ANTA02H3 Lecture Notes - Personal Taste, Queen'S Gambit Declined, George Mikes
Document Summary
When two englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather" (dr. johnson) Most commentators either stop, or try, and fail, to come up with a convincing explanation for the english obsession" with the weather. Their theory is often mistaken (cid:0) they assume that conversations about the weather are really conversations about the weather: they assume that we talk about the weather because we have a keen (desirable) interest in the subject. Primate cousins spend hours grooming each other"s fur when it is perfectly clean. Mutual acknowledgement, an exchange of greetings not necessarily a long convo. How do you do?" is old and no longer the universal standard greeting. Nice day, isn"t it?" is meant to be light and not taken seriously: not a real question about health or well-being or about the weather. Comments about the weather are phrased as questions (with a curious pitch) b/c they require a response but the reciprocity (tradeoff) is the point.
