WEBVTT 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.600 Matt Abrahams: While many of us focus on being direct, the reality is, 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:12.060 being indirect strategically helps us accomplish much of our communication. 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:15.480 My name's Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:17.220 Stanford Graduate School of Business. 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:20.635 Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:00:20.965 --> 00:00:24.145 Today, I'm super excited to spend time with Steven Pinker. 00:00:24.285 --> 00:00:27.925 Steven is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. 00:00:28.075 --> 00:00:31.315 He studies language, cognition, and social relations. 00:00:31.435 --> 00:00:33.595 He has received many awards for his teaching. 00:00:33.805 --> 00:00:37.795 He's written twelve insightful and impactful books, and his latest is, 00:00:37.855 --> 00:00:42.269 When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries 00:00:42.269 --> 00:00:44.849 of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. 00:00:44.910 --> 00:00:45.690 Welcome, Steven. 00:00:45.750 --> 00:00:48.870 I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since we set it up. 00:00:49.199 --> 00:00:49.500 Steven Pinker: Me too. 00:00:49.500 --> 00:00:50.370 Thanks for having me. 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:51.179 Matt Abrahams: Excellent. 00:00:51.179 --> 00:00:51.989 Shall we get started? 00:00:52.260 --> 00:00:52.830 Steven Pinker: Let's start. 00:00:53.250 --> 00:00:55.949 Matt Abrahams: Much of your work looks at language and cognition. 00:00:56.099 --> 00:01:00.720 You've distinguished between the what and the what you mean by it of language. 00:01:00.780 --> 00:01:04.679 What do you mean by this distinction and how can we use this insight to 00:01:04.679 --> 00:01:08.130 become more persuasive and effective in the communication we have? 00:01:08.700 --> 00:01:11.610 Steven Pinker: It's long been known by anyone who studies language that an awful 00:01:11.610 --> 00:01:15.539 lot of the time, we don't just blurt out what we mean in so many words, but 00:01:15.539 --> 00:01:20.100 we hint, we wink, we shilly-shally, we beat around the bush, we use euphemism, 00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:24.300 we use innuendo, counting on our listener to read between the lines, 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:26.070 connect the dots, catch our drift. 00:01:26.220 --> 00:01:29.050 And as someone who studies language, this has always been a puzzle. 00:01:29.070 --> 00:01:30.870 Why don't we just blurt out what we mean? 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:32.460 So just some obvious examples. 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:35.280 Politeness, if you could pass the salt, that would be awesome. 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:37.800 Now that's an awful weird thing to say. 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:39.630 For one thing, it's certainly hyperbolic. 00:01:39.630 --> 00:01:40.680 It wouldn't be awesome. 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:44.850 It might be nice, but also why are you pondering hypotheticals? 00:01:44.910 --> 00:01:46.380 We all understand what it means. 00:01:46.470 --> 00:01:47.250 Give me the salt. 00:01:47.310 --> 00:01:48.990 Why don't we just say, give me the salt. 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:53.430 In more emotionally hot circumstances, there's uh, 00:01:53.430 --> 00:01:54.330 certainly a lot of indirectness. 00:01:55.320 --> 00:01:58.590 So imagine you're trying to bribe your way into a restaurant by slipping a 00:01:58.590 --> 00:01:59.975 fifty dollar bill to the maître d'. 00:02:00.505 --> 00:02:03.985 You probably wouldn't say, if I give you the fifty, will you less jump 00:02:03.985 --> 00:02:05.095 the queue and seat us right away? 00:02:05.095 --> 00:02:08.695 You might say like, I was wondering if you might have a cancellation, or is 00:02:08.695 --> 00:02:10.324 there any way you could shorten my wait? 00:02:10.345 --> 00:02:16.315 Or sexual come ons is a, as we all know, a big arena for indirectness and euphemism. 00:02:16.405 --> 00:02:19.885 You wanna come up and see my etchings, you wanna come up for coffee, you 00:02:19.885 --> 00:02:21.385 wanna come up for Netflix and chill. 00:02:21.415 --> 00:02:25.195 So in all these cases you might say, oh, plausible deniability. 00:02:25.195 --> 00:02:26.075 But, come on. 00:02:26.075 --> 00:02:27.305 How plausible is it? 00:02:27.415 --> 00:02:30.750 As if any grown woman could, could be in any doubt as to what, do you wanna 00:02:30.750 --> 00:02:32.940 come up for coffee, means late at night. 