Conversation, New York's biggest cottage industry, doesn't exist in San Francisco in the sense of sustained discourse and friendly contentiousness. (Edmund White, States of Desire) 1 Take, for example, the following conversation. 2 F: How often does your acting group work? M: Do you mean how often we rehearse or how often we perform. J F:
I Both.
M: [Laughs uneasily.] F: Why are you laughing? M: Because of the way you said that. It was like a bullet. Is that why your marriage broke up? F: What? M: Because of your aggressiveness.
Of the many observations that could be made based on this interchange, I would like to focus on two: the general tendency to extrapolate personality from conversational style, and the specific attribution of aggressiveness to a speaker who uses fast pacing in conversation. In the discussion that follows, I will suggest that the stereotype of the 'pushy New York Jew' may result in part from discourse conventions practiced by some native New Yorkers of East European Jewish background. After examining some evidence for the existence of such a stereotype, I will (1) briefly present my notion of conversational style, (2) outline the linguistic and paralinguistic features that make up New York Jewish style and (3) demonstrate their use in cross-stylistic and co-stylistic interaction. In conclusion, I will (4) discuss the personal and social uses of conversational style.