Gina Elia | Silence is golden

The Benjamin Franklin Experiment | Reducing gossip in our conversations

By Gina Elia 09/14/15 12:38am

When Benjamin Franklin refers to “silence” on his list of virtues, he means not totally abstaining from speech, but rather speaking only when one has something useful to say. I decided that this week, I would live up to this virtue by trying to eliminate all filler conversation, including complaining. I especially wanted to focus on expelling that worst kind of idle chatter — gossip about other people — from my chit-chat repertoire.

The verdict of the experiment? Cutting the crap out of my everyday language was hard. When silence fell over a conversation, I would search the recesses of my mind for any material, however banal, to break it — which led to me chattering on about a lot of silly, inconsequential topics. It also became clear that a huge portion of what I talked about with people was complaining. We complained about all of the work we had, our teachers, our friends, our significant others, our job prospects and any other topic we could think of.

It goes without saying that this insidious negativity in so much of the small talk among students feeds into the general atmosphere of stress and pressure on campus. However, because everyone around me was doing it, I found it difficult to avoid negative conversation altogether. While it might be possible to abstain completely by being either reclusive or incredibly selective in your choice of friends, I realized that both of these options would be much too difficult for me. I have given up on ever omitting idle chatter, especially complaining, completely from my life.

In fact, talking about the issues in our lives can be cathartic. I thus wouldn’t even advocate completely restricting conversation to only what is useful, and I kind of doubt old Ben was successful in that endeavor throughout his long life either. Though really, it depends on how you define useful; sometimes, the calming effect of talking out an issue in itself lends the complaint a certain degree of utility.

But there is no denying that lots of gossip around Penn, including many unfortunate sentences that have come out of my own mouth, can turn vicious pretty quickly. Sometimes it was possible for me to extricate myself from a conversation that was taking a turn for the catty — for instance, if it was winding down anyway, or if I had something I needed to do. When this wasn’t possible, I tried to shift the tone of the conversation by pointing out something positive about the person in question or making some kind of generalizing, neutral statement, such as “Well, we’ll see,” or “I have to admit I don’t understand much about the situation.” Is this a cop-out? Maybe. But I found it to be an easier solution than abstaining from conversation 90 percent of the time or lecturing to my friends constantly.

I also wonder if the two problems I discussed above are related. Perhaps a fear of silence in casual conversation leads us to search for something else to say, and of course the first thing most of us would think of would be the issues weighing on us most. So maybe we could learn to embrace the silences of our conversations, rather than avoid them? Some of the closest people I know, like couples who have been married for years, are very comfortable in their silences with one another. This speaks to the fact that lack of filler conversation might be a sign of greater intimacy, rather than lack thereof.

Even though I didn’t cut negative talk from my speech entirely, I did reduce it — and I have to admit it made me feel much healthier about myself to know that I was not focusing as much on the negative aspects of my life or other people. So in general, based on my experiment, I’d say if you want to try it, go for it. Reducing negativity in our conversation could only improve the overall social and intellectual vibe of this campus. And that’s a great thing.

GINA ELIA is a graduate student from Hingham, Mass. Her email address is ginaelia@sas.upenn.edu. “The Benjamin Franklin Experiment” appears every other Monday.

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