00:02:33.270 --> 00:02:34.140 So why do we do it? 00:02:34.140 --> 00:02:39.000 And the answer that I came up with is that we avoid common knowledge. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:41.130 Now my book is about common knowledge. 00:02:41.190 --> 00:02:46.110 And common knowledge has a, a technical meaning in linguistics, in philosophy, 00:02:46.110 --> 00:02:49.890 in economics, in game theory, and political science, and a lot of academia. 00:02:50.170 --> 00:02:52.660 What it means is, I know something, you know something. 00:02:52.750 --> 00:02:54.910 I know that you know it, you know that I know it. 00:02:55.030 --> 00:02:58.000 I know that you know that I know it, I know that you know that. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.400 I know that you know that I know it, ad infinitum. 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:03.910 Common knowledge is important because it's necessary for coordination, 00:03:03.940 --> 00:03:05.290 for being on the same page. 00:03:05.380 --> 00:03:08.245 If you're the only one who knows that you're supposed to drive on 00:03:08.245 --> 00:03:10.615 the right and everyone else thinks that you're supposed to drive on the 00:03:10.615 --> 00:03:12.175 left, you better drive on the left. 00:03:12.175 --> 00:03:13.375 It's not enough that you know it. 00:03:13.375 --> 00:03:16.045 Even if you're right, according to the law of the land, it doesn't matter. 00:03:16.045 --> 00:03:18.955 What matters is what everyone knows that everyone else knows. 00:03:19.285 --> 00:03:21.685 Relationships are propped up by common knowledge. 00:03:21.745 --> 00:03:22.555 What makes us friends? 00:03:22.555 --> 00:03:25.790 You know, it's not as if we sign a contract, I know that 00:03:25.790 --> 00:03:26.960 you consider us friends. 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:27.980 And what does that mean? 00:03:27.980 --> 00:03:33.230 Well, it's 'cause you know that I consider us friends and so on, or lovers, or a boss 00:03:33.230 --> 00:03:38.150 and a subordinate, or an authority and a person who recognizes their authority. 00:03:38.150 --> 00:03:39.620 We're two transaction partners. 00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:43.070 The relationship exists in our heads, and it's a matter of common knowledge. 00:03:43.430 --> 00:03:47.000 So direct speech, blurting something out, generates common knowledge. 00:03:47.205 --> 00:03:50.355 It's not a question of whether it's deniable, it's a question of whether 00:03:50.355 --> 00:03:53.955 you know that the other person knows what you meant is deniable. 00:03:53.955 --> 00:03:56.355 That is, is the common knowledge deniable. 00:03:56.415 --> 00:04:01.275 And common knowledge is what ratifies or annuls social relationships, 00:04:01.335 --> 00:04:05.235 and that's why blurting something out that contradicts assumptions 00:04:05.265 --> 00:04:08.865 of the relationship can blow everything up and be deeply awkward. 00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:13.590 Whereas hinting innuendo, they know, but they don't know you know they know. 00:04:13.590 --> 00:04:16.980 And that allows you to maintain the previous relationship. 00:04:16.980 --> 00:04:20.370 So in the case of, say, a sexual proposition, if Harry says, you 00:04:20.370 --> 00:04:24.090 wanna come up for coffee, and Sally says, no, she knows she's turned 00:04:24.090 --> 00:04:26.820 down a sexual overture and he knows she's turned down an overture. 00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:30.060 But does she know that he knows she knows? 00:04:30.305 --> 00:04:33.815 She could think, maybe he thinks I'm naive, maybe he thinks I, that I 00:04:33.815 --> 00:04:35.405 just turned down a coffee invitation. 00:04:35.465 --> 00:04:37.685 And he doesn't know that she knows that he knows. 00:04:37.685 --> 00:04:39.395 He could think maybe she thinks I'm dense. 00:04:39.425 --> 00:04:42.935 Maybe she thinks I just interpret it as turning it down for coffee, 00:04:42.935 --> 00:04:45.605 even though I know she really turned down a sexual overture. 00:04:45.845 --> 00:04:50.409 So without the common knowledge they can maintain the fiction 00:04:50.409 --> 00:04:52.539 of a purely platonic friendship. 00:04:52.599 --> 00:04:55.150 Whereas if he said, do you wanna come up for sex? 00:04:55.150 --> 00:04:57.549 And she says, no, it's never the same. 00:04:57.609 --> 00:04:59.859 They can try to go back to a platonic friendship. 00:04:59.859 --> 00:05:03.520 But once it was out there, once it's common knowledge, that changes everything. 