X-Delivery-Notice:  SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender.
X-else-reply-to: sibun@parc.xerox.com
Fake-Sender: sibun@parc.xerox.com
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 13:35:40 PST
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      what's in a code?
              18 Nov 1992 09:38:48 -0800
              <92Nov18.125250pst.12704@alpha.xerox.com>

(penni sibun 921119.1400)

   [From: Bruce Nevin (Wed 921118 12:07:22)]

   My response was that in the party patter in fact considerable
   linguistic information is in the language used, but that it is
   not information that the participants care much about;

sure, there's ling info in the lang, but the users didn't put it there.
it's (often) an artifact.  i claim this is frequently true when we
speak our native language; it's quite obviously true in a foreign
lang, as illustrated by this excerpt from a recent article about japan
by dave barry:

****

When we pulled up in front, three women in kimonos came out and began
bowing and saying things in Japanese and picking up our luggage.
Using our Japanese skills, we said "thank you" or possibly "good
night," and we bowed, and they bowed some more, which was not easy for
them to do while holding our luggage.

Our maid, who was wearing a kimono and a beeper, came into our room
about 30 seconds after we arrived, speaking in the very high,
sing-song voice that Japanese women often use when they're speaking to
somebody in authority.  "Hai domo!" she said.  She said "Hai domo!"
to us a lot.  As far as I was able to determine, "Hai domo!" means
"Yes very!"  We came to think of her as the Very Lady.

****

 and in the
   flirtation little information is in fact transmitted, however
   much is imagined, and that the most important thing communicated
   is interest in and availability for negotiating mutual agreements
   that have a more explicit foundation.

it is clear that we will never find ourselves flirting, since we have
radically different ideas of what's involved.

   >in my description of flirting, i gave specific instances of
   >information being conveyed (eg, ``i like it when you do that'').

   You are imagining that you have conveyed the information that is
   in the sentence "I like it when you do that." He may very well be
   imagining something else, such as "she thought that was funny".

i don't go around imagining that i convey info in sentences.  i gave
you a verbal gloss of a nonverbal communication.  of course confusions
such as those you suggest occur, and either get subsequently resolved,
perpetrate tragicomic consequences, or are irrelevant.  these exact
same issue arise *all the time* in verbal communication too.

    probably nothing even as specific as your really rather vague "I
   like it when you do that"

that's not vague at all--it's terribly concrete.  it looks vague when
we write it down, cause there's no context, and every word in it has
deictic/indexical qualities.  in context, the whole expression refers
to--the context, which is right in the participants' face(s).  maybe
it takes some negotiation to figure it out precisely, but the space of
possibilities is pretty small, being the-here-and-now.

   Even the more specific "I liked it when you just did that" has this
   problem.

this is more specific cause it's more inflected??

   Conversely, this is why
   language is good for error-free transmission of linguistic
   information,

what is ``error-free transmission of linguistic
   information''?

   but not particularly good for communication, in the
   sense of communication that happens in flirtation and is
   restrained in party patter.

--and if it's unrelated to the bulk of communication, then why should we
focus on it?

cheers.

                                --penni
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU