by Andrew Purvis

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, people in America are thinking about getting together with family and catching up on all that has happened over the last year. They'll gather around the dinner table and eat meals of mashed potatoes, gravy, cranbery sauce, and, of course, turkey. Believe it or not, all of this talking and turkey has nothing to do with the phrase "let's talk turkey." In this edition of Talk the Talk we'll look at this saying and others associated with communicating. Heck, we'll even explain what "talk the talk" means!

The history of "talk turkey" is obscure, and there are quite a few stories out there that try to explain it, but probably none of them is entirely correct. If someone says he wants to "talk turkey," he means he wants to have a direct conversation about what really matters. The most popular story about how this phrase entered the English language centers on hunting in America during the nineteenth century. Supposedly, Americans would sometimes work with native (American Indian) hunting companions, and at the end of the day the two hunters would divide the birds they had killed. The American would take the turkeys and offer the Native American the other birds (various stories suggest that these were crows or buzzards). The Native Americans would sometimes complain that their hunting companions would always take the better birds but "never talk turkey" for the Native Americans." In other words, if the Americans had been fair-if they had "talked turkey"-they would have taken the other birds some of the time. As with many such stories, this probably has a grain of truth to it, but people added to it over time.

Americans love to talk. Look at our politicians. They make a lot of promises, and these promises tend to change depending on who they are speaking to. Of course, their opponents will often challenge them to "put their money where their mouth is." Or tell them, "You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?"With so much interest in talking, the English language (both American English and British English) is full of words to describe different kinds of talking.

When a group of friends get together, they may just chat, shoot the breeze, or have a bull session. If they don't like someone, they may start some gossip about that person by telling tales about his behavior. This is rumor-mongering at its worst, full of backbiting and hyperbole.

There are some people out there who just have the gift of gab. They will opine about any subject at any time; engage complete strangers in far-ranging debates; and comment, editorialize, expostulate, and yack until no one will listen.

Business meetings are full of times when someone with a new idea will run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Maybe management will kick it around for a while to see if it has any merit. Some people believe so strongly in their ideas that they sound as if they are preaching when they talk about them, and if they're lucky, they'll be preaching to the choir. Of course there are cases in which managers have listened to someone who shoots from the hip and gets it wrong, only to end up losing the company's money. Maybe the manager will only have words with the employee, but more likely he'll read him the riot act (and you bet he'll curse a few times in all of that).

There are so many other cases I would love to cover here, but I just don't have the space this week. Perhaps, if you email me some ideas, we can open a dialogue, engage in some give-and-take, and negotiate (without any double-talk, please) a future article.