00:05:03.580 --> 00:05:06.609 So when everyone knows something, it's really different than when 00:05:06.609 --> 00:05:09.250 everyone knows it and everyone knows that everyone knows it. 00:05:09.645 --> 00:05:13.605 Matt Abrahams: It seems to me that the context also plays a role in 00:05:13.605 --> 00:05:15.495 what we all know about each other. 00:05:15.495 --> 00:05:19.094 So taking flirtation, which I actually, in grad school, my 00:05:19.125 --> 00:05:21.915 research was on flirtation, not only because I wanted to get dates when 00:05:21.915 --> 00:05:25.635 I was that age, but I was always fascinated by strategic communication. 00:05:25.635 --> 00:05:28.095 And I think flirtation is a wonderful venue to study that. 00:05:28.155 --> 00:05:31.215 If you go see a doctor and the doctor says, how are you doing? 00:05:31.215 --> 00:05:32.325 That has one meaning. 00:05:32.385 --> 00:05:34.965 But if you're in a bar and somebody says, how are you doing? 00:05:34.965 --> 00:05:36.315 That has a very different meaning. 00:05:36.794 --> 00:05:41.445 Context seems to add an extra level of understanding of what you know and I know. 00:05:41.505 --> 00:05:44.174 And so we have to be aware, not just of what's being said, but the 00:05:44.174 --> 00:05:45.705 context in which it's being said. 00:05:45.705 --> 00:05:49.664 And clearly we can run into some mismatches if I'm not paying attention 00:05:49.664 --> 00:05:51.645 appropriately to the context. 00:05:52.050 --> 00:05:55.860 So it sounds to me like we have the ability to assess and judge these 00:05:55.860 --> 00:06:00.600 circumstances and try our best to fit within that optimal space. 00:06:00.870 --> 00:06:02.340 How do we learn to do this? 00:06:02.340 --> 00:06:06.780 I don't ever remember taking a class on indirect, ambiguous communication. 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:08.550 How do we learn what's appropriate? 00:06:09.085 --> 00:06:12.534 Steven Pinker: Kids often charm us because they just blurt things out. 00:06:12.594 --> 00:06:15.925 They haven't mastered this yet, and it's, oh, grandpa just farted. 00:06:15.985 --> 00:06:18.295 Or, how come you have hair growing outta your nose? 00:06:18.354 --> 00:06:22.344 They just, you know, sort of say things, so you do have to master it. 00:06:22.525 --> 00:06:23.965 Some of it is from feedback. 00:06:24.055 --> 00:06:27.414 You say things that are, as you get older and the other kids 00:06:27.505 --> 00:06:29.155 stare at you, make fun of you. 00:06:29.275 --> 00:06:32.125 Some of it is just an extension of conversation. 00:06:32.305 --> 00:06:37.105 We don't lay out every last step in a logic of a conversation. 00:06:37.255 --> 00:06:38.485 Conversation would be impossible. 00:06:38.515 --> 00:06:39.985 There's so many missing links. 00:06:40.105 --> 00:06:44.035 It would be like a legal contract and a legal contract is written 00:06:44.065 --> 00:06:49.015 so that it would be immune to an adversary trying to exploit loopholes. 00:06:49.070 --> 00:06:51.590 When we have conversation, we start off cooperative. 00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:53.840 That's what we mean by to be on speaking terms. 00:06:53.930 --> 00:06:57.140 When you have two adversaries, there is no conversation. 00:06:57.170 --> 00:07:00.500 Two coaches of two football teams don't get together for a chat 00:07:00.500 --> 00:07:05.150 before the game, so conversation presupposes some degree of cooperation. 00:07:05.150 --> 00:07:06.830 That's a basic law of linguistics. 00:07:07.195 --> 00:07:10.765 When you're cooperative, you can leave things out so that the conversation 00:07:10.765 --> 00:07:13.915 doesn't take all day and you just know that the other person will figure 00:07:13.915 --> 00:07:17.455 out what you meant on the assumption that you're both aiming at the same 00:07:17.455 --> 00:07:20.005 thing, namely information coordination. 00:07:20.065 --> 00:07:25.285 And so knowing how a listener will connect the dots will fill in the blanks, 00:07:25.345 --> 00:07:29.455 allows you to sometimes to be creative in making one of these propositions. 00:07:29.575 --> 00:07:32.695 And there are formulas like, could you please pass the salt? 00:07:32.905 --> 00:07:34.375 No one even thinks about what that means. 00:07:34.905 --> 00:07:39.765 Literally, it's a idle question, not what it really is, which is an imperative. 00:07:39.855 --> 00:07:43.275 But still, that's the case where it's formulaic, but sometimes there 00:07:43.275 --> 00:07:47.025 is no formula and we think about something that's a prerequisite to the 00:07:47.025 --> 00:07:51.435 act, knowing that our hearer on the assumption that we're not crazy, that 00:07:51.435 --> 00:07:54.530 we're rational, that we really are trying to get at something, they then 00:07:54.830 --> 00:07:57.859 connect the dots and think, oh yeah, of course he wants me to do something, 00:07:57.859 --> 00:07:59.900 but he's too polite to boss me around. 