True Story 10.11
The questions that seemed to remain unanswered
The setting for this story
A classroom at a university in the U.S. was visited by a West African griot, a respected singer, storyteller, musician, historian, and “praise singer.” He told stories and engaged his audience in clapping, singing, demonstrations, and humor, generating congeniality and solidarity. But then the professor who had invited him, Jo Ann, opened the floor for questions. After the event, attendees grumbled to Jo Ann that the griot’s answers had been irrelevant and evasive.
A story of misaligned minds14
One of the grumbling attendees noted that she had asked the singer to discuss how he introduces children to the griot tradition. Instead of responding verbally (for example, he might have said something like, “Our children learn by doing rather than just listening to instruction”), he pointed to another performer sitting next to him cross-legged on the floor, then took a third performer’s hand and briefly led him around the stage.
Another attendee recalled asking the singer what he thought of another West African performer who was blending praise-singing with modern popular music. The griot replied:
He is not a griot. He is a Wolof. The Wolofs do have a griot who plays a four-stringed instrument. This performer plays some traditional things and some other things. We call what he does “jazz.”
Jo Ann’s question
The griot’s answers did seem evasive. How can I explain his responses to the attendees?
Critique of story 10.11
Among all the stories in this chapter, this one is unique. Each of the others discusses an analytic teacher who is dealing with holistic students. This story, however, concerns a holistic teacher who made a presentation to analytic students.
Jo Ann wonders why the griot responded “evasively.” Her puzzlement draws our attention to societal differences in people’s preferences for certain types of information flow during daily interactions. The griot preferred “indirect communication,” which in his home society is the norm.
When conversational partners are in highly familiar surroundings and are very well known to each other – often the case in West Africa – they share a great deal of local experience as well as knowledge about each other and the situation at hand. All of that combines to contextualize their communication. In such circumstances, it usually is superfluous to describe in detail whatever one is talking or writing about.
So in West Africa, people don’t think it’s necessary during conversations to orally devote time of rehearsing details. All assume that participants will gather information not only from oral statements but also from the contextual/historical clues they share, and from nonverbal behavior. Sometimes, oral statements don’t occur at all. When they do, they’re usually partial, suggestive, or poetic, but rarely precise. In fact, stating matters precisely can be disrespectful. For if a speaker is orally precise, that implies that he or she believes the listeners are incapable of arriving at their own conclusions based on information flowing nonverbally and contextually/historically as well as orally.
That’s an overview of the conditions under which indirect communication – written as well as oral – can occur and, in some societies and social circles, constantly does occur. Scholars call such communication “high context” because the communicators’ reliance on contextual/nonverbal factors is high.
For most Americans, indirect communication can seem ambiguous, vague, non-responsive and, yes, evasive. We’re accustomed to “direct communication” in which it’s expected that one’s conversational partner will straightforwardly describe things in at least moderate detail. The other channels by which meaning is exchanged are often available, but we don’t make heavy use of them. Scholars call such communication “low context” because the communicators’ reliance on contextual/nonverbal factors is low.
The high context griot engaged the students actively and immersively, creating an event during which the students could appreciate the griot tradition via a holistic experience. So far, so good. But the setting was an American university, a bastion of analytic thought. Not surprisingly, the students came expecting to take away facts and figures about griots. They became frustrated when they found the singer disinclined to share his tradition in a verbalized, explicit, narrowly focused way. The mindsets of the students and the griot were misaligned with respect to both the what and the how of knowledge transmission.
About the singer’s indirect answers: By pointing to another performer sitting cross-legged next to him, he indicated a child’s learning by quietly observing at the master’s feet. By taking a third performer’s hand and leading him, he demonstrated how he leads a child disciple from house to house. These responses were holistic, which disappointed attendees accustomed to specific analytic answers to their questions.
When asked “what he thought of” another West African singer, the griot finally did answer with some specificity but avoided publicly evaluating him, which would have violated his culture’s social norms.
For thought
The Americans are not solely to blame for this cultural complication because they didn’t “get” the griot’s indirect communication. Mindset misalignments are resolved more successfully when both sides try to adapt. The griot seemingly made little or no effort to adapt to his American audience. Imagine that you could advise him before his next appearance at a U.S. university; what would you suggest?
Related stories
Like this story, stories 10.14 and 10.15 concern ways of thinking about the construction, transmission, and perception of meaning. For more about “high context” and “low context” in relation to holism and analysis, see Appendix B.
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Endnotes:
14 Fox, ix–xi; the quote of the griot is lightly edited.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.