Fact and the Novel in Your Head

Words have a literal sense and a function.

The philosopher of language Paul Grice noticed that conversation works thanks to unspoken cooperation. We assume that the other person is telling us enough, staying on topic, trying to be truthful and making himself clear. That is exactly why “it’s cold in here” is easily heard as a request to close the window, although grammatically it demands nothing.

Inferences like this make communication fast. They also produce the novel in your head, when a presumed function of a sentence is declared a proven motive. Good communication knows how to use subtext and knows the moment when it has to be checked with a direct question.

“It’s cold in here” may report the temperature. It may be a request to close the window. It may express irritation at the person who opened it. It may mean that the conversation is over and it is time to go home.

So it is worth noticing not only what was said, but why it might have been said.

The key word is might.

We do not read other people’s minds. An assumption about a motive stays a hypothesis until the person confirms it. A confident interpretation quickly turns a conversation into a trial where the defendant is hearing the charges for the first time.

Instead of:

You left the window open on purpose to show that you don’t care.

Better:

It’s cold in here. Shall we close the window?

If the motive matters:

Did you want to air the room, or did you just forget?

That way the problem is solved first at the level of behaviour. The psychological novel can be written later, if it turns out to be needed at all.

Separating content from function is especially useful in conflicts. A person may be arguing about a fact while actually defending his status. Demanding an answer while looking for an apology. Discussing a trifle that stands in for an accumulated sense of disrespect.

In such cases new arguments do not help, because the conversation is not about its stated subject.

You can ask directly:

What matters most to you here?

What outcome do you want?

Am I right that this isn’t only about this one episode?

Sometimes the dog really is looking at the stick. Sometimes the stick was simply thrown past the dog. Symbolic readings should not stop you from picking the thing up and seeing what happened.

A presumed motive is especially easy to mistake for a fact when your own model of people supplies the same plot in advance.

Someone who sees calculation in every action may do a lot of his own thinking in terms of gain. A person who constantly suspects infidelity may be especially afraid of loss, or may know his own tendency to break agreements.

This is not a universal detector of projection. Suspicion is sometimes based on real experience, and an accurate observation does not become a self-portrait merely because it is unpleasant to hear.

So there is no point announcing:

If you suspect me of lying, you must be a liar yourself.

That is the same leap to a motive, only with a psychological vocabulary.

It is more useful to separate observation from interpretation:

He has cancelled three times at the last minute.

That is a fact.

He doesn’t respect me.

A possible interpretation.

He deliberately wants to show that I am nothing.

Already a screen adaptation.

Talking about the phenomenon is usually safer than assigning a person an inner cause. If the cause matters, you can ask about it or leave it unknown.

Our assumptions about other people really do show what model of a human being we carry around inside. Which is why it is especially useful to notice when, in that model, everyone around you has suspiciously identical motives.

Short messages produce novels fastest of all. “Come see me” from your manager an hour before the end of the day has time to mean dismissal, a complaint being reviewed and a grievance about last quarter’s report. Usually it is a request to sign a piece of paper that cannot go by mail. An hour is gone, and the content of the message has not changed by a single letter. By the end of that hour the author arrives extremely well prepared for a conversation that never existed. Not one of the three versions was checked during that hour.

The cheap way to interrupt the writing is to ask: “Urgent, or after lunch?” The answer comes in a minute and costs less than an hour spent studying the tone of two words that have no tone.