00:08:00.080 --> 00:08:02.270 So he's stating the precondition. 00:08:02.330 --> 00:08:07.370 And we use our natural conversational skill at filling in the missing premises 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:09.919 in order to convey the imperative. 00:08:10.250 --> 00:08:13.610 The reason that we do this indirectness, this musing, you know, do you 00:08:13.610 --> 00:08:18.440 think you could please, et cetera, is friends and, or just casual 00:08:18.440 --> 00:08:21.229 acquaintances don't like to boss each other around like they're servants. 00:08:21.289 --> 00:08:23.359 It's not like, Jeeves, bring me the butter. 00:08:23.450 --> 00:08:26.299 You don't wanna treat a friend like that, but still the butter's at their 00:08:26.299 --> 00:08:27.530 end of the table and you want it. 00:08:27.859 --> 00:08:29.810 How are you gonna get it without bossing them around? 00:08:30.120 --> 00:08:32.909 Matt Abrahams: So there's this level of metacognition that's 00:08:32.970 --> 00:08:34.560 required to pull this off. 00:08:34.710 --> 00:08:35.670 Steven Pinker: There is in novel. 00:08:35.670 --> 00:08:36.930 When they're novel cases. 00:08:36.990 --> 00:08:41.100 A lot of these circumstances are so familiar that we have formulas. 00:08:41.159 --> 00:08:42.270 Do you think you could pass the salt? 00:08:42.270 --> 00:08:43.290 Could you pass the salt? 00:08:43.380 --> 00:08:47.160 Where you don't have to engage in the metacognition, in that circumstance, 00:08:47.190 --> 00:08:51.990 'cause it's so familiar cliche that the English language gives you these formulas. 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:58.025 But when it's a one time thing then, or a novel situation, and you're calibrating 00:08:58.025 --> 00:09:02.915 it to the other person, a sexual come on being a classic example, much more 00:09:02.915 --> 00:09:04.685 is at stake than getting the salt. 00:09:05.165 --> 00:09:08.315 Matt Abrahams: You mentioned in English, and I'm curious about cross-culturally 00:09:08.315 --> 00:09:09.665 if these things apply as well. 00:09:09.665 --> 00:09:12.335 I'll share an experience I had, I was teaching a student who was a 00:09:12.335 --> 00:09:15.485 non-native speaker of English, and he came into my class thrilled. 00:09:15.485 --> 00:09:17.255 I mean, he was elated, super excited. 00:09:17.255 --> 00:09:18.395 So I said, Hey, what's going on? 00:09:18.395 --> 00:09:19.415 Why are you so excited? 00:09:19.475 --> 00:09:22.265 And he looked at me and said, the woman that I'm very interested in told 00:09:22.265 --> 00:09:24.035 me that she just wants to be friends. 00:09:24.035 --> 00:09:25.565 And I'm really excited about that. 00:09:25.965 --> 00:09:31.065 And I had to rain on his parade because let's just be friends, when he looked it 00:09:31.065 --> 00:09:33.135 up, is exactly what he was looking for. 00:09:33.135 --> 00:09:36.375 But we all know that was saying something very different. 00:09:36.435 --> 00:09:40.245 So have you found that these ideas of what you know and other people 00:09:40.245 --> 00:09:44.235 know and using the strategic ambiguity crosses cultures as well? 00:09:44.685 --> 00:09:47.325 Steven Pinker: Do all cultures have some kinds of politeness? 00:09:47.325 --> 00:09:48.645 Some kinds of indirectness? 00:09:48.675 --> 00:09:49.575 The answer is yes. 00:09:49.935 --> 00:09:54.375 Cultures can vary and often tourist, travelers, businessmen have to get used 00:09:54.375 --> 00:09:56.865 to the level of indirectness in a culture. 00:09:56.865 --> 00:10:01.245 So Japan is famously indirect and polite, and there are many layers 00:10:01.245 --> 00:10:04.665 of honorifics and to the point where sometimes people get frustrated that 00:10:04.665 --> 00:10:06.165 you just never get down to business. 00:10:06.255 --> 00:10:08.115 You exchange so many pleasantries. 00:10:08.435 --> 00:10:13.535 Conversely, they're cultures like New York or Israel where people are famously 00:10:13.535 --> 00:10:16.954 blunt and people can easily get offended 'cause they don't realize that's just how 00:10:16.954 --> 00:10:19.474 you exchange information in that culture. 00:10:19.564 --> 00:10:21.094 But all cultures have some. 00:10:21.375 --> 00:10:23.584 Matt Abrahams: What it becomes really fascinating to me, is when you have people 00:10:23.584 --> 00:10:26.765 from lots of different cultures come together and they have conversation and 00:10:26.765 --> 00:10:29.944 you see this play out in how some people could be offended and others aren't. 00:10:30.314 --> 00:10:36.495 So it sounds to me at the end of the day that this indirect communication is, while 00:10:36.525 --> 00:10:39.975 many of us say, Hey, just I want people to be direct and honest with me, none of this 00:10:39.975 --> 00:10:44.745 doublespeak or hypocrisy, this is actually really necessary for us to function. 