I've been thinking about lying recently, for several reasons. First is because of accusations of lying that I see flying back and forth between people of different political persuasions. Second is because I'm writing a story entitled, "The Liars." Third is because I have children.
You might think that since I say I have children, I would be saying that they lie. Not so. Instead, what they do is they make me question how lying is defined in the first place.
Consider the following situations. What do you think of them? Are these people lying?
1. A person testifies before congress and says that a study defined nuclear families as having one mother and one father when this was not in fact the definition used by the study.
2. A person hears a loved one tell a story of an injury, and proceeds to tell another story about a nearly identical injury she herself sustained, but for which there is no evidence.
3. A person tells a group of curious but unwary outsiders a lengthy story about how he used to ride to school on a kangaroo, including details of what the kangaroo ate, what kind of saddle it wore, etc.
Okay, so let's go through. As I see it, there are two possibilities for the person in situation 1. Either he was lying, or he was in error (possibly as a result of insufficient research). The difference between the two, to my mind, would be whether this person had indeed read the real definition and then decided intentionally to disregard it.
There are also two possibilities for the person in situation 2. Either she is lying to take attention away from the injured person, or she is expressing empathy for the injured person by imagining herself in a similar situation. The difference between the two, to my mind, would be whether the person is maliciously inclined toward the injured person or not.
Just as in the first two situations, there are two possible interpretations for situation 3. Either the storyteller is lying to deceive a group of people as a result of their ignorance, or he is playfully telling a joke and trying to engage their skepticism and enjoyment of hyperbole/sarcasm as well as their curiosity. The difference between the two is whether he intended to fool or belittle the listeners.
I know from personal experience that the people in situations 2 and 3 were not lying (because I know them). I don't know anything about the person in situation 1 except that many people believe he was lying. In all three cases, the situation is ambiguous, not because of any question of factual accuracy (all three cases involve factual inaccuracy!), but because of the implication of intent.
If the inaccurate statement is made with malicious (or selfish) intent, then it is a lie.
Of course, factual accuracy (or inaccuracy) is much easier to judge than malicious intent. In the case of situation 3, the intent of the storyteller was playful, but the culture of the listeners didn't actually allow for this as a possible interpretation, and therefore they thought the speaker was lying (inexplicably!) and the speaker had to explain to them that the whole thing was a joke. And then of course there are "white lies" which people don't seem to mind so much, which are told with explicitly benevolent intent... and there are lies which are told because they are required for reasons of politeness... [See my other article about this, Honesty and Politeness]
I find this an incredibly rich source of ideas for stories. There are plenty of situations when an error or omission by one party can be interpreted as deliberately malicious by the other. Cultural differences only exacerbate these situations. Have you ever been in an ambiguous lying situation? Have you ever seen someone accused of lying when they didn't deserve it? Was the factual accuracy at issue, or the intent behind it?
It's something to think about.
Showing posts with label politeness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politeness. Show all posts
Monday, August 8, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Gender in job ads, and subconscious bias in language
You don't know what you are saying.
Sure, you think you know. You've chosen the content of what you want to say. You're thinking about what linguists call the "propositional content," or the "message" of what is being said. The fact is, though, that you're saying so much more. The complexity of language carries all kinds of information about social alignment, and the individual's stance in relation to social groups and in relation to larger discourses in society (other times the same topic has been referenced).
Yesterday I ran across this link through @geardrops on Twitter. I was fascinated, but not at all surprised, given my background in linguistic anthropology. The article talks about a study in which it was demonstrated that job postings contain language that is "gendered," or biased toward either a female or male expectation - and that potential applicants can feel this when they read the postings, and gravitate toward the ones that match their gender. Wow, right? Interesting. Within three minutes of having picked up this link, I ended up in an argument about whether we had left behind bias in the workplace, and whether a person could be considered sexist for writing an ad in this way, and whether or not "gendered" language was just something made up by academics that had no basis in reality. Geardrops' conclusion, which I loved, was this:
"Hey guess what language bias exists and is subtle."
That's right. The social messages in language are not just subtle, they are subconsicous. So let's look at what that means for a second, starting with the question of politeness.
If you ask someone, "You need to ask your professor for a pen. What do you say?" that person will give you an answer, but chances are it won't be exactly what that person would say if you recorded them in the situation. It will be - and this is important - what they think they ought to say. This is a trend backed up by all kinds of politeness research: live recordings will get you different results from what people say they do. In fact, I found precisely this in my own research. When I studied polite and casual forms in Japanese, I asked three teachers how much of each type they thought they were using in the classroom, and each one said they used formal forms most of the time. When I went in, took a videotape, transcribed and counted these forms, it turned out that they were using formal forms 35% of the time.
I'm sure you can see the difference.
The propositional content of what you say is consciously chosen. But for the most part, the manner in which you say it, and the social messages conveyed, are outside of your conscious control.
Can we say that there is "fault" involved, or accuse a person of being sexist, because of what they express in a subconscious manner?
Well, yes and no.
I often imagine language use within a culture as an enormous piece of fabric. Each person's contribution is a tiny thread within that fabric. The color of the fabric varies depending on which part you look at, but each thread will tend to be roughly the same color as the ones around it. We don't speak in a vacuum. The patterns of speech and expression that we use are learned from those around us, and the more closely our color matches the surrounding pattern, the more likely everything is to appear normal. Sexism, racism, and any other -ism that you might care to identify are mostly built into the fabric. If you're a member of an insider group, chances are pretty good that the language use patterns that show bias will be difficult to see. It's the whole "by saying mankind I mean all people" thing. The distinct color of the thread containing the word "man" will be more easily recognized by someone who doesn't match it - i.e. a woman.
I think it's more effective to talk about "gendered language" than "sexist language" because the latter implies intent. Intent is a tricky thing. In our society these days "bias" itself is seen as being wrong - which is I think a good thing - but what it means is that people can get attacked for subconsciously engaging in the fabric of the discourse around them. Should they be blamed? Probably not. Engaged with, probably yes. Every time we question biased language we're acting on the front lines of societal change. Increasing our consciousness of these mostly-invisible markers is the way to get people to notice biases they don't mean to convey, and act to change them.
Here's an important point, though. Social language is not a plus-or-minus proposition. You can go one direction or another on the road, but you're still on the road. We will always, always mark our social position, our posture, relative to others. We will always express our membership in social groups. We will strive to distinguish ourselves from groups that we don't want to be a part of by emphasizing our membership in other groups. I don't see "gendered language" ever going away; I do, however, see it changing.
Language is something that reinforces itself, and at the same time changes itself, every time that it is used.
So to be a positive force for cultural change in the world, think about increasing consciousness - your own as well as that of others. Go easy on yourself - be aware that you yourself are constantly enacting culture and social alignment without thinking, and you won't be able just to "stop." Don't blame yourself terribly if you find yourself doing something you don't want to do - just think through it and try to exert your conscious will to change it. Be willing to engage with others. Be willing to question yourself.
And next time you're looking for a job, be aware of gendered language. Be aware, too, that the person who wrote the ad probably didn't try to exclude anyone. Choose not to let that shut you down.
Change takes time, but it's worth the effort.
Sure, you think you know. You've chosen the content of what you want to say. You're thinking about what linguists call the "propositional content," or the "message" of what is being said. The fact is, though, that you're saying so much more. The complexity of language carries all kinds of information about social alignment, and the individual's stance in relation to social groups and in relation to larger discourses in society (other times the same topic has been referenced).
Yesterday I ran across this link through @geardrops on Twitter. I was fascinated, but not at all surprised, given my background in linguistic anthropology. The article talks about a study in which it was demonstrated that job postings contain language that is "gendered," or biased toward either a female or male expectation - and that potential applicants can feel this when they read the postings, and gravitate toward the ones that match their gender. Wow, right? Interesting. Within three minutes of having picked up this link, I ended up in an argument about whether we had left behind bias in the workplace, and whether a person could be considered sexist for writing an ad in this way, and whether or not "gendered" language was just something made up by academics that had no basis in reality. Geardrops' conclusion, which I loved, was this:
"Hey guess what language bias exists and is subtle."
