punctuative! by Matt Winn

The first time I heard the phrase “conversational currency” I was suitably located at the bar in the Harvard Club of New York City.  A good friend and I were catching up and enjoying each other’s stories. It was what I call “life talk,” sweeping conversation in which you get at core issues. The kind of conversation in which it’s okay to ask, “Are you happy?”

We both were, certain qualms and disclaimers notwithstanding. When you’re talking big, the small stuff melts away. And as we chatted, we landed on the subject of travel and my friend’s advice was to engage in it as actively as possible. Amongst the benefits, he said, was “conversational currency,” fodder for communication.

He’s right, of course.  But I found the phrase itself a nifty nugget which I pocketed and bring out from time to time. 

Sometimes, it slips into business discussion.  Seth Godin’s notion of a “purple cow” is, after all, a product that generates conversational currency.  It’s something to talk about and it markets itself.  An addition to the marketing lexicon.

Notably, the phrase hasn’t always held its current connotation (at the very least, was long ago bent in the case cited herein).  Google’s #2 result on the query is a 1914 New York Times piece which follows:

An annuity of $52,000 in weekly payments of $1,000; five $100 bills as a casual gift, frequent gifts of from $100 to $500; an advance of $8,000 to buy a motor car and the purchase of a second-hand one for $2,000 and no change returned. A bank deposit of $10,000, just pocket money, made by a kind friend, and no money to meet the first check drawn thereafter.

…this kind of extravagant talk about money is not confined nowadays to the evidence in breach of promise suits. It is heard on every hand. It stimulates the I. W. W. [Industrial Workers of the World, I believe] to new effort to gets its share. What the youngsters fresh from college expect to “earn” after a few months is more than their estimable grandfathers ever earned, more than men of renown in the learned professions ever hope to possess. We live in an age of big money, but it is largely conversational currency, and it is just as difficult to earn an honest living as it ever was. [emphasis mine]   

[source]

A much more literal interpretation: imaginary money bandied about in conversation.  I’m a fan of its more metaphorical usage.  The phrase itself, whilst rarely used offers its own fodder.  Use wisely.

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Photo credit: Shout, shout…, originally uploaded by hebedesign

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