Prof. Dr. Hans Jürgen Heringer

Leseproben - How to improve your understanding

3. The programme

Maxims may guide your training and training examples but they must become second nature. In other words, maxims must be spelled out in examples and in differentiated methods.
You can acquire such methods by training. You may improve your understanding by analysing communicative examples and different interpretations of it, but the examples must fit, they must be good examples and apt for learning the right things.
It is a common method to train understanding of other cultures by analysing so called critical incidents. Critical incidents are examples where something went wrong as in the following incident:
In front of a car-wash, a 54 year-old German got angry at a Frenchman who had obviously the waiting queue. Though the German loudly protested in German and in French to be precise the Frenchman did not react at all. In asking the German what in his opinion the Frenchman might have thought in this case, he answered: "The Germans are frightened arse-holes anyway, and it is impertinence that wins."
The critical incident displays the perspective and bias of two narrators. There is a secondary narrator who narrates from a third person's perspective. The referential noun phrases he uses evoke an interpretation in a national-stereotyped pattern. But there must be a primary narrator, surely the German whose reflection is quoted.
But more important, the narration is a closed text. The learner cannot detect something new unless he guesses or insinuates more detailed or different backgrounds. Thus, he cannot learn to detect something really new. Working in more methodical steps, the protagonist German could possibly remember that the Frenchman bought a ticket before him, and that this fact might have been the reason for his behaviour. He probably could hypothesize in the end: The Frenchman probably thought: "I was the first to buy a ticket, so I am the first to enter the car-wash."
While assuming in the beginning that the Frenchman thinks in a national-stereotyped pattern, he later refers back to reasons arising from the context of the situation described. In the end he came to the conviction that he could not be sure not to have misunderstood the person he was cursing at.
Within the last years, we developed a training programme on a multimedial CD-ROM. The programme deals with the possibilities of improving your understanding. It offers methods which sensitize you for problems of interpersonal communication.
The core of the programme is a learning module in which you can become an expert in operational methods for a better understanding. You work with this module for 3 days and explore a personal case, i. e. a communicative episode where you felt in trouble with somebody else, be it in an intracultural or in an intercultural case. (We see no difference between both, in principle. When realizing that we are engaged in intercultural communication we quite rashly assume that misunderstandings may occur, that it is in general more risky, but this in fact is the danger of intracultural communication, that we think it runs smoothly. And in intercultural communication we very soon reach the rock bottom of our personal conviction, of our culture, of our form of life.)
In the course of the program, you try out how the different operations shed new light on your case and you evaluate the result and the method. Does it result in a better understanding, an understanding which is more plausible for you? Would you be satisfied with this version? In any case, there is no absolute criterion such as a correct or a sublime better understanding. You yourself are the master of understanding and only you alone can be the measure.
The methods used are not new. In contrast to widespread isolated applications of the operations, the effect is brought up by the experiential and personal character of working in the programme. You put yourself in focus for some days, you take your experiences seriously and you are helped by the arrangement and order of the methods presented.
The programme proceeds in six steps:
1. Take the case
2. Develop the case
3. Elaborate the context
4. Work out alternative versions
5. Change perspective
6. Get to the point
The idea is that the case is formulated as a text because then you can apply further well-defined textual operations. All the instructions are what I call formal. They cannot refer to the special case since I do not know anything of it. This kind of neutrality is especially adequate because nobody else would know what a better understanding of the case would look like. The programme is strictly person-centered.

1. Take your case Focus attention Remember similar episodes How did they go on? Feelings that came up Take the notes Revision Additions and specifications Further details? Their relevance

You should write your case down spontaneously in order not to lose your personal point, not as a reflected or well-structured narration.
A welcoming effect of this is that you give attention to the incident and to yourself.
The effect of writing down is often that you feel freeer, a kind of liberating force seems at work.
Sometimes you may think that you have found a solution right after this step.

2. Develop the case Mark keywords A fresh attempt Free associations Condensation A telegramme to a friend A stereotyped title/ slogan A new expanded version under this title

With this step you follow the strategy to condense the case to the bones and then blow it up. The effect is that you write and understand it with a well-defined bias such that you can physically see what it would look like under this bias. Remember that you evaluate the different versions and thereby gain more knowledge and new aspects of your case.

3. Elaborate the context Where did it begin? The beginning for your partner Is there any precedence? Did you expect the course? Or your partner? What my partner did or said What depressed me What I wanted to say; why I did not say it

Here the personal situation, the roots in personal history and the context of this episode are spelt out. You systematically scan your memory and search for hidden patterns that have been guiding you and, perhaps, guide you habitually.
Another point is to explicate the implicit. In this way you become aware of the fact that the wording is not the only thing that counts but that your tacit belief interferes constantly.
And you prepare yourself for the design of and for scrutinizing alternative ways of action and of understanding the case.

4. Work out alternative versions What I did and what I didn't do Alternatives you would have preferred Consequence? Would this satisfy you now? Your actions What you thought in detail What did your partner think? Do both go together? Talk to yourself What you said and what you thought Balance

To design alternatives opens your faculties of understanding and it prepares you for a new understanding and for future cases.

5. Change perspective Is there a tendency in your text? Check: Which points show that it was you who wrote the text and not your partner? Triggers of action: "I just ___ed when my partner ...ed." "I usually ___ before my partner ...s." Values, motives and maxims of your partner Mark good ones with +, bad ones with Your values, motives and maxims Do you make a better showing than your partner? The global objective of your partner Your own objective Could you make the formulation more precise to the extent that there is a real contradiction?

With this step we explicitly turn to the partner. This is mostly done by a change of perspective where you try to make explicit what you think what your partner did and thought. So you do not really explore your partner but only yourself. The aim is that you detect and acknowledge your part, what you contributed to the case, not in a physical and objective sense but in the constitutive sense that you created it. In the course of the programme it becomes more and more clear that there is not "the case" but that it changes and develops while you work on it.

6. Get to the point Something unclear or vague? Self-assurance Was it a structural conflict? A quite normal incident? Arguments that you were right A letter to your partner Got further? Clearer? A new interpretation, another understanding?

This programme is not a programme of communicative correctness. Even if you have a better understanding and better faculties of understanding the outcome will not necessarily be that you were wrong, that you made a mistake. Sometimes you will realize how things are, you will respect or even approve of the way things are. Or you will detect that there was a structural conflict which cannot be resolved or resolved by you, at least not in a reasonable way and time. Sometimes you will find out that you proceeded well and that your partner really was wrong or did something you could not accept. This is quite normal. Then you will be recompensed for your hard work anyway by having trained your personal communicative faculties.
Another point is the final reflection on the different methods you tried and the effect they had in each particular case of the different types. This will give you a good reason to follow the method in future cases. And the more you train yourself the more you will be able to follow it fast and completely naturally. This is my hope, at least.
However, the general lesson to learn is: Your understanding is open and flexible. There is no fixed meaning that determines your understanding. Threfore you have to scrutinize your precedence, what comes to your mind when you hear a certain word, see certain things or participate in certain acts. You realize your own contribution to your understanding and that it may change and develop. And this is the only possibility of coming to a better understanding.