Interpersonal Communication
I am not saying this just to make Mikhail happy about assigning me the Accounting Department in my first year at Schwartz, but I really am enjoying working there. I had my misgivings early on, especially about the students treating me as a second-class citizen, a “fellow” who apparently has no clue about accounting, thus no need to pay attention to her. What I have been experiencing, however, is a great deal of gratitude on their part and a sense of appreciation that, at times, makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. After all, I tell them, I am only doing my job helping them with their presentations.
Maybe it is because of their responsiveness to me that I become a softee when it comes to the evaluation of their performance. Luckily I do not have to grade them, but I talk with their professor about how they did, and, more often than not, I find myself taking their side. I want the professor to be more generous, more understanding of how nerve-wracking a presentation can be, more embracing of the students’ individual skills and needs, etc, etc. On the professor’s side, I am facing a set of extremely well organized grading scale that breaks down final grades to the smallest percentage. This is how grading should really look like, I tell myself, envying the social sciences for their apparent efficieny that messy humanities people, let alone literature buffs like me, tend to miss. Yet, I feel like a coward when the professor mentions a student’s way of being too “soft-spoken” and I let it go saying only that her “softness” comes from her cultural training as a Japanese woman. (Apologies if this comes across as relying, yet again, on stereotypes about Asian women. Obviously not all Japanese women are low-key, but I just finished reading Kyoko Mori’s memoir, Polite Lies, and I think I got at least a better appreciation of Japanese cultural normativity than I had before reading the book.) Evidently, the professor, who has earned all my respect for his superbly organized way of doing his job, cannot let himself bogged down by my remark since he has to evaluate the final product, but I am left with a sense of failure. I wish I had a way of giving more time and space to the process, of being able to assist each student individually while I do not run around myself trying to finish up my dissertation. In my dream-world, I use a grading rubric that includes “cultural baggage” as a big bonus point because I know how heavy it gets at times and how important it is to keep carrying it on in spite of all.
I’m starting to get a little bit worried about the rash of strangely written and borderline grammatically incorrect advertising slogans in the media. This is especially true of fast food advertisements. The slogan that bothers me the most is McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it.” I understand how dropping the g makes the slogan less impersonal and more relaxed, but the lowercase i really irks me. What’s the point?
Other celebrated and effective examples include Apple’s classic “Think different,” and their more recent description of the new iPod touch as “The funnest iPod ever.” Even the Obama campaign’s “Change we can believe in” ends in a preposition.
The worst thing about these slogans is that the television viewing public is exposed to them on a daily basis. Many of these slogans are not necessarily incorrect, but they violate several rules we try to teach our students in efforts to improve the clarity and effectiveness of their oral and written communication. I can’t help but wonder about the extent to which these slogans are negatively impacting the communication skills of the viewing public. The advertising industry seems to be on a mission to legitimize incorrectness.
One of the great points that stayed with me after our last Symposium was a Japanese concept of “Read the Air,” introduced by Yukiko. Emphasizing different non-verbal components of communication, it obliges us to be conscious of our and our interlocutors’ body language and mood, as well as our surroundings. Apparently, this subject has been of some interest to the scientists. It turns out that reading the air is not only something that we do, consciously or not, but also something that affects our physical sensations. There was an interesting NYT article “A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat” by Benedict Carey about a scientific analysis of the effect of social rejection or the ‘cold stare’ on people. It was found that when feeling disregarded or dismissed (verbally or not) in a social situation, people perceive a decrease in the outside temperature. Next time you get that coffee or hot chocolate, think whether it’s really a caffeine craving.
Yeah, I’m on the Facebook. I resisted for some time, but being able to play Scrabble (or, more accurately, “Scrabulous”) with friends ultimately got me. I’ve developed a bond with the husband of a college friend of my sister-in-law, forged initially through comments on the baby blogosphere, but secured ultimately through online word games played on Facebook. We’ve met only twice. The first time was before our online friendship blossomed. The second was at a party a few weeks ago. We were both a little nervous, but happy to see each other. I joked that we met on “Bromatch.com.” We haven’t played a game in a while, and I just heard from my sister in-law last week that he misses me. Scrabulous challenge forthcoming….
