Blackout in America
lllHumor in Action!R. Wilburn Clouse, PhDVanderbilt University Using Humor inDeveloping theEntrepreneurial SpiritLearning in Action! A Cross-disciplinary Problem-Based Learning Environment for EntrepreneurshipDid You Just Say What I Thought You Said?: Lessons In Listening For The Listening ChallengedTest Version 1.0(A Work in Progress)-571500-457200Did You Just Say What I Thought You Said?: Lessons In Listening For The Listening ChallengedStoryline by Jonathan WebsterIntroductionIn my line of work the ability to establish a quick rapport with new people is an important skill to have. I have gotten better at it over the years, and find that I’m pretty comfortable talking with people from all sorts of backgrounds. One morning I might sit down to meet with a family from New York City, that afternoon I might meet with a student from a small Tennessee town, and in between I will likely talk with a variety of school officials, students, and parents, all with different communication patterns and perspectives.When I was in college I got interested in the idea of communication and the different habits and patterns that might be evident when people talk with each other. I wrote a paper on a phenomenon known as accommodation (sorry, no reference available…I couldn’t find the paper I wrote on this topic), which is a curious, involuntary practice in which nearly all people engage when interacting with someone who displays substantially different verbal and non-verbal cues from themselves. Accents are a good example; when a man with a mild southern accent finds himself talking with someone who has a much deeper southern accent, he might unconsciously adopt a more pronounced accent than he normally exhibits. There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon, but no matter why he does it, one readily demonstrable outcome is that the man with the mild southern accent who inadvertently slips into a thicker accent is often perceived by the person with whom he is speaking to be more like him or her. Communication is easier. Goals are achieved more quickly. We all evidence different degrees of accommodation in our daily interactions, not just with accents, but also with hand gestures, vocal qualities (cadence, tone, volume), and other verbal and non-verbal cues. Whether consciously or not, I use it in my work as an admission officer. It helps me to establish the rapport that is so important in recruitment. It must stand to reason, then, that my years of experience making small talk and initiating conversations with relative strangers make me an expert conversationalist in all social situations, right? I never make faux pas or stick my foot in my mouth. Wrong.My wife loves to help me relive a couple of situations in which my conversational skills let me down. On a visit home I was out to dinner with some high school friends, when the mother of a high school classmate walked up to our table. We talked about mutual acquaintances for a while, then the mother asked us,“Have ya’ll heard anything from Dax Melson?” It is important now to know that the mother was speaking with a pronounced southern accent, (one might even say, ‘redneck’ accent - I can use the term with impunity, because I’m part redneck, too), one we had all been very accustomed to when we lived back home, but since moving away, had perhaps lost our ear for. At least I had.“That Dax Melson,” she went on, “he’s just a runt. I just don’t know what to think about him anymore. He’s just a runt.”The others were nodding, saying things like “I haven’t heard from him,” or “Hmmmm, that’s too bad,” and I was sitting there thinking, What could’ve happened to Dax? He was on the football team, so he was always pretty healthy and in shape…what could turn someone into a runt? Did he start using drugs or something? Did he get in a car accident and end up in the hospital for an extended time? So I looked at the mom and said, “What do you mean about Dax? What could’ve turned him into a runt?” The conversation stopped as everyone looked at me and one of my friends kicked me under the table, giving me a “drop it” look. We were all quiet for a second, and then the mom said her goodbyes and left us to our dinner. When she was out of earshot, all my friends burst out laughing and finally managed to explain between laughing fits that the mom had said how Dax was “ruined” now, not that he had become a runt. I couldn’t believe how badly I had misunderstood. So much for my conversational skills and my aptitude for accommodation. I have misunderstood people like that on other occasions, and my wife questions why I cannot understand that, if what I thought I heard just makes absolutely no sense, it’s probably not what the person actually said. But what if what I thought they said makes a little sense?Like the time in a Chinese restaurant I misunderstood the waitress. This is a really good restaurant run by the family of a friend of mine who are really from China. My wife and I were with a work friend of mine, and the waitress came to our table to take our order. When she got to me, I ordered Moo Goo Gai Pan, like I always do, but this time she asked me if I wanted eggs in my rice. At first I didn’t answer, because I’d never been asked before, but now that she mentioned it, I realized that fried rice usually has little pieces of egg yolk in it, presumably for flavor or color or some other reason. Because fried rice is not as good for you as steamed rice, I was appreciative she had taken the time to ask. I politely declined the eggs in my rice. “No thank you, just steamed rice for me.”The waitress looked at my quizzically, then asked again, “Eggs in your rice?”I looked at my wife and our friend, who were sitting across the booth from me, but they wouldn’t make eye contact, so I knew I had done it again. But I couldn’t understand what she was asking, so I just said, “Yes, please, that would be great.” So after she had left, they both just laughed at me and explained that she was asking me if I wanted extra rice, not eggs in my