Viktória Albert: Exploring Conversation with David Crystal’s Let’s Talk: How English Conversation Works (2020)

Book review

DOI 10.51313/Freeside-2021-1

What can be considered a successful and meaningful conversation? Are we truly good at it? The reason David Crystal has written Let’s Talk proves the topic’s on-going universality and significance since being a good conversationalist is quite demanding. For this reason, this book proves to be a goldmine of gripping and insightful observations of various aspects of conversation throughout history. It encompasses quite a plethora of topics, such as greetings and farewells, clichés, turn-taking, simultaneous feedback or interruption, semantic fuzziness, parenthesis, the choice of conversation topics, storytelling, telephone and online etiquette, vocal and visual cues in conversation, style, cultural conflicts, breaking maxims of conversation, and the future of conversation.