CMN 457, Spring 2003

Sheet 3) Exercises on Chapters 7, 8, and 10 in Tannen, D. (1986). That's not what I meant! How conversational style makes or breaks relationships. New York: Ballantine Books.
Prof John Shotter

TANNEN CH.7: WHY THINGS GET WORSE.

1) "When my boyfriend and I first went out, we never had any problems like that [i.e., tempers flaring over small matters]. Now that we've been together for two years, we have them all the time."
2) We attribute difficulties to failures: our own, or the other's, or a failure of love... not to the inherent ambiguity of communication.
3) The only way we know of solving problems is to talk them out - but if ways of talking are causing the problem, talking more isn't likely to solve it.
4) Unintended consequences (side-effects, collateral-damage)... it is difficult to be aware of issues we are usually and inevitably unaware of... a spiral of worsening consequences.

Why?

5) One reason: we want so badly for communication to be perfect at home.
6) Another: the worsening of communication is the opposite of what we expect.

All this means that the platitude: "If you love each other, you can work it out," is not necessarily true.
Instead: the more unrealistic your expectations of perfect communication, and the more painful the metamessage of misunderstanding can be.

1) Courting: start from a position of distance and look for signs of closeness.
2) Marriage: start from a position of closeness and look for signs of distance.
3) Background anticipations and expectations: we will find what you are expecting to find - the important idea of a "self-fulfilling prophecy."
4) The closer you are to someone, the more you have to lose by saying wrong things.

Getting to Know You: the Myth

1) That we can say what we mean.
2) That what we say will be understood as we mean it

1) Versailles summit meeting: "No sooner was the meeting over then American and European spokesmen gave diametrically opposed versions of what had been agreed to" (Newsweek, May 30th, 1983).
2) "Each side probably believed the other had deliberately falsified or altered their reports of what had been agreed to. But it's likely that they had different understandings of what they were saying even at the time they agreed," (p.117).

Getting to Know You: the Reality

1) Ronnie and Bruce: When the endless minor negotiations between them kept getting complicated and confusing, each tended to blame the other, not the situation, or the process of communication.
2) As relationships continue, if style differences cause misunderstandings, each new misunderstanding gives added evidence for negative conclusions: she is uncooperative, inconsiderate, he is selfish, pushy, antisocial.
3) Self-fulfilling prophecies again: communicating over time, sets up anticipations - anticipations often lead you to see small hints as confirmation of overall expectations.

A Big Deal About Nothing

The pressure of a frame that surrounds almost all love relationships: "Do you love me enough?"

1) Mike and Ken - Mike: What kind of salad dressing should I make? Ken: Oil and vinegar, what else?
2) Mike 'heard' Ken's reply as a demand for the kind of dressing he likes, and the 'what else?' as the metamessage: Why ask? There's no need if you really knew me.
3) Mike had expected to be given the option (choice).
4) Ken was giving Mike the choice, but doing it ironically!!! (being self-depeciating).
5) Mike mistook the tone of voice to be a 'put-down'
6) As they went about their lives together, they each saw more and more evidence of Ken being demanding and putting him down, and Ken saw Mike as being temperamental and hypersensitive.
7) Not seen as misunderstandings, but as the other person's personality defects or lack of caring.
8) Ken and Mike split up.

9) The culprits: not words - but tones of voice, intonation, and unstated assumptions (Background anticipations and expectations).

Complementary Schismogenesis

1) The 'dual electric blanket' joke... as A turns up their side, B gets too hot and turns down A's side even more.
2) (i) Miriam more indirect and tentative, with a deep inclination not to say anything that might hurt who she was talking to. (ii) Liz more direct. (iii) Miriam fears provoking Liz to snap at her.
3) As Miriam backs off, asks why. Miriam offers a vague reply (not wanting to hurt Liz). Liz snaps back : "That's not it."
4) Finally, Miriam admits she is wanting to back off. Liz is satisfied with her reply.
5) They split up.
6) At the time, those involved don't think of changing their styles (their tactics), because their ways of talking seem self-evidently appropriate.
7) We look to the individuals for the causes, and go on talking, spontaneously, in the ways we have grown into.