00:10:44.745 --> 00:10:45.585 Would you agree with that? 00:10:46.035 --> 00:10:46.395 Steven Pinker: Well, yeah. 00:10:46.395 --> 00:10:49.365 In the last chapter of, uh, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, 00:10:49.365 --> 00:10:53.145 it's about, it's called radical honesty, rational hypocrisy. 00:10:53.490 --> 00:10:56.190 We're all kind of hypocrites about our hypocrisy. 00:10:56.250 --> 00:11:00.660 That is, we say, this hypocrisy is just such a waste of time, and it's 00:11:00.660 --> 00:11:05.310 so annoying, people beating around the bush, and roleplaying and rituals. 00:11:05.370 --> 00:11:07.680 Why don't we just cut the crap and say what we mean. 00:11:07.680 --> 00:11:08.790 Wouldn't life be better? 00:11:08.880 --> 00:11:09.780 The answer is no. 00:11:09.780 --> 00:11:10.135 It would be awful. 00:11:10.865 --> 00:11:14.945 A lot of our relationships really depend on common assumptions that 00:11:14.945 --> 00:11:16.805 are, at the end of the day, fictions. 00:11:16.805 --> 00:11:18.305 They're not literally true. 00:11:18.455 --> 00:11:22.265 One of them is that friends would do anything for each other and 00:11:22.265 --> 00:11:24.845 they value the other person's welfare as much as their own. 00:11:24.905 --> 00:11:26.135 They value the friendship. 00:11:26.195 --> 00:11:27.920 There's no limit on how much they value the friendship. 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:29.650 Of course that can't be true. 00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:32.689 But if you were to say, okay, we've been on the phone for twenty-five 00:11:32.710 --> 00:11:36.580 minutes now, and twenty-five minutes is about all I can really take of 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:39.520 talking to you and I, there are other things that I'd really rather do now. 00:11:39.820 --> 00:11:40.660 That is often true. 00:11:40.660 --> 00:11:45.100 But saying your friendship is worth only so much to me, but no more. 00:11:45.580 --> 00:11:46.660 That kills the friendship. 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:48.610 It changes everything if you actually say it. 00:11:49.380 --> 00:11:52.319 Matt Abrahams: So this kind of communication really does provide 00:11:52.319 --> 00:11:55.829 the lubricant for these interactions and allows them to keep going. 00:11:56.310 --> 00:11:59.339 Steven Pinker: I wouldn't even say lubricants so much as the basis. 00:11:59.400 --> 00:12:02.040 That is, they, that's what being friends means. 00:12:02.040 --> 00:12:03.479 That's what being lovers means. 00:12:03.540 --> 00:12:06.930 It means that you accept certain things as the ground rules. 00:12:07.050 --> 00:12:09.599 You know that the other person accepts them, you know that they 00:12:09.599 --> 00:12:12.765 know that you accept them, and that's what makes relationships possible. 00:12:13.800 --> 00:12:16.230 Matt Abrahams: In your book, The Sense of Style, you argue that good 00:12:16.230 --> 00:12:20.340 writing and communication is about clarity, conciseness, and grace. 00:12:20.520 --> 00:12:23.580 I understand conciseness, but can you tell us a little bit more 00:12:23.580 --> 00:12:25.230 about grace, and then clarity? 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:30.610 Steven Pinker: So what makes a lot of academese, bureaucratize, 00:12:30.610 --> 00:12:34.079 corporatize, what makes it so frustrating to get through is often 00:12:34.110 --> 00:12:36.180 what's called the curse of knowledge. 00:12:36.329 --> 00:12:40.110 The curse of knowledge is a psychological phenomenon in which, if you know 00:12:40.110 --> 00:12:44.040 something, it's very hard to imagine what it's like not to know it. 00:12:44.130 --> 00:12:45.840 That is, it's false common knowledge. 00:12:45.840 --> 00:12:48.630 You assume that your private knowledge is common knowledge. 00:12:48.870 --> 00:12:52.770 That's why in bad writing, the writer doesn't spell out the 00:12:52.770 --> 00:12:56.485 abbreviations, doesn't explain the jargon, doesn't give examples, 00:12:56.485 --> 00:12:58.375 doesn't allow for a concrete image. 00:12:58.435 --> 00:13:01.525 It doesn't occur to them because it's just so obvious, to them, and they don't 00:13:01.525 --> 00:13:03.655 realize it's not obvious to anyone else. 00:13:03.745 --> 00:13:06.775 So that's what goes into a lot of clarity, is just the empathy of 00:13:06.775 --> 00:13:11.155 what does the reader know and what can they see in their mind's eye? 00:13:11.334 --> 00:13:14.185 Sometimes clear writing may be a kind of graceless. 00:13:14.185 --> 00:13:15.865 It may be an instruction manual. 00:13:15.865 --> 00:13:16.735 It could be a memo. 00:13:17.275 --> 00:13:22.194 But when we try to persuade, to charm, even to make our writing pleasurable 00:13:22.194 --> 00:13:25.790 enough that other people will pay for it, we wanna get a job as a columnist 00:13:25.790 --> 00:13:29.270 or reviewer, we just want an audience, the prose has to be compelling. 00:13:29.450 --> 00:13:31.610 And there are many things that go into that. 00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:33.470 There's, first of all, just clarity. 00:13:33.470 --> 00:13:35.510 If you've got a struggle to figure out what the other person 00:13:35.510 --> 00:13:39.410 means, then you're gonna give up, and that makes prose graceless. 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:43.160 Imposing on the memory load of a reader. 00:13:43.160 --> 00:13:46.430 If you've gotta hold too many words from the beginning of the sentence in 00:13:46.520 --> 00:13:48.920 mind before you get to the end of the sentence and know what they're doing. 00:13:49.430 --> 00:13:54.500 Or if it's not clear where the end of one phrase is and the beginning of the 00:13:54.500 --> 00:13:58.880 next one is, and the reader has to work hard, and if they're trying too hard 00:13:58.880 --> 00:14:02.540 to parse the syntax of the sentence, instead of seeing through to the 00:14:02.540 --> 00:14:05.240 meaning, that makes prose less graceful. 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:08.450 But also even the melody and rhythm of speech. 00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:09.750 In this case, there is no speech. 00:14:09.750 --> 00:14:13.020 It's writing, but writing is mentally always speech. 00:14:13.020 --> 00:14:16.290 When you read someone's words, you're always sounding it out to 00:14:16.290 --> 00:14:17.730 yourself as if they're speaking. 00:14:17.790 --> 00:14:22.350 And so just the sheer mellifluousness of the sentence, as it would 00:14:22.350 --> 00:14:25.110 be said aloud, goes into grace. 00:14:25.230 --> 00:14:28.470 And one other thing is the vividness of the mental picture 00:14:28.530 --> 00:14:30.030 that the reader is supposed to get. 00:14:30.030 --> 00:14:33.770 And one of the things that makes bad writing bad is the reader doesn't 00:14:33.770 --> 00:14:35.660 have any image, nothing to grasp. 00:14:35.750 --> 00:14:39.200 Instead of someone describing a study with kids and they talk about the 00:14:39.320 --> 00:14:43.940 experimental stimuli instead of the Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch puppets. 00:14:44.030 --> 00:14:48.230 So being concrete, being visual, being vivid, is an important 00:14:48.230 --> 00:14:49.880 way for prose to be graceful. 00:14:50.210 --> 00:14:53.060 The other component of grace is, and I have a whole chapter in The Sense of 00:14:53.060 --> 00:14:55.700 Style on this phenomenon of coherence. 00:14:55.850 --> 00:14:59.960 That is, even if every sentence in a passage is a hundred percent 00:15:00.020 --> 00:15:05.090 comprehensible, the passage itself may be baffling if you don't know 00:15:05.210 --> 00:15:07.910 how one sentence leads into the next. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:13.255 And that's why we use connector words like however, nonetheless, on the other 00:15:13.255 --> 00:15:18.955 hand, moreover, that is, for example, in general, they seem like silly 00:15:18.955 --> 00:15:21.115 little fillers, but they're really not. 00:15:21.265 --> 00:15:25.855 They're the links, the glue that make one sentence flow into the next. 00:15:25.945 --> 00:15:30.745 And a lot of the feeling of coherence, flow, indeed grace comes when 00:15:30.745 --> 00:15:34.495 you just know why the writer is saying what he's saying right now. 00:15:34.615 --> 00:15:37.135 How does it fit into everything that I've read so far? 00:15:37.449 --> 00:15:41.589 Matt Abrahams: This idea of coherence that helps people to really understand the 00:15:41.589 --> 00:15:45.729 flow of the message, super important, and I like that as a key component of grace. 00:15:46.060 --> 00:15:48.520 You've discussed the concept of metaphors in language. 00:15:48.790 --> 00:15:51.854 What are these and what do they mean for the way in which we communicate? 00:15:52.725 --> 00:15:56.505 Steven Pinker: There are more metaphors in language than we realize. 00:15:56.595 --> 00:15:58.275 Often we're completely unaware of them. 00:15:58.545 --> 00:16:01.755 We know this from a brilliant work by the linguist George Lakoff and 00:16:01.755 --> 00:16:04.965 the philosopher Mark Johnson in a book called Metaphors We Live By, I 00:16:04.965 --> 00:16:06.495 think it's forty-five years old now. 00:16:06.855 --> 00:16:10.515 They noticed that some things that we talk about, we keep harking back 00:16:10.515 --> 00:16:12.405 to the same metaphorical image. 00:16:12.405 --> 00:16:14.190 So a relationship is a journey. 00:16:14.740 --> 00:16:16.180 We've gone through a lot together. 00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:17.500 We're at a crossroads. 00:16:17.500 --> 00:16:19.300 We might have to go our separate ways. 00:16:19.390 --> 00:16:22.540 Look how far we've come, or argument is war. 00:16:22.750 --> 00:16:26.680 I tried to defend my position, but he demolished it. 00:16:26.980 --> 00:16:28.300 Knowing is seeing. 00:16:28.390 --> 00:16:29.260 I see what you mean. 00:16:29.260 --> 00:16:31.630 But that argument is cloudy or murky. 00:16:31.630 --> 00:16:32.560 I can't make it out. 00:16:32.949 --> 00:16:35.260 We don't even realize we do it, but we do it all the time. 00:16:35.560 --> 00:16:37.990 Matt Abrahams: I have a colleague, Michele Gelfand, she likes to talk 00:16:37.990 --> 00:16:41.890 about mind your metaphors because in negotiation and influence and 00:16:41.890 --> 00:16:46.090 conflict, those metaphors impact how we approach it and the words we use. 00:16:46.090 --> 00:16:49.840 So if I see a negotiation as a battle versus a problem to be solved, 00:16:49.870 --> 00:16:51.190 I approach it very differently. 00:16:52.500 --> 00:16:54.840 Well, Steven, before we end, I'd like to ask you three questions. 00:16:54.840 --> 00:16:57.120 One I create just for you and the rest I've asked everybody 00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:58.110 who's ever been on the show. 00:16:58.110 --> 00:16:58.829 Are you up for that? 00:16:58.980 --> 00:16:59.520 Steven Pinker: Sure thing. 00:16:59.790 --> 00:17:03.150 Matt Abrahams: You have written about cursing, and it's fun to talk about, and 00:17:03.150 --> 00:17:07.980 I'm curious, how does cursing, swearing, how can we use it as an effective tool? 00:17:07.980 --> 00:17:09.270 What value does it provide? 00:17:09.579 --> 00:17:12.609 Steven Pinker: The thing that swearing does is it elicits 00:17:12.669 --> 00:17:15.280 involuntary emotional reaction. 00:17:15.369 --> 00:17:18.760 Your primitive part of your brain, maybe your amygdala just gets pinged, 00:17:18.760 --> 00:17:23.800 usually with some, not just an offensive thought, excretion, feces, 00:17:23.800 --> 00:17:29.460 urine, cuckoldry, copulation, death, misfortune, those are the subject 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:31.919 matter of swearing across languages. 00:17:31.980 --> 00:17:36.510 But also there's common knowledge in the sense that when someone uses a profane 00:17:36.510 --> 00:17:40.530 word and they know that you're trying to get an emotional reaction out of them. 00:17:40.800 --> 00:17:44.520 That's why we avoid swear words when we have no interest in 00:17:44.520 --> 00:17:45.510 getting an emotional reaction. 00:17:46.120 --> 00:17:48.460 When you go into the doctor's office, the nurse might say, well, 00:17:48.460 --> 00:17:49.810 we'd like to take a stool sample. 00:17:49.810 --> 00:17:51.460 She wouldn't say, we'd like to take a shit sample. 00:17:51.760 --> 00:17:55.510 But shit does, it pings a little part of our brain. 00:17:55.930 --> 00:17:59.830 Now, there is a, a rule for taboo language if used rarely and 00:17:59.830 --> 00:18:03.520 judiciously it can express something you can't express it any other way. 00:18:03.580 --> 00:18:06.260 If you're angry, like, will you pick up your dog shit? 00:18:06.490 --> 00:18:09.120 It's not a very nice way of putting it, but it's appropriate 00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:10.710 to be anger at the moment. 00:18:10.980 --> 00:18:11.640 Matt Abrahams: Understood. 00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:13.260 That was a damn good answer. 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:13.860 Thank you. 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:17.490 There's some research that I've heard when I talk and try to help people 00:18:17.580 --> 00:18:20.640 feel more comfortable and confident in their communication, manage their 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:25.050 anxiety, that swearing actually releases some neurochemicals that can blunt the 00:18:25.050 --> 00:18:27.840 cortisol that comes about from anxiety. 00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:31.050 So it can actually make you feel a little more confident or at least 00:18:31.050 --> 00:18:34.800 a little less unconfident, just by blurting out, not in front of public 00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:38.220 obviously, but you might do it behind the curtain before you get out on stage. 