It’s not a “different paradigm.” It’s bad communication. There’s EVERYTHING wrong with it. It’s inarticulate and antisocial. It’s obnoxious. If the kid isn’t answering the question, then he isn’t answering he question. No descriptivist apology is going to make his answers any more communicative, and if he can’t give detailed answers to questions in an interview, he can’t be relied upon to do it in a job. Employers don’t have time to ask 15 different questions to get one piece of information out these self-absorbed little morons. They need to learn to actually understand questions. That’s part of communicating.
:rolleyes: You’re still being subjective. This the the “right” way to communicate because it’s what is expected in the context. It is not **objectively **“good,” any more than a business suit is **objectively **better than jeans and a t-shirt. But you’re still going to want to wear the first one to an interview.
There’s no subjectivity involved. Communication is the transmission of information. Information is either transmitted successfully or it is not. A person speaking in monosyllabic grunts is not transmitting information.
We’re not talking about monosyllabic grunts–we’re talking about information exchange spread out between two or more speakers in smaller pieces, rather than in large chunks. Information can be transmitted just as successfully by a series of small questions and small answers as by one large question and one large answer. The fact that the kids communicate this way at all means that it is, by definition, a successful method when all parties use it.
ETA: Short answers to questions expecting long answers will be just as useless as long answers to questions expecting short answers.
Short questions intended to elicit expansive answers are the standard way in which interviews are conducted, and should be understood as such by all but the dimmest of candidates. A candidate who is overly literal and only gives the most minimal, narrow answers to open ended questions is showing a lack of receptive communication as well as verbal.
Forget it, this is pointless if you’re going to keep talking past every point I make.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with Shot From Guns’ point. She (I think she’s a she at least) is saying that two people who are communicating in short bursts are communicating just as effectively as two people who are communicating through a longer, more involved type of speech.
You can argue with that if you want, but it doesn’t really say much for your ability to communicate with another person, does it?
Bingo on the argument **and **the gender! Now where’s a cookie I can throw in your general direction…
It’s irrelevant how well they communicate with all their other inarticulate, subliterate, monosyllabic pothead friends on a cell phone (and those are situations in which little or no real information needs to be transmited anyway). They’re still not communicating well in the interview. Period. If they can’t understand that they need to give more substantive answers than “Yup,” or “'s’all good,” then they’re idiots, not “different communicators.”
I love that this argument is over an article that neither of us has even read, so we’re not even sure of the actual content of the conversation. I see it as an interesting shift in language, and Diogenes sees it as the end of modern society, and get off my lawn you damn kids, without either of us knowing what was actually said.
Update: She got on the plane this morning, had $48 and (I suppose from listening to her voice) a smile on her face.
It was hard for me not to slip a few $20 bills to her when I saw her yesterday, but I didn’t.
All I gave was the remark, “You’ve made an adult decision here, so I expect you to handle the results of your decision in an adult fashion”. That and I told her to call me if it all went to shit and I’d get her out of there.
Whatever happens, happens.
Update#2: She just called me from an airport where she has to change planes. “How do I do this? Where do I go now?” I told her to ask one of the nice young men or ladies that work for the airline she’s traveling on. Yep, she’s really thought this one through…
I don’t know. In my experience airports aren’t exactly the easiest or most intuitive places to navigate. I’m 26 and to be honest, were it not for the fact I became quite familiar with the places flying to London and back three weeks ago, I’d have probably been similarly as lost when I fly alone for the first time this October.
Best of luck to her.
Would really like to hear the end of day 1 update.
What about calling the local police and asking if they’ve had occasion to visit that house because the son was a suspect or the family was disturbing the peace?
I agree that she knows him as well as some stranger from the next town over. I’d let her go. But the cops could give you an idea if the boy still needs a little growing up.
Take this quiz:
You’re in a confusing airport. You’re not quite sure what to do or where to go. What is the first thing you do:
a. Find a person who works at the airport and ask them, or
b. Call a relative.
Nobody expects someone to find their way around an airport if they don’t know what they’re doing. But I’d expect someone who is mature enough to take this kind of trip to be able to solve this very straightforward and simple problem without calling Grandpa.
That’s not to make you feel bad, JCoM. But I’d suggest you keep your bag packed for this week, because I think there’s a good chance that you’re going to have to go on a "rescue mission.
I think that there’s one important aspect of what Dio is saying–something that’s getting lost in his obvious disdain for text-type communication. But it is a valid point:
These teens may not be developing the skills needed for more complex verbal communications. That’s a problem. You can’t expect that your audience will always be firing back questions at you.
Txt speak might be a “different” form of communication, but it shouldn’t be the only one that a person knows how to use.
I would have liked an update too. Or any sort of communication at all. Finally, tonight, after she’s been gone since early Saturday morning, there’s a cryptic post on her facebook to the effect “having a great time, sorry no cell service, be home as planned”.
So either:
- she’s already been chopped up into pig food and the FB note is a fake
2), she’s pissed because nobody here got all happy about this adventure and gave her a bunch of money to spend
3), there really is no cell phone service in a good sized town in Ohio.
My money’s on (2), above. :mad:
I wasn’t really angry about her deciding to go, just sort of disappointed that she didn’t use better judgment. This not communicating, when she had agreed to do so is not acceptable to me. Even if for some strange reason her cell phone won’t work there, this boy and his mom could afford to buy a plane ticket for her to fly up there. A long distance phone call on a landline shouldn’t break the bank.
I don’t think she’s asked to use their phone, either through distraction or simply not wanting to talk. Or because she’s been chopped up.
If she lives through this I may strangle her myself. A jury composed of parents and grandparents would let me walk.
I’m sorry to hear all this, John Carter. Kids these days, I tell ya. I’m turning into that uber pissed Dana Carvey character who is 800,000 years old and telling kids they didn’t have skis in his day, they just strapped dead guys to their feet and they were glad to have them.
Many posts in this thread revolved around the status of this girl—child or adult? IMO she’s both and neither. It’s another transformation stage for her. Your hypothesis that she’s pissed because people around her weren’t thrilled etc. is “Look at me! Look at me!” and that’s obviously “child.” The adult part…well…
I think she needs a path from childhood to adulthood. Effectively, “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t lounge by the pool and indulge whims because ‘I’m a child,’ then expect people to treat you like an adult, as though you earned this trip or planned it carefully or executed it well, etc.”
Calmly, but probably not all at once, when she gets back, what about a review of the experience? An adult…
*wouldn’t call home from the airport to ask how to get the connecting flight. She would ask someone there, save the money spent on the phone call, etc.
*would follow through on calling home because responsible adults know that others will be bewildered if the agreed-upon call doesn’t come.
*would have some money saved in case she had to bail, switch to plan B.
*doesn’t figure she is the center of the universe. The idea of you dropping everything and flying over to rescue her is laudable on your part, but not something that people who allege they are adults rely on because it shows a lack of self-sufficiency. What, like you might not have better things to do? Like you don’t have other uses for your money? Like you live to serve her needs and wants?
*would have seen this as a test of maturity and risen to the occasion, if only so that she’d be more supported on such things in the future.
*Etc.
In general, it’s an opportunity for you to frontload your objections and concerns for the next time she wants to try this. Give her enough grief and maybe she won’t even ask.
Nevermind, didn’t look at the date.
I think you are going to get more phone calls from her just like this.
I’m a little confused - if the guy can text her 30 times from his house, why can’t she use her cell phone from his house? If she has access to a computer to update FB - she should have at the very least, sent you an email letting you know she got there okay.