A Post About Subtext
Dec. 19th, 2002 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeBeen thinking a lot lately, always a dangerous habit of mine, and thus decided to do some of that thinking in writing to see if it makes any more sense that way.
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griffen kind of was the catalyst in all this, and I have to thank firewillow for fanning the flames, too.
So. Subtext.
I guess most of you don't know me very well. At least, you've mostly only known me for the past four years or less. Actually, that would be all of you. About half or more of you have known me for less than a year. So I can imagine it's pretty damned hard to know what makes me tick, even if you're interested in knowing.
I've known for a very long time that I'm really terrible at verbal and especially oral communication. It's always been extremely difficult for me to convey what I want to say, what I need, what I want, or whatever, with the spoken word, in spite of my relative mastery of four languages.
Up until recently, however, I never actually questioned why this was. I simply accepted it as a fact of life and kept going. Lately, however, with all the soul-searching going on in these parts, I've come to ask myself a few pointed questions too, and so far they've all led me back to that this: subtext.
To me, subtext is everything, and likely always will be on some level. Communication to me lies more in what is *not* said than what is actually said. In conversation, I look for tone, expression and body language to tell me what the person is trying to say. In text form, I tend to read between the lines. In both cases, I tend to be relatively sensitive and alert to what's going on, and most of the time I get at most of the truth behind the words (which is perhaps why I always excelled at literary analysis).
Thus, when I communicate with people, most of my meaning I convey with gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Any of my RL friends will tell you that once I get going I'm a very exuberant conversationalist, using any means at my disposal to get my message across more effectively. It also makes me a very good anecdote teller, as I've developed a fairly good sense of comedic timing for that kind of thing. I can be very entertaining at parties when I force myself to be sociable.
Now, the more important question in all this is: why?
Well, I hate to disappoint you all, but the answer is hopelessly banal: it's all my parents' fault.
Actually, I'm serious.
I've often ranted about my mother being passive-aggressive in these pages. Well, that has a lot to do with how my entirely family works. I am an only, adopted child. My mother is an artist who was forced to make a career in advertising in order to feed herself, and my father is an armchair marxist. We lived together for 23 years.
During that time, I can count on the fingers of one hand the instances in which there were raised voices in my household. In fact, we very rarely argued, let alone fought. Shouting matches were nonexistent.
This isn't to say there wasn't conflict. It just happened on a different level. In a very short time we had all become so attuned to each other that we could "read" each other's signals without even pausing to think. I could tell by my parents' actions, their facial expressions, everything, exactly how they were feeling, and 90% of the time I knew why, too. I suppose in a way I was lucky to be a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), because this allowed me to win myself a very special place in my parents' hearts that I'm sure I wouldn't have had if I had been a different sort of child.
Because I was so sensitive to my parents' emotional states, I quickly grew to fear and loathe anything which upset the mood of the household. If one or both of my parents was upset, I could feel the tension build around me until it became suffocating and unbearable. It was as though we were living in a simmering kettle and the simplest thing could bring it to a full boil.
So I always strove to "fix" things whenever I could. I'd hug my mother, talk to my father, bring them drinks, make dinner when I could, whatever I knew would make them "happy" at that moment. I aslo became adept at making light conversation, no matter what the topic. If I could, I'd fill in any void with flippant remarks and hyperboles, willing one of my parents to smile and ease the tension.
The same way, when things were going well, I was amply rewarded by my parents' tacit approval. When I did well in school, I knew by the way they held themselves that they were proud of me. Often they'd buy me a book as a reward, and every time they came home from a parent–teacher meeting they would give me all the feedback from my teachers, praising me fo what I had done well and chastising me gently for what I hadn't accomplished or done wrong.