00:18:38.669 --> 00:18:40.200 Let me ask you question number two. 00:18:40.290 --> 00:18:42.960 Who is a communicator that you admire and why? 00:18:43.379 --> 00:18:44.460 Steven Pinker: Oh, geez. 00:18:44.550 --> 00:18:49.800 On the public stage, Barack Obama was a, has a deserved reputation as 00:18:49.800 --> 00:18:53.885 a communicator, particularly for the nonverbal component of trying to bring 00:18:53.909 --> 00:18:56.370 the country together in moments of crisis. 00:18:56.490 --> 00:18:59.220 Now, he didn't succeed with everyone 'cause there were factions that 00:18:59.220 --> 00:19:03.190 still hated him, but just by virtue of conspicuously making the 00:19:03.190 --> 00:19:06.700 effort to bring people together, I think that had a positive effect. 00:19:06.970 --> 00:19:10.240 Among writers, I think George Will has a way with words. 00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:12.070 He's been around for quite some time. 00:19:12.340 --> 00:19:15.520 Matt Abrahams: Obama certainly is recognized as a, as an amazing 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:18.700 communicator, and I appreciate you highlighting the ability 00:19:18.700 --> 00:19:20.200 to bring people together. 00:19:20.530 --> 00:19:21.760 Last question for you. 00:19:21.820 --> 00:19:26.800 What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 00:19:27.225 --> 00:19:29.895 Steven Pinker: Well, certainly empathy, not in the sense of 00:19:30.165 --> 00:19:33.435 necessarily feeling someone's pain, but getting inside their head. 00:19:33.465 --> 00:19:36.615 Overcoming the curse of knowledge, knowing what they don't know. 00:19:36.915 --> 00:19:44.055 The simultaneous awareness of the message to be communicated and the relationship 00:19:44.055 --> 00:19:45.580 that you have with your hearer. 00:19:46.010 --> 00:19:49.850 That's what all this euphemism and indirectness and innuendo 00:19:49.850 --> 00:19:51.530 is, is all about calibrating it. 00:19:51.620 --> 00:19:56.360 Finding the optimal level of directness or indirectness that's appropriate to the 00:19:56.360 --> 00:20:01.850 context, the nature of your relationship, the culture you're in, and the costs 00:20:01.850 --> 00:20:06.979 and benefits of the message going over your hearer's head or being so blatant 00:20:06.979 --> 00:20:08.310 that they know what you're up to. 00:20:08.925 --> 00:20:12.555 Matt Abrahams: So empathy, making sure that you balance out, or 00:20:12.555 --> 00:20:15.915 think through, the message and the relationship you have, and trying to 00:20:15.915 --> 00:20:20.685 balance among all of those factors in terms of directness around context, 00:20:20.685 --> 00:20:22.605 relationship, cost, benefit, and culture. 00:20:22.725 --> 00:20:22.905 Steven Pinker: Yeah. 00:20:22.905 --> 00:20:23.570 Optimal directness. 00:20:23.570 --> 00:20:23.730 Yes. 00:20:24.270 --> 00:20:25.500 Matt Abrahams: Optimal directness. 00:20:25.530 --> 00:20:28.260 Thank you, Steven, for all of the valuable insights. 00:20:28.260 --> 00:20:32.670 Truly a masterclass in how to be more effective in our communication, 00:20:32.730 --> 00:20:37.140 and you've uncovered many insights into our indirect communication. 00:20:37.230 --> 00:20:40.350 Thank you, and I wish you well with your newest book, When Everyone 00:20:40.350 --> 00:20:43.770 Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of 00:20:43.770 --> 00:20:45.840 Money, Power, and Everyday Life. 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:46.800 Steven Pinker: Thanks for having me on. 00:20:48.990 --> 00:20:51.000 Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:53.100 Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:20:53.220 --> 00:20:55.679 To learn more about language and cognition, please listen to 00:20:55.679 --> 00:21:00.030 episode 91 with Valerie Fridland and episode 224 with Adam Aleksic. 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:04.899 This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. 00:21:04.919 --> 00:21:06.419 Our music is from Floyd Wonder. 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:08.730 With special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. 00:21:09.074 --> 00:21:12.165 Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. 00:21:12.225 --> 00:21:14.294 Be sure to subscribe and rate us. 00:21:14.324 --> 00:21:16.574 Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. 00:21:16.695 --> 00:21:21.135 And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language 00:21:21.135 --> 00:21:23.054 learning content and our newsletter. 00:21:23.264 --> 00:21:26.864 Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, 00:21:26.955 --> 00:21:31.914 Ask Matt Anythings, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.