Look: No Hands

“In every society one can contrast occasions and moments for silence and occasions and moments for talk. In our own, one can go on to say that by and large (and especially among the unacquainted) silence is the norm and talk something for which warrant must be present…In holding our tongue, we give evidence that such thought as we are giving to our own concerns is not presumed by us to be of any moment to the others present, and that the feelings these concerns invoke in ourselves are owed no sympathy. Without such enjoined modesty, there could be no public life, only a babble of childish adults pulling at one another’s sleeves for attention. The mother to whom we would be saying, ‘Look, no hands,’ could not look or reply for she would be saying ‘Look, no hands,’ to someone else.”

Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk