Is it True that Chinese People Speak Indirectly? (New Design)

Cultures Explained | 文化解密

Is It True That Chinese People Speak Indirectly?

BY HE LIN 何霖

Neihan (内涵), a word that could be understood as “subtext”, is the key to understanding why Chinese people often say the Chinese communication style is indirect.

If Chinese people were asked whether the Chinese way of speaking is indirect, most of them would say yes. It is commonly believed in Chinese society that Chinese people speak in a more roundabout way than people from other countries, especially people from the West. In daily conversation, it is true that many Chinese people will not directly ask for help and they may talk about other things to cover their real intentions.

However, it is also true that sometimes Chinese people will be much more direct than Western people. For example, some Chinese people will directly ask people about their salaries, the cost of their homes, or their plans to have babies. Why does this contradiction exist? Are Chinese people wrong to draw this conclusion to themselves? From my perspective, it results from different understandings of being indirect. The Chinese idea of neihan —a word that could be understood as “subtext,” is the key to understanding the Chinese way of speaking.

Image credit: https://www.jianshu.com/p/374602693236

Even though some Chinese people do not speak indirectly in certain circumstances, the art of neihan is of high value in Chinese society. The wisdom behind this indirect way of speaking has been depicted by countless of storytellers, poets and writers for thousands of years. To comment on the political events without being persecuted, Chinese historians invented a special style of writing about two thousand years ago that depended on subtext. The rules of this style are that every character should convey implicit messages and avoid saying things that do harm to family members and people with high status. It is called weiyandayi, which means subtle and concise language with profound meanings. [1] Thanks to the conciseness and elegance of the language, the historian could indicate their attitudes through the character they chose. For example, there are three characters for the verb ‘kill’, one for killing innocent people (sha 杀), one for killing people in a higher position (shi 弑), and one for killing for justice (ke 克). Through choosing the right character, readers could know the writer’s perspective without him writing them out directly. This writing style quickly became popular, and it deeply influenced the Chinese way of writing and speaking. Being able to convey ideas implicitly and read the real meaning behind the words are considered signs of good breeding and high intelligence. Since Chinese words were made of characters with their individual meanings, it gave people many opportunities to create new words and hide their thoughts behind the word. Those who were good at playing with words had a huge stage to show off their talents and they were highly respected. In ancient times, they were invited to fancy parties to make up smart language codes for other guests to guess the meanings, make poems that hide information and do other kinds of language games to entertain the guests. [2] Even though these fancy parties no longer exist today, Chinese people’s passion about hiding meanings in words lives vigorously. Many people enjoy finding ways to convey their messages without directly saying so, such as using sarcasm or saying one thing while meaning another, and those who master this skill are considered smart and talented. TV hosts with this skill are thought highly of by the audience, and even at gatherings of friends and family, people who master the art of indirect speaking will automatically become the spotlight.

Image credit: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/china-history/li-bai.htm

Apart from showing off one’s talent, another function of neihan is to avoid causing harm to important people, which is also one of the rules of the historical writing style mentioned earlier. In daily conversation, it means using an indirect way of speaking to avoid making important people feel embarrassed or attacked.

Things get complicated when it comes to the understanding of who are “important people,” and this is where the contradictions mainly come from. According to the traditional moral code, people should be obedient to their parents or elder family members, their leaders and people with high social status. When having conversations with those people, no matter whether asking for help, giving advice or receiving praise, Chinese people are expected to avoid showing signs of surpassing them. For example, in the traditional view, children should not point out their parents’ mistakes directly, but have to implicitly indicate their parents to reform themselves, so that their parents’ dignity and authority could be protected. The same goes for leaders and teachers.

"Through an indirect way of speaking, one can talk about other related things before one asks for a favor in order to evaluate the chance of being rejected based on the other’s attitude."

