One of the first things you’ll notice when you start taking English classes with conversation is that not only do your speaking skills and comprehension improve, but you also become more fluid the more you talk.
English conversation is the reason you take classes. Whatever the reason you tell yourself—the position you’d like to gain, the relationship you want to improve, the carrier you want to change—you want to be 100% sure you can enjoy a conversation.
So well! Let’s talk about conversations.
Every day, we talk with people. But have you ever wondered how two people with completely separate minds manage to understand each other?
To have a good conversation, you must understand the other person’s language and speak in a way that the other person can understand. If you don’t do this, it can be hard to talk to each other.
Alignment: An Essential Component of Conversation
The objective of any conversation is the sharing of thoughts and emotions in such a way that both parties can understand and fully experience the thoughts and ideas of the other.
To have a thriving conversation, you must comprehend the speech of your conversational companion and deliver a speech that your conversational counterpart can understand. And it may not be as easy as it seems!
Although for many of us, having a conversation seems to be the easiest thing in the world, stop to think for a moment if your conversations are true and successfully communicating thoughts, ideas, and emotions, or if they are an exchange of noises and behaviors without any real sharing.
A successful conversation requires attention from both sides.
Maintain appropriate timing for speaking and listening. While your partner is talking, your mind must race to come up with all the words, sounds, and sentences you want to respond with.
Similarly, you should only use words, sounds, and sentences that you believe your partner will understand.
One strategy that can help with this is to mirror what your partner says. This is called alignment.
When people in a conversation copy elements of each other’s language to make it easier to understand each other, and it is a behavior commonly used by humans to make conversations easier and more successful [1].
By learning about alignment, you can gain insight into how people talk to one another and what they value in their interactions with others around them. If you and your friends are working on a project or playing a game together, for instance, you could all benefit from better results if you were in alignment.
What Kinds of Alignment Exist?
When someone re-uses any feature of language that their conversational partner has recently used in the discourse, this is referred to as “alignment.”
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and somehow end up using words they use, or a type of accent and even a different way of gesturing?
Alignment happens when someone uses any feature of the counterpart language for their own discourse.
For instance, I notice that when I speak another language my whole body language changes. If I am speaking Italian, I do different hand gestures than the ones I use in Spanish. And when I speak English, my body language goes down to almost its minimum. It is quite funny actually.
Because mostly all the time we don’t even notice.
Alignment is particularly useful when we don’t fully speak the other person’s language.
Language scientists are aware of at least three types of alignment (Figure 1).
Word Choice Alignment:
I once heard this story from one of my tour passengers:
I was a teenager on a family trip on my way up to Monteverde. The road was very bad, it was back in the eighties and the road was terrible. We were in a small van, and since I was skinnier I ended up sitting between the Costa Rican driver and the tour guide in the front sit.
It began raining, the van had no AC, the windows were up, and I was uncomfortably hot.
I was learning to speak Spanish, and even though the guide spoke perfect English he was talking to the back where my parents were.
So I turned to the driver, a very nice respectful man, and told him in my broken Spanish:
-Estoy caliente
The driver looked at me in terror and asked the guide to put attention at what I was saying, but he didn’t listen and kept on talking to my parents.
I got very frustrated because I thought I was being very clear and I told him even louder:
-¡Estoy caliente!
The driver even more terrified just responded:
– Ay Muchacha yo soy casado.
I didn’t understand what was going on, and then the tour guide listened to the conversation and looked at me impatiently and in a very clear and well-pronounced Spanish said:
-¡Se dice “Tengo calor” Mary! You are basically telling him you are horny!
I was so embarrassed I tried to apologize by saying my version of Spanish “I am so embarrassed!” saying: “¡Estoy muy embarazada!”
This is a funny example of total misalignment.
The word “caliente” had a different meaning for Mary than for the driver and by not acknowledging this small detail, major confusion could have happened.
One of the keys to a successful conversation is word alignment. And sometimes it is useful to use some of the counterpart’s words. This not only created a flow of communication but most importantly develops a sense of trust for both.
Alignment of Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way the language sounds, the pitches, the lower sounds, where it slows down, and how a certain vowel is said one way or another. depending on the consonants around.
For Spanish speakers is one of the biggest challenges, especially when you have words like sheet, and beach, that can be easily confused giving different meanings to what you are saying if mispronounced. Thus, creating a failure in communication.
One of the ways to practice pronunciation alignment is to listen to podcasts and audiobooks in English. The more you listen to the English language the easier your mind will align with it.
Word Order Alignment
When we speak there are many ways to say the same thing. For instance, think about these two different sets of words:
‘Going home.
We are going to go home now.
Let’s see it in Costa Rican Spanish:
Vamos jalando.
Ya nos vamos para la casa.
Don’t think as much about the content, but the rhythm, the number of words, that is word choice alignment.
Alignment to speak English successfully:
The best conversations are the ones where both parties construct mental models of the situation and these situation models are similar or the same for both.
Probably the most important skill to achieve this is to put attention and make sure you are understanding and being understood.
When in doubt, simply repeat what the other one is saying, with a brief intro like: “You are telling me … (Repeat what you understood) correct?” This will avoid confusion and create a more comfortable environment for everyone.
In our next blogs we will talk about the different sorts of conversations there are and how can they help us improve our communication skills.
For now, listen and pay attention. 🙂
References:
The Art of Conversation: How Do We Communicate Successfully? (2022). Frontiers for Young Minds. https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.639598
[1] ↑ Pickering, M. J., and Garrod, S. 2004. Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behav. Brain Sci. 27, 169–226. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x04000056