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THINK SMART, TALK SMART

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

List of Illustrations........................................................................viiPreface......................................................................................ixIntroduction.................................................................................xiPart I: Outputs..............................................................................11. In the Background.........................................................................32. Getting Specific: Conversation, the Rickety Structure.....................................133. Generalizations: People are Always Silly..................................................214. Stereotypes: The Metal Plate-In Our Heads.................................................355. Polarities: When Black or White Means Seeing Red..........................................436. Objectivity: The Elusive Goal.............................................................567. Frames of Reference: Mayan Hieroglyphics, Adolescent Stress, and More.....................63Part II: Inputs..............................................................................758. Perceptions and Misperceptions............................................................779. Language: Seducer and Seductress..........................................................94Part III: The Four As........................................................................10710. Aristotle: Genius and Nemesis............................................................10911. Authoritarianism: Yours Not to Question Why..............................................11712. Abstractions and Absolutes...............................................................122Part IV: A Supplement........................................................................13113. Statistics: The Numbers Game.............................................................13314. Epilogue.................................................................................149

Chapter One

Why should communication be any different for the twenty-first century than it has been in the recent past? Language changes slowly over time, but in any period not everyone is adept at using it. Still, we take our ability to communicate with one another for granted as though it were immutable, requiring little attention. We may be unaware or uncaring about ineffective communication habits. Yet these can get in the way of interpersonal relationships, even inter-group relationships, which provide a practical reason at any time for improving our skills.

Much has happened, though, in the last half of the twentieth century to make improving the effectiveness of communication appropriate, even necessary—that is, getting through to people by what we say and how we say it, rather than simply getting to them by the way we transmit it. These skills go beyond grammar, which we all hated to study in school; they go beyond vocabulary, which can be accumulated or improved; and they go beyond style of word usage and phraseology, which can depend upon linguistic background, education, and personal characteristics.

The skills I refer to involve the way our communication reflects the way we think. They involve a mindset that is sorely needed to keep up with the pace and demands of the twenty-first century. Think of all that has happened in the past one hundred years!

Globalization is one obvious change. The jet plane, the credit card, and the internationalization of corporations have brought peoples and nations of diverse languages and cultures into intimate contact with one another. In the mid-twentieth century, the United Nations pointed out the need for simultaneous translation, but even that capability did not prevent misunderstanding because of subtleties of word meanings and tones of expression. Diplomatic language can veil ambiguity on purpose, but business communication between different languages needs to be unambiguous to be effective.

Electronic technology has almost exploded with possibilities. The Internet is the most recent example that brings diverse people together, as well as friends who may be reached by cell phone. Using the speed of light, it epitomizes the instantaneity with which information can be transmitted. This implies that the chance—or risk—of acting on the information can become even more critical than when a telephone "hot line" was set up between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Other frontiers have been breached: electronic voice and facial recognition, artificial translation, even artificial intelligence, for example.

The computer has allowed investigation of several variables at once. Statistics, as will be seen in Chapter 13, has become very sophisticated as a mathematical tool to check the validity of information from scientific research and from public opinion polls. The computer facilitates the use of statistics and helps to speed up even more research.

Information has exploded. With all of the easily observable aspects of nature already investigated, the most hidden ones are now the subjects of PhD dissertations. Since World War II, achieving a doctoral degree has become the minimum requirement for many professions. So we came to the "publish or perish" era. There is such a proliferation of information that it is now often said that today the key to power is information.

With every type of organization flooding us with brochures and blandishments, "junk mail" and telemarketing have brought us to an era of information pollution. What does this say about the significance of the content of what is published? What does it say about our ability to absorb the information and savor its subtleties? It says we need to burnish this wonderful tool of language and our skills in using it.

Finally, communication as a subject that has blossomed into a specific discipline, treated as a science. More will be said about this in later chapters, but first, more fundamental advances must be noted.

Two Science Giants

Early in the twentieth century, two powerful scientific concepts were enunciated from the realm of Physics, and they are germane to our subject. How could such seemingly unrelated subjects, such as physics, communication, and making judgments, be related? This will become apparent. Although each concept deals with the most arcane aspects of science, and although each concerns opposite ends of the spatial scale, their implications have helped to shape the way we size up our world.

The two concepts are Einstein's Relativity Theory and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Don't be terrified by them! One needn't get technical to see how they play a part in effective communication.

As to Relativity, many of us have had experiences that demonstrate in a simple way what Einstein was essentially saying. If a person is on a moving train, and a train on an adjacent track is going in the opposite direction, one cannot tell, apart from feeling the motion, whether the train you are on is standing still and the other one is going backward, or whether the adjacent train is standing still and yours is going forward. Einstein pointed out that while we on Earth consider ourselves to be on a stable,...