That's right. The social messages in language are not just subtle, they are subconsicous. So let's look at what that means for a second, starting with the question of politeness.
If you ask someone, "You need to ask your professor for a pen. What do you say?" that person will give you an answer, but chances are it won't be exactly what that person would say if you recorded them in the situation. It will be - and this is important - what they think they ought to say. This is a trend backed up by all kinds of politeness research: live recordings will get you different results from what people say they do. In fact, I found precisely this in my own research. When I studied polite and casual forms in Japanese, I asked three teachers how much of each type they thought they were using in the classroom, and each one said they used formal forms most of the time. When I went in, took a videotape, transcribed and counted these forms, it turned out that they were using formal forms 35% of the time.
I'm sure you can see the difference.
The propositional content of what you say is consciously chosen. But for the most part, the manner in which you say it, and the social messages conveyed, are outside of your conscious control.
Can we say that there is "fault" involved, or accuse a person of being sexist, because of what they express in a subconscious manner?
Well, yes and no.
I often imagine language use within a culture as an enormous piece of fabric. Each person's contribution is a tiny thread within that fabric. The color of the fabric varies depending on which part you look at, but each thread will tend to be roughly the same color as the ones around it. We don't speak in a vacuum. The patterns of speech and expression that we use are learned from those around us, and the more closely our color matches the surrounding pattern, the more likely everything is to appear normal. Sexism, racism, and any other -ism that you might care to identify are mostly built into the fabric. If you're a member of an insider group, chances are pretty good that the language use patterns that show bias will be difficult to see. It's the whole "by saying mankind I mean all people" thing. The distinct color of the thread containing the word "man" will be more easily recognized by someone who doesn't match it - i.e. a woman.
I think it's more effective to talk about "gendered language" than "sexist language" because the latter implies intent. Intent is a tricky thing. In our society these days "bias" itself is seen as being wrong - which is I think a good thing - but what it means is that people can get attacked for subconsciously engaging in the fabric of the discourse around them. Should they be blamed? Probably not. Engaged with, probably yes. Every time we question biased language we're acting on the front lines of societal change. Increasing our consciousness of these mostly-invisible markers is the way to get people to notice biases they don't mean to convey, and act to change them.
Here's an important point, though. Social language is not a plus-or-minus proposition. You can go one direction or another on the road, but you're still on the road. We will always, always mark our social position, our posture, relative to others. We will always express our membership in social groups. We will strive to distinguish ourselves from groups that we don't want to be a part of by emphasizing our membership in other groups. I don't see "gendered language" ever going away; I do, however, see it changing.
Language is something that reinforces itself, and at the same time changes itself, every time that it is used.
So to be a positive force for cultural change in the world, think about increasing consciousness - your own as well as that of others. Go easy on yourself - be aware that you yourself are constantly enacting culture and social alignment without thinking, and you won't be able just to "stop." Don't blame yourself terribly if you find yourself doing something you don't want to do - just think through it and try to exert your conscious will to change it. Be willing to engage with others. Be willing to question yourself.
And next time you're looking for a job, be aware of gendered language. Be aware, too, that the person who wrote the ad probably didn't try to exclude anyone. Choose not to let that shut you down.
Change takes time, but it's worth the effort.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
TTYU Retro: Honesty and Politeness
I'm going to begin this post with a hypothetical situation:
You're at High Tea at a nice tea shop with friends and family. Everyone is enjoying eating scones, and giggling about drinking with pinkies raised, etc. The tea sandwiches come out, and someone recommends the cucumber triangles to you. You take one bite and really don't like the sandwich. What do you do?
Okay, I will allow for the assumption that you're not going to break your "tea character," fling the sandwich to the floor and stomp on it before storming out of the place, never to return. But what do you do when you don't want anyone ever to give you another cucumber tea sandwich?
a. Don't say anything, and put the sandwich back on the plate with a bite taken out of it.
b. Don't say anything, and leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
c. Say, "That's good," but leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
d. Say, "I don't like it."
e. Say, "I'm sorry, but I don't like it."
f. Say, "I'm sorry, but it's not my favorite."
g. Say, "I liked the chicken salad sandwich better."
h. Say, "May I try the mushroom turnover instead?"
There are possible complications to each of these options, if (as you may have guessed) you're one of my kids at the table in this situation. Option a will probably get you yelled at. Option b won't get you yelled at, but it's also possible that no one will notice how much you dislike it, or that Mom will conclude you were full and didn't want anything else. Option c, in my family at least, is considered a lie, and even if you don't get called for dishonesty, you'll probably get asked why you didn't eat it if you actually liked it.
Option d was the one my daughter chose (she was 4 when this happened). Option e was the one my son chose (he was 6). At the time I accepted these without comment and got them different food, but I did wince a little internally. Mind you, we weren't eating High Tea with the queen, but my impolite radar did go off.
On the way home, I tried to think about how to deal with similar situations in the future. This involved running some more options through my head.
Option f is a fancier version of option e. My sense of this one is that it might work, but it still expresses a negative opinion that might be hurtful to someone's feelings (the cook's?). So I kept thinking until I came up with options g and h. The first of these is more direct, since it provides a comparison with something that you like better. The second leaves the disliking incident entirely behind and focuses on a future, and (we hope) better, outcome.
If you've ever lived through a situation resembling this, then you may notice the way that politeness and honesty appear to be at odds a lot of the time. This is true across every culture that I've encountered personally, and is in fact an enormous resource for me of situations that cause misunderstanding and friction.
Which makes you more of a bad person - to be a social disgrace, or to be a liar?
I have a real aversion to dishonesty. To me this means not that I must say precisely what I mean on every topic, but that I should not say what I do not mean - a different kind of criterion in its practical application. Of all the options I outlined above, only option c involves actual dishonesty from my point of view. This aversion of mine has gotten me into social trouble before, particularly when I was living in Japan - a very instructive experience.
I've discussed H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle before on this blog. Politeness is one of the things that we study in the linguistic discipline of Pragmatics. It's relevant here because avoiding the topic of one's dislike completely, and yet talking about something else that one would like to eat, depends for its understanding on the cooperative assumption that one will not say untrue things, and that one will not say less than one needs to. Obviously if I mention that I want something else to eat, that implies that I needed to say that (for some reason) and thus the astute listener can conclude that the reason is a dislike of cucumber sandwiches.
I always find it fascinating how strong our gut reactions are to perceived impoliteness. Funny as it may sound to a child learning it, I really am much happier to comply with a request that is made politely. It's easy for bad syntax, morphology, phonology, or semantics to be interpreted as the mistake of a language learner, but make a mistake of politeness and you're suddenly no longer just making a learner's mistake - you're a bad person. Students of the Japanese language struggle with this all the time, particularly since in Japanese you can't really say anything at all without putting some kind of politeness marker on it - but it's not restricted to Japanese. It happens in English all the time.
One of the places I see it happening a lot is on online forums, where there aren't a lot of external social cues to help people judge one another's verbal behavior. It's hard to know, in a lot of cases. Where is the fine line between politeness and plain dishonesty? Where is the line between honesty and incitement to flame war? I'm not going to say there's one real answer, because there isn't one - online, there isn't even a single culture to establish the rules of behavior. Most "communities" form their own through habit rather than through a written manifesto.
We all live, speak and act on this borderline, every day. It's a fascinating source of stories for me - and something I'd encourage writers to think about.
You're at High Tea at a nice tea shop with friends and family. Everyone is enjoying eating scones, and giggling about drinking with pinkies raised, etc. The tea sandwiches come out, and someone recommends the cucumber triangles to you. You take one bite and really don't like the sandwich. What do you do?
Okay, I will allow for the assumption that you're not going to break your "tea character," fling the sandwich to the floor and stomp on it before storming out of the place, never to return. But what do you do when you don't want anyone ever to give you another cucumber tea sandwich?
a. Don't say anything, and put the sandwich back on the plate with a bite taken out of it.
b. Don't say anything, and leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
c. Say, "That's good," but leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
d. Say, "I don't like it."
e. Say, "I'm sorry, but I don't like it."
f. Say, "I'm sorry, but it's not my favorite."
g. Say, "I liked the chicken salad sandwich better."
h. Say, "May I try the mushroom turnover instead?"
