My serious answer as a neurotypical person is that it depends on what you mean by being better at communicating.
Is the goal is to communicate information in the clearest manner possible? Or is communication that is laden with ambiguity, irony, hierarchy etc., in short, social information that is supplementary to the literal meaning of the words, better because is more dense with meaning? And this is just considering verbal communication. Is a poem better the clearer its meaning is? There are lots of people who think so, even if I would disagree.
I think it depends on the situation, context and your own assumptions about what good communication is.
If you take the example above about the aunt wanting the clothes picked up, obviously this is pretty shitty at clearly communicating intention, and maybe she’s just bad at communicating generally. But it’s also plausible that this person felt like asking directly for whatever reason was too overbearing. Women are often socialized to avoid direct commands. In that case the communication much better matches the aunts intended goal of asking without asking, even if that message was not understood by the recipient.
Autistic people, speaking as one of them, tend to heavily focus on semantics in communication whereas allistic people tend to heavily focus on pragmatics.
Often autistic-coded characters in media make vulgar stereotypes of this divide and they’ll have their autistic-coded character be extremely pedantic about the semantics of communication in a condescending way, which is played off as the punchline.
But, as it is, there’s often a kernel of truth to stereotypes and this definitely tracks for autistic folks. (The first part though, not the condescension.)
What this means is that autistic people tend to miss a lot of the ancillary communication that goes on with allistic people that provides a lot of context, social cues, and signalling of intent and mood and other matters of social significance.
It’s a case of “I have investigated communication and it turns out that I meet my own priorities for communication better than others do” (shocking, I know!) and this goes both ways; I strongly suspect that allistic people often feel as though when communicating with autistic people, a lot of cues are missed and a lot of the implied meaning goes over the autistic person’s head (or worse yet, it’s interpreted as the autistic person intentionally ignoring these signals and the autistic person is considered as being rude or arrogant.)
Essentially so much of this boils down to a matter of what emphasis and purpose autistic/allistic people have for communication.
ReadFanon has discussed neurotypicals failure of Theory of Mind eloquently, but I’d also like to elaborate.
Feminine people aren’t just socialised to avoid direct commands, we’re also socialised to avoid conflict. And if someone has directly asked an autistic person to do “task” but the person was hyperfixated on something or in a rigid routine (or they don’t see the need)…the response to that can pretty easily cause conflict. The problem is the neurotypical is generally misinterpreting the cause of conflict.
Now, the correct response is to recognise when a person is in a hyperfixated state and either wait or gently bring them out before directly asking for task (non-neurotypicals love small talk on their interests, in its proper place).
But the response for neurotypicals is to withdraw and then use oblique approaches to pressure the person socially and allow the person to “want” to do the task themselves rather than force a direct hard power conflict. Which mostly just annoys.
Is the goal is to communicate information in the clearest manner possible? Or is communication that is laden with ambiguity, irony, hierarchy etc., in short, social information that is supplementary to the literal meaning of the words, better because is more dense with meaning?
ReadFanon claims that;
Autistic people, speaking as one of them, tend to heavily focus on semantics in communication whereas allistic people tend to heavily focus on pragmatics.
My experience though is that in most circumstances the kind of “dense layering of social meaning” that you’re talking about is basically indecipherable to me in the context of an interpersonal conversation.
And so part of the reason why I might resort to “focusing on semantics” in the course things is because I’m trying to get the other person in the conversation to state explicitly what they would normally be trying to convey implicitly, because I cannot actually know what they are trying to say otherwise.
It’s like subtitles for somebody with a hearing imparement.
My serious answer as a neurotypical person is that it depends on what you mean by being better at communicating.
Is the goal is to communicate information in the clearest manner possible? Or is communication that is laden with ambiguity, irony, hierarchy etc., in short, social information that is supplementary to the literal meaning of the words, better because is more dense with meaning? And this is just considering verbal communication. Is a poem better the clearer its meaning is? There are lots of people who think so, even if I would disagree.
I think it depends on the situation, context and your own assumptions about what good communication is.
If you take the example above about the aunt wanting the clothes picked up, obviously this is pretty shitty at clearly communicating intention, and maybe she’s just bad at communicating generally. But it’s also plausible that this person felt like asking directly for whatever reason was too overbearing. Women are often socialized to avoid direct commands. In that case the communication much better matches the aunts intended goal of asking without asking, even if that message was not understood by the recipient.
This is the old pragmatics vs semantics issue.
Autistic people, speaking as one of them, tend to heavily focus on semantics in communication whereas allistic people tend to heavily focus on pragmatics.
Often autistic-coded characters in media make vulgar stereotypes of this divide and they’ll have their autistic-coded character be extremely pedantic about the semantics of communication in a condescending way, which is played off as the punchline.
But, as it is, there’s often a kernel of truth to stereotypes and this definitely tracks for autistic folks. (The first part though, not the condescension.)
What this means is that autistic people tend to miss a lot of the ancillary communication that goes on with allistic people that provides a lot of context, social cues, and signalling of intent and mood and other matters of social significance.
It’s a case of “I have investigated communication and it turns out that I meet my own priorities for communication better than others do” (shocking, I know!) and this goes both ways; I strongly suspect that allistic people often feel as though when communicating with autistic people, a lot of cues are missed and a lot of the implied meaning goes over the autistic person’s head (or worse yet, it’s interpreted as the autistic person intentionally ignoring these signals and the autistic person is considered as being rude or arrogant.)
Essentially so much of this boils down to a matter of what emphasis and purpose autistic/allistic people have for communication.
I think you’ve put this very nicely here, and I agree.
ReadFanon has discussed neurotypicals failure of Theory of Mind eloquently, but I’d also like to elaborate.
Feminine people aren’t just socialised to avoid direct commands, we’re also socialised to avoid conflict. And if someone has directly asked an autistic person to do “task” but the person was hyperfixated on something or in a rigid routine (or they don’t see the need)…the response to that can pretty easily cause conflict. The problem is the neurotypical is generally misinterpreting the cause of conflict.
Now, the correct response is to recognise when a person is in a hyperfixated state and either wait or gently bring them out before directly asking for task (non-neurotypicals love small talk on their interests, in its proper place).
But the response for neurotypicals is to withdraw and then use oblique approaches to pressure the person socially and allow the person to “want” to do the task themselves rather than force a direct hard power conflict. Which mostly just annoys.
ReadFanon claims that;
My experience though is that in most circumstances the kind of “dense layering of social meaning” that you’re talking about is basically indecipherable to me in the context of an interpersonal conversation.
And so part of the reason why I might resort to “focusing on semantics” in the course things is because I’m trying to get the other person in the conversation to state explicitly what they would normally be trying to convey implicitly, because I cannot actually know what they are trying to say otherwise.
It’s like subtitles for somebody with a hearing imparement.