My friends always wondered at my apparent fear and respect of my parents, since neither of them ever lifted a hand against me (except on two occasions), and certainly never used "traditional" forms of punishment like grounding or taking away privileges or what have you. It's very difficult to explain the type of censure that one exacts upon oneself for having disappointed one's parents. To me, there was no worse punishment than having to bring home an A- and having to explain "what went wrong" to my father. He never raised his voice, nor even said anything to me that would have been considered in the least bit "bad." He would simply sit me down and expect me to explain to him why I was imperfect and what my plan for the next month, year, two years, whatever, was in order to strive towards perfection.
It was quite simple.
All this to say that all my life my existence has revolved around subtext. The text itself was unimportant, because it was what lay underneath that determined whether or not I was worthwhile.
It's important that most of the time the text itself was entirely divorced from the subtext. We could be talking about the weather, but I'd know from the tone that we were really talking about what a horrible disappointment I was. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.
So if for example my mother said she was "Fine!" I knew automatically that she wasn't, because it wasn't a word she'd use in normal conversation. Her face and tone would also register annoyance and irritation, and generally her shoulders and entire upper body would be tense. Then I knew that I would immediately have to comply to what she wanted, or risk facing more censure. If I wanted to fight for myself, then I had to find a compromise, and sweeten it with future promises, while at the same time insinuating that she was in fact getting her way.
As a result, even today I mistrust text alone. To me, the simple word is never what it says it is. There's always a hidden meaning somewhere. What's safe to me is subtext. I can rely on it always being there, and, if I read it right, it brings rewards.
Disclaimer time: I didn't write this as a lame excuse for overreacting to certain things, or what have you. Nor am I promising to "mend my aberrant ways" and suddenly become all straightforward. Ain't going to happen. I just wrote this as an effort to actually understand the way my own psyche functions.
This isn't a black-and-white issue. I refuse to believe that subtext is all bad, and that being direct is always the right approach. Nor do I believe that my own way of dealing is completely functional: after all, the entire world does NOT share my parents' subtext, which makes interpretation very iffy sometimes. ;)
That was my ramble for the day.
griffen kind of was the catalyst in all this, and I have to thank firewillow for fanning the flames, too.So. Subtext.
I guess most of you don't know me very well. At least, you've mostly only known me for the past four years or less. Actually, that would be all of you. About half or more of you have known me for less than a year. So I can imagine it's pretty damned hard to know what makes me tick, even if you're interested in knowing.
I've known for a very long time that I'm really terrible at verbal and especially oral communication. It's always been extremely difficult for me to convey what I want to say, what I need, what I want, or whatever, with the spoken word, in spite of my relative mastery of four languages.
Up until recently, however, I never actually questioned why this was. I simply accepted it as a fact of life and kept going. Lately, however, with all the soul-searching going on in these parts, I've come to ask myself a few pointed questions too, and so far they've all led me back to that this: subtext.
To me, subtext is everything, and likely always will be on some level. Communication to me lies more in what is *not* said than what is actually said. In conversation, I look for tone, expression and body language to tell me what the person is trying to say. In text form, I tend to read between the lines. In both cases, I tend to be relatively sensitive and alert to what's going on, and most of the time I get at most of the truth behind the words (which is perhaps why I always excelled at literary analysis).
Thus, when I communicate with people, most of my meaning I convey with gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Any of my RL friends will tell you that once I get going I'm a very exuberant conversationalist, using any means at my disposal to get my message across more effectively. It also makes me a very good anecdote teller, as I've developed a fairly good sense of comedic timing for that kind of thing. I can be very entertaining at parties when I force myself to be sociable.
Now, the more important question in all this is: why?
Well, I hate to disappoint you all, but the answer is hopelessly banal: it's all my parents' fault.
Actually, I'm serious.I've often ranted about my mother being passive-aggressive in these pages. Well, that has a lot to do with how my entirely family works. I am an only, adopted child. My mother is an artist who was forced to make a career in advertising in order to feed herself, and my father is an armchair marxist. We lived together for 23 years.
During that time, I can count on the fingers of one hand the instances in which there were raised voices in my household. In fact, we very rarely argued, let alone fought. Shouting matches were nonexistent.
