' sake. (Mahaffy 1888: 54)

"But can we regard it as a mode of action?" (PC 7.1). Now I need to find "The technique of speaking".

The good talker who monopolises conversation, who insists on keeping other people waiting that he may finish his story, who tells anecdotes which are evidently unpleasant to some of the company, but will not forego his joke for the sake of others - the social bully who makes butts of the more retiring, and sallies at their expernse, is the most obvious case of a man failing from selfishness, and losing the great [|] natural advantage he possesses through want of the opposite quality. (Mahaffy 1888: 55-56)

Very crucial to the "slightly veiled impatience" and other social vices.

I have spoken of these people as failures, and such they really are, in the truest and highest sense, for they certainl kill more conversation than they create, nor do they understand that the very meaning of the word implies a contribution-feast, an eranos as the Greeks would say, not the entertainment provided by a single host. (Mahaffy 1888: 56)

Another piece to the puzzle of "communion": "The word 'Eranos', in Greek language, applies to a banquet, both spiritual and material, which lasts thanks to the contributions each participant makes." έρανος is "public contribution; fund, collection". Vrd. "osadus".

In every company there may be people either socially or intellectually inferior to the rest, who feel themselves somewhat out of it (to use a vulgar phrase), and whom the selfish man, the big talker, the ambitious man is apt to ignore. (Mahaffy 1888: 60)

The man whose speech Malinowski, effectively, describes as "phatic".

§22. The great Adam Smith, in a book called Moral Sentiments, which he seems to have thought out as a sort of antidote to the selfishness of the Wealth of Nations, managed to deduce all the virtues from this one root of sympathy. (Mahaffy 1888: 62)

Well, my need for Spencer's "The Comparative Psychology of Man" now goes out the window as something unnecessary. If Malinowski read this then he probably didn't have to read Spencer nor Smith. In future, should I go deeper into this, I must include Smith's Moral Sentiments in my readings.

Starting from the fact that man is a gregarious animal, with social instincts, he showed that the desire to be in sympathy with our fellow-creatures, and so command their love and respect, made us watch them, consider what they felt about us, and avoid everything which might shock or hurt their opinions or their feelings. It was this indefinite and impersonal public opinion which was by degrees made a part of ourselves, and under the [|] name of conscience was set up as 'a man within the breast' of each of us to approve and disapprove even our most secret actions. (Mahaffy 1888: 62)

The social instinct is "the fundamental tendency which makes the mere presence of others a necessity for man" (PC 3.3). Instinct is "one of those fine words which are chiefly used to cover over what is not understood" (Jespersen 1922: 128). Sympathy and fellowship are here tied with the imitative tendency (cf. mention of G. Tarde in Argonauts) and what amounts to the looking glass self (Cooley). The indefinite and impersonal public opinion or conscience amounts to the - was it? - superego in psychoanalysis.

The first condition of any conversation at all, is that people should have their minds so far in sympathy that they are willing to talk upon the same subject, and to hear what each member of the company thinks about it. The higher condition which now comes before us is, that the speaker, apart from the matter of the conversation, feels an interest in his hearers as distinct persons, whose opinions and feelings de desires to know. (Mahaffy 1888: 63)

This is the social vice of the selfish man who speaks but doesn't listen.

And as in every conversation there must not only be good talking but good listening, the intellectual gifts which make the talker are often marred if he has not the sympathy which makes the listener. (Mahaffy 1888: 65)

The asymmetry of sympathy: "But though the hearing given to such utterances is as a rule not as intense as the speaker's own share, it is quite essential for his pleasure, and the reciprocity is established by the change of rôles" (PC 5.6).

§23. Buh I suppose no one will be disposed to dispute this, or to underrate the value of sympathy as a quality for conversation. (Mahaffy 1888: 66)

You'd suppose wrong, as Malinowski demonstrates.

Sympathy must not be excessive in quality, which makes it demonstrative, and therefore likely to repel its object. We have an excellent word which describes the over-sympathetic person, and marks the judgment of society, when we say that he or she is gushing. (Mahaffy 1888: 66-67)

The subject of sincerity: "where [common sentiment] purports to exist, as in expressions of sympathy, it is avowedly suprious on one side" (PC 2.3).

The most seductive way of conveying your sympathy to another is to join with him in some strong antipathy, thus showing that all the world cannot claim your friendship, but that you distribute your likes and dislike with judgement and discrimination. (Mahaffy 1888: 68)

The social mind works on small groups this way. In-group bias?

