Doorknob Hanging

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Joe from Hillsborough, Oregon.

Hiya, Joe. How you doing?

Hey, Joe.

I’m doing well.

I have a friend who has an interesting little quirk.

After we say our goodbyes, he’ll immediately start up another conversation with me.

I’m not talking like hours or minutes later.

He’ll do it immediately after saying goodbye.

I notice that it happens a lot more often now that I use Instant Messenger a lot.

People just say goodbye, and then they’ll start up with the next conversation.

I’m just wondering if there’s any term for this behavior.

Can you give us an example, Joe?

Sure.

I’ll be standing, you know, talking to my friend face-to-face, and he’ll say,

Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to work.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

And then I’ll say, all right, see you tomorrow.

Oh, hey, did you hear that Spore came out last weekend?

And it’s just right immediately after he says goodbye.

And Spore is a video game, right?

Yes, that’s right.

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

I get this. I understand what you’re talking about, Joe, because everybody does this.

Even family, friends at work, it doesn’t matter who it is. They all do it, don’t they?

One way or the other.

A lot of people, some do more than the others.

Right. I don’t have an exact term for what you’re describing, which is when a goodbye takes forever.

But linguists who study discourse, which is the way people talk to each other,

And believe me, there are people that study this and write books about it,

They call the whole process of saying goodbye leave-taking.

And they also talk about things like pre-closings.

And what a pre-closing usually is is a word like anyway, right?

You say anyway with that tone and people get that you’re about to wrap up whatever it was you were saying.

Yeah, that anyway carries a whole lot more meaning.

But it’s not just anyway that can be a pre-closing word.

Goodbye itself isn’t necessarily just a closing word.

It can be a pre-closing word too.

So you can say, you know, you say goodbye, and what you’re doing is kind of starting that ritual of leave-taking.

You say goodbye, but you don’t really, you’re not necessarily going to go unless the other person consents that it’s okay to go,

And so they’re saying goodbye to see if you have anything left to say.

And if you do, once they’ve said goodbye, you’re probably going to spit out whatever’s most important, whatever has to be said.

And so that might lead you to a second conversation. Does that sound familiar, Joe?

Yeah, I think that happens a lot.

I mean, even in my example, I was like, well, I’ll let you get back to work.

You know, starting out with that well.

Right.

And let you get back means I need to get back to work.

Right.

It can be because, right, because in order for a leave-taking to be comfortable,

Everybody has to agree that the leave-taking is okay.

If you just say goodbye and you’re gone, it’s usually considered rude.

Now, instant messenger is a little different.

I have people do that to me all the time.

They just stop chatting and there’s no goodbye at all.

They just walk away from their computer or go idle.

That’s a little different.

But in real life, on the phone or in person, it kind of requires this ritual of negotiation

Where we don’t exactly say what’s on our mind.

But what’s on our mind is I’m going to be polite to you and offer you a chance to get off of this call or this chat.

And if you want, you can take it.

And if not, go ahead and keep talking.

Does that make sense?

It does.

I think it makes a lot of sense, and it’s interesting to think about the whole lead-taking ritual.

I hadn’t given it much thought in the past.

Well, Joe, you’re not so much looking for a technical term, or are you?

Because I can give you a more colloquial term.

Ooh, what is it?

No, if you have a colloquial term, that’s great, too.

Well, and I don’t know how idiosyncratic it is, but, Joe, I have a friend who’s a courtly southern gentleman.

That’s the way that I would describe him.

And he calls this practice, which he does all the time at rotary meetings when he goes to a rotary meeting and then he’s getting ready to leave and he talks a little bit more, he talks a little bit more.

He calls that doorknob hanging.

Doorknob hanging.

And I just love that, you know, because he’s got his hand on the doorknob and then he says, and one more thing, you know.

I love that, doorknob hanging.

And I don’t know how common that is, but I like to spread it around.

Doorknob hanging.

That’s great.

I can picture it in my mind.

You’re kind of there with the door, a little bit of ajar, one foot in, one foot out,

And maybe you’re going to leave, maybe you’re not, right?

Right.

Yeah, I think I’ll have to start using that.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Joe, for your call.

Bye.

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