A WOMAN asked another woman in her office if she would
like to have lunch. The colleague said no, she was sorry, she had
a report to finish. The woman repeated the invitation the next
week. Again her colleague declined, saying she had not been feeling
well.
The first woman was confused. So she asked her colleague what
her refusals meant: Was she really just busy one week and ailing
the
next, or was she trying to say she simply didn't want to have lunch,
so stop asking? The response only confused her more: "Well,
um, sure, y' know, I really haven't been feeling well and last week
really was difficult with that report which, by the way, was about
a very interesting case. It was. . . ."
The woman was frustrated. She couldn't understand why her colleague
didn't just say what she meant. But the other woman was frustrated
too. She couldn't understand why she was being pushed to say no directly,
when she had made perfectly clear that she was not interested in
pursuing a friendship.
One woman was expecting directness; to her, indirectness is dishonest.
The other was expecting her indirectness to be understood; to her,
directness is rude, and being direct would mean being a sort of person
that she finds unappealing. Both felt that their own ways of talking
were obviously right. Neither realized that both systems can be right
or wrong; each works well with other people who operate on the same
system, and both fail with people who do not. They instinctively
tried to dispel the tension by doing more of the same. Neither thought
of adopting the other's system.
Many Americans believe that the only purpose of language is to
convey information and that information should be stated outright.
But there
are many reasons why meaning should not be stated outright, why indirectness
is useful and even necessary.
The study of indirectness and other politeness phenomena has received
increasing attention in linguistic scholarship. This is a drastic
departure from the trend dominant in linguistics in recent decades:
formal representation of language not as it is used but as an abstract
system. A linguist working in the latter tradition would be concerned
with whether a given sentence is grammatical, regardless of whether
it might actually be spoken by anyone, let alone how frequently it
might be spoken. For linguists concerned with language as it is used
in everyday life, sentences that are actually spoken -- and often
spoken -- are the ones of interest, not those that are theoretically
possible but never encountered.
Keeping One's Verbal Distance
Using language to communicate requires balancing two conflicting
needs: to be involved with others and to be independent. This duality
has been identified by scholars in many fields. Psychologists write
of the urge to merge and the urge to independence, and of the complementaryfears
of separation and intimacy. Sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote of positive
and negative religious rituals (such as prayers and taboos). Later,
sociologist Erving Goffman showed that daily life is also a compendium
of should-do presentational rituals (greet people, ask after someone's
health and family, show concern, and show interest) and should-not-do
avoidance rituals (invade another's personal terrain, ask nosy questions,
touch too much, remark on embarrassing conditions).
Anthropologist Thomas Kochman, author of "Black and White
Styles in Conflict," speaks of the rights of feelings (for
example, the right to laugh loudly at a play, talk loudly in public
or blast
a radio) as compared to the rights of sensibilities (the right not
to be disturbed by someone else's laughter, talking or radio).
Linguist Robin Lakoff, author of "Language and Woman's Place," suggests
that in deciding what to say and how to say it, people apply different
rules of politeness. A distant or deferent style of politeness applies
the rules "Don't impose" and "Give options." A
camaraderie style of politeness applies the rule "Be friendly." For
example, in answer to an offer "Would you like to stay for lunch?" a
distant response would be, "No, thank you, I just ate." A
deferent response would be, "I don't want to put you to any
trouble." And a camaraderie-motivated response would be, "Thank
you, I'd love to." An even stronger dose of camaraderie might
entail volunteering, "I'm starving! Have you got anything to
eat for lunch?"
Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, an anthropologist and a
linguist, use the terms positive politeness (for showing involvement)
and negative
politeness (for not imposing).
All of these systems for understanding human behavior reflect
the universal human needs to be involved with each other and
yet not
to become engulfed or overwhelmed by involvement. Indirectness
is a universal device for expressing ideas, opinions and desires
--
that is, showing involvement -- in a way that does not impose
on or offend others.
