| 1.
Known knowns |
Things
we know we know |
| 2.
Known unknowns |
We
know there are some things we do not know. |
| 3.
Unknown unknowns |
Sometimes,
it is impossible to know what we do not know. We do not even know,
or cannot know, that there is something to know. |
Categories
one and two are plainly stated and easily exemplified. I know that I
know America invaded Iraq. I know that I may never really know why they
invaded Iraq. It is Rumsfeld's third category that earned him the award.
An "unknown, unknown" applies to cases when it just could
not occur to us that there is something we do not know. If someone is
waiting round the corner with a gun, to say that we do not know is not
enough. We do not even know that we need to know.
Rumsfeld's
impromptu remarks, made during a free-flowing media briefing, unwittingly
place him in the linguistic field of pragmatics, the very field that
is taking on increasing importance in EFL in relation to the internationalization
of English. They are at the same time reminiscent of the Orwellian '1984'
notion of Newspeak (1949: 241-251), "…the Newspeak vocabulary
was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised"
(p. 249). Is Orwell's chilling prediction for the decline of English
finally coming to pass twenty years later than he foretold? "There
was no need for such a word as bad, since the required meaning was equally
well - indeed, better - expressed by ungood". As one disciple of
Big Brother puts it (p. 49), "After all, what justification is
there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word…
If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word
like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better,
because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not." We are
then left with reductionist pairs such as good/ungood, light/unlight
and - doesn't it start to look familiar? - known/unknown. From Orwell's
Newspeak, there was only one step to coining the notion of Doublespeak
for language that willfully disguises the reality it pretends to represent,
not ethnic, but linguistic cleansing, as exemplified in the now notorious
"collateral damage".
In a recent paper in this journal, (Nunn: 2003 http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/march03.sub3.php)
I attempted to discuss intercultural inferencing in terms of pragmatic
theory using a specific example from an intercultural simulation involving
foreign and Japanese students of intercultural communication in a Japanese
University. Three views of inferencing were discussed in relation to
the data sample. Grice's view of inferencing guided by a principle of
cooperation, and its subordinate maxims, Sperber and Wilson's relevance
theory and Clyne's revised maxims for intercultural analysis. To use
the academic jargon, that can in no way be called "plain English",
within a theory of relevance, "contextual effects" are created
by reference to known information, reducing the need for processing
by interlocutors who share the same prior contextual clues in a "mutual
cognitive environment". The conclusion of the paper is that, in
intercultural negotiation a higher level of awareness of assumptions
about common knowledge is of central importance to competence and performance.
On reading Rumsfeld's comments soon after publishing this paper, it
immediately struck me that his much-maligned paradigm was in some respects
much 'plainer' than my own attempts, and those of more famous linguists,
to explain the states of mutual knowledge in communication. An Internet
journal is an ideal medium for this kind of retrospective re-analysis
as the previous analysis is available at the click of a mouse.
A key aspect
of pragmatics is that it is important to make assumptions about what
our interlocutors know. Among the five points referred to by Grice (1989:
31) as essential aspects of the inferential process, the last two in
particular refer to our state of knowledge:
"To
work out that a particular conversational implicature is present, the
hearer will reply on the following data:
(1) the conventional meaning of the words used, together with the identity
of any references that may be involved;
(2) the Cooperative Principle and its maxims,
(3) the context, linguistic and otherwise, of the utterance;
(4) other items of background knowledge;
(5) the fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under
the previous headings are available to both participants and both participants
know or assume this to be the case." (Grice 1989: 31)
Sperber
and Wilson (1989: 43) refine Grice's view, arguing that notions of mutual
knowledge or even notions of common assumptions are untenable. They
point out that, "it is left to the communicator to make correct
assumptions about the codes and contextual information that the audience
will have accessible and be likely to use in the comprehension process."
We must therefore make assumptions about which assumptions will be,
and especially will not be, "mutually manifest". Such assumptions
are at least partly assumptions about the state of knowledge of our
interlocutors. They are vital for successful communication. In this
respect, Rumsfeld's three categories add an interesting dimension in
much plainer English.
Figure 1 Rumsfeld's categories: the states of knowledge during communication
| 1.
Known knowns |
Things
I assume you know - so I do not need to mention them. |
| 2.
Known unknowns |
Things
I know you do not know - so perhaps I will tell you, if I want you
to know.
