Paralinguistics, paraorthography, and now parap-what?
Email is often misinterpreted. Duh. And now there is even psychological proof of just that.
The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
"Don’t work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong.
According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.
Or blogs they read.
As I wrote the first paragraph, I was assuming that the sarcastic undertone was unmistaken. Why? Because (a) I knew I was and (b) I left clues. The rest, my dear reader, is your problem.
Communicating with others is a tricky business. An inherent problem is that we don’t have direct access to — let alone control over — how others interprete our messages. Ideas we wish to communicate often go beyond objects and events under our collective nose. To refer to them we need symbols. But how do we know the symbols means the same thing to different people? This is the problem of symbol grounding that troubles philosophers, psychologists and AI researchers alike.
Even when you get all the symbols aligned at the two end of the communicative channel, there is still the problem of interpretations. It is simply too robotic to assume that (a) everything you need to know is in the message and (b) every symbol is interpreted literally.
Take sarcasism. To get it across, you have to pass 2 messages in one sentence — whatever you are commenting about, and the meta-instruction that "don’t interpret the message literally". How? It depends. For someone who knows you well — such as yourself — trust that they just get it because the literal meaning is the opposite of your predictable responses. For a more general — and therefore distant — audience, embed clues. If you are speaking, use gestures (wink, wink), intonation, interjections, or whatever paralinguistic devices. Writing? Your choices are more limited, but there is still hope. Use quotation marks, capitalization, anything that warns the reader an "escape sequence" is coming (in programming, an escape sequence is a string that is marked to be interpreted non-literally). I called these paraorthography in a paper that will come out soon.
While paralinguistics may have biological basis, as many embodied cognition theorists argue, paraorthography is purely cultural conventions. That is, everybody is supposed to agree on the set of rules. But everybody is not. So when it comes to written communications, you can probably bet that your message will be interpreted literally, but you can’t be sure your sarcatic clues will be picked up at the other end. Back in days when writing was either very personal (remember handwritten letters?) or formal (copy editors, anyone?), you are relatively safe. Either the receipent knew you too well, or the cost of misinterpretation was so high that you took pains to cue your readers.
Email and blogs are different. You are writing for strangers and you don’t think twice before clicking that send button. Don’t expect too much from your readers either. As they scan email or blogs, who has the time for detective work? The research findings are to be expected — when readers overlook (or uncertain about) sarcatic cues you left (or did you?), the default is literal reading.
But aren’t emoticons supposed to help? Is saving space the only reason we don’t we spell out LOL and OMG? Why do some users reveal their "emotion" when they log on? There is a trend to formalize symbols of authors’ psychological state. Whether or not they will achieve the success of paralinguistics or paraorthography, the need is paramount. They are part of the frame in which electronic messages are interpreted. Yes, language and orthography have other means to do just that. But in this age of SMS, they have to be done a lot more efficiently and explicitly.
Paralinguistics (e.g., gestures, intonations) help interpreting speech.
paraorthographics (use of punctuations, etc.) help interpreting text.
What do we call this new breed of symbols/conventions that reveals emotions over email? Para-messaging?
The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
Stephen Leahy02.13.06 | 2:00 AM
"Don’t work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong.
According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.
"That’s how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "People in our study were convinced they’ve accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance," says Epley.