rice. Clearly in this case, her accent was more difficult to understand, but unlike the Dax misunderstanding, what I thought she was asking made a bit of sense. My wife asserts that no one should ever expect to be asked about eggs in one’s rice, and that should have been my clue to ask for clarification or just to drop it. I still maintain that I wasn’t so off base to think they might be giving me the option of fried rice without eggs. Another time, I caused someone else to be in the same sort of situation as the ones I was in above, but I was still the one made to look silly, once the misunderstanding became apparent. We just built a house, and during our walk-through with the electrician, we paused to explain that we wanted to put wall sconces in the foyer of the new house, but we just hadn’t picked out the fixtures yet. That we hadn’t picked out the fixtures was important, because if we had, the electrician would know exactly what kind of electrical box to put in the wall to which he would later attach and wire the fixtures. So, we talked about a couple of other things while we stood there, on a brief tangent from the sconces, and then the electrician said, “Well, we’ll get your scotch lights taken care of as soon as you pick ‘em out.”Leave it to me to ask what he means, thereby embarrassing him and me both. “What are scotch lights?” Of course, I’ve never built a house before, so I was standing there thinking he might be talking about something that could have enormous consequences on cost or looks or both. Nobody said anything (my wife, our builder, or the electrician), so I asked again, adding insult to injury, “What are scotch lights?” “I think we’re still talking about the sconces, Jonathan,” said my builder.“Oh, okay,” I mumbled. “Sorry.” Why am I apologizing?! He’s the one who messed up! But my wife insists that, while my highly refined (right!) small-talk skills and conversational acumen put me in good stead when it comes to talking with some people, I am either remarkably literal in my interpretations of certain other folks, or I am incapable of realizing how often I over-think what I thought I heard, convincing myself that what I misunderstood has a logic of its own worthy of consideration (witness the ‘eggs in my rice’). Rather, my wife thinks I should keep Occam’s Razor in mind, that principle we all learned from high school science lab: the simplest explanation is probably the correct one (or “keep it simple, stupid,” as one of my professors used to say). So, what is to be learned from my embarrassments? One issue that Yarwood points out is that not all funny things are funny to all people. Or, in other words, some topics are best left alone as objects of humor (pp. 7-9). I typically relate the above stories in company that will not be offended by my characterization of “redneck” accents or by my suggestion that people who are truly Chinese citizens might be difficult to understand to a Tennesseean who is, himself, part redneck (I was born in Mississippi, you see). Referring to the items his selected politicians considered to be inappropriate subjects of humor, Yarwood explains, “their lists include humor about races, genders, homosexuals, ethnic groups, religion, humor that makes fun of somebody else, off-color jokes, jokes about family, one’s physical appearance, and profanity” (p 7). Any reasonable person would agree. Regarding my description of the situations above, perhaps one factor that mitigates any inference that I might be making fun of others for their accent or inability to communicate effectively is that, in fact, no matter how I tell the stories, or how much time has past since the incidents, the inescapable truth is that no one else who was present labored under the same misunderstandings that I did. The mistakes were all mine; I know that, and any telling of these stories, therefore, represents either self-deprecating humor on my part, or is intended to ridicule me (in the event my wife or friends are telling the stories).The situations are funny to me now, though immediately after they occurred, they were far less amusing. Distance in time does have an important effect here, then, as Morreall and our discussion last class seem to confirm. The benefit of that perspective, coupled with Osten’s suggestion that humor itself, that which is funny in a situation, permits a “cognitive reframing of a situation to occur” (p. 6), means that a much-needed and previously unavailable interpretive lens might offer itself. With the aid of such a lens, one can consider the implications of a given situation, problem, or incident from different points of view. This might mean a person can draw different conclusions, or perhaps even more valid or more valuable conclusions, from a vantage point some days, weeks, or even years later. Reframing the above situations might allow me to understand some fundamental truths about them: diversity exists in communication styles, for example, and that a little patience can go a long way in facilitating communication; or that the entire gist of a verbal transaction can hinge on the meaning or interpretation of a single word (which suggests further that one should choose those pivotal words carefully). Using a different lens to interpret these situations can allow me to extract lessons about myself, too (if I listen to my wife), such as that I should not work so hard to attribute sense to the nonsensical, that if I think I misunderstood someone, I probably did, and I should just keep my mouth shut. In essence, to keep it simple. Guiding QuestionsDiscuss how humor can be used by an individual to help work through cultural situations?Discuss how language can be a source of humor?ReferencesOsten, Regina. (1996). “Letting it Come Naturally.” The Use of Humor in Group Work Interactions. Paper presented at the International Society for Humor Studies 7th International Conference, Sydney, Australia, July, 1996.Yarwood, Dean L. (1998). When Congress Makes a Joke… ................
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