There are possible complications to each of these options, if (as you may have guessed) you're one of my kids at the table in this situation. Option a will probably get you yelled at. Option b won't get you yelled at, but it's also possible that no one will notice how much you dislike it, or that Mom will conclude you were full and didn't want anything else. Option c, in my family at least, is considered a lie, and even if you don't get called for dishonesty, you'll probably get asked why you didn't eat it if you actually liked it.
Option d was the one my daughter chose (she was 4 when this happened). Option e was the one my son chose (he was 6). At the time I accepted these without comment and got them different food, but I did wince a little internally. Mind you, we weren't eating High Tea with the queen, but my impolite radar did go off.
On the way home, I tried to think about how to deal with similar situations in the future. This involved running some more options through my head.
Option f is a fancier version of option e. My sense of this one is that it might work, but it still expresses a negative opinion that might be hurtful to someone's feelings (the cook's?). So I kept thinking until I came up with options g and h. The first of these is more direct, since it provides a comparison with something that you like better. The second leaves the disliking incident entirely behind and focuses on a future, and (we hope) better, outcome.
If you've ever lived through a situation resembling this, then you may notice the way that politeness and honesty appear to be at odds a lot of the time. This is true across every culture that I've encountered personally, and is in fact an enormous resource for me of situations that cause misunderstanding and friction.
Which makes you more of a bad person - to be a social disgrace, or to be a liar?
I have a real aversion to dishonesty. To me this means not that I must say precisely what I mean on every topic, but that I should not say what I do not mean - a different kind of criterion in its practical application. Of all the options I outlined above, only option c involves actual dishonesty from my point of view. This aversion of mine has gotten me into social trouble before, particularly when I was living in Japan - a very instructive experience.
I've discussed H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle before on this blog. Politeness is one of the things that we study in the linguistic discipline of Pragmatics. It's relevant here because avoiding the topic of one's dislike completely, and yet talking about something else that one would like to eat, depends for its understanding on the cooperative assumption that one will not say untrue things, and that one will not say less than one needs to. Obviously if I mention that I want something else to eat, that implies that I needed to say that (for some reason) and thus the astute listener can conclude that the reason is a dislike of cucumber sandwiches.
I always find it fascinating how strong our gut reactions are to perceived impoliteness. Funny as it may sound to a child learning it, I really am much happier to comply with a request that is made politely. It's easy for bad syntax, morphology, phonology, or semantics to be interpreted as the mistake of a language learner, but make a mistake of politeness and you're suddenly no longer just making a learner's mistake - you're a bad person. Students of the Japanese language struggle with this all the time, particularly since in Japanese you can't really say anything at all without putting some kind of politeness marker on it - but it's not restricted to Japanese. It happens in English all the time.
One of the places I see it happening a lot is on online forums, where there aren't a lot of external social cues to help people judge one another's verbal behavior. It's hard to know, in a lot of cases. Where is the fine line between politeness and plain dishonesty? Where is the line between honesty and incitement to flame war? I'm not going to say there's one real answer, because there isn't one - online, there isn't even a single culture to establish the rules of behavior. Most "communities" form their own through habit rather than through a written manifesto.
We all live, speak and act on this borderline, every day. It's a fascinating source of stories for me - and something I'd encourage writers to think about.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Intimacy and Invasion
There's a fine line between intimacy and invasion.
Closeness is desirable and yet terrifying. I'm sure you can think of an example from your own life where just when you were starting to get close to someone they panicked and backed off. If the wrong person tries to get close to you, don't you feel that panic and revulsion?
To me, this is one of the richest sources of story conflict imaginable. In "Cold Words" (Analog Oct. 2009), my character Rulii said about his friend Parker,
"I do not know to love or cringe, that a foreign creature can nudge me so close."
Another classic example of the same thing is the relationship between Genly Ai and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven in Ursula K. LeGuin's book The Left Hand of Darkness. Two individuals who are fundamentally incompatible for intimacy find themselves thrust into an intimate situation. The conflict - the tension - it's incredible! And it even demonstrates what I was saying about intimacy, invasion and retreat, because when the two attempt to speak through telepathy, Estraven discovers that Genly's mental voice sounds like the voice of his dead brother, and asks him not to try to speak to him that way again.
You could argue that the way that the "Ewu children" are treated in Nnedi Okorafor's new book Who Fears Death (DAW 2010) is related to this intimacy/invasion borderline. These children are born of unions - either willing or unwilling - between two races, one of which is trying to eliminate the other through genocide. The Ewu children, as evidence of intimacy between people who are "supposed" to be separate, engender extreme reactions of revulsion, disgust, contempt, and even violence.
If you've ever wondered about the draw of romance novels, I think it has a lot to do with the fascination of intimacy. Intimacy is the goal - revulsion and the fear of invasion are the risks. It's a conflict that speaks deeply to all of us, even though it's not necessarily always about love or sex. Rulii has lost the support of his family because of personal choices, and is desperately lonely, but afraid to pursue the brotherly intimacy he has begun to feel with the human linguist, Parker. There are opportunities too to play with intimacy/invasion conflict in the mentoring relationship that is so common in stories. Obi-wan acts like Luke's father, but who is his real father? And who does Luke get angry with when he finds out? Harry longs for his lost parents and wants to get closer to Dumbledore, but struggles when Dumbledore pushes him away for his own protection... Look also at all the buddy movies out there, and how the guys try to prove their worthiness to each other without getting too close. I'm sure there are many many more examples.
If you're writing a story, look around for possible intimacy/invasion conflicts. One might be at the center of your story, as with my novel in progress For Love, For Power. Or there might be a minor character in your story, perhaps a confidant or guide to the protagonist, who could take on additional dimension if you can explore the relationship and find where the intimacy/invasion borderline lies between them. It could be as simple as styles of politeness, where one group of people expresses alignment by honoring the autonomy of others, and another group expresses alignment by using expressions of intimacy with them (oh, the possibilities for offense!).
The borderline between intimacy and invasion is a powerful ally to any writer who wants to intensify conflict in a story and increase the engagement of readers.
It's something to think about.
Closeness is desirable and yet terrifying. I'm sure you can think of an example from your own life where just when you were starting to get close to someone they panicked and backed off. If the wrong person tries to get close to you, don't you feel that panic and revulsion?
To me, this is one of the richest sources of story conflict imaginable. In "Cold Words" (Analog Oct. 2009), my character Rulii said about his friend Parker,
"I do not know to love or cringe, that a foreign creature can nudge me so close."
Another classic example of the same thing is the relationship between Genly Ai and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven in Ursula K. LeGuin's book The Left Hand of Darkness. Two individuals who are fundamentally incompatible for intimacy find themselves thrust into an intimate situation. The conflict - the tension - it's incredible! And it even demonstrates what I was saying about intimacy, invasion and retreat, because when the two attempt to speak through telepathy, Estraven discovers that Genly's mental voice sounds like the voice of his dead brother, and asks him not to try to speak to him that way again.
You could argue that the way that the "Ewu children" are treated in Nnedi Okorafor's new book Who Fears Death (DAW 2010) is related to this intimacy/invasion borderline. These children are born of unions - either willing or unwilling - between two races, one of which is trying to eliminate the other through genocide. The Ewu children, as evidence of intimacy between people who are "supposed" to be separate, engender extreme reactions of revulsion, disgust, contempt, and even violence.
If you've ever wondered about the draw of romance novels, I think it has a lot to do with the fascination of intimacy. Intimacy is the goal - revulsion and the fear of invasion are the risks. It's a conflict that speaks deeply to all of us, even though it's not necessarily always about love or sex. Rulii has lost the support of his family because of personal choices, and is desperately lonely, but afraid to pursue the brotherly intimacy he has begun to feel with the human linguist, Parker. There are opportunities too to play with intimacy/invasion conflict in the mentoring relationship that is so common in stories. Obi-wan acts like Luke's father, but who is his real father? And who does Luke get angry with when he finds out? Harry longs for his lost parents and wants to get closer to Dumbledore, but struggles when Dumbledore pushes him away for his own protection... Look also at all the buddy movies out there, and how the guys try to prove their worthiness to each other without getting too close. I'm sure there are many many more examples.