I should add that the foregoing remarks are specially applicable to English (I do not mean English-speaking) society. There is no people more distant and reserved in social intercourse, or that more resents any display of feeling, most of all of sympathy, without a careful introduction and considerable intimacy among the company. Thus those who are accustomed to freer and more outspoken societies, not so say French and Italian life, may make social mistakes in English on the score of sympathy, which are sins only in the heavy atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon manners. (Mahaffy 1888: 69)

Perhaps some of his twists upon this material is due to him writing to an English audience?

In nothing is it more useful than in preparing the right conditions for a pleasant society in choosing the people who will be in mutual sympathy, in thinking over pleasant subjects of talk and suggesting them, in seeing that all disturbing conditions are kept out, and that the members who are to converse should be all without those small inconveniences which damage society so vastly out of proportion to their intrinsic importance. (Mahaffy 1888: 72)

This is the culmination of the "national character" passages in the very beginning. It also includes the passages tagged here with "natural enemy". An ideal conversation partner is able to speak clearly, knows the language, doesn't have an annoying accent, has manners, has ideas and interesting knowledge of his own to contribute as well as know the art of conversation or the technique of speaking (rhetorically, humorously) to goad others to speak their minds and open their character as well.

Every company of men ought to import two or three grave and revened people into their circle for the purpose of checking such ruinous excesses, if there be any probability that the conversation may stray into this slough of mire. (Mahaffy 1888: 77-78)

Checking impulses.

Far more important is it, in my mind, to demand no accuracy. There is no greater or more common blunder in society than to express disbelief or scepticism in a story told for the amusement of the company. (Mahaffy 1888: 78)

This should be the ideal type of speech for social communion; besides formulae and an egocentric or trivial flow of language. Probably a good replacement for the purpose of informing (or instructing).

The great and good man must unbend; he must acquiesce in being amused; he must even connive at inaccuracies, and smile at what he considers investigations; he must for the nonce regard recreation as his direct object. (Mahaffy 1888: 80)

Dorothy Lee's non-utility, or futility.

The effect of knowing this is to detract greatly from[|] the enjoyment of the company, and still more from the reputation of the speaker. (Mahaffy 1888: 83-84)

Hm, "to enjoy each other's company" (PC 3.2) and Dorothy Lee's "renown".

[...] humour is the sustained side of the ridiculous, the comic way of looking at things and people, which may be manifested either in comment upon the statements made by others or in narrating one's own experiences. (Mahaffy 1888: 87)

These are positive aspects of "personal accounts of the speaker's views and life history" (PC 5.4).

The humourist is the only good and effective story-teller; for if he is to monopolise a conversation, and require others to listen to him, it must be by presenting human life under the fresh and piquant aspects - in fact, as a little comedy. (Mahaffy 1888: 88)

The social vice of monopolising the conversation. Turn-taking. Requiring others to listen is the sign of selfishness.

The excesses of the humourist are perhaps rather those of a complacent selfishness, which does not hesitate to monopolise the company with long stories in which all do not feel an interest. (Mahaffy 1888: 90)

Slightly veiled impatience, as in "the manner in which such type of narrative would be told over camp fires, the same subject being over and over again repeated by the same man, and listened to by the same audience" (Malinowski 1922: 248).

But beyond the necessary cautions above indicated, we cannot bring it into any systematic doctrine of social intercourse. (Mahaffy 1888: 91-92)

Did Malinowski do that? Is there a phatic theory?

You should turn the conversation upon the other person's life, inquire into his or her history, so far as that can be done with good taste and without impertinence, and so induce him (or her) to give personal recollections or confessions, which are to the teller of them generally of the deepest interest. But you will not elicit these without some frankness on your own part, sometimes without volunteering some slight confession which may induce the other to open the flood-gates of his inner life. When this is once attained there must ensue good conversation; for to have a volume of human character said open before you, and to turn over its pages [|]at leisure, is one of the highest and most intense recreations known to an intelligent mind. (Mahaffy 1888: 93)

A positively minded version of "personal accounts of the speaker's views and life history" (PC 5.4). The flood-gates of inner life is like opening a person's character (here a book metaphor) and volunteering some personal confession amounts to a gift of personal character (lineal and non-lineal attitudes towards human interaction: deepening a bump vs following a line to some end).

It is bad enough to begin with truisms about the weather - an excusable exordium; it is far worse and more disgraceful to end with them, and positively many people get no further. (Mahaffy 1888: 95)

The commonplace of comments about weather. It's a social vice to talk only about the weather.

He and I had apparently not a single interest in common. But when the right vein was touched one had to supply nothing but assent, or an occasional question; the man flowed on with an almost natural eloquence. People said that others had found him morose and unapproachable. It was certainly their fault. (Mahaffy 1888: 96)

The technique of speaking. Oriented towards the addressee with an appeal to open themselves. People who supply nothing but assent are "yes-men", and hence not real conversation partners. Affirmation and consent.

