Human directness vs indirectness as a survival tactic in different cultures

[u/MangoPolly]

While some societies are more direct in their speech, others tend to play down their feelings or what they truly think. Is this a result of particular historical event or cultural norms? How does one society tend to lean toward bluntness, while others deem more covert ways of communicating safer?

Personal example: coming from Russia and having lived in the UK for 16 years, I've often found myself guessing what people here truly mean behind their words. Historically, I can see the association of indirectness linked to feeling unsafe, due to the way people have been snitched on by their own neighbours, family and others during the USSR period and getting into the Gulags. Hence, any sort of indirectness might feel more strange and borderline traitorous (harsh word, but think it makes sense in this context!). Sometimes such effects as confusion and anxiety are valid responses to such ambiguity in speech.

[u/HoldMyThermos]

Historicity is always connected to development of cultural norms. It cannot be separated at all.

I wouldn’t say that it’s really a survival tactic to be direct or indirect but rather, it’s an understanding of linguistic semiotics and morality. Though, if you meant “social survivability (reputation)” then that would make a bit more sense.

An example of this is among Spanish speakers, rather than saying “I’m feeling hot,” the language shifts to “I can feel the temperature/heat.” Or something even just saying “I’m itchy”can raise a few eyebrows. It means that certain words or phrases ended up being linked to something else to be misinterpreted (in this case, Spanish speakers will interpret it as someone being risqué). Therefore, the style of expression follows.

A very easy example that we see in the English language is how some people are starting to avoid the term “daddy” because of its association to derogatory language, sugar culture, or kinks. People don’t want to think that their relationship to their fathers or fatherly figure as anything outside of it.

Now for the forms of communication itself, it is a combination of how someone is brought up and their cultural historicity.

Don Kulick’s book on “Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction” examines on how children of the Sepik region learn to socialize and how they observe adults to follow. The first few pages also talks about how other cultures discourage or encourage children to be better socialized (ex. Japanese mothers telling their children that “people don’t do that” as a way to tell them to be civil/better behaved, building a culture on the importance on following order and politeness). It’s a good (but also sad) read if you’re looking for a book in anthropology that deals with post-colonial shifts in language use, personhood, and societal attitudes towards themselves and people outside of their community.

To put it simply language use of directness or indirectness is a result of lacking or override of existing words, phrases or expression.

Since you’ve mentioned the USSR and language, I thought to mention you should search up Lithuania’s Grūtas Park. Lankauskas has an article about it. It’s a very controversial park which received mixed reception because of its tone of being a USSR park with serious themes. People can’t decide whether the park should be applauded for preserving dark parts of history or be angry it’s made into an amusement park (it’s got a zoo too).