Furthermore, there is pleasure in being understood without stating
explicity what one means. Everyone wants to get an appropriate
birthday gift. But few come out and say what they want, because
that would
defeat its purpose: to show that the giver knows one well enough
to choose an appropriate gift and cares enough to spend time
getting it.
Differences in directness are a major source of confusion and
dissatisfaction in communication. At weekly staff meetings,
the director of a counseling
agency never issued peremptory orders; decisions were reached
after all staff members had expressed their opinions. Yet
more often
than not, the decisions reached were those the director thought
best.
One staff psychologist thought the director manipulative;
if she knew what she thought best, she should just tell them
so
directly.
But others appreciated the chance to express their opinions.
They felt they had been part of the decision-making process,
and if
they happened to decide on a course the director preferred,
they did so
with an understanding of her reasons.
A real-estate appraiser complained to a colleague about a client
who had called to say that she was leaving for vacation. His colleague
knew immediately why the client had called: She was letting him
know, indirectly, that she was impatient to receive her appraisal.
The vacation provided an excuse to remind him.
The appraiser did not understand the indirect approach and didn't
realize that the client wanted reassurance that her appraisal would
be ready by the time she returned. He preferred the client who
called and said, "Where the hell is my appraisal?" On
the other hand, his less-direct colleague would have been shaken
by such a call -- perceiving it not as direct but as nasty -- and
therefore could not have assured the client that all was well.
A Greek woman explained that when she was growing up, she had
to ask her father's permission for everything. If she asked if
she
could go to a dance and he said, "If you want, you can go," she
knew that she should not go. If he really thought it was a good
idea, he would say, "Yes. That's a good idea. Go." He
never said no. But she understood by the way he said yes whether
or not he meant it.
This sounds to many Americans like hyprocrisy: He got her to do
what he wanted without stating it directly. But indirectness could
have advantages for both of them. The father could feel that his
daughter did the proper thing of her own free will rather than
simply obeying. The daughter could feel that she was choosing to
please her father rather than following orders. And if she did
go against his wishes, they would both save face: He did not go
on record as forbidding her, so her going would not be openly defiant.
"
Hypocrisy!" "Dishonesty!"
The indirect system causes misunderstandings when it is not shared.
If an American cousin who spoke Greek visited the family, she
might take her uncle's hedged approval literally. Then, if she
went to
the party, he would be angry at her for going and she would be
angry at him for his inconsistency. An indirect message is crystal
clear to those who know the system but opaque to those who don't.
American businessmen have similar problems communicating with
their Japanese counterparts.An American journalist at a trade
fair in
Japan asked if he could see a particular robot. His Japanese
host answered, "That might be possible." To the American,
this meant "yes," so he later insisted that he had
been told he could see the robot. To the Japanese, "No" is
too face-threatening to be used. "Maybe" means "no," and
only an unqualified "yes" means "yes." The
Japanese host felt he had made his refusal clear and could not
understand the American's dishonesty in claiming to have been
misled.
Since all speakers tend to take their own system of communication
as self-evident, talking with someone who operates on a different
system frequently results in mutual accusations of dishonesty
(not meaning what was obviously said) and hypocrisy (not saying
what
was obviously meant.
Many misunderstandings are caused by unstated assumptions. For
example, a telephone conversation made less and less sense until
it emerged that one party assumed erroneously that the other
was calling from home. The confusion could have been prevented
by the
caller stating where he was. But it would be absurd for all callers
to begin by announcing their location. Every utterance is based
on innumerable assumptions that cause problems only when they
are not shared, and no one can predict which of all their assumptions
will turn out not to be shared.
Understanding how language is used is the focus of two sub-fields
of linguistics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. Analyzing
language as it is used in communication immediately points up
the pervasiveness and necessity of indirectness. Among the many
reasons:
Deciding to tell the truth leaves open the question of which aspects
of the truth to tell. For example, everyone resents being told
the obvious; it seems to imply criticism or condescension. However,
what is obvious to one person is not obvious to another; it may
even be unimagined.