Things you know I do not know - but do you want me to know?
|
| 3.
Unknown unknowns |
Things
I do not know that you do not know or that you need to know - so
I do not think of telling you.
Things I am not aware of myself - although it might be useful for
you to know.
Things you do not tell me, because you are not aware of them yourself
- although I might need to know.
|
For those of us who spend a lot of time communicating outside our own
cultures, Rumsfeld's third category, if not the plainest, is certainly
the most relevant. In a foreign culture, and arguably in any communication,
the biggest problems are those things that we do not know that we do
not know. When we do not know that there is something we need to know,
it does not even occur to us to ask. For members of the host culture,
they cannot know that we do not know so they do not think of telling
us. In our own culture some things are so obvious that we cannot imagine
other people don't know them and we might not even be aware that we
know them ourselves. Interculturally, this makes a slightly different
category. I know what you need to know, even if my 'knowledge' is instinctive
or subconscious, but it never occurs to me that you do not.
Background From the Previous Study
Some brief extracts are presented below to provide sufficient background
to appreciate the relevance of Rumsfeld's study for those who prefer
not to read or re-read the previous detailed argumentation and analysis.
"One American student (AM) and three Japanese students (JP1, JP2
and JP3) played the role of insurance agents, each representing a driver
in a traffic accident. Their aim was to negotiate the lowest possible
percentage of blame for the driver they represented. (Numbers in the
transcript represent percentages proposed by negotiators.) Common background
information included a detailed description of the accident by the teacher
and a short statement by each driver.
In the
information provided before the negotiation, the Escort driver, represented
by the American student, had admitted to having "a couple of drinks".
Transcript
Part 1
JP1: |Why | |Ah ...I think ..{.er ...Escort..}…{you… Escort
AM: Yes.}
JP1: ::Escort is forty to fifty|
AM: |Tell me why |
JP1: |Tell me why |
AM: |Tell me what laws I broke first |
JP1: |I don't know {I don't know that, I don't know} about er the
situation in other country :: but er in Japan ::especially in
Japan :: er ...er You were drunk, {drunk.}|What is drunk is
...er...driving
AM: Ah
JP1: ...is most severe situation|
AM: |Okay| Where does it say ::I was drunk then |It doesn't say
{er my er client does not say} :: he was drunk|
JP1: |Ah...even a little bit {er couldn't er }you couldn't admit
That in Japanese law ::I think|
Transcript
Part 2 (6 minutes later in the same conversation)
AM |You
should be more cautious:: when you`re {when
you`re} coming into this lane :: because I'm driving ... |In
Japan these lines here ...:: well according to what {the
VW} the representative for the VW was ...|
JP1 (Interrupting) |::Even if you are driving
main road you are drunk…| you are drunk…| Okay | Er
{you have} you did have a drink :: even a little bit :: so I
think er your responsibility is er 40 to 50, {er 40 to 50 and
er}…|
Am |{How do you} how do you know :: I was drunk though ::
or my client was drunk | I mean :: how do you know |
JP1 |You said ...before|
AM |I didn't
say :: he was drunk| I said :: he had a drink|
JP1 |In Japan a little bit drink means drunk:: |Okay| {… in
Japanese law}| (laughter from other JP students)"
I pointed
out that there was an entanglement between the normally accepted range
of possible meanings of a lexical item in one context and the background
assumptions in relation to drinking and driving within a different speech
community.
JP1 identifies
the problem early in the conversation. AM does not. This is clear from
the way JP1 explains "drunk" contrastively.
JP1 |I
don't know {I don't know that… I don't know}
about er the situation in other country :: but er {in
Japan} especially in Japan, er ...er You were drunk
{drunk} |What is drunk ...er...driving…
AM: Ah
JP1: ...is most severe situation|
As Sperber
and Wilson (1989: 16) suggest "a mismatch between the context envisaged
by the speaker and the one actually used by the hearer may result in
a misunderstanding". We have already noted that the American student
did not consider the Japanese student's assumption of the "drunkenness"
of the Escort driver as true or possibly true in any relevant sense.
