Without a context, the imagination runs wild
About a week ago, I had BBC TV on in the background as I was getting ready for work. From my bedroom, I heard a woman’s concerned, energetic voice say something like, ”In Germany, things aren’t looking too good – and it’s not clear what will happen over the next few days.”
The phrase has stuck with me. Not because it’s particularly clever or exciting, but because it reminded me of something I typically encounter when I try to understand Danish. Not speak it, because when I (try to) speak it, I generally know what I’m talking about. But understand it, because then, I often have no idea what we’re talking about – which leads to some pretty entertaining misinterpretations.
When you’re learning a new language and have a half-baked vocabulary, context is everything. If I know the discussion is about cars, I can follow. If not, I can just as well think that ”speed”, ”comfort” and ”prices” are still referring to the previous conversation about Søren’s cruise on the Rhine. And it can be a good 5-10 minutes before I find out that I’m on the entirely wrong track.
So what was the BBC anchor talking about? The weather? Or a national strike? It would take a bit more time in front of the TV to figure it out – and I just didn’t have that time.
The same goes for all communication. I often encounter brochures and web texts that go on and on about saving you time and money, or speeding up operations, or enhancing employee morale – you get the picture. This goes on for paragraphs. And I sit there, waiting for the punchline: ”We make remote-controlled robots” or ”We specialize in business to business advertising.”
Sometimes, companies forget the importance of context. They know who they are, so they assume others do too. But without an anchor point, you just can’t expect audiences to guess your message correctly – so it’s best to just set them straight right from the start with something like, “And now, back to Germany, where the strikers don’t seem to be stopping any time soon…”
Have you ever let your imagination run in the wrong direction because of a lack of context? I’d love to hear about it.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Hmm. When teaching English in Japan, I used to start every class by asking the students (five years old in this case) to answer a question before they came into the room. So the kids would line up, and I’d ask each one a question: How are you? How old are you? What’s your name?, that sort of thing.
Just before Christmas, I was dressed as Santa Claus and said to the first kid in a happy, booming Santa voice “Ho ho ho!”. And the kid fired back, “I’m fine, thank you.”
And then I realised that they didn’t understand what I said at all - they only knew the context (red suit or not) - Dan asks a question at the door and we answer.