Kristin in San Clemente, California, wonders why actors in old movies often hang up the phone without saying goodbye. It’s not just old movies! In fact, you can watch supercuts of lots of modern movies where the same thing happens. Although this convention may seem unrealistic, it’s just an expedient way to move the action along. Kristin says she’s also observed young smartphone users behaving similarly, but in a time of 24/7 digital communication, there’s less need for such verbal niceties because the conversation never really ends. Incidentally, after The Guardian ran an article about characters who skip saying goodbye at the end of phone calls, readers responded with many more examples of things that seem to happen only in the movies. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Never Saying Goodbye”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, Grant. My name is Kristen. I am in the beach bedroom community of San Clemente, California, and thank you for having me on the show.
Well, hello, Kristen. Welcome.
Thank you.
Glad to have you.
Hello. I had a question about kind of the evolution of salutations. I love older movies, anything Turner classic movies. I love the whole Downton Abbey series, and I noticed when they got on the telephone, when it was time for a closing remark or to end a call, they just hung up. And my favorite, black and whites, and the same thing with Downton Abbey. And I always thought that was brusque and odd, you know, without a formal hello or goodbye of some kind.
Now that we’ve evolved through the times, I’m noticing with my own boys, just being in quarantine with them a lot and hearing their conversations with friends, they don’t say goodbye either, and they often don’t say hello. I’ve noticed that with a lot of millennials in Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores. There’s kind of a loss of the hello or goodbye, excuse me, when in conversation with a single person. In the grocery store, a lot of people say, you know, I’m going to get that or I need to get over there instead of excuse me. And I just found that all odd. I wondered if you could expand.
Well, I think we can address the part about old movies because it’s not just old movies, as a matter of fact. This happens a lot in modern movies as well. In fact, you can go online and see compilations of people just hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.
Supercuts.
Yeah, supercuts. And it’s actually really funny to just watch a whole bunch of these in a row. And there are people like Tom Cruise and George Clooney and Tom Hanks. It’s not just old movies by any stretch of the imagination. And people have complained about this and made that observation before. And it’s really just a matter of efficiency in a movie script, I think.
Okay.
Yeah, just moving the action along. It’s sort of like, you know, you don’t really see all the other connective tissue of life in movies. Whenever I watch a James Bond movie, you know, and he’s having all these adventures, I think, does that man never go to the bathroom? You know what I mean?
And he rarely eats.
Exactly. I tell you, I do have a pet peeve when it comes to movies and reality. The fact that when they’re carrying suitcases, they almost always look empty to me. In a movie. That just drives me crazy.
Mine is they walk into houses and leave the door open.
Yeah.
They just walk in and leave the door open. You don’t do that. If the door is closed when you enter it, you close it right behind you. Absolutely. You’re letting the air out.
The conversation in movies is stylized just like everything else in the movies. It’s art. It’s a representation of real life. It’s not a recreation of it. It’s not meant to be a perfect picture. It’s somebody’s, they’ve taken a particular paintbrush and painted this in a particular style, and the conversation isn’t really a real conversation at all. There are so many other things that when linguists who study conversation look at movies, they can’t really use movie scripts as examples of real conversation because it just doesn’t flow the way people really talk. That’s interesting. Yes, that’s a good point.
And what about today with the millennials? Any explanation or insight?
Yes. So people who study computer-mediated communication have an understanding that it’s not just millennials. It’s everyone now. It’s anyone who uses a phone for regular communication and a desktop or a laptop for regular communication. You’ve kind of got these digital devices everywhere. What it is is that we don’t turn off the conversation anymore. And so you feel like every time you hear from somebody that you know well, that you never really stopped talking to them. You’re picking up where you left off. So you don’t need to have this formality because it’s just part one billion of you two talking. And also your phone tells you who they are even before you answer. It shows you their name. And so you know who they are. And they know who you are. So it’s not a mystery. So why say hello and goodbye? It’s not like you’re not going to see them for six months because it takes you six months to get from New York to California.
That’s true. That’s true. The boys were laughing at me the other day because I left a voicemail and I left my phone number. And they said, why are you doing that? People know your number. And I was like, no, when you get older and you call businesses, they don’t know your number. And then I thought about it. I’m like, well, caller ID, maybe that is, you know, a way of old that’s kind of going to pair off in time.
Do you do Zoom at all? Do you do Zoom meetings?
I do, yes. Because somebody was talking on Twitter the other day about how weird it is that when you end a Zoom conference, everybody’s waving.
Yes.
Like, you don’t do that in real life when you walk out of a room.
Bye.
Yeah, it is odd. So I think we’re all evolving a little bit. Kristen, thank you so much for your call. This was a really good one. I really appreciate it. Take care now.
Thank you.
Love you guys.
Take care.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Love you, too.
We’re waving.
Bye-bye.
We’re waving.
Bye-bye.
Hello, goodbye. We’d love to talk to you about both ends of the conversation and everything in between. Call us. Martha and I would love to talk to you. 877-929-9673.
