Manipulation and other exciting topics from 4-11-08

So we had a quiz. And then we talked about some of the ideas from Yamada.

Recipient Design, Harvey Sacks' term, Alan Bell, Audience Design
Accommodation, Couplands

What is the difference between tailoring your talk to the conversational style, preferences, personality, schema, etc. of your hearers and plain old manipulation (Kim asks)? Most of us agreed that manipulation is used to describe a vice, not a virtue, where self-interest is the primary motivator, Regardless of the good of the other (hearer). Lyndsey sees the word as more neutral, to describe people with good negotiation skills, e.g., her father. ee wryly reminded her that meaning is collaboratively constructed-- even if it's arbitrary, you need at least two people to Agree on the meaning of a word/sign for it to have that meaning. So she's looking for another person to go live on a deserted island with. (: She thinks she'll recruit her dad. My pocket Oxford at home, however, defines manipulation as dexterous (esp. UNFAIR) use of influence. And I don't think that's what she means when she describes her father's superior language skills.

The fact is that we All Always have our interactional goals in mind every time we speak or engage in social interaction. We don't necessarily have our goals as paramount to anyone else's; we usually strive for equilibrium, where everybody wins as much as possible. I think it's an excellent question that comes up all the time. Being deliberate and careful about how you say something doesn't make you manipulative-we all spend time thinking about how to approach difficult subjects with others--that doesn't make us conniving and underhanded. We often spend that time worrying about violating the other's face and are trying to think of a way to achieve what we need to without offending or hurting the other person's feelings (negative and positive face, respectively). Maybe we’re trying to tell them why no one will go out with them, for example. Totally loving motivation, very dicey topic, mine field of potential hurt feelings.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding and axiom, The man may be the head, but the woman is the neck that turn's the head, was mentioned and appreciated. Segue about how many mothers give their daughters pre-marriage advice about making her husband "think it (whatever) was his idea." Frighteningly consistent advice. But having the other person's best interest in mind and not just one’s own seems to be the touchstone for non-manipulative talk. (And in the movie everybody had one another’s best interest in mind; it was very sweet).

To be fair, I think there probably are more manipulative women than men, but that’s probably also because men can use more overt forms of power to get what they want. Personally I respect women more who use language ‘dexterously’ but are also disclosing and transparent in their communication in general. I tease the men in class quite a bit, but let me correct that a bit. Far more men are left brain dominant and analytical in their thinking style, which is the basic foundation of science. Far more women are right brain dominant, dwelling more in the aesthetic and emotional aspects of language. And even though women have the advantage that both of their brains actually talk to each other, it’s also true that a dismazing number of women pretty much let their left brains die over the course of time. So even though their brains Could talk to each other, far too often they don’t. Moreover, most of the men in our class are exceptional as they have self selected to take a class about intercultural interactional communication, and most of the women are fairly exceptional because they’re taking a class that turns interaction into an analytical system to be investigated part by part.

Canale and Swaine, Communicative Competence:

1) Grammatical

2) Discourse

3) Sociolinguistic

4) Strategic (the competence of incompetence)

I'll add more later.

Some Notes on Class from 3-31

Monday, March 31 What is the cultural significance of such prosthetics as wigs, hair plugs, etc. How taboo is it to put such things on record in talk? How do you know how off limits something prosthetic like this is for talk with a given individual?

Animal metaphors --how do you know what characteristics are attributed to various animals in a given culture? And then what aspects are being attributed to a person when you call them that animal? Pig: selfish, greedy, dirty, perverted (chauvinists?), China and Japan: just means 'ugly' Dragons are always the bad guy in Western literature, but in China they are the good, the mother of Chinese civilization? Chicken means prostitute in China, not coward as it does here.

What is the main problem for cross cultural communication in using animals as metaphors for various human personality characteristics? What other sources of metaphor might be subject to the same pitfalls? How would you go about eliciting information from a native of a particular culture that would circumvent misunderstandings based on animal (or other) metaphors?

Treatment of Animals, their role in society. . .How you treat animals, the Pomeranian that the Korean family I tutored for. What animals are considered a legitimate food source? What cultures share expectations for what animals can be pets and what the role of pets in a given family is? Dog soup in Korea, eating live monkey brains (Tracy, from China, brought this one up and described it), Philipinos served missionary family a feast on their return from furlough-- served them their own family dog, which I believe they dutifully ate, to demonstrate their appreciation for their hosts.

