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Recently I had a problem with a friend, wherein I told them something and they then went and told other friends of mine in a public place. Now technically this person wasn't in the wrong, as I hadn't specifically told them that I was uncomfortable having this information spread around without my permission. But I was unhappy about it because it was in a public place where others were close by, and one of the people who they assumed it would be alright to talk to hadn't heard about it from me. But I hadn't said so to them, I just made the assumption that they wouldn't talk about it, and it turned out I should in fact have told them so directly.
And this got me thinking about the difference between discretion and tact.
The friend in question and I both agree that neither of us have much tact. If I want someone to do something I might as well tell them straight out, because I'm incapable of being indirect and any attempt to do so will come across as stupidly transparent. I've improved these days to the point where I can say things somewhat less hurtfully rather than just blurting it out any which way, but if I feel like the point needs to be made then virtually no force on earth will prevent me from saying it. My friend is much the same.
However I do have a lot of discretion. For me the default settings on any information I get is private rather than public. Unless the information is posted in some publicly accessible place or the information is exceptionally good or important I won't discuss it with other people unless I know for sure that they've been given access to it as well. I'll also be as careful as possible where and when I discuss things to minimise other people getting access to information that might be privileged for all I know.
I guess I'm still socially immature in a lot of ways to assume that what I say will never be taken as gossip fodder. After all, talking about mutual acquaintances and events is what makes up 90% of social interactions. But knowing this, my gut instinct is to react by holding the information I do possess even closer to my chest, lest it travel outside my sphere of control. This is ridiculous of course, and so I try to let go. But.. it really isn't easy, especially when things like this happen. To me, everything anyone says has an invisible Private tag attached, and so I find it somewhat frustrating that other people don't always feel the same way. If you keep asking them to keep things to themselves you come across as not trusting the other person and/or paranoid, but if you don't then they might spread it more than you feel comfortable with.. *sigh*
Anyway, this all brings me to a related point which I just found randomly interesting from a personal perspective. As usual it concerns Linguistics :P In tute the other day one of the questions concerned politeness strategies. It presented a couple of scenarios where you had to ask a favour from your neighbour/friend. In the first scenario you had to convince them to let your young daughter play with their young daughter for the day while you went shopping. For the second you had to convince them to mind your few-months-old baby (called Howler) for the night while you go to stay with a friend who hates babies.
My own answers were that for the first scenario you could get away with just asking straight out as long as you were somewhat polite about it, ie "I don't suppose you could do me a favour and mind my daughter just for today" and for the second scenario, same deal except with <i>much</i> more politeness, ie "I know this is a huge imposition and I wouldn't be asking you if I could possibly avoid it, but could you pleeeeaase take care of Howler just for tonight?"
The tutor on the other hand discussed them in these terms:
Scenario 1: "That's not a huge favour to ask... in fact you probably wouldn't even need to lie!... You could even possibly get away without even asking, say something like "you know, our daughters get along sooo well and they haven't seen eachother in ages..." and then just wait for the other person to make the offer!"
Scenario 2: "You would lie, definitely. Your uncle died, you have a wedding to go to, anything! Just not the truth!"
My reactions to the above discussion?
Scenario 1: Eww.. Not only could I never do that sort of indirect request where you hint and then wait for the other person to offer, but I really really hate it when people do that to me.
Scenario 2: Just wow. It never even occurred to me to lie outright. I would have been as polite as possible and skirted around the reasons why I needed the favour, but if pushed I would admit it was because I just wanted to spend one night with my friend who (and I would probably embroider the truth somewhat here, since hating babies is socially unacceptable) had trouble dealing with babies.
Apparently this ability to lie and hint around the favour you want so that you save face (both for yourself and for the person you're communicating with) is part of negative politeness; obviously it's something I'll have to work on if I want to be socially acceptable.. I'm not sure if I do though given what's involved.
And this got me thinking about the difference between discretion and tact.
The friend in question and I both agree that neither of us have much tact. If I want someone to do something I might as well tell them straight out, because I'm incapable of being indirect and any attempt to do so will come across as stupidly transparent. I've improved these days to the point where I can say things somewhat less hurtfully rather than just blurting it out any which way, but if I feel like the point needs to be made then virtually no force on earth will prevent me from saying it. My friend is much the same.
However I do have a lot of discretion. For me the default settings on any information I get is private rather than public. Unless the information is posted in some publicly accessible place or the information is exceptionally good or important I won't discuss it with other people unless I know for sure that they've been given access to it as well. I'll also be as careful as possible where and when I discuss things to minimise other people getting access to information that might be privileged for all I know.
I guess I'm still socially immature in a lot of ways to assume that what I say will never be taken as gossip fodder. After all, talking about mutual acquaintances and events is what makes up 90% of social interactions. But knowing this, my gut instinct is to react by holding the information I do possess even closer to my chest, lest it travel outside my sphere of control. This is ridiculous of course, and so I try to let go. But.. it really isn't easy, especially when things like this happen. To me, everything anyone says has an invisible Private tag attached, and so I find it somewhat frustrating that other people don't always feel the same way. If you keep asking them to keep things to themselves you come across as not trusting the other person and/or paranoid, but if you don't then they might spread it more than you feel comfortable with.. *sigh*
Anyway, this all brings me to a related point which I just found randomly interesting from a personal perspective. As usual it concerns Linguistics :P In tute the other day one of the questions concerned politeness strategies. It presented a couple of scenarios where you had to ask a favour from your neighbour/friend. In the first scenario you had to convince them to let your young daughter play with their young daughter for the day while you went shopping. For the second you had to convince them to mind your few-months-old baby (called Howler) for the night while you go to stay with a friend who hates babies.
My own answers were that for the first scenario you could get away with just asking straight out as long as you were somewhat polite about it, ie "I don't suppose you could do me a favour and mind my daughter just for today" and for the second scenario, same deal except with <i>much</i> more politeness, ie "I know this is a huge imposition and I wouldn't be asking you if I could possibly avoid it, but could you pleeeeaase take care of Howler just for tonight?"
The tutor on the other hand discussed them in these terms:
Scenario 1: "That's not a huge favour to ask... in fact you probably wouldn't even need to lie!... You could even possibly get away without even asking, say something like "you know, our daughters get along sooo well and they haven't seen eachother in ages..." and then just wait for the other person to make the offer!"
Scenario 2: "You would lie, definitely. Your uncle died, you have a wedding to go to, anything! Just not the truth!"
My reactions to the above discussion?
Scenario 1: Eww.. Not only could I never do that sort of indirect request where you hint and then wait for the other person to offer, but I really really hate it when people do that to me.
Scenario 2: Just wow. It never even occurred to me to lie outright. I would have been as polite as possible and skirted around the reasons why I needed the favour, but if pushed I would admit it was because I just wanted to spend one night with my friend who (and I would probably embroider the truth somewhat here, since hating babies is socially unacceptable) had trouble dealing with babies.
Apparently this ability to lie and hint around the favour you want so that you save face (both for yourself and for the person you're communicating with) is part of negative politeness; obviously it's something I'll have to work on if I want to be socially acceptable.. I'm not sure if I do though given what's involved.
