Steven Pinker argues that things like guess culture exist so that while she knows I was “asking” to crash at her place, she doesn’t know that I know that she knows that I was asking to crash at her place.
Yes, that’s a good video! You can find more detail in Pinker’s article. Abstract:
When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition. Examples include sexual come-ons, veiled threats, polite requests, and concealed bribes. We propose a three-part theory of indirect speech, based on the idea that human communication involves a mixture of cooperation and conflict. First, indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially to it. This intuition is supported by a game-theoretic model that predicts the costs and benefits to a speaker of direct and indirect requests. Second, language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of relationship holding between speaker and hearer (in particular, dominance, communality, or reciprocity). The emotional costs of a mismatch in the assumed relationship type can create a need for plausible deniability and, thereby, select for indirectness even when there are no tangible costs. Third, people perceive language as a digital medium, which allows a sentence to generate common knowledge, to propagate a message with high fidelity, and to serve as a reference point in coordination games. This feature makes an indirect request qualitatively different from a direct one even when the speaker and listener can infer each other’s intentions with high confidence.
Ask/tell/demand/etc. culture treats direct communication as the norm where desires/wishes/requests are concerned, while guess/hint/give/etc. culture treats indirect communication as the norm. Both have plenty of advantages and disadvantages. In a community where people come from very different backgrounds, often haven’t spent 10+ years routinely interacting, or have mediocre or subpar social perception, ask/tell culture is probably superior (in spite of the fact that it punishes shy people), since it’s more generalist, teaches people to better understand and express their own preferences, pushes back against typical mind fallacy, and desensitizes folks to offense from controversy and dissent.
Relevant video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU
Steven Pinker argues that things like guess culture exist so that while she knows I was “asking” to crash at her place, she doesn’t know that I know that she knows that I was asking to crash at her place.
Yes, that’s a good video! You can find more detail in Pinker’s article. Abstract:
Ask/tell/demand/etc. culture treats direct communication as the norm where desires/wishes/requests are concerned, while guess/hint/give/etc. culture treats indirect communication as the norm. Both have plenty of advantages and disadvantages. In a community where people come from very different backgrounds, often haven’t spent 10+ years routinely interacting, or have mediocre or subpar social perception, ask/tell culture is probably superior (in spite of the fact that it punishes shy people), since it’s more generalist, teaches people to better understand and express their own preferences, pushes back against typical mind fallacy, and desensitizes folks to offense from controversy and dissent.