Apart from Facebook’s support for connectedness and competitive word twisting, the site allows users to issue “status” updates whenever they want. This is a delicate but powerful art form. I’ve encountered the following kinds of updates:
Literal: “Luke is working on a blog post”
Self-promoting: “Luke just published this: http://cac.ophony.org/2008/07/24/status-anxiety/”
Philosophical: “Luke is”
Frustrated: “Luke is, but perhaps not according to Human Resources”
Resigned: “Luke isn’t”
Ironic: “Luke’s productivity is unaffected by the distractions of Facebook”
Literary (direct quote): “Luke is under the brown fog of a winter dawn”
Literary (reference): “Luke thinks the only thing keeping him visible is his whiteness”
Historical: “Luke thinks the run on Indymac echoes the Panic of 1893″
Informed: “Luke just got run over by Bob Novak”
Uninformed: “Luke thinks McCain is being too heavily scrutinized by the press”
Anticipatory: “Luke is looking forward to the new season of Mad Men”
Anguished: “Luke keeps writing the same &%#(*&@ sentence over and over again!”
Confessional: “Luke watched Steel Magnolias last night, and is still crying”
Curious: “Luke wonders how many kinds of status updates there are”
Evangelical: “Luke thinks there will never, ever, ever be anything like The Wire on TV again”
Nerdy: “Luke is a csstud and a phpimp”
Political: “Luke is chanting No Justice, No Peace”
Supportive: “Luke thinks that no matter what (redacted)’s dissertation adviser says, the work is top-notch”
Onomatopoeic: “Luke thump thump thumped three miles at the track” (that one is also alliterative)
Swinging: “Luke is be-bop-be-dee-bop”
Sporting: “Luke is yelling ‘Go Green’”
Stumped, Disinterested, or Over Forty: ” ”
Of course, there are other ways to announce your status, or lack thereof, to the world. There’s Twitter, which gives you 140 characters to say what you’re up to (”microblogging,” they call it). There’s the status menu feature of an instant messaging client. There’s all sorts of ways to unify these statuses, to change them on the fly; or you can choose to keep them separate.
Yet, I imagine the following uttered in the border-state twang of a dear BLSCI comrade: “who cares? I don’t want to know what you’re doing, and I don’t want you to know what I’m doing.” Of course not. A status update is not really a status update, but rather a chance to blast your friends with a small dose of personality to break up the monotony of the day. It’s fun, it’s a challenge to be creative, and it’s a chance to stay connected with a community.
Peter O’Toole, on Fresh Air, telling Terry Gross about shooting the dangerous scene pictured above for Lawrence of Arabia.
I love how O’Toole takes her question and turns it into a narrative, reveling in the details, painting a picture, and ending with a bang. As is often the case, Gross asks a follow-up question that leads to a coda by O’Toole that sums up not only the moment and the story, but also his entire approach to life.
Editor’s note: in advance of this weekend’s U.S. Open, this is the second in a series of posts exploring the metaphorical relationship between golf and writing.
One of the enduring paradoxes of golf as played by amateurs is the huge and hugely disproportionate emphasis placed on the drive. That’s the first shot on a hole, hit off a tee instead of from the grass, with the biggest, longest club in the bag. It is a powerful feeling, and often looks great too, when you smack a ball way, way down the fairway just where you wanted it, bringing a sense of satisfaction that must somehow be tied up with the primal urge to demonstrate one’s physical prowess to other would-be alpha males. Of course, most drives, even ones that go far, do not go far in the right direction. And when the monster-drive-that-almost-was ends up in the woods or in three-inch long grass, you’ve hurt yourself far more with your strong-man indulgences than if you’d have sacrificed distance for accuracy. These indisputable facts, however, seem to have approximately zero effect on the minds of most amateur golfers. As I write there are thousands of (mostly) men wasting $200-300 on drivers whose heads (the part that hits the ball) are almost exactly the same size (at 460 cm3) as a pint glass.