This isn't to say there wasn't conflict. It just happened on a different level. In a very short time we had all become so attuned to each other that we could "read" each other's signals without even pausing to think. I could tell by my parents' actions, their facial expressions, everything, exactly how they were feeling, and 90% of the time I knew why, too. I suppose in a way I was lucky to be a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), because this allowed me to win myself a very special place in my parents' hearts that I'm sure I wouldn't have had if I had been a different sort of child.
Because I was so sensitive to my parents' emotional states, I quickly grew to fear and loathe anything which upset the mood of the household. If one or both of my parents was upset, I could feel the tension build around me until it became suffocating and unbearable. It was as though we were living in a simmering kettle and the simplest thing could bring it to a full boil.
So I always strove to "fix" things whenever I could. I'd hug my mother, talk to my father, bring them drinks, make dinner when I could, whatever I knew would make them "happy" at that moment. I aslo became adept at making light conversation, no matter what the topic. If I could, I'd fill in any void with flippant remarks and hyperboles, willing one of my parents to smile and ease the tension.
The same way, when things were going well, I was amply rewarded by my parents' tacit approval. When I did well in school, I knew by the way they held themselves that they were proud of me. Often they'd buy me a book as a reward, and every time they came home from a parent–teacher meeting they would give me all the feedback from my teachers, praising me fo what I had done well and chastising me gently for what I hadn't accomplished or done wrong.
My friends always wondered at my apparent fear and respect of my parents, since neither of them ever lifted a hand against me (except on two occasions), and certainly never used "traditional" forms of punishment like grounding or taking away privileges or what have you. It's very difficult to explain the type of censure that one exacts upon oneself for having disappointed one's parents. To me, there was no worse punishment than having to bring home an A- and having to explain "what went wrong" to my father. He never raised his voice, nor even said anything to me that would have been considered in the least bit "bad." He would simply sit me down and expect me to explain to him why I was imperfect and what my plan for the next month, year, two years, whatever, was in order to strive towards perfection.
It was quite simple.
All this to say that all my life my existence has revolved around subtext. The text itself was unimportant, because it was what lay underneath that determined whether or not I was worthwhile.
It's important that most of the time the text itself was entirely divorced from the subtext. We could be talking about the weather, but I'd know from the tone that we were really talking about what a horrible disappointment I was. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.
So if for example my mother said she was "Fine!" I knew automatically that she wasn't, because it wasn't a word she'd use in normal conversation. Her face and tone would also register annoyance and irritation, and generally her shoulders and entire upper body would be tense. Then I knew that I would immediately have to comply to what she wanted, or risk facing more censure. If I wanted to fight for myself, then I had to find a compromise, and sweeten it with future promises, while at the same time insinuating that she was in fact getting her way.
As a result, even today I mistrust text alone. To me, the simple word is never what it says it is. There's always a hidden meaning somewhere. What's safe to me is subtext. I can rely on it always being there, and, if I read it right, it brings rewards.
Disclaimer time: I didn't write this as a lame excuse for overreacting to certain things, or what have you. Nor am I promising to "mend my aberrant ways" and suddenly become all straightforward. Ain't going to happen. I just wrote this as an effort to actually understand the way my own psyche functions.
This isn't a black-and-white issue. I refuse to believe that subtext is all bad, and that being direct is always the right approach. Nor do I believe that my own way of dealing is completely functional: after all, the entire world does NOT share my parents' subtext, which makes interpretation very iffy sometimes. ;)
That was my ramble for the day.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-20 05:32 pm (UTC)i can sort of understand where you're coming from, but i also get the other side of the coin. my mother never raised her voice, or argued, or did much of anything. it was all about subtext. my father, on the other hand, is unaware of what speaking in a normal tone of voice would sound like. hence why i fluctuate madly between talking very quietly and screaming at the top of my lungs.
subtext is not all bad, i think. it's just how you use it, and if you expect everyone else to understand it. then, there's also the issue of reading TOO much into everything; sometimes, there is no subtext, but it's always so easy to find it buried in anything and anywhere...