Whose Reacting?

1) Communication is a system, a system in which everything is closely inter-connected with everything else.
2) Thus, each utterance is both - a response to previous utterances, and the instigation (motive, the 'call') for a next response form another person.... "conditional relevance" (FPP - 'calls for' a SPP).
3)_We sense our own utterances as responses to their's, but not their's as responses to our's!!!
4) In other words, we think individualistically and not relationally.

The Paradox of Love and Marriage

1) Romantic attraction: cultural differences... the gift of 'otherness'.
2) Marriage, friendly companionship: cultural similarities... the gift of 'affirmation'.
 

TANNEN CH.8: TALK IN THE INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP: HIS AND HERS.

"Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication" (p.125)

"...my husband was simply engaging the world in a way that many men do: as an individual in a hierarchical social order in which he was either one-up or one-down... Life, then, is a struggle to preserve independence and avoid failure... I, on the other hand, was approaching the world in a network of connections. In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus" (from Deborah Tannen, You just don't understand : women and men in conversation. New York : Morrow, 1990, pp.24-25).

He Said/She Said: His and Her Conversational Styles

Messages and metamessages: Women tend to be more attuned to metamessages (indirectly shown), because they are more focused on involvement; men attuned to messages (what is explicity said), because they are more focused on independence. 1) Negotiation allows a display of solidarity, which women prefer to the display of power. But, unfortunately, ways of talking intended to create solidarity have the simultaneous effect of framing power differences.
2) When they think they're being nice, women often end up appearing deferential and unsure of themselves or of what they want.

Women Listen for Metamessages

Pronouns: We can feel 'locked out' by a person's use of "I," which does not seem to offer the metamessage of an invitation to join in. Metamessages can be seen in what is not said as well as what is said. Messages and Metamessages in Talk Between ...Grown Ups? 1) Jake criticizes Louise for not responding when Edie (their daughter) called.
2) Louise ignores Jake's message and goes for the (supposed) metamessage: that she's a bad mother.
3) The more he denies any meaning beyond his message, the more she amplifies her supposed metamessage.
4) Lousie and Jake are responding to each other at different levels: message and metamessage (Bateson's crossed controls).
5) Each one intensifies the energy going to different aspects of the problem.
6) What pushes Jake and Louise from anger to rage their different orientations: her to meta- , him to message.
7) Her attempts to interpret "what he didn't say," make shim feel that she is "putting words into his mouth," and, denying him authority over his own meaning.

The same thing happens when Louise tells Jake, he is being 'manipulated' by Edie:

8) The point to Louise is her feelings - that Jake makes her feel 'put down'
9) The point to Jake is her actions - that she doesn't always respond when Edie calls.
10) Since each will only talk in their own ways - feelings versus actions - neither can get satisfaction from the other: they simply get more and more angry.
11) Conventional wisdom - meaning is conveyed by words.
12) Supports men's views - meaning is in the message: undermines women's view that feelings are real.

1) Because what they expect is different, as well as what they see as the significance of talk itself.
2) They expect talk to be about feelings - not always a matter of emotion, but of a "relational sensitivity," i.e., a matter of what's actually happening here between people.
3) They see the significance of talk as relational.

The Strong Silent Type

Henry Fonda's goal: Not to let anyone see "the wheels go round, " not to let the "machinery" show.

Growing Up Male and Female

Findings of anthropologists Daniel Maltz and Ruth Borker:

1) Little girls tend to play in small groups or, even more common, in pairs.
2) Best friends, friendships are made, maintained, and broken by talk - especially "secrets."
3) Secrets themselves may or may not be important, but the fact of telling them is all-important.
4) Girls like to play cooperatively; if they can't cooperate, the group breaks up.

1) Little boys tend to play in larger groups, often outdoors and they spend more time doing things than talking.
2) Once in the group, boys must jockey for their status in it.
3) Verbal display such as telling stories and jokes.
4) Challenging and withstanding other boys' challenges in order to maintain their own story-and status.
5) Their talk is often competitive talk about who is best at what.