In the end, golf is a game of less-than-inches. About half of the normal hacker’s shots will actually take place on or around the green (the short grass where the hole is) when the ball is probably less than twenty yards from the cup. And thus the timeless phrase, “Drive for show, putt for dough.” (A variant I think I actually prefer was suggested to me by Tom: “It’s not how you drive, it’s how you arrive.”) When you need to hit the ball just 20 yards (a chip) or roll it just 10 feet (a putt) what happens is not only more difficult, but much more important than the drive. Only dedicated practice can yield even occasional success when faced with greenside subtleties. Many times I have played golf with old men – really old, not middle aged – who just tap the ball down each fairway while my pals and I are wailing away from the tee and then trudging into the woods in search of an uncooperative ball (which we will then of course try to hit as hard as possible from under a rock, giving in again to the Siren song of the heroic). At the end of the round, we find that the eighty-year-old has shot his age while we’ve stumbled into the unsatisfactory upper-nineties. The difference is that we have cool clubs and he has a good swing. We have a giant dictionary and updated thesaurus on our desk, if you will, but he knows how to write.
The point is: do sweat the small stuff – which brings me to writing. Mark Twain addressed this point when he said something like “The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” I still (cringingly) remember writing “poems” in middle school classes and figuring that the more multi-syllabic adjectives I could shove into the description of something the better. Good poetry must mean using superficially intense, longish words right? This was not unlike equating your golf prowess with your expensive, grotesquely large driver: an attempted shortcut that usually yields really embarrassing results. To get good at using metaphor a never-ending, effort. To craft a truly clear and useful sentence can ultimately take hours. Whether at its more basic levels (making sure you have an antecedent for a pronoun, subject-verb agreement) or in the mysterious and elusive quest for a meritorious style, what matters is not the flashy phrasing but the effective communication of your worthwhile perceptions, ideally in a way that effects or informs your reader in salutary ways. A golf shot starts with envisioning exactly how and where you intend the ball to fly or roll. A piece of writing begins with envisioning what information you want to convey. The good shot and the good essay are thus both instances of successful translation, and neither comes easy, and neither can be purchased.
(Another crazy and endearing thing about golf – though not so much like writing – is that the best professionals sometimes make very stupid, very costly mistakes. Read about an infamous instance.
Parenthood is undeniably a blessing. Yet, if I were to speak honestly, I’d note that there are certain drawbacks, not the least of which is ceding control over the soundtrack to your life. My sweet soon-to-be four year old doesn’t want to listen to many of my tunes. I’m fortunate that her choices are usually pretty tolerable. While I dig Dan Zanes or Laurie Berkner in small doses, they get play in our house mostly because the munchkin wants them.
Of course, she’s allowed her own music. I know our tastes will likely diverge through her adolescence, and we’ll have less of a chance during those years to connect over common sounds. That’s part of why I’m so glad that she’s worked the Dino-5 into her rotation recently. This collection of hip-hop heads is organized by Prince Paul, who produced the landmark De La Soul albums 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul is Dead, and Buhloone Mind State, and features Ladybug Mecca (formerly of the Digable Planets), Chali 2na (Jurassic Five), Wordsworth (an underground Brooklyn MC who appeared on records by A Tribe Called Quest and Blackstar), and Scratch (the vocal turntable, formerly of the Roots). Their debut album is a storybook, narrated by the poet Ursula Rucker, about 5 dino friends at their dino school. My kid is now walking around, rapping in the deep voice of 2na’s character, T-Rex, “I may be big and scary, but I’m really pretty nice.”