Social requirements are real: Stating the truth in no uncertain
terms may hurt the feelings of others. For example, a woman
called a friend and backed out of a dinner engagement, saying she
was
tired. The friend did not doubt that this was true; but she
was hurt because simply being tired was so slight a reason to let
her
down that it implied small regard for the friendship. Had
the caller invented a better excuse, such as having gotten ill,
she would
have accomplished her goal without implying carelessness
about the friendship.
A difference of opinion stated directly is more difficult to rescind
than one that has only been hinted. In fact, one may not
be sure what one wants or thinks until one has a sense of what the other
wants or thinks. This need not be seen as lack of conviction.
It may simply be that one has a slight but not a strong preference.
Conversational style -- including joking, irony and figures
of speech -- is a basic part of language and provides creativity,
pleasure and the basis for a sense of community and shared
style.
Stylized language is open to misunderstanding because
it does not state meaning directly, but being explicit would defeat
the social
purpose of language and rob individuals of the means
to express their personalities.
Language as We Live It
Ignoring the social and psychological functions of language
is at the heart of most demands for directness, and also
of those
scholarly approaches which treat language solely as a
grammatical system. Neurologist and essayist Oliver Sacks,
author of "The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," wrote a recent
article in The New York Review of Books about Tourette's,
a neurological
syndrome that causes multiple convulsive tics. Sacks
noted that advances in modern medicine have resulted
in "a real gain
of knowledge but a real loss of understanding" because
neuroanatomy "became
compartmentalize . . . seeing the motor, the intellectual
and the affective in quite separate and noncommunicating
compartments of
the brain." The results were "efforts. . .
to 'physicalize' or 'mentalize' [the syndrome], to make
it one or the other, when
it is so manifestly both. . . . By the turn of the century
a split had occurred, into a soulless neurology and a
bodiless psychology,
and with this any full understanding of Tourette's disappeared.
. . . What Tourette's is really like -- this has been
forgotten, and we can only recapture it if we listen
minutely to our patients,
and observe them, everything about them, with a comprehensive
eye."
The developments in linguistics discussed here parallel
Sacks' account of neuroanatomy. The compartmentalization
he describes
is analogous to modern linguistics' separation of language
into autonomous parts: phonology (the sounds), morphology
(the bits
that make up words) and syntax (the sequence in which
words are strung together in sentences).The field of
sociolinguistics
arose
to bridge the gap between a sociology that ignored the
structure of langauge and a structural linguistics that
ignored the
social and psychological forces at play when people use
language.
Sacks' concern with describing "what Tourette's is really
like" parallels the concern of many in linguistics
today with describing what language "is really like" --
not only as a grammatical system, but also as a part
of people's lives.
Even the method he recommends -- listening minutely to
how people talk, making use of videotaping and slow motion
playback -- parallels
methods being used by linguists trying to understand
the "full
character, connection and meaning" of language.
Sacks calls for "a neurology of living experience." The
approach to linguistics I have been describing amounts
to a "linguistics
of living language," reflecting the reality of our
experience using language: That we often can't say what
we mean.
Clarity vs. Color
ONE DANGER of indirectness is lack of understanding.
An indirect person may assume that meaning is clear when
it
is not.
One person said to another, "What kind of salad dressing
should I make?" The other answered, "Oil and vinegar,
what else?" This
was meant ironically: "Oh, you know me. I'm unimaginative.
I always make oil and vinegar. So don't pay attention
to me. Make whatever you like."
In this case, the irony was missed. "Oil and vinegar, what
else?" was heard as a demand. And furthermore, it
sounded like an implied criticism: "You should have
known."
But while irony is always open to misunderstanding, banishing
it and other forms of indirectness would rob speech
of most of its
creativity, character and expressive potential.
Deborah Tannen is professor of linguistics
at Georgetown University.
When You Shouldn't Tell It Like It Is" By
Deborah Tannen, The
Washington Post, March 1, 1987, copyright Deborah Tannen. Reproduced
by permission.
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