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

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

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Ah, but "say" includes "how you said", in addition to "the words you used".

I realize that dictionaries state that "say" means "utter", but in practical terms, if your nonverbals come across as contradicting your verbal expression, "that's (not) what I SAID!" will come across as lying, because "those aren't the words I used" is a weasel's dodge in the eyes of those who put weight on nonverbals.

I know that's upsetting to you, because you're not attempting to weasel, but you're getting caught under "walks like a duck". Dunno what to tell you other than "put in the explanatory verbiage". It's like having a certain sort of deafness -- people of good will will try to accomodate differing communication needs, but it's not likely to become standard anymore than the speed limit on highways will be set to the maximum speed of the lowest performing jalopy.

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

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Okay... then we have, I suppose, an agreement to mutually-misunderstand one another. As well as large parts of the rest of the world... whether or not you intend metamessages, metamessages will be read by others. If they're at cross-meanings with what you say, you will often be misunderstood. And trying to get millions of others to stop using them is unlikely to work. I can try to explicitly spell out context in words to compensate when others aren't reading me correctly, but it is an additional effort.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

When people read "metamessages" into things that I say, they are misinterpreting what I mean. And yet I'm supposed to put up with this and not agitate to get people to recognize that what I say is about words (and yes, grudgingly, context), and no more than that?

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Whether you *intend* to broadcast what people are receiving or not...it's going out. If you really were broadcasting null, rather than garbage, things would be different. I understand that it's frustrating to have incidental noise interpreted as signal, but you're not putting out the pure signal that you think you are. It *is* up to you to help contruct that filter.

You can't get "people" to recognize that, you can only get *individuals* to understand that.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Griffen, you are making a big assumption here: that people *can* stop reading metamessages into things. To the extent that NTs communicate using metamessages, and I think they do, a lot of us cannot "turn off" reading metamessages anymore than you can "turn on" reading them. Or, at least, not without specific knowledge that it is necessary. Someone who knows you will make a special effort to "turn off" metamessages, but someone who does not won't -- from a social safety context, they can't really afford to. And, personally, I find it a damned hard thing to do under any circumstances.

You may not like it, but going around telling NTs how dishonest or manipulative they are for behavior they can't really help anymore than you can help not reading metamessages is unfair.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

:(

I'm tired of being told I'm dishonest and sneaky and manipulative because I'm broadcasting information that I have no control over. After a while it makes me pretty damn defensive. I'm sorry.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I don't think you *are* being told that you're dishonest/sneaky/manipulative, but rather that you *come across* that way.

The way out of that is to frontload the filter, "I'm aware that it's hard for you to filter, but I really do only mean the things that are expressed by the words I choose, and everything else needs to be discarded."

Re: accuracy and being liked

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Okay. I can do that.

I guess the thing that causes the most frustration is, I can't *make* people accept that filter. I can only say it needs to be there.

Re: accuracy and being liked

[trinker.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't want people to be able to compel you in the other direction, either. So it's an equal and opposite thing.

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.