In a recent discussion the issue of indirect communication arose. A widespread observation among Westerners is that Afghans communicate more indirectly than do Westerners. (There is great variation in among Western nations of course, and even between regions of America and Germany, for example.) The purpose of this blog post is to show that indirect communication is not necessarily unclear communication; it is simply communication that asks for the listener to think things through.

In August 2002 I visited my grandparents in Maine (in the northeastern United States), and at the end of the visit I flew out of a small regional airport. This was after 9/11, so security was tighter, but this small airport hadn’t had all the upgrades yet, and it was a one-person airport anyway. After checking me in, the woman behind the counter said, “I’ll need to look through your bag.” I said, “All right.” She was older and small of frame, so she said, “You have to carry it down to the inspection area yourself.” So I carried the bag down and waited. She put on a pair of rubber gloves, and gave them a little snap at the wrists. I feigned nervousness and said, “You’re only going to check the bag, right?”

Now maybe you’re chuckling right now, or maybe you’re offended. (In the event, the woman laughed politely at first because she could tell I was making a joke, but then she got it and laughed a lot more.) But the point is: my joke was perfectly clear, even though it was also completely indirect.

Understanding the joke requires some background knowledge. You have to understand that rubber gloves refer metonymically in our culture to a certain examination, and that a very thorough security check might involve something similar. And of course you’ve got to realize that it’s a sort of ridiculous for someone to fear that sort of thing in a routine airport check.

Do you notice how I have told the joke, explained it, and still I have said nothing? You, as the reader, have filled in all the gaps. It’s indirect communication. I offered the spark, but the fire kindled in your mind. Note how I unambiguously invoked a fairly complex scenario with the phrase, “You’re only going to check the bag, right?” Even if you see the joke as inappropriate to begin with, imagine how much worse (and unfunny) it would have been for me to say, “I sure hope you’re not going to [blankity-blank-blank-black].” You can say a lot indirectly that you can’t say directly. You can also make a message more powerful by speaking indirectly.

Indirect communication works because of shared cultural knowledge, and an expectation that listeners will draw appropriate conclusions from what’s been said. Can you think of a situation in which that might break down? That’s right: when you’re in a new language and culture. (If you’re not familiar with much of Western culture—if indeed the relevant background knowledge is common beyond America—you’ll be confused as to why I think I just told a joke.) That’s why it’s important to learn as much culture as you can. In fact, although language is indepensible in culture-learning, culture learning is really more important. One linguist observed that, for him, it was common for him to understand what was said, without understanding why it was said.

Here is a final story, which is a kind of baby example of me learning to process indirect communication in Afghanistan.

When I was new in LOP—it was LOP back then, not LCP—I brought a pair of chaplaks to the school just to use there, and wrote my name on each shoe. About a week later, I was with an LOP teacher and a staff member, and the latter casually asked me, “So, in your religion is it okay to write your name on your shoes?” I quickly gathered that it was not in his! I asked him a bit more about this, and he explained that in Afghanistan no one would ever write their name below the level of the waist. I quickly blacked out my name on the shoes. I think this story has spread around, because now even people who were not there at the time and never saw my name on my shoes, will still refer specifically to these shoes (“Your shoes aren’t there..”) even though I’ve long since donated them to the school!