True Story 10.14
The long-drawn-out answer to a simple question
The setting for this story
The students of an inner-city middle school had returned after summer vacation. Their middle-class white teacher, Alex, tells a story about his first post-vacation class.
A story of misaligned minds17
As an interactive way to begin the semester, I asked my students to briefly share “How I spent my vacation.” The first student said he and his mom had visited his grandmother. A second reported that she’d spent most days at the neighborhood pool. A third explained that she’d really enjoyed two weeks at a sleep-away camp. A fourth, a Black boy named Martin, responded as follows:
Sometimes, especially on holidays, you know, like July 4, or maybe when a friend was celebrating a birthday, we go to the amusement park. It’s a long ways from where I live. And, that is always a big thing, because we have to get together and form car caravans. Jamie and Kelly are the best drivers, but I preferred to ride with Aisha because her dad’s van is loaded, and we be just riding along, chilling, and listening to tapes and stuff. Going to the amusement park was a kick ’cause we had to drive a long way, and when we got there people would stare at us like we were weird or something. And we would just stare right back at them. All but Dion. He would start to act crazy, saying things like “What you lookin’ at me for? I ain’t no animal in no zoo. I got as much right to be here as you do.” You see, Dion gets hyped real quick about this racist thing. And we be telling him, “Man, cool it. Don’t start no stuff. We too far from home for that.” Then, we just go on into the park and have us a good time. We try to get all the rides before everything closes down for the night. Then, there’s the trip home. Everybody be tired but happy. We do this three or four times in the summer. Different people go each time. But, you know something – we always run into some kind of funny stuff, like people expecting us to make trouble. Why is that so? All we doing is out for a good time. Dion, of course, would say it’s a racist thing.
Alex’s question
Why was Martin so talkative when I asked for brevity and the other students had been brief?
Critique of story 10.14
Alex’s query draws us into comparative analysis of the “discourse styles” of various languages and dialects, which is the province of professional linguists and can become quite complex.
One of the key differences that linguists notice about how culturally different people converse concerns not only the order in which they express their thoughts but also which thoughts they select for expression. In other words, when given a topic, some people will discuss A, B, C, and D while others will discuss A through M but not necessarily in that order.
ABCD speakers usually focus on the topic by avoiding tangentially related matters, stating facts in the order in which they occurred (or perhaps in cause-and-effect order), and explicitly relating facts to conclusions. Their discourses tend to be working examples of analytic thought and often are described as objective, systematic, focused, non-emotional, and (because they avoid long digressions) efficient. “Topic-centered” is the term linguists use to refer to this pattern.
A-through-M speakers use the topic as a jumping-off point for drawing into the discussion a wide range of more or less related matters. They don’t necessarily try to mention, in any predetermined order (such as the order of real-life occurrence) either facts or tangentially related matters, nor do they routinely try to relate facts to conclusions, nor even to state their personal conclusions. They assume listeners will draw their own conclusions from the details, context, and emotions their discussion has conveyed. Their discourses tend to be working examples of holistic or relational thinking and can be described as subjective, evocative, anecdotal, episodic, inferential, emotional, and lengthy. Linguists use the terms “topic-associative” and “topic-chaining.”
You might recall that, some years ago, a book entitled You Just Don’t Understand by Deborah Tannen remained a best-seller month after month. While comparing the talk styles of American men and women, Tannen introduced the memorable contrast “report versus rapport,” which also is relevant to this case. The goal of topic-centered people such as Alex is mainly “report,” while the goal of topic-associative individuals such as Martin is primarily “rapport.”
Each discourse style is effective and appreciated within groups of like-minded people. As with so much else that’s described in this book, mindset misalignments occur when the two styles come into contact in a classroom. Teachers such as Alex quickly become impatient regarding all the “irrelevant stuff” in soliloquies such as Martin’s. They “waste time” and disrupt carefully crafted schedules. Right off the bat, Alex has formed a less-than-favorable first impression of Martin.
For thought
Some authors who write about matters such as these contrasting discourse styles try to help readers understand them by describing one as “inductive” and the other as “deductive.” I’m purposefully not telling you which term they attach to which style because they’re as likely to be wrong as right. And even if the writers get it right, most readers have only an imprecise grasp of the terms inductive and deductive. In my experience, using these two terms only muddies the water. The two discourse styles can be very well distinguished from one another without using these two terms at all.18
Related stories
Story 1.14 discusses discourse styles in relation to paragraph construction. Stories 10.05 and 10.15 discuss older immigrant students’ communication challenges in terms of differing discourse styles.
Go to Chapter 1 Quick-Links | Go to Chapter 4 Quick-Links | Go to Chapter 7 Quick-Links | Return to Chapter 10 Quick-Links
Endnotes:
17 Gay, 126–27; the quote (of Martin’s soliloquy) appears here exactly as found in my source.
18 For a discussion in historical context of the meanings of “inductive” and “deductive,” see my 2013 book The Aptitude Myth, pages 23–24. These terms are probably confused because of Arthur Conan Doyle’s popular novels in which Sherlock Homes makes many “amazing deductions” that are actually inductions.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.