What’s so striking about the Dino 5 for me is the way they capture the essence of hip-hop as it was during its golden era in the late 1980s-mid 1990s, before capital swooped in and co-opted what was once predominantly an alternative and oppositional art form. Popping off about your fly Adidas or your adversary’s nappy head and rotund relatives, rapping about dancing, music, girls, boys, friends, enemies, and the neighborhood. Most of that gave way to Big Pimpin’, bling bling, and baseless braggadacio.
Hip-hop is still a vibrant art form, always will be, but there’s a reason that the areas of the music that challenge listeners aurally, poetically, and politically moved “underground,” out of site from the casual observer who doesn’t have the time or the passion to dig for those sounds. Hip-hop ain’t dead, y’all, far from it; it’s been integrated in interesting ways into other forms, it’s been globalized, and there’s still plenty of innovation happening. Yet hip-hop’s foundational meaning has been clouded over the past generation by its loudest voices.
So I’m happy to share with my daughter a feeling similar to what I got during my adolescence, listening to De La transmit live from Mars. The Dino 5 represent the best of hip-hop: role playing, storytelling, deep danceable beats, learned references and musical quotations, wicked flow, and lyrical playfulness. Their music is both nice enough for a four year-old and “nice” enough for her purist dad. Kid tested, pops approved.
As my daughter takes her first tentative steps towards reading, it heartens me to be able to introduce her to the poetry and artistry of hip-hop with something that’s her speed. Soon enough, she’ll be barraged with beats and words and sounds. The Dino 5’s album gives her hip-hop that’s more sophisticated than the corny rapping on Sesame Street. Hopefully, it will help her sort through the cacophony that she’ll meet as she grows, and find something that’s as meaningful to her as the music of my youth is to me.
Here’s a couple of brief clips to tack sound onto my words.
T-Rex struggles with how other kids see him, and hopes that they can think twice about how nice he may be:
Tracy Triceratops has a tough time keeping her voice down:
Posdnous introduces the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” on De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989):
As part of their Mobile Learning initiative, Abilene Christian University has begun a new program that involves giving iPhones to incoming freshman. With the iPhones and the software they’ve designed, an incredible amount of innovation is possible in extending the classroom and giving students access to learning materials that are both class-related and college-wide. Imagine having syllabi, access to research databases, and course readings available anytime with just a few touches! They also describe plans for the use of podcasting, hybrid online/in-class discussions, and instant polling throughout their “mLearning” initiatives.
This and other programs in their Mobile Learning initiatives are available on their website. They even produced a video entitled “Connected” which provides their vision of what it might be like for a student who has access to this powerful technology.
As you’ll notice in the video, the iPhones that students get are not restricted to educational use. Facebook and other social networking sites are accessible, along with general internet, texting, and emailing capabilities. You can also see how the technology may present particular problems for communication in the classroom and more generally between students and professors. For example, professors are texting students and encouraging online research during class discussions.
So, although their programs may have a lot of potential to change the way students learn for the better, I worry that they also risk creating distractions and promoting poor communication. How connected is too connected?
To open up this new year, I would like to extend a discussion that got off to a good start in 2006-7: the new possibilities and challenges associated with the fact that we increasingly–whether we like it or not–have an online persona to project, or at the least protect. Kate got this ball rolling with her post, “Excuse me, sir, but your online persona is showing.”
I came across a closely related article in today’s New York Times, titled “Putting Your Best Cyberface Forward.”
The image above, lifted from the article, clearly communicates the main point. If you have the chance to read the piece you will find a couple of intriguing findings by social scientists studying online behavior patterns, but mostly confirmation of what you already know. Even the author of the article partially acknowledges this, comically noting,
“The scholars found it common for online daters to fudge their age or weight, or to post photographs that were five years old. Also, the world is round and the chemical symbol for water is H2O.”
However, even if the contents of the article don’t teach us loads, it is important to note that the article appears in the “Fashion & Style” section, not in “Technology”, speaking to the expansion of this issue far beyond the technical.