If you're writing a story, look around for possible intimacy/invasion conflicts. One might be at the center of your story, as with my novel in progress For Love, For Power. Or there might be a minor character in your story, perhaps a confidant or guide to the protagonist, who could take on additional dimension if you can explore the relationship and find where the intimacy/invasion borderline lies between them. It could be as simple as styles of politeness, where one group of people expresses alignment by honoring the autonomy of others, and another group expresses alignment by using expressions of intimacy with them (oh, the possibilities for offense!).
The borderline between intimacy and invasion is a powerful ally to any writer who wants to intensify conflict in a story and increase the engagement of readers.
It's something to think about.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Brave New Twitter
I attended a Twitter chat last night. It was both difficult and fascinating - and not because of what we were talking about, but how we were talking about it.
Let me give you some context. I'm not a big producer of tweets, because I don't have the best mobile phone tech, and I don't tend to narrate my life in quite that manner. But this time I was invited to #scribechat and I figured I'd attend. It took me a while to figure out how to attend, given that I never had, and I'm still not entirely convinced that I did it in the easiest way. But I learned a lot about Twitter interactions.
New technologies don't always allow for established conventions. That's certainly the case with email, texting, and instant messaging, but even more so with Twitter. Sometimes when conventions of communication fail to be translated between media, it can become socially problematic or even dangerous. Let's trace through some developments.
Take email first. It's considered to be a much less formal medium than actual letter-writing. I remember when people first started learning that writing in all capitals meant shouting in the email format. Some people still have trouble grasping this convention. It worked fine for telegrams, because those were usually sent only in emergencies anyway. I know of many cases where people have offended others by going too far into the realm of the informal with emails. It's a medium that resembles letters, but doesn't follow their rules in the area of politeness.
Then there's texting, and instant messaging. Like telegrams, texts are restricted in length by price. It's interesting to note that the conventions for shortening a telegram - which involved leaving out words but not usually shortening the words themselves - more resembled writing headlines for newspapers. Texting conventions took this shortening trend and combined it with the more recent trend for creating acronyms (from company names etc.), resulting in "ROFL" and all sorts of fascinating new expressions. Instant messaging is restricted by a different kind of shortening influence - the desire to get the messages back and forth as quickly as possible. Texting conventions translate easily to this environment, but for those who aren't well-versed in the texting acronyms, you tend to see missed capitals, abbreviations and dropped punctuation. Interestingly though, when you're dealing with a medium of high-speed back-and-forth, misunderstandings can be cleared up much more easily than with email, because the members of the conversation can simply ask questions immediately to clear things up. There's another convention that gets altered too - turn-taking. The high speed of messages means that cross-posting happens, and one person will start a new topic while the other is still about to make a comment. Generally in my experience, that can lead to the situation (more unusual, but not unheard of, in verbal conversation) of two topics being maintained at once.
Twitter is something different. You've got lots of people involved in a chat at once, but here more distinctly, turn-taking rules don't apply well. In Twitter many of the contributions aren't actually replies to any particular person's statement. I figure if a two-person conversation is ping pong, and a multi-person conversation resembles hacky-sack (even in an online chatroom), a Twitter conversation is more like trying to play tennis against a ball machine. I felt like I was in a room with lots of different conversations going on, but even once I chose one to belong to, I still was required to eavesdrop on all the others at the same time.
So here's a summary of some conventions of conversation and letter-writing that get altered by new technologies:
1. turn taking (and topic switches)
2. the link between information and identity
3. conventions of politeness
4. availability of context for disambiguation of message
This is not to say that technology only causes trouble. It has some great advantages. The funniest one I've heard lately was yesterday, when my friend told me that "today in rehearsal, I had to ask kids to text instead of whisper. Crazy thing is, it actually worked."
I'm not about to condemn these new forms of communication. They're actually very interesting as inspirations for the kinds of misunderstandings that can arise in different contexts - and for different modes of narrative. More and more these days I've seen stories take the form of chatroom logs. It works pretty well! There's also the example of the Google ad about the boy and the French girl that was shown during the Superbowl. I'd call that an unusual sort of flash fiction video.
I had a flash of inspiration after the Twitter chat that I'd like to share because in the moment I had it, it felt so true. Being in a room with multiple conversations and having to listen to all of them is precisely the reality that many people describe when they work with species or groups that communicate by telepathy. Our imaginations can give us a lot of insight into how it would "feel" to be in a place where you could hear everything that everyone said - or thought - but if you want insight into the kind of conversation that would occur, or the kind of processing load that would be put on a person unfamiliar with such a context, follow Twitter chats for a while.
I don't think that was my last Twitter chat, though I know that I prefer instant messaging. I'm definitely going to be keeping my eyes open for inspiration - and I hope you can too.
Let me give you some context. I'm not a big producer of tweets, because I don't have the best mobile phone tech, and I don't tend to narrate my life in quite that manner. But this time I was invited to #scribechat and I figured I'd attend. It took me a while to figure out how to attend, given that I never had, and I'm still not entirely convinced that I did it in the easiest way. But I learned a lot about Twitter interactions.
New technologies don't always allow for established conventions. That's certainly the case with email, texting, and instant messaging, but even more so with Twitter. Sometimes when conventions of communication fail to be translated between media, it can become socially problematic or even dangerous. Let's trace through some developments.
Take email first. It's considered to be a much less formal medium than actual letter-writing. I remember when people first started learning that writing in all capitals meant shouting in the email format. Some people still have trouble grasping this convention. It worked fine for telegrams, because those were usually sent only in emergencies anyway. I know of many cases where people have offended others by going too far into the realm of the informal with emails. It's a medium that resembles letters, but doesn't follow their rules in the area of politeness.
Then there's texting, and instant messaging. Like telegrams, texts are restricted in length by price. It's interesting to note that the conventions for shortening a telegram - which involved leaving out words but not usually shortening the words themselves - more resembled writing headlines for newspapers. Texting conventions took this shortening trend and combined it with the more recent trend for creating acronyms (from company names etc.), resulting in "ROFL" and all sorts of fascinating new expressions. Instant messaging is restricted by a different kind of shortening influence - the desire to get the messages back and forth as quickly as possible. Texting conventions translate easily to this environment, but for those who aren't well-versed in the texting acronyms, you tend to see missed capitals, abbreviations and dropped punctuation. Interestingly though, when you're dealing with a medium of high-speed back-and-forth, misunderstandings can be cleared up much more easily than with email, because the members of the conversation can simply ask questions immediately to clear things up. There's another convention that gets altered too - turn-taking. The high speed of messages means that cross-posting happens, and one person will start a new topic while the other is still about to make a comment. Generally in my experience, that can lead to the situation (more unusual, but not unheard of, in verbal conversation) of two topics being maintained at once.
Twitter is something different. You've got lots of people involved in a chat at once, but here more distinctly, turn-taking rules don't apply well. In Twitter many of the contributions aren't actually replies to any particular person's statement. I figure if a two-person conversation is ping pong, and a multi-person conversation resembles hacky-sack (even in an online chatroom), a Twitter conversation is more like trying to play tennis against a ball machine. I felt like I was in a room with lots of different conversations going on, but even once I chose one to belong to, I still was required to eavesdrop on all the others at the same time.
So here's a summary of some conventions of conversation and letter-writing that get altered by new technologies:
1. turn taking (and topic switches)
2. the link between information and identity
3. conventions of politeness
4. availability of context for disambiguation of message
This is not to say that technology only causes trouble. It has some great advantages. The funniest one I've heard lately was yesterday, when my friend told me that "today in rehearsal, I had to ask kids to text instead of whisper. Crazy thing is, it actually worked."
I'm not about to condemn these new forms of communication. They're actually very interesting as inspirations for the kinds of misunderstandings that can arise in different contexts - and for different modes of narrative. More and more these days I've seen stories take the form of chatroom logs. It works pretty well! There's also the example of the Google ad about the boy and the French girl that was shown during the Superbowl. I'd call that an unusual sort of flash fiction video.