(I didn't say he was drunk, I said he had a drink.) The repeated act
of ostension by the Japanese student in the second extract obliges the
American student to re-consider his assumption. The strong ostensive
behaviour of the Japanese student has successfully made the American
student recognize the relevance of the contribution "you were drunk"
in spite of the fact that this contradicts the background assumption
his own argument was grounded in and his assumption that language was
the major problem of understanding. Skilled intercultural negotiation
involves bringing out into the open, ostensibly making manifest or available
for inference what is not shared. The discovery of radically opposing
assumptions may represent the cultural equivalent of an electric shock.
In this context, the American student, a hitherto able and articulate
negotiator with considerable intercultural experience, admitted (in
later analysis) that he was "paralysed", leading him to accept
a very high percentage of blame for his driver with little further negotiation."
The very
notion that won Rumsfeld his award, the "Unknown, Unknowns"
provide a simple way of understanding what was happening during this
intercultural incident. The American student did not know there was
something different that he needed to know about the meaning of "drunk"
for a driver in Japan. This student happened to be an experienced and
skilful intercultural negotiator in many situations. The conclusion
is perhaps that even a skilled intercultural communicator cannot be
aware of what he does not know he needs to know. This will always be
an important aspect of intercultural communication to try to take into
account, if only to reduce the stress of the inevitable pragmatic failures
that those who cross borders cannot fail to encounter. The "unknown
unknowns" are part of intercultural life. In this case, it was
the Japanese student who realized what was happening and explained it
to the visiting student. However, this student had "lost"
the simulated negotiation by this stage in terms of the "Insurance
Negotiation" task set. We may hope optimistically that it was well
worth losing a classroom simulation in order to gain intercultural knowledge
that may help in future intercultural negotiations. With regard to English
as a language taught for purposes of international communication, this
example highlights the difficulties that we face as teachers who are
now called upon to teach pragmatic skills as well as the many other
interlocking skills relating to linguistic and communicative competence
and performance.
Academics writing about intercultural pragmatics are perhaps fortunate
to avoid the kind of scrutiny that the plain English judges reserve
for high-profile media figures. However, we may receive some comfort
from PEC spokesman, John Lister (PEC webpage), who seems himself to
find plain English just too boring to stick to when he states with reference
to Rumsfeld's award: "We think we know what he means, but we don't
know if we really know". There are times when Plain English just
does not do the job. Multiple negatives - with a strategic modal verb
thrown in for good measure - fit my knowledge of the Iraq war perfectly.
I do not know if Rumsfeld did not know there were no WMDs in Iraq but
I do know that I might never know what he did not know.
Rumsfeld's
winning enigma uses combinations of only two very common words that
would fit into anyone's list of plain English lexis. But perhaps we
may comfort ourselves by pointing out that "plain" English
flatters to deceive. The "plain" English of modern news media
has a worrying capacity for keeping us in the dark; which brings us
back to Orwell, for whom the natural partner of Newspeak was Doublethink.
The Orwellian example of Doublethink best suited to this paper is perhaps,
"Ignorance is strength", although some might prefer "War
is peace". Many views of so-called international English propose
the broad view of "World Englishes" in a diverse, complex,
unpredictable but fascinating multi-dimensional world. However, we might
also note the increasing risk of proposing a reductionist - "less
is easier" - unilateral linguistic model, a 2024 Newspeak of our
post-cold war era, in the name of concepts such as mutual intelligibility,
that are best understood in the domain of Pragmatics.
While the
rather complex academic jargon of Pragmatics is ultimately aimed at
enhancing understanding, the political masters of monosyllabic mediaspeak
often have a vested interest in adding to the considerable number of
"unknown-unknowns" that already hinder international understanding.
We may never know what they know, because they will hide behind 'plain'
English, the Newspeak of "International" English, to make
sure that we do not.
References
Clyne, M. (1994) Inter-cultural Communication at Work - Cultural Values
in Discourse Cambridge CUP
Ezard, J. Guardian webpage (accessed 02.12.2003)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1097856,00.html
Grice, P. (1989) Studies in the Way of Words London: Harvard University
Press
Nunn, R.
(2003) 'Cooperation and Relevance in Intercultural Conversation: the
Influence of Background Knowledge on the Inferential Process' Vol.14
March 2003 Asian EFL Journal http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/march03.sub3.php
Orwell, G. (1949) Nineteen Eighty-Four Harmondsworth: Penguin
Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication and Cognition
(2nd ed.) Blackwell Publishers, Inc; Oxford, England
The Plain English Campaign Website (accessed on 02.12.2003) http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/footinmouth.html
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