Hospitality, This leads from the role of animals in a culture to the importance and definition of hospitality in various cultures. Kimberly A mentioned anthropologists in - Somoa, a legend they are proud of, this man served his guests his wife for dinner, that's just how serious he was about hospitality.

The commitment in oriental cultures (which tends to extend to the Middle East and Africa) to serve strangers (who might be angels in disguise). OT stories of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, and the Benjamites in Judges, where they offered their daughter, concubine in place of the angels when gangs of men wanted to abuse the travelers sexually. The sacrifices people make for their guests in other cultures. A chicken could be a month's wages for a family, then imagine if you didn't eat it! I ate the brain soup in Turkey. . . because I loved my hosts and I didn't want to be the selfish ugly American. And maybe because I didn't want to look like a wimp.

The temptation people so often have to laugh at others' customs; you really have to try to get inside the experience of the other--that's pretty much the crux of life in general. my sheltered Turkish student laughing scornfully what Christians believe in contrast to Muslims, not a good way to win friends and influence people. . .but kind of an automatic response for many people. . .The long road to intersubjectivity. . .

Anomie- alienation in community, the feeling you don't belong in your culture or your family (ever pray you were adopted?) (: Power/solidarity- distance/affiliation, independence and involvement Anomie can work for you if it makes you adjust to another language and culture more easily because you didn't feel at home in your own. If you are really well integrated in your home culture it may make it more difficult to integrate and adjust to another culture.

A huge frame conflict between Japanese and American companies: Japanese companies are organized like a big family.There are benefits and detriments to all sides. I doubt that there is any value in another culture that is completely nonexistent in all others. It's all a matter of ranking priorities of different values, using different forms for the same functions, doing those functions in different contexts.

Arranged marriages--not forced on you usually, even in Iran, Japan, etc. . . There is some value in having your family weigh in on big decisions. Africans have said that Westerners who marry for "love," put a hot pot on a cold stove and it grows colder, whereas Oriental cultures put a cold pot on a hot stove and it grows hotter.

This East West tension is a kind of tension between the rights and choices of the individual versus the collaborative decision making style preferred in oriental cultures. Do not both values exist potentially in each? Is the main distinction just a very strong, prevailing preference for one over the other in a given culture? What do you make of the fact that the cultures that prefer the "love" based mate choosing have astronomically higher divorce rates?

Review of Wednesday's class

What is an adjacency pair? Where does the term come from? How was it first 'discovered'? What are its features? How does it relate to Chomksy (as noted in class)?

Formulaicity- what is it's social value in East vs. West cultures? Appropriateness, authenticity, creativity, etc. ?

What is the benefit of highly formulaic adjacency pairs in an Asian language? What seems to be the downside for Westerners learning Asian languages? What aspects of social interaction are more stressful in Asian interaction vs. American interaction? What is more stressful about American interaction? What misanalysis are Asian learners of English likely to make and to transfer to her interactional grammar in English language contexts? How does this relate to the specifically American cultural practice of buying and sending greeting cards?

What is pragmatic competence?
What does ee claim about "women's intuition"?
How does this relate back to formulaicity and the social meaning attributed to it?

What does Goffman offer as the motivation for greeting and closing rituals in human interaction? What does this have to do with face?
How does this relate to Garfinkel and phatic communion? What is small talk? What problems arise in conflicting expectations about formulaicity and phatic communion?

What impact does the fact that Japanese typically leaves out 74% of the subjects in sentences have on interactional interpretive processes? In other words, how does it relate to the collaborative construction of meaning in interaction?

What is the main problem for cross cultural communication in using animals as metaphors for various human personality characteristics? What other sources of metaphor might be subject ot the same pitfalls? How would you go about eliciting information from a native of a particular culture that would circumvent misunderstandings based on animal (or other) metaphors?

Semantic Pragmatic Disorder

In class Wednesday we talked a little bit about people who seem to have a pragmatic disability in managing social interaction. Amanda found this on the web and it's pretty interesting. . .

http://www.hyperlexia.org/sp1.html
http://members.tripod.com/Caroline_Bowen/spld.htm