I had a flash of inspiration after the Twitter chat that I'd like to share because in the moment I had it, it felt so true. Being in a room with multiple conversations and having to listen to all of them is precisely the reality that many people describe when they work with species or groups that communicate by telepathy. Our imaginations can give us a lot of insight into how it would "feel" to be in a place where you could hear everything that everyone said - or thought - but if you want insight into the kind of conversation that would occur, or the kind of processing load that would be put on a person unfamiliar with such a context, follow Twitter chats for a while.
I don't think that was my last Twitter chat, though I know that I prefer instant messaging. I'm definitely going to be keeping my eyes open for inspiration - and I hope you can too.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Now, this is marvelous!
Here's a wonderful blog entry about drawing portraits of great apes - gorillas and chimpanzees. The portraits are wonderful, but what makes me laugh with delight is the way the artist has learned appropriate nonverbal behavior to be polite to these apes so they'll pose for the sketches.
Marvelous!
It's here.
Marvelous!
It's here.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
How Children are Like Aliens
Everyone's heard the expressions: "Out of the mouths of babes," or "Children say the darndest things." That is - and isn't - what this post is about. Fundamentally, this post is about how children can shake us free of the view of life that we ordinarily take for granted - and thereby give us insight into the Other.
When you're grown up, you know so many things that it's easy forget how few things you knew when you started out. Kids have to be taught to wave hello. To greet others. To say please and thank you. To shake hands. When to speak up and when to be quiet. Yes, a lot of this is about manners and politeness. But some of it is also about basic understandings of how the world works, too. We have to learn where rain comes from, what money is, and what banks are, and what they're for. We also have to learn how to acquire possessions, how to arrange them in our space, and what "clean" means, and what "tidy" means (and whether the two are different!). We have to learn how to use the bathroom - where toilets are kept, how to clean ourselves when we're finished (both above and below). The list goes on and on - but when you consider that a baby has to learn how to focus its eyes, and how to hold an object, you realize that any one particular thing is tiny in the face of the enormous list of things to learn.
It shouldn't be at all surprising that children misunderstand. We should all stand in awe of how much they do understand, how easily and how quickly they learn.
Earlier this year, I was asked to compose a bio for the conventions (BayCon and Westercon) that I attended. Deciding to go for humor, I included the following lines about myself and my beloved babes:
"Juliette taught alien languages for three years, then moved on to completing her M.A. in Linguistics and Ph.D. in Education before encountering an entirely new species – children. After several years in the thick of linguistic struggle she has achieved successful communication which bodes well for their future on our planet."
It's not far off. And children, who often lack understanding about the things we've learned to take for granted, can give us valuable hints into how strangers to our societies - aliens or just travelers - might react to the things they experience.
My dad uses an expression that I've picked up: "That's one approach." I use it any time when I see my kids accomplishing a task in a way that I never considered. Hey, it might not be the way I'd do it, or even the way I'd suggest they do it, but it works. I use it a lot.
So keep your eyes and ears open when children are around, even if they're not your own. Watch for instances of misunderstanding, of unusually keen insight, of language error, of social faux pas, or of accomplishing a task by an unfamiliar means. Each one of these can provide a view into previously unseen alternatives, and prove a source of story ideas, or of details for an alternate world, or of behavioral details for an alien.
It's a treasure chest of ideas, waiting for you to discover it.
When you're grown up, you know so many things that it's easy forget how few things you knew when you started out. Kids have to be taught to wave hello. To greet others. To say please and thank you. To shake hands. When to speak up and when to be quiet. Yes, a lot of this is about manners and politeness. But some of it is also about basic understandings of how the world works, too. We have to learn where rain comes from, what money is, and what banks are, and what they're for. We also have to learn how to acquire possessions, how to arrange them in our space, and what "clean" means, and what "tidy" means (and whether the two are different!). We have to learn how to use the bathroom - where toilets are kept, how to clean ourselves when we're finished (both above and below). The list goes on and on - but when you consider that a baby has to learn how to focus its eyes, and how to hold an object, you realize that any one particular thing is tiny in the face of the enormous list of things to learn.
It shouldn't be at all surprising that children misunderstand. We should all stand in awe of how much they do understand, how easily and how quickly they learn.
Earlier this year, I was asked to compose a bio for the conventions (BayCon and Westercon) that I attended. Deciding to go for humor, I included the following lines about myself and my beloved babes:
"Juliette taught alien languages for three years, then moved on to completing her M.A. in Linguistics and Ph.D. in Education before encountering an entirely new species – children. After several years in the thick of linguistic struggle she has achieved successful communication which bodes well for their future on our planet."
It's not far off. And children, who often lack understanding about the things we've learned to take for granted, can give us valuable hints into how strangers to our societies - aliens or just travelers - might react to the things they experience.
My dad uses an expression that I've picked up: "That's one approach." I use it any time when I see my kids accomplishing a task in a way that I never considered. Hey, it might not be the way I'd do it, or even the way I'd suggest they do it, but it works. I use it a lot.
So keep your eyes and ears open when children are around, even if they're not your own. Watch for instances of misunderstanding, of unusually keen insight, of language error, of social faux pas, or of accomplishing a task by an unfamiliar means. Each one of these can provide a view into previously unseen alternatives, and prove a source of story ideas, or of details for an alternate world, or of behavioral details for an alien.
It's a treasure chest of ideas, waiting for you to discover it.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Honesty and Politeness
I'm going to begin this post with a hypothetical situation:
You're at High Tea at a nice tea shop with friends and family. Everyone is enjoying eating scones, and giggling about drinking with pinkies raised, etc. The tea sandwiches come out, and someone recommends the cucumber triangles to you. You take one bite and really don't like the sandwich. What do you do?
Okay, I will allow for the assumption that you're not going to break your "tea character," fling the sandwich to the floor and stomp on it before storming out of the place, never to return. But what do you do when you don't want anyone ever to give you another cucumber tea sandwich?
a. Don't say anything, and put the sandwich back on the plate with a bite taken out of it.
b. Don't say anything, and leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
c. Say, "That's good," but leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
d. Say, "I don't like it."
e. Say, "I'm sorry, but I don't like it."
f. Say, "I'm sorry, but it's not my favorite."
g. Say, "I liked the chicken salad sandwich better."
h. Say, "May I try the mushroom turnover instead?"
There are possible complications to each of these options, if (as you may have guessed) you're one of my kids at the table in this situation. Option a will probably get you yelled at. Option b won't get you yelled at, but it's also possible that no one will notice how much you dislike it, or that Mom will conclude you were full and didn't want anything else. Option c, in my family at least, is considered a lie, and even if you don't get called for dishonesty, you'll probably get asked why you didn't eat it if you actually liked it.
Option d was the one my daughter chose (she's 4). Option e was the one my son chose (he's 6). At the time I accepted these without comment and got them different food, but I did wince a little internally. Mind you, we weren't eating High Tea with the queen, but my impolite radar did go off.
On the way home, I tried to think about how to deal with similar situations in the future. This involved running some more options through my head.
Option f is a fancier version of option e. My sense of this one is that it might work, but it still expresses a negative opinion that might be hurtful to someone's feelings (the cook's?). So I kept thinking until I came up with options g and h. The first of these is more direct, since it provides a comparison with something that you like better. The second leaves the disliking incident entirely behind and focuses on a future, and (we hope) better, outcome.
If you've ever lived through a situation resembling this, then you may notice the way that politeness and honesty appear to be at odds a lot of the time. This is true across every culture that I've encountered personally, and is in fact an enormous resource for me of situations that cause misunderstanding and friction.
Which makes you more of a bad person - to be a social disgrace, or to be a liar?
I have a real aversion to dishonesty. To me this means not that I must say precisely what I mean on every topic, but that I should not say what I do not mean - a different kind of criterion in its practical application. Of all the options I outlined above, only option c involves actual dishonesty from my point of view. This aversion of mine has gotten me into social trouble before, particularly when I was living in Japan - very instructive experience.
I've discussed H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle before on this blog. Politeness is one of the things that we study in the linguistic discipline of Pragmatics. It's relevant here because avoiding the topic of one's dislike completely, and yet talking about something else that one would like to eat, depends for its understanding on the cooperative assumption that one will not say untrue things, and that one will not say less than one needs to. Obviously if I mention that I want something else to eat, that implies that I needed to say that (for some reason) and thus the astute listener can conclude that the reason is a dislike of cucumber sandwiches.
