Ronald Carter is a 'conversation expert and
professor of English Language at Nottingham University ... [with]
more than 20 books and 100 papers on different aspects of spoken
language', says Amelia Hill in
Why chattering classes have nothing to say, in today's
Observer.
According to a survey of more than 2,000 adults, almost
two-thirds of us [Britons] admit to indulging in shallow chit-chat
at the expense of weighty dialogue - even though we secretly long
for more meaningful exchanges.
'Brits have lost the skill of conversation,' said Ronald Carter
.... 'Considered communication has been the first casualty of our
rushed, modern lives.
'We can't exchange thoughts and opinions reflectively when we're in
a hurry and so we resort to banal banter ...'
It's more than 'our rushed, modern lives', it's many more things:
television, poor reading habits, poor grammar skills leading to
inability to comprehend complex thoughts and presentations,
three-minute or less music, amnesia (by which I mean the idea that
all valuable ideas and significant persons and events occurred
within the past ten years or so, or at least within one's
lifetime), people moving and changing jobs frequently ...
Guardian writers summarizing Fyodor Dostoevsky's
The
Devils as 'about a group of terrorists' ineffectual struggle to
bring down the tyrannical Tsarist regime' (
Burning
Bush brandishes Dostoevsky).