[...] the people are really ready to talk, but don't know how. The beginning is evidently the difficulty, and surely here, if anywhere, people who [|] have no natural facility should think out some way of opening the conversation, just as chessplayers have agreed on several formal openings in their game. (Mahaffy 1888: 96-97)

The origin of formulae of greeting and approach, "The breaking of silence," (PC 4.5), how "Stereotyped formulas [are] a means of establishing contact" (Gardiner 1932: 45-46), and "messages primarily serving to establish [...] communication [...] by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas" (Jakobson 1960d: 24).

Their very virtues in home life have dulled their interests in outer things, and the best of mothers have sometimes forgotten to talk about anything except the education of their children. (Mahaffy 1888: 97)

And do anthropologists sometimes forget to talk about anything except their field-work?

But it is always better worth probing a sound nature than hearing the ready chatter of idleness. For this reason, some serious topics ought to be the best, even for talking with a stranger, since our conversation errs more frequently through frivolity than through gravity. (Mahaffy 1888: 97)

Malinowski the contrarian left this one out. IRL people talk about things grand as well as small, the visibly present as well as the abstract and general. There's variability.

A brilliant thing said at the very start, which sets people laughing, and makes them forget that they are waiting, may alter the whole complexion of the party, may make the silent and distant people feel themselves drawn into the sympathy of common merriment, and thaw the iciness which so often fetters Anglo-Saxon society. (Mahaffy 1888: 102)

The ludic moment combined with the image of (cramped) waiting spaces. The sympathy of common merriment sounds like the prototype of "the atmosphere of sociability" (PC 7.5).

The topic which ought to be common to both and always interesting, is the discussion of character and human motives. (Mahaffy 1888: 104)

Montagu discovering human nature.

People of serious temper and philosophic habit will be able to confine themselves to large ethical views, and the general dealings of men; but to average people, both men and women, and perhaps most of all the busy men, who desire to find in society relaxation from their toil, that lighter and more personal kind of criticism on human affairs will prevail which is known as gossip. (Mahaffy 1888: 105)

A positive conception of gossip.

§36. This may, therefore, be the suitable moment to consider the place of gossip in the theory of conversation; for though gossip is not only possible but usual in the private discourse of two people, and possible too in a large society., its real home and natural exercising ground is the society of a few people intimate with the same surroundings. (Mahaffy 1888: 105)

Sadly, Malinowski did not make room for gossip in his PC. It is mentioned on 6 accounts but not explained infra. The context of gossip is in Argonauts. In the (nearly) hundred years only a few instances have considered "rumo(u)r", for example (one study in the 70s comes to mind). As to the situation of context, this right here is really the answer to the rather rhetorical question, "But what can we consider as situation when a number of people aimlessly gossip together?" (PC 7.4) - this situation is that of mutual acquaintance and mutual confiding. The "surroundings" here is the network of social relations, all else falling into the "surrounding penumbra" (Gardiner 1932: 56).

These people cannot but feel obscurely what they are either afraid to speak out or have not duly considered, that the main object of conversation is neither instruction nor moral improvement but recreation. (Mahaffy 1888: 106)

Again, reflexivity or futility.

But the main and direct object is recreation, mental relaxation, happy idleness; and from this point of view it is impossible for any sound theory of conversation to ignore or depreciate gossip, which is perhaps the main factor in agreeable talk throughout society. (Mahaffy 1888: 106)

I have to say Mahaffy's theory of conversation lends itself much more effortlessly to Annette Holba's theory of leisure, for which I have here found a new respect. Likewise, I think all this talk of rank, hierarchy, manners and vanity in this thread that it should lend itself more readily towards Marija Liudvika Drazdauskienė's doctoral thesis on honorifics.

It will be conceded that the one thing absolutely essential to the education of a lady is that she should talk agreeably at meals. It is the natural meeting time, not only of the household, but of friends, and conversation is then as essential as food. Yet, what is the habit of many of [|] our schools? They either enforce silence at this period, or they compel the wretched pupils to speak in a foreign language, in which they can only labour out spasmodic commonplaces, without any interchange or play of thought. (Mahaffy 1888: 110)

The communion of food. And perfunctory execution (spasmodic commonplaces) vs interchange or play of thought (lively exchange).

This worthy man did his best under a system devised to bring up young people in silence and in fear, not in free and friendly intercourse with their instructors. (Mahaffy 1888: 112)

Is being "friendly", for Malinowski, "aimless"?