I always find it fascinating how strong our gut reactions are to perceived impoliteness. Funny as it may sound to a child learning it, I really am much happier to comply with a request that is made politely. It's easy for bad syntax, morphology, phonology, or semantics to be interpreted as the mistake of a language learner, but make a mistake of politeness and you're suddenly no longer just making a learner's mistake - you're a bad person. Students of the Japanese language struggle with this all the time, particularly since in Japanese you can't really say anything at all without putting some kind of politeness marker on it - but it's not restricted to Japanese. It happens in English all the time.
One of the places I see it happening a lot is on online forums, where there aren't a lot of external social cues to help people judge one another's verbal behavior. It's hard to know, in a lot of cases. Where is the fine line between politeness and plain dishonesty? Where is the line between honesty and incitement to flame war? I'm not going to say there's one real answer, because there isn't one - online, there isn't even a single culture to establish the rules of behavior. Most "communities" form their own through habit rather than through a written manifesto.
We all live, speak and act on this borderline, every day. It's a fascinating source of stories for me - and something I'd encourage writers to think about.
You're at High Tea at a nice tea shop with friends and family. Everyone is enjoying eating scones, and giggling about drinking with pinkies raised, etc. The tea sandwiches come out, and someone recommends the cucumber triangles to you. You take one bite and really don't like the sandwich. What do you do?
Okay, I will allow for the assumption that you're not going to break your "tea character," fling the sandwich to the floor and stomp on it before storming out of the place, never to return. But what do you do when you don't want anyone ever to give you another cucumber tea sandwich?
a. Don't say anything, and put the sandwich back on the plate with a bite taken out of it.
b. Don't say anything, and leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
c. Say, "That's good," but leave the sandwich on your plate without eating it.
d. Say, "I don't like it."
e. Say, "I'm sorry, but I don't like it."
f. Say, "I'm sorry, but it's not my favorite."
g. Say, "I liked the chicken salad sandwich better."
h. Say, "May I try the mushroom turnover instead?"
There are possible complications to each of these options, if (as you may have guessed) you're one of my kids at the table in this situation. Option a will probably get you yelled at. Option b won't get you yelled at, but it's also possible that no one will notice how much you dislike it, or that Mom will conclude you were full and didn't want anything else. Option c, in my family at least, is considered a lie, and even if you don't get called for dishonesty, you'll probably get asked why you didn't eat it if you actually liked it.
Option d was the one my daughter chose (she's 4). Option e was the one my son chose (he's 6). At the time I accepted these without comment and got them different food, but I did wince a little internally. Mind you, we weren't eating High Tea with the queen, but my impolite radar did go off.
On the way home, I tried to think about how to deal with similar situations in the future. This involved running some more options through my head.
Option f is a fancier version of option e. My sense of this one is that it might work, but it still expresses a negative opinion that might be hurtful to someone's feelings (the cook's?). So I kept thinking until I came up with options g and h. The first of these is more direct, since it provides a comparison with something that you like better. The second leaves the disliking incident entirely behind and focuses on a future, and (we hope) better, outcome.
If you've ever lived through a situation resembling this, then you may notice the way that politeness and honesty appear to be at odds a lot of the time. This is true across every culture that I've encountered personally, and is in fact an enormous resource for me of situations that cause misunderstanding and friction.
Which makes you more of a bad person - to be a social disgrace, or to be a liar?
I have a real aversion to dishonesty. To me this means not that I must say precisely what I mean on every topic, but that I should not say what I do not mean - a different kind of criterion in its practical application. Of all the options I outlined above, only option c involves actual dishonesty from my point of view. This aversion of mine has gotten me into social trouble before, particularly when I was living in Japan - very instructive experience.
I've discussed H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle before on this blog. Politeness is one of the things that we study in the linguistic discipline of Pragmatics. It's relevant here because avoiding the topic of one's dislike completely, and yet talking about something else that one would like to eat, depends for its understanding on the cooperative assumption that one will not say untrue things, and that one will not say less than one needs to. Obviously if I mention that I want something else to eat, that implies that I needed to say that (for some reason) and thus the astute listener can conclude that the reason is a dislike of cucumber sandwiches.
I always find it fascinating how strong our gut reactions are to perceived impoliteness. Funny as it may sound to a child learning it, I really am much happier to comply with a request that is made politely. It's easy for bad syntax, morphology, phonology, or semantics to be interpreted as the mistake of a language learner, but make a mistake of politeness and you're suddenly no longer just making a learner's mistake - you're a bad person. Students of the Japanese language struggle with this all the time, particularly since in Japanese you can't really say anything at all without putting some kind of politeness marker on it - but it's not restricted to Japanese. It happens in English all the time.
One of the places I see it happening a lot is on online forums, where there aren't a lot of external social cues to help people judge one another's verbal behavior. It's hard to know, in a lot of cases. Where is the fine line between politeness and plain dishonesty? Where is the line between honesty and incitement to flame war? I'm not going to say there's one real answer, because there isn't one - online, there isn't even a single culture to establish the rules of behavior. Most "communities" form their own through habit rather than through a written manifesto.
We all live, speak and act on this borderline, every day. It's a fascinating source of stories for me - and something I'd encourage writers to think about.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Make it happen, make it smooth
Language isn't just a way of sending messages between people. Certainly that's the easiest of its functions to pinpoint, but it does some other really important things, too.
Have you ever asked yourself whether you think in words? I know I do. I've always assumed it's possible to have internal thoughts without words involved, but it doesn't happen that way much with me.
Lev Vygotsky, a famous researcher who was born in Tsarist Russia, had a really interesting idea (actually, lots of them). He posited that language is interpersonal first, and internalized second. Thus, that children will learn the interpersonal function of language with caregivers and others first, then learn to talk to themselves out loud, and finally learn to speak to themselves internally. One thing he observed from child behavior was that whenever children were struggling to accomplish something just at the limits of their capability, they would start talking about it out loud. How to get an object off a high shelf, for example. His idea was that using language actually helped them to grasp what to do next.
This isn't just true for kids. It's true for me, even now! When I'm working on something hard, I talk to myself, or to others (my long-suffering critique buddies will attest to this :-) ).
Language helps make it happen.
Another thing that language makes happen is social interaction. A lot of the language we use is geared less to message-sending per se than to social smoothing and posturing. Europeans in the United States would probably draw attention to our tendency to say "have a nice day" a lot. Some might say excessively, though I've always rather enjoyed hearing it, myself. Then there's "how are you?" "fine" when neither person really has the time to talk about how they're really doing. These are things we use to say "I acknowledge you" and "we're socially aligned."
Greetings can be very important. How they're done can make the difference between feeling that a person is standoffish or friendly, and this can influence all subsequent interaction. So if you're working with a world that has status distinctions, I encourage you to consider building these distinctions into the greeting system. There are also words that we use to mitigate problems, like trying to share a path (excuse me), or remedy a mistake (sorry, pardon me, excuse me).
Often, words are used to indicate the beginning or end of an activity (including, but not limited to, a conversation). In English we'll often indicate that we're changing topics by saying "okay." I also find myself teaching my kids to say "welcome" and "come in" when our friends arrive for a visit, and "goodbye" and "thank you for coming" when they leave. Of course, when we leave their house it's "thank you for having us." In Japan when you invite someone in you say "go ahead, please come up." This, for all you worldbuilders out there, is a great way to give extra information about culture and architecture. The saying "please come up" depends on the fact that Japanese people take their shoes off in a lower entry area called a genkan and then take a literal step up into the house. Many of us know that when we enter a Japanese restaurant we hear the word "irasshaimase"; this one means "honorably come (in)". Japanese also has words you use when you start eating (itadakimasu, I humbly receive) and finish your meal (gochisoosama, it was a treat/feast).
As you're writing language use into your stories, think about how characters can use language to make things happen and to make things smooth. This will not only make interactions feel real, but give you extra opportunities to slant the content subtly and divulge more about the physical and social structure of your worlds.