Because relationships between people are of great value in Chinese society, Chinese people pay huge attention to maintaining good relationships. To maintain a relationship between normal friends or colleagues, one of the ways is to use indirect speaking to prevent being aggressive and causing embarrassment. In this case, the friends and colleagues are the important people for whom the safe talk is used. Through an indirect way of speaking, one can talk about other related things before one asks for a favor in order to evaluate the chance of being rejected based on the other’s attitude. If the other person shows a sign of unwillingness, the favor will not be asked in order to prevent getting the person into an awkward situation where both people’s feelings will be hurt.

However, the traditional view has become less influential in the modern day. After the New Culture Movement in the 1920s, Chinese people started to reconsider whether it was correct to obey their parents and leaders under every circumstance. [3] More and more Chinese families have started to have an air of freedom where children can make innocent jokes about their parents and do not need to be as careful about their words as in ancient times. Conversations between friends, acquaintances or even strangers have become more casual because people are spending less effort to build up a seemingly perfect relationship but focus more on real feelings. Sometimes good friends say very direct things to each other to show they are close. The exposure to Western culture makes many Chinese people reconsider the benefit of efficient and direct speaking. People are encouraged to speak directly, and there is even a trend that celebrities who like to speak directly gain more fans because they “show their true natures”. For instance, a famous singer Na Ying, who will directly reject invitations and point out people’s problems, is always praised as being “genuine.” [4]

[Singer, Na Ying] Image credit: https://yantai.dzwww.com/2010sy/gdxw/201312/t20131231_9442962.htm?pc

Although many people still choose to use an indirect way of speaking, the moral constraints have less influence on their choices than before. They speak in that way because that is how the Chinese was used for many generations and neihan has become an important part of the language. But some phenomena cannot be explained as “exposure to Western culture.” How can Chinese people, who spend so much effort avoiding awkwardness, ask about a sensitive subject like other’s salary directly? The traditional value plays a big role. Such direct questions are often brought up by the elders to the youngers, like parents to children, teachers to students. Beating around the bush is not necessary because the youngers are not supposed to feel offended by the elders. In ancient times, parents had the right to know the detail of their children’s lives and asked their children to obey what they said, so there was no need to be indirect. The same worked for teachers. Whatever a teacher said was unquestionable and the students should always obey. Besides, teachers could directly point out the students’ mistakes without worrying about their feelings and even beat them as a punishment. Even though in modern life there are few physical punishments, direct criticism is still very common in education. For example, some teachers will exaggerate the consequences of a mistake to make students more careful not to do that again. Even when praising a good student, some teachers will spend more time talking about the potential problems he has. In most cases those teachers are not picky people with a bad temper. They do it because they believe this can help their students be better and this is what a teacher should do.

Image credit: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/36547190?utm_source=com.youdao.note

The indirect way of speaking is indeed a big part of Chinese language and culture. Being able to convey ideas without directly saying them is considered a sign of good education, high intelligence. Although more and more Chinese people use a direct way of speaking for efficiency nowadays, they are still proud of the flexibility and complexity of the language that allows them to be very creative when they want to be indirect. Moreover, the spirit of being respectful and not offending anyone by speaking indirectly is taken as politeness and thoughtfulness. So, even though Chinese people do not always communicate this way, they are happy to claim that speaking indirectly is an important trait of Chinese culture.

Editors | Austin Woerner

Layout | Liu Haiyi 刘海一 Lexue Song 宋乐雪

He Lin (何霖 Holly) is a student of Class 2023 majoring in Data Science. She likes reading, traveling and many other things that make life interesting. This essay was written in Professor Austin Woerner’s EAP102A class in 2020.

References

1. ‘Weiyandayi’ https://hanyu.baidu.com/ (Accessed on March 16, 2020)
2. Such parties were documented in many ancient poems and articles. One of the most famous poet, Li Bai, had written many poems with neihan in this circumstance.
3. ‘Xinwenhuayundong’ https://baike.baidu.com/item/新文化运动/527309?fr=aladdin (Accessed on March 17, 2020)
4. ‘NaYing is genuine and considerate’ https://www.sohu.com/a/453052528_121038970 (Accessed on June 16, 2021)