Next time you see me face-to-face you may want to ask me how my adventures in Asian communication are progressing. My new ears are straining for examples of this type of communication. I am heading back to China next week and finishing up the week in Tokyo. I just finished a two-week trip through China with a 24-hour stopover in Korea. The speaker/questioner must try other approaches to glean the real answer. This means a Japanese listener’s first response to a question is usually vague to a western speaker. Similarly, they will often decline offers of politeness with the expectation that the speaker insist so they can eventually comply. For instance, the Japanese rarely say ‘no’ but instead suggest difficulties that should be read as the clearest form of the negative. From an American perspective, it can be a challenge to understand the real message embedded in a Japanese person’s speech. The most obvious case of orientation mismatch I have seen occurs in my engagements with my Japanese colleagues and customers.
An indirect speaker from the east may circle around a subject with an oblivious western listener missing cues that suggest a larger message. A direct speaker from the west will be seen as ignoring the subtlety of communication by issuing bold directives that may be inappropriate for the relationship.
These two approaches can cause problems when speakers from each orientation meet. Asian languages value speakers that are subtle, nuanced, and clever. This means transmitter oriented languages like English favor speakers that are direct, clear, and articulate. Any lack of clarity is the fault of the transmitter (the speaker). In transmitter orientation the speaker is required to unambiguously explain his message.
This requires skills of indirection by the speakers and concentration by listeners. It is the receiver (the listener) that must comprehend the suggestion and deduce the subject or ask more information to clearly understand the message. In receiver orientation the speaker need only say enough information to to suggest that something important needs to be conveyed. And after reading this section of Outliers, I can reconcile my manager’s suggestions with linguistics. He suggested that I work on my indirect communication skills. He warned western directness and how this could be perceived by Asians as bossiness or even bullying. My first week in Singapore my manager cautioned me to be careful with my communication in Asia. Without any supporting evidence of Gladwell’s claims that linguists use these terms, there is a possibility that Gladwell made this up.) All articles quoted Gladwell’s book, not other analysis. I found only a handful of unique articles–one had been reprinted on half a dozen websites–discussing the subject. I spent about 15 minutes Googling for other articles on transmitter and receiver orientation. I often search for corroborating evidence for insightful claims like this. (Before I go further I want to point out something bothersome about this text. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation”–that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously…But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented.
#Culture of indirection communication how to#
One part of Outliers, a discussion on Asian communication, seems to offer a piece in the puzzle I am trying to solve on how to be successful in Asia. This is the second of Gladwell’s books I have read and I enjoyed it just as much as the first, The Tipping Point. A Facebook friend recommended to me Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, a book I finished on a flight to Korea last week.
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