From Children to Grown Ups.

1) To many women, the relationship is working as long as they can talk things out - talk to save the relationship.
2) To many men, the relationship isn't working out if they have to keep working it over - talk weakens the relationship.

How to Talk Things Out.

1) She expects him to ask questions to show he's interested... to return the intimacy by telling her a problem of his.
2) Instead, he sidetracks her story... jokes about it, questions her interpretation of the problem, and gives her advice about how to solve it and avoid such problems in the future.
3) If he challenges her story, she feels he is criticizing her when what she wants is to be reassured.
4) If he tells her how to solve the problem, it makes her feel as if she's the patient to his doctor - a metamessage of condescension, echoing male one-upmanship compared to the female etiquette of equality.

Complementary schismogenesis can easily set in.

5) His way of responding to her bid for intimacy makes her feel distant from him.
6) She tries harder to regain intimacy the only way she knows how - by revealing more and more about herself.

You're Not Listening to Me.

1) Maltz and Borker contend that women tend to use these noises just to show they're listening and understanding.
2) Men tend to use them to show they agree.
3) Using the noises to show "I'm listening; go on" serves the relationship level of talk.
4) Using them to show what one thinks of what is being said is a response to the content of talk.
5) So men and women are being stylistically consistent in their interactive inconsistency.

Why Don't You Talk About Something Interesting?"

1) Women: the telling of details... not because details are important, but because the telling of them proves involvement - that you care about the other.
2) Since it is not natural to men to use talk in this way, they focus on the inherent insignificance of the details.
3) What they find worth telling are facts about topics - sports, politics, history, or how things work.
4) Women often perceive the telling of facts as lecturing, which carries instead a metamessage of condescension: I'm the teacher, you're the student. I'm knowledgeable, you're ignorant.

Conversations About Conversations

Edward and Frances:

1) When the toaster did 'something funny'.
2) Edward began to explain why it did it, but was lost in his explanation. She felt very stupid - and indications were that he thought so too.
3) Later, he was telling her about a difficult situation in his office that involved a complex network of interrelationships.
4) Suddenly he stopped and said, "I'm sure you can't keep track of all these people." "Of course I can," she said, and she retraced his story with all the characters in place, all the details right.
5) He was genuinely impressed. She felt very smart.

What Do You Mean, My Dear?"


Stylistic differences cause misunderstandings.

1) Not, ironically, in matters such as sharing values and interests or understanding each other's philosophies of life... these large and significant yet palpable issues can be talked about and agreed on.
2) It is far harder to achieve congruence in the simple day-to-day matters of the automatic rhythms and nuances of talk.
3) Nothing in our backgrounds or in the media (the present-day counterpart to religion or grandparents' teachings) prepares us for this failure.

Avoiding blame (blame doesn't solve problems):

1) If you don't know about differences in conversational style, you assume something's wrong with your partner or you, or you for having chosen your partner.
2) At best, you may absolve individuals and blame the relationship.
3) But if you know about differences in conversational style, you may not always correctly interpret the person's intentions, but if you get a negative impression, you know that it may not be what was intended - and neither are your responses unfounded.
4) If someone says they are really interested even though they don't seem to be, maybe you should believe what they say, and NOT what you sense.
 

TANNEN CH.10: TALKING ABOUT WAYS OF TALKING

1) She tried pushing herself to begin answering questions a little sooner than felt polite, and not to leave long pauses when she was talking.
2) The result was that she talked a lot more, and the man was as pleased as she was.
3) Her supervisor complimented her on having become more assertive. 1) She did Not have an emotional problem or personality defect.

What to DO

(STEP 1) Small adjustments

1) To understand your own style. 2) If you seem always to be interrupting: back off and listen more quietly... count six before starting. 3) Be aware of the danger of "complimentary schismogenesis" - resist the impulse to do more of the same and trying doing something different... parents 'distract' their children when in the middle of a crying fit.

