h-l's history with indirect communication

Several years ago, there was a thread on alt.polyamory entitled "RJ's history with 'indirect' communication", in which rmjwell tried to articulate what it was about indirect communication that bugged him so much. This rapidly turned into The Thread That Ate alt.poly. I remember it spanning a good 2000+ posts (Google Groups suggests 3157) and several months.

One of the things that came up in that thread was the idea of people saying one thing and meaning the polar opposite. An example was given of a visitor saying "What a nice, fresh breeze!" and meaning "Please close the window". That completely blew my mind. If a visitor in my house was to remark on the pleasantness of a breeze, I would either sit there continuing to enjoy the breeze alongside them, or offer to open the window wider. I certainly would never get any idea that the person was cold and wanted the window shut. The idea that someone could say something so utterly contrary broke my brain.

So, a few days ago, we received a letter from an elderly relative that is so full of indirect communication, we hardly know how to interpret it. So I'm asking all of livejournal to offer insights.( Read more... )