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6.3.1 Understandable Messages

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Understandable Messages

In his exploration of language and meaning, philosopher Paul Grice noted that cooperative interactions rest on our ability to tailor our verbal communication so others can understand us. To produce understandable messages, we have to abide by the Cooperative Principle: making our conversational contributions as informative, honest, relevant, and clear as is required, given the purposes of the encounters in which we’re involved (Grice, 1989).

Being aware of situational characteristics is critical to applying the Cooperative Principle. For example, while we’re ethically bound to share important information with others, this doesn’t mean we always should. Suppose a friend discloses a confidential secret to you and your sibling later asks you to reveal it. In this case, it would be unethical to share this information without your friend’s permission.

Practicing the Cooperative Principle is important in your relationships with coworkers, with whom information often needs to be shared in a timely and professional manner. This is especially relevant when communicating via e-mail, where nonverbal cues, such as vocal tone and gestures, are not possible.

Being Informative According to Grice (1989), being informative during interpersonal encounters means two things. First, you should present all of the information that is relevant and appropriate to share, given the situation. When a coworker passes you in the hallway and greets you with a quick “How’s it going?” the situation requires that you provide little information in return—“Great! How are you?” The same question asked by a concerned friend during a personal crisis creates very different demands; your friend likely wants a detailed accounting of your thoughts and feelings.

Second, you want to avoid being too informative—that is, disclosing information that isn’t appropriate or important in a particular situation. A detailed description of your personal woes (“I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and my cat is sick . . .”) in response to your colleague’s quick “How’s it going?” query would likely be perceived as inappropriate and even strange.

The responsibility to be informative overlaps with the responsibility to be ethical. To be a cooperative verbal communicator, you must share information with others that has important personal and relational implications for them. To illustrate, if you discover that your friend’s spouse is having an affair, you’re ethically obligated to disclose this information if your friend asks you about it.

Being Honest Honesty is the single most important characteristic of cooperative verbal communication because other people count on the fact that the information you share with them is truthful (Grice, 1989). Honesty means not sharing information that you’re uncertain about and not disclosing information that you know is false. When you are dishonest in your verbal communication, you violate standards for ethical behavior, and you lead others to believe false things (Jacobs, Dawson, & Brashers, 1996). For example, if you assure your romantic partner that your feelings haven’t changed when in fact they have, you give your partner false hope about your future together. You also lay the groundwork for your partner to make continued investments in a relationship that you know is already doomed.

Question

Being Relevant Relevance means making your conversational contributions responsive to what others have said. When people ask you questions, you provide answers. When they make requests, you grant or reject their requests. When certain topics arise in the conversation, you tie your contributions to that topic. During conversations, you stick with relevant topics and avoid those that aren’t. Dodging questions or abruptly changing topics is uncooperative, and in some instances, others may see it as an attempt at deception—especially if you change topics to avoid discussing something you want to keep hidden (McCornack, 2008).

Being Clear Using clear language means presenting information in a straightforward fashion rather than framing it in obscure or ambiguous terms. For example, telling a partner that you like a recipe but that it needs more salt is easier to understand than veiling your meaning by vaguely saying, “It’s interesting.” But note that using clear language doesn’t mean being brutally frank or dumping offensive and hurtful information on others. Competent interpersonal communicators always consider others’ feelings when designing their messages. When information is important and relevant to disclose, choose your words carefully to be both respectful and clear, so that others won’t misconstrue your intended meaning.

One downside of our frequent online communication is that it is easy to misunderstand others’ messages, often mistaking them as ruder or less clear than intended. If you need a message to be error-free, consider delivering it in person or over the phone.

Dealing with Misunderstanding Of course, just because you use informative, honest, relevant, and clear language doesn’t guarantee that you will be understood by others. When one person misperceives another’s thoughts, feelings, or beliefs as expressed in the other individual’s verbal communication, misunderstanding occurs. Misunderstanding most commonly results from a failure to actively listen. Recall, for example, our discussion of action-oriented listeners in Chapter 5. Action-oriented listeners often become impatient with others while listening and frequently jump ahead to finish other people’s (presumed) points (Watson, Barker, & Weaver, 1995). This listening style can lead them to misunderstand others’ messages. To overcome this source of misunderstanding, practice the active listening skills described in Chapter 5.

Misunderstanding occurs frequently online, owing to the lack of nonverbal cues to help clarify one another’s meaning. One study found that 27.2 percent of respondents agreed that e-mail is likely to result in miscommunication of intent and 53.6 percent agreed that it is relatively easy to misinterpret an e-mail message (Rainey, 2000). The tendency to misunderstand communication online is so prevalent that scholars suggest the following practices: If a particular message absolutely must be error-free or if its content is controversial, don’t use e-mail or text messaging to communicate it. Whenever possible, conduct high-stakes encounters, such as important attempts at persuasion, face-to-face. Finally, never use e-mails, posts, or texts for sensitive actions such as professional reprimands or dismissals, or relationship breakups (Rainey, 2000).