Making More Friends

She keep talking all the time without a break. "I took up my plate and held it in my hand... in the hope that she herself would offer to say: 'Oh, you want some more food, you can go ahead'. 1) "First, by telling her all my experiences in Europe this past summer."
2) "Whenever she cut me off, I immediately cut her off in return;
3) whenever she raised her voice, I raised mione even higher." 4) "As a result, we got on extremely well this time." 1) That she is an impossibly rude, intolerable person: a compulsive talker.
2) Her company can be enjoyable.
3) Her style or way of talking can change. 1) We see our own behavior as a reaction to others (they make us do it) - we are not rude in ourselves.
2) But they are - rudeness is a part of who they are (it's called "the fundamental attribution error" in Psychology).

(STEP 2) Metacommunicating and reframing

1) Give an example of drawing attention to what is going on - "I want to say something but I need some time to get it out."
2) Give an example of 'naming the frame' - "I feel we've got ourselves into a shouting match here - can we quiet it down a little."
3) Give an example of asking about the other's expectations - A: "There are some good movies on tonight" B: "Are you inviting me to come with you?"
4) Give an example of saying what your expectations were - A: "There are some good movies on tonight. Shall we see one."
5) Give an example of "changing the frame" by talking or acting in a different way:  Tannen recommended Mr Beto to volunteer much information in advance of chemists having to ask for it. 1) The more Mr. Beto felt that, through questioning, his competence and authority were being challenged, the more he evaded the questions, the more questions he was asked, and so on.
2) Whereas the chemists were thinking of their questions simply for the message value-trying to get information - he was responding to the metamessage - questioning his competence. 1) Tannen didn't try to explain any of this to Mr. Beto.
2) Instead, she made a recommendation that proceeded from his assumptions.
3) She suggested that he short-circuit people's attempts to undermine his position by volunteering in advance all the information they could possibly ask questions about. 1) It would have sent the metamessage that there was something wrong with him.

(STEP 3) Let the Style fit the Context

It may make you appear uncertain and open to pressure. The manager's bid for a negotiation was taken by the accountant as an invitation to set his own terms.

(STEP 4) Use with Caution

Give at least two reasons.... 1) It takes effort to convert unconscious into conscious processes; having to do this more than once can be exhausting. 20 Also, talking differently can make one feel onself as being a different kind of person.

But, why did a husband not want to change his style with his wife? He didn't want to se himself as the sort of person who would talk 'that way', i.e., as 'talking over' his wife.

1) Manners ARE culture, are an aspect of it.

What is the difference between a belief in absolutes and a belief in relativity?

2) Not basic or absolute in a person, but relative to the relationship.

1) It seems to suggest that there is something wrong here, not just an aspect of how communication normally works. 1) It discounts the anger as a real message.

(STEP 5) Knowledge is Power

1) Knowing that no one is crazy, and that a certain amount of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and time taken to understand, is normal in communication.

The Benefits of a Linguistic Approach

Looking for psychological motivations: reasons not personality, intentions, ideas, beliefs, etc... 1) Psychological motives are internal, amorphous, and invisible - can only be understood through theories and hypothesis testing.
2) Talk is 'out in the world' between us - nothing is hidden. 1) Invisible.... but not unconscious.
2) Give names to what was felt only as a vague force... makes them rationally discussable.

A new way of talking - and seeing

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: We see the world as much through our words as through our eyes. A new vocabulary and anew way of talking are tantamount, equivalent, to a new way of, not only looking at the world, but of relating to it in many other ways also. Helping people see old things in new ways, i.e., to see new relational significances.

Power to the metamessage

1) Not overbearing or rude, but different conversational style. 1) It is possible, and common, in conversation for many people to be talking at once. Vera and Ed: a style difference was sparking unfounded interpretations. Vera realized she should always say her name when telephoning. 1) We still try to find causes psychologically, in people's personalities.

Stepping back

1) We act in reaction to others - change our interpretation of their intentions, change our style. 1) It has not worked as expected and hoped, because people from different background do just respond differently - not a mere matter of decision and choice and law. 1) Blame the other group: 'us' and 'them'. 1) Eygptian pilots: silence = permission ...versus... Cypriot controllers: silence = permission denied.