Name dropping and the art of passive aggression

One recurrent theme that I have found in these pages is the relevance of the context in any sort of communication. The concept of context in itself can be extremely wide, ranging for the cultural background of the speakers to the personal circumstances, permanent or temporary, of both parties. And the complexity only grows larger by the fact that the particulars of the situation are compounded by the situation of the individuals, resulting, as in an example that I mentioned before, in the same person showing two substantially different personalities at work and at home.

It might be tempting to think that understanding the context can only help the communication, but that would be overly optimistic. As with many other tools, linguistic understanding can also be applied to ill purposes, just as a cooking knife can used to prepare a delicious meal or to commit atrocities on fellow humans. And it is a fact that we can easily have very noxious attitudes in a complete subconscious level, so it is entirely possible to weaponize the context for uses very far removed from a friction-less communication, even if we are not aware of this use.

Photo: dronepicr

Probably one of the best examples of this mischievous behavior is the practice commonly known as "name dropping": in the middle of a conversation with a substantial cultural comment, one of the speakers starts to mention prominent elements (either people or their pieces of work) without the benefit of any obvious background, potentially leaving part of the audience in a very unpleasant state of want. On the one hand, they are not able to completely follow the ensuing conversation unless they manage to get additional insights about the subject; on the other hand, it is socially awkward to admit that they do not have sufficient background to follow along. In most cases, the affected people just stick to smiling pleasantly and keeping their mouths shut so as to ensure that they do not make it any worse, but they definitely go home in the evening with the impression that they have been inadequate. Just think about last time you met some colleague in the cafeteria and they mentioned that "Peter's new car is awesome": if you are close enough to that colleague, you might be able to know who they are referring to, but otherwise you find yourself in a minefield, fearing to show your own lack of knowledge before you find an excuse to escape.

The example above refers to what we could call "office lore", but the same applies to many cultural devices: if you mention "The Spring" without further qualification it could refer to the piece of music that the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote in 1720 or to the painting by the also Italian Sandro Botticelli from 1480, just to mention two among many others. It goes without saying that the level of familiarity that you can show with respect to a living person is much closer than the one for a classical work of art, but dropping names still helps solidify the idea that you are "somehow close" to the subject, even if the reason for such closeness is never disclosed.

This thought came to me as a segue to the article about the merits of traveling and the benefits that travelers extract from it. In particular, the right to boast about the trip you have just made is a real benefit. I would not argue that it is a particularly laudable benefit, since it has an evident element of envy involved (either you inspire envy in someone else or you appease your own), but it is clear that the investment of time and money pays off enough for the travelers to keep travelling. And even under these questionable circumstances there are worse and not-as-bad people: if they say that "we had a wonderful week in front of the Pacific Ocean in Acapulco" it is only a moderate flaunting with a lot of context compared to something along the lines of "the Fairmont was not as good as it always was in the past". Even if you manage to make the connection that "Fairmont" refers to a hotel chain, there could be tens of hotels to choose from and you have not hint of where this particular one might be. Also the not-so-veiled reference to all the times that they had visited the same hotel in the past is yet another flaunt of how much time and money they can devote to vacationing as to visit the same place repeatedly.

The point I was trying to make is that depriving your audience of sufficient context in a conversation is an act of aggression tantamount to grabbing and holding their wrists. Admittedly, this action will be ineffectual unless the victim tries to react, but it is an aggression nonetheless. And then it is just too easy to issue a fake apology ("sorry, I did not expect you not to know"), which is yet another attack piling on the ridicule. In the best possible scenario, this is just a self-aggrandizing person trying to get some attention, in the worst, someone openly trying to make you feel uncomfortable and inadequate, so next time you hear someone prattling about how the beaches in Zakynthos compare to those in Kos, you can just fire back with "yes, yes, we know that you spent 10 days in the Greek islands, do not pester us anymore". And if you do not have the information right at hand, just take careful mental notes and do your own research, because the subject will definitely come up again. And next time you will be prepared. Have a nice evening