Ice-Breaker for More Meaningful Conversation

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Suppose you’re at a social gathering and you’re introduced to someone you’d like to get to know better. Once you’ve exchanged pleasantries, then what do you reach for as a conversation starter? What’s that one question that you fall back on that you feel hits the sweet spot between being too nosy and being too impersonal?

For me, when I lived back east, I would usually say, what do you do?

Right.

What do you do? When I was in New York City, that was the thing. Totally permitted. Right. Right. But you come out here to California and I don’t. And also during the recession, I stopped saying it too because the answer would be too complicated and sometimes a downer, right?

So what do you say, Grant, when you want to get to know somebody better?

Oh, it depends. Now that I’m married, the conversations go a lot differently.

That’s well, yeah. It’s part of it, right? Good point. Who are you here with? Good point. Might be a question when I was a bachelor.

Oh, yeah. Right? Okay. It’s a way of determining whether or not she was open to me getting her a drink and having a good conversation and getting to know each other.

Right?

Yeah. That’s interesting. But also, I do ask that question now, but I have different intentions.

Right. Oh, how do you know our host, basically?

Right. That’s a good one. Go to a party and they’re like, oh, well, we went to high school together and you’ve got a whole conversation. Or we’re involved in a startup together.

Right. You’ve got a whole conversation.

Yeah. Or sometimes it’s a great answer. Like, I don’t know. I’m his butcher, and he just invited me when he was in the store the other day. And you’re like, oh, my God.

Yeah, and you’re like, okay, love this. Interesting.

I’ve been thinking about this because Deborah Fallows, the linguist, has been writing about this over at the Atlantic online. And she started thinking about it because she went to South Carolina and found that one of the questions that’s asked very quickly is what church do you go to?

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

Yeah, and she was surprised to hear that, but I certainly heard that growing up when I was in the South. In Kentucky, that’s what the question was?

Well, interestingly enough, in Kentucky, specifically in Louisville, Louisvillians are notorious for asking, where did you go to high school?

Oh, that’s the same in St. Louis.

Oh, is it really? Where I’ve spent much of my childhood or lived near.

Yeah, St. Louis. Because it’ll tell you a lot of things right away about, like, did you go to school in the city or in the county? And were you in a rich neighborhood or a not-so-rich neighborhood? There’s a lot of information there.

Right, right, in that one question.

Yeah. Our question for you is, what do you ask people when you don’t know anything about them, but you want to find out more? Is it where they went to high school, what church they went to, or something else?

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