Communication styles

[jay]

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.

Comments

accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

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

Re: accuracy and being liked

[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".

Re: accuracy and being liked

[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.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[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.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[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.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[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.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

*blink* That's not something that had occurred to me. Brevity is a way of asserting power?

What the heck's wrong with brevity?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Metamessages. If brevity truly contained only the base data, this would be a different thing.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Again we're at an impasse. Why would it contain anything other than the base data?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Depends on what your assumptions of minimum are.

If your assumption is that vision carries hue as well as tone and shape, then taking out hue is notable.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

True, but if you're a person who is unable to see hue, the insistence by everyone who *can* see it that it's really necessary is damned annoying, because you can get along fine without it, so it must not really be all that necessary.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you mean by "get along fine", doesn't it?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

What I mean by it is that words are enough to convey the meaning that needs to get across. When people conform to that, I get along fine.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Words are accepted as enough in a text medium.

Face to face interaction is very rarely going to be about just text. If that's what you want, I think you'd be better off feigning deafness to force people to interact with you on paper.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

What's the distinction between command voice and brevity?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

The way it's phrased. Command voice is "You do this," or "Do this." Brevity is "I need this."

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Ah, but there's the hidden "...so you get out of my way/provide this for me" vs. the "social grease" version which doesn't contain that (for people who speak that way).

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

And there's one of my big issues with metamessages. People have no business assuming I meant something that I didn't actually say.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Part of the trouble is in the definition of "say". You mean "didn't verbalize", and others mean "expressed", which encompasses more than that...

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

"Say" means "verbalize." It does not mean metamessages.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

What one says is more than the words spoken. Words are often ambiguous. Context and packaging serve to add meaning to the words, pick the right context and express the intended message.
Saying "fire" will be assumed to mean different things at work during layoffs, if an alarm bell is ringing, or at a target range. But those default assumptions *could* be wrong...

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

What one says is more than the words spoken.

No, it isn't. I will agree with you so far as context, but that's the extent of it. What I say is about WHAT I SAY, not how it's said.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

When someone else says "I need this," I will assume that they'd like me to provide it, but not that they consider me obligated to provide it. Hence, I won't take offense to the briefer version.

I often have the experience of feeling like people who object to my brevity are reading more into my words than ever crossed my mind. Again with the Thai food example - if I say "I want Thai food," I am NOT implying "and thus you must go along with my desires." It will be perfectly fine with me if you say "Well, I'm really not in the mood for Thai - how 'bout Mexican?" It will not be perfectly fine with me if you assume, "Geri will not accept anything other than Thai food now" and go along resentfully. Cause I didn't *say* that. In my world, "I want X" doesn't mean "And you are now obligated to provide it."

If Thai was the only thing acceptable to me, you'd hear "I am really craving Thai food now. Wanna come along?" If the person replied that they just weren't in the mood for Thai, and wanted Mexican, I'd say "How 'bout we do takeout then, from both places, and eat them together at home?"

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*nod*

This is where the style clash comes in. Some of us default to "don't phrase it assertively, because it will come across as a demand rather than a statement of preference".

"Hey, I'm hungry, what do you think of Thai?" or variants thereof to me speak of inviting dialogue. "I want Thai." comes across as not having space for response without it being disrespectful and contentious. I realize this isn't what's intended by someone whose culture expects everyone to make their own space, but it's taken a lot of work to get there.

Out of curiosity, what's your cultural background?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I often have the experience of feeling like people who object to my brevity are reading more into my words than ever crossed my mind.

Yes! This. Yes, yes, yes yes yes.