Have you ever asked yourself whether you think in words? I know I do. I've always assumed it's possible to have internal thoughts without words involved, but it doesn't happen that way much with me.
Lev Vygotsky, a famous researcher who was born in Tsarist Russia, had a really interesting idea (actually, lots of them). He posited that language is interpersonal first, and internalized second. Thus, that children will learn the interpersonal function of language with caregivers and others first, then learn to talk to themselves out loud, and finally learn to speak to themselves internally. One thing he observed from child behavior was that whenever children were struggling to accomplish something just at the limits of their capability, they would start talking about it out loud. How to get an object off a high shelf, for example. His idea was that using language actually helped them to grasp what to do next.
This isn't just true for kids. It's true for me, even now! When I'm working on something hard, I talk to myself, or to others (my long-suffering critique buddies will attest to this :-) ).
Language helps make it happen.
Another thing that language makes happen is social interaction. A lot of the language we use is geared less to message-sending per se than to social smoothing and posturing. Europeans in the United States would probably draw attention to our tendency to say "have a nice day" a lot. Some might say excessively, though I've always rather enjoyed hearing it, myself. Then there's "how are you?" "fine" when neither person really has the time to talk about how they're really doing. These are things we use to say "I acknowledge you" and "we're socially aligned."
Greetings can be very important. How they're done can make the difference between feeling that a person is standoffish or friendly, and this can influence all subsequent interaction. So if you're working with a world that has status distinctions, I encourage you to consider building these distinctions into the greeting system. There are also words that we use to mitigate problems, like trying to share a path (excuse me), or remedy a mistake (sorry, pardon me, excuse me).
Often, words are used to indicate the beginning or end of an activity (including, but not limited to, a conversation). In English we'll often indicate that we're changing topics by saying "okay." I also find myself teaching my kids to say "welcome" and "come in" when our friends arrive for a visit, and "goodbye" and "thank you for coming" when they leave. Of course, when we leave their house it's "thank you for having us." In Japan when you invite someone in you say "go ahead, please come up." This, for all you worldbuilders out there, is a great way to give extra information about culture and architecture. The saying "please come up" depends on the fact that Japanese people take their shoes off in a lower entry area called a genkan and then take a literal step up into the house. Many of us know that when we enter a Japanese restaurant we hear the word "irasshaimase"; this one means "honorably come (in)". Japanese also has words you use when you start eating (itadakimasu, I humbly receive) and finish your meal (gochisoosama, it was a treat/feast).
As you're writing language use into your stories, think about how characters can use language to make things happen and to make things smooth. This will not only make interactions feel real, but give you extra opportunities to slant the content subtly and divulge more about the physical and social structure of your worlds.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sleepwear!
This morning I told my daughter I'd mentioned her on the forums, discussing the comic books that we just bought for her and her brother (Supergirl and Spiderman, respectively), and she suggested that I should mention her new pajamas. So here I am.
There's actually more in sleepwear as a topic than you might think (there always is). Do people dress for bed? Or do they undress for bed? Do they wear hats in bed (remember The Night Before Christmas?) to keep from being cold? Or would sleepwear be considered a waste of money because it's a piece of clothing no one but the family sees?
Actually, this is not true, as my daughter just wore her new pajama top to preschool. It's purple with black trim, an image of a black kitten on a broomstick, and the words "Spooky but Sweet."
This brings me to color and gender.
As we were walking up to the store, my son was saying he wanted Spiderman pj's, and we were joking with him, suggesting that he get bright pink with orange flowers and purple stripes - he said that would be girly (he's learned that, but not from me!), but actually I don't think even my daughter would want to wear something with that design. I suggested maybe it was just "too much." My husband mentioned fairies and we collectively bemoaned the fact that so few people in this world know about the cool and awesome male fairies that are out there. (Don't get me started on Disney Princesses, a good few of whom aren't even princesses but are still trying to take over the world of small females.)
When you think about it, gender assignment of colors etc. is a lot like manners. If you ask someone what they would say in a polite social situation, they will tend to tell you what they believe they should say, rather than what they would actually say. And if you ask people which colors, or symbols, go with which gender, they'll have very clear ideas. Fortunately, if you look out into the world beyond clothes-and-toys-marketing-for-children, you'll soon realize there's a lot more nuance out there than you think. Even Disney has to bow to the fact that the market is not all for pink and purple - which is why I was able some time ago to find my daughter some Lilo pajamas which were turquoise and orange and absolutely gorgeous.
Don't get me wrong - I love pink and purple myself. But at least for our family, love of the color purple transcends all boundaries. All four of us love it.
Thanks, with hugs, to Nonny for suggesting the topic.
There's actually more in sleepwear as a topic than you might think (there always is). Do people dress for bed? Or do they undress for bed? Do they wear hats in bed (remember The Night Before Christmas?) to keep from being cold? Or would sleepwear be considered a waste of money because it's a piece of clothing no one but the family sees?
Actually, this is not true, as my daughter just wore her new pajama top to preschool. It's purple with black trim, an image of a black kitten on a broomstick, and the words "Spooky but Sweet."
This brings me to color and gender.
As we were walking up to the store, my son was saying he wanted Spiderman pj's, and we were joking with him, suggesting that he get bright pink with orange flowers and purple stripes - he said that would be girly (he's learned that, but not from me!), but actually I don't think even my daughter would want to wear something with that design. I suggested maybe it was just "too much." My husband mentioned fairies and we collectively bemoaned the fact that so few people in this world know about the cool and awesome male fairies that are out there. (Don't get me started on Disney Princesses, a good few of whom aren't even princesses but are still trying to take over the world of small females.)
When you think about it, gender assignment of colors etc. is a lot like manners. If you ask someone what they would say in a polite social situation, they will tend to tell you what they believe they should say, rather than what they would actually say. And if you ask people which colors, or symbols, go with which gender, they'll have very clear ideas. Fortunately, if you look out into the world beyond clothes-and-toys-marketing-for-children, you'll soon realize there's a lot more nuance out there than you think. Even Disney has to bow to the fact that the market is not all for pink and purple - which is why I was able some time ago to find my daughter some Lilo pajamas which were turquoise and orange and absolutely gorgeous.
Don't get me wrong - I love pink and purple myself. But at least for our family, love of the color purple transcends all boundaries. All four of us love it.
Thanks, with hugs, to Nonny for suggesting the topic.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Look at me when I'm talking to you!
Today I have to take my cat to the vet, long-distance, so this will be a brief entry.
I'm thinking about eye gaze.
With all the child-rearing that I'm currently involved in, I meet a lot of different kids, and one thing I notice is the way that parents teach their children where to look. This happens both explicitly, as when parents insist that their children look them in the eye in a punishment situation, and inexplictly, through demonstration and observation.
I urge you never to underestimate a child's natural powers of observation. I think they must be adaptively selected for keenness when it comes to cues about emotion in adults; once the brain develops enough to grasp social cues of this nature, around age 9 months, watch out!
Adults are pretty good at this, too. Think about how much of the time you look around to see what someone is looking at - and then think about how certain you are of your judgment. It's amazing what a human being can deduce from of the tiniest motion of a pair of eyes. Is he looking at me? Is he meeting my eyes? Why does he keep looking at the door? Is he preoccupied with that stone in his hand?
Culturally speaking, different groups associate different meanings with the placement of eye gaze. I find that typically in American conversation, the listener is expected to maintain eye gaze on the speaker's face, while the speaker makes direct eye contact regularly but not continuously so as not to appear too forceful. In Japan, direct eye gaze can be considered an affront. My friend Sheryl yesterday was remarking that an Asian friend of hers accompanied her to dinner with a pair of her friends who were married, and did not make eye contact with the married woman through most of the meal - something that this woman noticed and felt odd about at the time, but which was later explained as a distinct cultural gesture of politeness. In a way it makes perfect sense: why would you ogle someone else's wife? Of course, this depends on how ogling is defined in your culture...
As you move into your created worlds, it's worth giving thought to how people watch one another in different contexts. Watching for social signals is very important - but clearly people can have very strict rules about what, and when, to watch. It can also be used very well as a physical decription to break up dialogue, and description of what a person is looking at at any given time can play an important role in point of view.
