to avoid having to communicate

The fantastic Jana Perković wrote/tweeted this sometime ago:

If you listen carefully, you will notice that Australians primarily use language not for communication, but to avoid having to communicate. The Australian English, spoken and written, relies heavily on formulas and linguistic presets (“How’s it going?”, “Oh, not too bad. You?”) for much longer into any given conversation and into any given relationship than in other languages I know.

I have a sneaky suspicion that New Zealand English is pretty similar. It seems like much of my adult life has been looking for ways to fight such resistance to entering communication.

Jana Perković (she used to be on twitter as @relatively) is such an arresting writer and thinker (among other things). See this post on the theatre scene in Melbourne as she calls a hiatus from her own website and to a certain extent social media:

http://guerrillasemiotics.com/2017/06/on-hiatus

And here’s a link to Jana’s podcast series called Audio Stage:

http://guerrillasemiotics.com/category/format/podcast/

There are rich pickings in there.

And, finally, here she is on Matt Cornell’s Wombat Radio podcast:

Part 1: http://wombatradio.com.au/jana-perkovic-part-1/

Part 2: http://wombatradio.com.au/jana-perkovic-part-2/

Jana — if you are reading this –I’m a fan, and hello from Italy.