The use of innuendos or euphemisms may be a way of avoiding such awkwardness - for example, inquiring of the maitre d’ whether there is a cancellation respects his dominance in his place of work, rather than switching the relationship to reciprocity, while still conveying the intended offer. If you sell your best friend your car, negotiating a price can put a strain on the friendship, because it involves the rules of reciprocity, whereas a friendship is governed by communality. The difference between eating food off of our spouse’s plate and our boss’s plate may be obvious, but not all of our relationships have such clear boundaries. Pinker notes that “what we can get away with in a communality relationship, we can’t get away with in a dominance relationship.” At a party, for example, you may eat a shrimp off of your spouse’s plate, but you will probably not grab food off of your boss’s plate. We are very careful about our relationships and we distinguish various types of relationships sharply - behavior that is acceptable in one relationship may be inappropriate in another relationship. Invoking the work of anthropologist Alan Fiske, Pinker suggested that people distinguish three major types of relationships: dominance (e.g., graduate advisor and their student), communality (e.g., family, close friends), and reciprocity (e.g., business relationships). Our choice of words can be influenced by our relationship with our conversation partner. Pinker observes, “No matter how much we profess a desire for people to say what they mean, we use - and expect people to use - indirect speech.” In addition, it exposes a paradox in our attitude toward conversation. However, we may be more willing to quickly (and hopefully smoothly) flash the $20 bill and say something along the lines of, “I was wondering if you might have a cancellation.” The maitre d’ is no fool and it’s obvious in both scenarios what’s really going on, so why do we insist on this charade and an “if you catch my drift” approach? According to this year’s Psi Chi Distinguished Speaker, APS Fellow and Charter Member Steven Pinker of Harvard University, using indirect speech (that is, veiling our true intentions in innuendos and euphemisms) can reveal a lot about social life. Few of us, no matter how hungry we are, would directly come out and offer the maitre d’ $20 for a table. It’s crowded and there’s a long line of people waiting. Imagine you’re at the hottest restaurant in Manhattan on a Saturday night.
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