Reader's question: We're not interested in talking for talking's sake." Could you explain “talking for talking’s sake”?

My comments:

If you talk for talking’s sake, you just want to talk. That is, you do not really intend to get anything solved.

“Sake” is the word to grasp here. If politicians do something for the sake of something else, say, they talk about achieving world peace, then they very well might be accused of holding talks for the purpose of world peace.

World peace is a grand topic, isn’t it? Well, I picked that on purpose, thinking it’ll provide politicians another good opportunity to talk without getting anything done towards meeting that goal. After all, people talk of peace while waging wars, don’t they?

Anyways, bureaucrats talk. And they seem to be having a meeting all the time, too, sometimes giving the impression that they’re having a meeting just for the sake of if (having a meeting). Therefore, do not always expect anything meaningful to come out of it.

Related stories:

Middle Kingdom是哪國？

The devil you know…

Right out of the gate

Leap-frog

Up the ante

loose ends

Nose-bleed section

Off the rails

Keeping up with the Jones's

Benefits package

Closed-door talk

March Madness

On-again,off-again

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網(wǎng)立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發(fā)布一切違反國家現(xiàn)行法律法規(guī)的內(nèi)容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.