Many people, especially Americans, tend to associate indirectness with dishonesty and directness with honesty, a quality we see as self-evidently desirable. In explaining why the press pursued the issue of Debategate--Reagan's campaign officials' obtaining of Carter debate documents--the executive producer of CBS Evening News is quoted as saying, "Had the President handled the press conference more directly, we might not have gone back to the story."
"Not handling directly" here implies not telling the whole story--that is, not telling the truth.
In most day-to-day situations, this view of indirectness as dishonest is not fair, and not realistic. As we talk to each other about important or unimportant matters, we are always monitoring our relationships to each other, and information about relationships is found in metamessages, which by definition are not spelled out in words but signaled by the way words are spoken. So indirectness, in the sense of metamessages, is basic to communication. Everything must be said in some way; the way it is said sends metamessages--indirectly.
There are two big payoffs to being understood without saying explicitly what we mean: payoffs in rapport and in self-defense. And there's an aesthetic pleasure in communicating cryptically.
To the extent that we can even talk about honesty in communicative habits, any system that successfully gets meaning across is honest.
Quotes from Deborah Tannen,
That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships.
Tangentially related question for my readers: How would
you define honesty?
Comments (1)
This quote from Tannen reminds me of the explanation of the Babelfish in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which translates what people mean, not just what they say. Its use launched the bloodiest period in galactic history.
Honesty doesn't necessarily mean bluntness or straightforwardness, and not all information has to be disseminated at once. Jesus was cryptic more than once in his conversations.