I'm thinking about eye gaze.
With all the child-rearing that I'm currently involved in, I meet a lot of different kids, and one thing I notice is the way that parents teach their children where to look. This happens both explicitly, as when parents insist that their children look them in the eye in a punishment situation, and inexplictly, through demonstration and observation.
I urge you never to underestimate a child's natural powers of observation. I think they must be adaptively selected for keenness when it comes to cues about emotion in adults; once the brain develops enough to grasp social cues of this nature, around age 9 months, watch out!
Adults are pretty good at this, too. Think about how much of the time you look around to see what someone is looking at - and then think about how certain you are of your judgment. It's amazing what a human being can deduce from of the tiniest motion of a pair of eyes. Is he looking at me? Is he meeting my eyes? Why does he keep looking at the door? Is he preoccupied with that stone in his hand?
Culturally speaking, different groups associate different meanings with the placement of eye gaze. I find that typically in American conversation, the listener is expected to maintain eye gaze on the speaker's face, while the speaker makes direct eye contact regularly but not continuously so as not to appear too forceful. In Japan, direct eye gaze can be considered an affront. My friend Sheryl yesterday was remarking that an Asian friend of hers accompanied her to dinner with a pair of her friends who were married, and did not make eye contact with the married woman through most of the meal - something that this woman noticed and felt odd about at the time, but which was later explained as a distinct cultural gesture of politeness. In a way it makes perfect sense: why would you ogle someone else's wife? Of course, this depends on how ogling is defined in your culture...
As you move into your created worlds, it's worth giving thought to how people watch one another in different contexts. Watching for social signals is very important - but clearly people can have very strict rules about what, and when, to watch. It can also be used very well as a physical decription to break up dialogue, and description of what a person is looking at at any given time can play an important role in point of view.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Education...
Today will be my son's first day of Kindergarten. All around me are moms with five-year olds preparing their kids to go, many having attended preschool, many without. Some have tears gathering in their hearts at losing their little babies, others (like me) are grinning and excited about the new world that's about to open up.
Education is central to our society. It provides us with meaningful transition events of all kinds. Going to kindergarten for the first time, or graduating from high school, or going off to college and adult independence, and everything in between.
It also informs the way in which we expect to communicate. We get trained in this society to sit in groups and listen to another (usually single) person talk. This is not new; this is OLD. I'm imagining Plato sitting down with his pupils in the agora. And before him was Socrates, and before him...?
The content of what we learn has changed a lot. Or maybe not so much in its fundamentals - still trying to prepare young people to enter society in a meaningful way. Just that the society itself is not the same everywhere, all the time. US education values (or tries to value) critical thinking, exploration and innovation. Japanese education does an amazing job of providing literacy (in a very tough literacy system!), and high levels of performance on many tasks. Do they innovate? Sure - they've been growing and changing for thousands of years, even when they had no contact with the outside world. But the model of educational communication is slightly different.
American teachers value creativity, but they do have to value actually grasping the fundamentals of the topic, also. Too much free thinking and you can start dropping basic parameters of physics or mathematics. I'm only kind of kidding.
Japanese teachers come from a slightly different model, in which the expert (say, an artist or musician) didn't have to take students at all, but those who wanted to learn from him (her?) would have to sneak around, pick up what they could from listening or watching around corners until they could prove their dedication, whereupon they might be taken on as students. It's called "stealing the art." Thereafter the ideal is to duplicate exactly, with all skill and artistry, what the teacher does - and then to innovate. The innovation is still there, but subject to a few more stringent prerequisites.
The master/apprentice model is very common in fantasy and science fiction (and Star Wars, whichever side that falls on!). There are also schools of magic (Hogwarts being quite a standout!). It's important to consider how your characters come about the things they know, and if you think about how they consider their knowledge philosophically, that can really deepen your characters. Someone with super-ninja skills isn't going to get them by falling off a log. And I always wondered how the heck Jason Bourne learned all the stuff he knew before he turned into a doddering old man - but maybe it was the, um, intensity of the education he received!
I'll write more about this later, but for now it's time to go and get my kids started on a very big day.
I'm smiling.
Education is central to our society. It provides us with meaningful transition events of all kinds. Going to kindergarten for the first time, or graduating from high school, or going off to college and adult independence, and everything in between.
It also informs the way in which we expect to communicate. We get trained in this society to sit in groups and listen to another (usually single) person talk. This is not new; this is OLD. I'm imagining Plato sitting down with his pupils in the agora. And before him was Socrates, and before him...?
The content of what we learn has changed a lot. Or maybe not so much in its fundamentals - still trying to prepare young people to enter society in a meaningful way. Just that the society itself is not the same everywhere, all the time. US education values (or tries to value) critical thinking, exploration and innovation. Japanese education does an amazing job of providing literacy (in a very tough literacy system!), and high levels of performance on many tasks. Do they innovate? Sure - they've been growing and changing for thousands of years, even when they had no contact with the outside world. But the model of educational communication is slightly different.
American teachers value creativity, but they do have to value actually grasping the fundamentals of the topic, also. Too much free thinking and you can start dropping basic parameters of physics or mathematics. I'm only kind of kidding.
Japanese teachers come from a slightly different model, in which the expert (say, an artist or musician) didn't have to take students at all, but those who wanted to learn from him (her?) would have to sneak around, pick up what they could from listening or watching around corners until they could prove their dedication, whereupon they might be taken on as students. It's called "stealing the art." Thereafter the ideal is to duplicate exactly, with all skill and artistry, what the teacher does - and then to innovate. The innovation is still there, but subject to a few more stringent prerequisites.
The master/apprentice model is very common in fantasy and science fiction (and Star Wars, whichever side that falls on!). There are also schools of magic (Hogwarts being quite a standout!). It's important to consider how your characters come about the things they know, and if you think about how they consider their knowledge philosophically, that can really deepen your characters. Someone with super-ninja skills isn't going to get them by falling off a log. And I always wondered how the heck Jason Bourne learned all the stuff he knew before he turned into a doddering old man - but maybe it was the, um, intensity of the education he received!
I'll write more about this later, but for now it's time to go and get my kids started on a very big day.
I'm smiling.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Manners Matter...
No, I'm not talking about Emily Post.
I'm talking about polite words. Please and thank you, obviously, which have been drilled into many of our heads - and which I drill into the heads of my own children! (I do try to do it gently...) But there's also that other stuff: all the things we say to each other which seem to have no real content or meaning, but which we say anyway. "How are you?" when we don't expect an answer. "Fine" when we don't really feel fine. The list goes on and on.
These things are important. Why? Not because they have empirical value, but because they have social value. They express alignment, and to mark us as members of particular social groups. They are largely unnoticed and unconscious, but that makes them all the more problematic.
If a language learner makes a mistake in verb conjugation, we go, "Okay, that was a mistake." And we move on. But if a language learner makes a mistake in politeness, usually we don't say it was a mistake; we conclude that this person is abrasive or rude. Mistakes in politeness (and pragmatics generally) tend to reflect on the person, rather than on the person's use of language.
Here's another one. Where do we draw the line between politeness and lying? If we don't like a friend's outfit, it would be pretty inconsiderate to tell him so - but what do we say if he asks? If we say he looks fine, is that lying, or is it simply polite? It's a tricky distinction, but potentially explosive, and begging to be used in a story.
Then there's mimicry, which came up recently on Kelley Eskridge's blog. Many of us unconsciously fall into the speech patterns of the people we're talking with - it seems to feel better, to help us fit in by aligning us with those people. But how much is too much? How do we know when it might turn into mockery?
I spoke Australian once. I'd been waiting at a train station for half an hour, watching trains go by and fuming, when I suddenly realized that I'd made a mistake in reading the destination signs, and I could have caught any of about five trains that I'd seen. This made me hopping mad (literally! I must have been quite a sight). But when the kind people around me asked what was wrong, some unconscious part of me decided they'd call me stupid if they knew I was American, so I launched into Australian without thinking. Luckily I was smart enough not to try it for long, and I escaped without offending anyone. They assumed (correctly!) that I wasn't from the neighborhood.
How many of you have been part of situations like this?
I'll come back to the topic again soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)