jay | Communication styles

I'm a US Southerner, both by nurture and preference in speech patterns. Communicating in Japan, even with few words, often feels more natural somehow than with New Yorkers... the flow and mutual consideration of the former seem intuitive, while the latter often seems brash and noisy and prone to attempts to dominate in conversation.

[minor deviation from current personal experiment]
On top of culture, growing up I was a low-status, weird geeky kid who was the butt of harassment and frequent physical violence from groups of other kids... I learned to try to get my message across conversationally while giving those around me as little excuse as possible to take offense. Anything perceived as assertive on my part would generate teasing and putdowns at best, getting beaten-up or stoned (hit with big rocks, not drugs) again at worst. So on top of the cultural norms, I learned to exceed them...
[end deviation]

So, in person, I'm generally coming from Pleasant, Believed, Understood, Remembered (PBUR) in all person-to-person communications. Understood is in a distant third place. I go to lengths to structure in-person conversation so to minimize the possibility of conflict, or at least to leave a face-saving way out for the other person(s). Maintaining the interpersonal relationship is far more important to me than the passing, temporal content of whatever I happen to be saying at the moment.

For me, speech stressing Understood is limited to lecturing others, as in teaching a class or giving a presentation. Other communication forms, particularly some impersonal, online forms, may also find me in a neutral balance.

Someone in a group using Understood will often come across to me as pushy or blunt, or as attempting to impose their preferences, running over everyone else's... often, I'll get wary or defensive when that form of speech is used. But I'll try to avoid conflict at my annoyance at their use of a direct, aggressive style, instead trying to smile and ignore or placate it.

Current Mood: contemplative

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

brian1789.livejournal.com

Interesting. While I've had to work to not automatically process a direct, Understood-oriented approach as aggressive, and indicating either overt hostility or an assertion of higher social status.

From:

griffen.livejournal.com

What's more important to you: being liked, or getting correct information? As I said to Danny and Joyce last night after my first response to this post, "I don't care if I'm believed as long as I'm understood. I don't care if I'm remembered as long as I'm believed. And as long as I'm remembered, I couldn't care fuck-all whether I'm liked or not."

I feel the same way about incoming communication. Someone being "pleasant" obscures the things about communication that are most important to me - it's more important, to me, to understand someone than to like them, and in fact I'll probably like them better if they make themselves very plainly understandable than if they try to be "nice" to me.

That's why it took me forever to trust Danny's mom. She's automatically Pleasant, and that's a huge turn-off for me in terms of relating to another person. I had to hold her at arm's length for a *long* time. If she'd been less Pleasant, it would not have taken me nearly as long to warm up to her.

From: (Anonymous)

Whereas I see "not Pleasant" as an indication of "not wanting to engage with me, dealing with me as if wearing rubber gloves", IOW dealing with me with disgust/disdain.

I *don't* see "Pleasant" as an indication of deep friendliness, however.

We're seeing "understandable" as being based on different things.

From:

griffen.livejournal.com

That we are. For the sake of Brian's LJ, I've reposted most of my comments as a post in my own LJ so that we don't take over his LJ with the ongoing noodle.

From:

brian1789.livejournal.com

To a first order, in conversation, being liked is more important to me than the accuracy of the information. There are exceptions to this, usually involving asking strangers for directions...

A second-order effect is that in the long term, intentionally inaccurate information will lead me to feel unsafe around that individual, so lying or persistent ignorance will eventually come to overshadow or poison otherwise-pleasant interactions.

From:

griffen.livejournal.com

For me, the two things are inseparable. Someone being inaccurate, intentionally or otherwise, will make me dislike them.

From:

trinker.livejournal.com

Er...I see it as "people can't help being inaccurate to some degree, even if they're trying for strict accuracy".

From:

griffen.livejournal.com

Unintentional inaccuracy is forgivable (usually). Intentional inaccuracy (shading the truth, telling white lies, misrepresenting facts) will get someone put on my sh*t list faster than anything else up to and including halitosis, body odor, farting in public, and gross eating habits.

From:

trinker.livejournal.com

Intentional rudeness bothers me possibly as much as being lied to. There's a difference, to me, between politeness and deliberate lies.

From:

griffen.livejournal.com

Most of what constitutes "politeness" is a form of lying. White lies, yes, intended to grease the skids, yes, but still lying. Therefore still inaccurate, and deliberately so, and thus suspicion-producing in me.

From:

trinker.livejournal.com

I think this is another place where your definition is creating issues.

"Excuse me" and "please" aren't untruths -- unless your truth is that you don't give a fuck about the other party, in which case, rude !== true, it's just rude.

For *most* people, stripping out the polite bits is a way of asserting power, and I find it unpleasant.