Monday, April 07, 2008

Revisiting Message and Metamessage

One person says, "I know he said he didn't like the assignment but all of his other behavior indicated that he didn't have that big of a problem with it."

The other person says, "I told her in a straight-forward manner that I didn't like the assignment. How much clearer do I have to be?"

One person is reading overall context while the other is emphasizing the precise message.

If I only had a dollar for how often this occurs.

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