The last blog article from one of my MRN co-workers prompted a lot of great questions and comments. I've really appreciated the feedback and will write future blogs to address some of the things I heard.

However, one response seems very common among Americans, even those who are deeply immersed in cross-cultural relationships. One friend who works for another international ministry wrote the following response.

I appreciate this article very much. It does a great job of capturing the problem. However, . . .On a personal level, this drives me insane. Because while I know I am the one who is in the position to be aware and make adjustments, I still cannot shake the sense that when this happens (and it does), people are being dishonest. This feels like an integrity issue to me. This sentence in particular bugs me, "people use communication primarily to maintain and manage relationships." Because while I know this is true, I also believe that words mean something. And when you ask someone a direct question (e.g. what do you think of this idea?), and they tell you something that is not true, it is still a struggle for me.

Here is an expanded version of what I replied to this good brother.

I get it. I often feel the same way. But I must accept that my feelings about things don't determine what they are. I don't accuse my wife of lying when I ask her what is wrong, and she says "nothing" with a tone that we both know means "something." Over the years, I've come to understand that when she does that, it is because she doesn't trust the honesty of my inquiry. She knows, or at least suspects based on previous experience, that I don't really want to know what is wrong. What I want is confirmation that I haven't done anything wrong; I'm not willing to hear about her feelings and adjust to her concerns.

In these situations, she needs more evidence that I'm ready for a deeper conversation than my flippant inquiry can prompt. If I'm in a good place, I hear what she isn't saying and make a note that I'm going to have to use another approach to address what is wrong. But I'm a fool if I listen only to the literal meaning of the word she used. I need to notice all the ways she is communicating—her tone, body positioning, and facial expressions. She communicates on multiple levels; even the word she chose to reply, "nothing," is code for "something." We both know what she is saying, and the word's literal meaning is not the point.

Communications experts tell us that only a tiny fraction of communication is carried by the literal meaning of words. Words are symbols, and they often work ironically or indirectly themselves. One example is how the word "literally" has become code in America for "metaphorically," which is the opposite of what it literally means. As in, "I was literally shocked to death." This functions just like when the word "nothing" means "something." Tone and context invert the word's meaning, and everyone involved understands.    

People in indirect or high context cultures rely on more than the literal word meanings to convey an "honest" response. People who live in that culture understand this. Those of us from the outside struggle to hear what isn't being said literally. They are not being deceptive; they are being respectful. They struggle to speak in a way we say we prefer because it "feels" wrong to them. It is dishonoring when they don't feel a lack of honor. There is no intent to deceive or hide anything.  It is honest in that it honors how they feel about us, and they don't want to harm our relationship by sharing a criticism that would not just express disagreement, which they do feel, but also express disrespect for us, which they don't feel. We should get that. Even in our supposedly direct culture, we still have ways of being less direct.

Also, we struggle with the unintended consequences of our directness in America. We routinely find out that when we express disagreement with other people on the idea level, those people take it as disrespect on the relational level. Then we have relationship repair to do. Americans constantly say they want direct feedback, but when they receive it, they get wounded and withdraw. We have many ways of being indirect in our culture. This is not only a majority world phenomenon. Every culture has direct and indirect communication levels, just as all cultures have some honor-shame dynamics. When we look at ourselves and how we operate in our "direct" culture, we can see that we really aren't as different from indirect cultures as we may assume. The differences are matters of degree, not of kind.

This can help us understand that indirect communication is not a form of dishonesty.