Thus children learn to appreciate the requirements of human dialogue.

A final step in acquiring conversational competence is learning to develop a conversational style. The particular style a child will adopt depends on his or her interaction with the mother. Mothers interpret what their children say and thus help them express intentions in conventional ways. They model and thus socialize children into culturally acceptable ways of communicating. They also extend what their children say by responding in challenging ways. They provide opportunities for conversation, thus helping children gain strategies for the topics and oppor­tunities for interaction given them. And finally, mothers demonstrate positive atti­tudes toward communication. Thus, the caretaker has a critical role in developing the child's conversational abilities (p. 120).

In contrast to Piaget's view, the sociocentric view is that message-encoding skills begin to develop when we are very young children and these skills evolve out of our exchanges with other human beings. So a child learns early on and is learning all the time, given favorable conditions, to participate in that world of shared meanings first introduced by the mother or some other adult caretaker.

As adults, we differ in our sensitivity to conversation. Some of us are partic­ularly savvy, others take conversations pretty much at face value. Qualities of both attention and interpretation would seem to be involved. A recent study of the components of conversational sensitivity finds that people high in sensitivity have a great capacity to remember what is being said, are perceptive in identifying deeper and sometimes multiple meanings, enjoy listening to social exchanges (even if they are not speaking), understand various kinds of power relationships in play, can sense patterns of affinity between people, are at ease with conversa­tional word play, and can come up with extremely effective alternatives during conversation (Daly et al., 1987, p. 171). The researchers also report a correlation between high conversational sensitivity and high ratings for empathy, assertiveness, self-monitoring, and self-esteem.

"The secret to language use," writes Clark, "lies in the users—the speakers and the listeners":

When a person talks, he can't just utter words aloud and expect to be under­stood. He must consider the people he is talking to, make an encyclopedia full of assumptions about them, and design his utterances accordingly. He must design what he says so that his specific addressees can figure out what he means, and they must interpret what he says assuming that he has selected it for them. Inherent in this intricate dance is a system of coordination. (1985, p. 227)

Language and thought

In discussing message encoding we've seen that language and thought are often said to be interrelated. But the nature of their relationship is far from clear. Is language a precondition of human thought? Is thinking simply inner speech? There are no easy answers. Students of communication have been particularly concerned with the question: Does language shape our ideas, or is it merely an instrument of thought?

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

One version of the view that our thought is shaped by the language we speak is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the world is perceived differently by members of different linguistic communities and that this perception is transmitted and sustained by language. Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956), whose work was shaped by that of the great linguist Edwin Sapir, regards language as the primary vehicle of culture. In short, the language we speak influences our experience of the world, while the evolution of language also reflects changes in the predominant modes of expression.

Whorf supports this theory with findings from studies of American Indian languages. In English, he points out, we tend to classify words as nouns or verbs; in Hopi the words tend to be classified by duration. For example, in Hopi "light­ning," "flame," "wave," and "spark" are verbs, not nouns; they are classified as events of brief duration. In Nootka, which is spoken by the inhabitants of Vancouver Island, categories such as things and events do not exist; thus it is said that "A house occurs" or "It houses."

Is it the case that differences in language reflect differences in perception? An Amazon tribe called the Bororo have several different single words for types of parrots. The Hanunoo of the Philippines have single words for ninety-two different kinds of rice. The Eskimos distinguish at least three kinds of snow in this way. We have only one word for parrot, one for rice, and one for snow. Does this mean that we are incapable of perceiving several types of each? Probably not. Social psychologist Roger Brown (1958) suggests that the perceptual categories we use more frequently are merely more "available" to us: "It is proposed, really, that categories with shorter names (higher codability) are nearer the top of the cog­nitive deck—more likely to be used in ordinary perception, more available for expectancies and inventions" (p. 236).

Linguistic distinctions tell us something about priorities within a given culture. Eskimos have several words for snow because they need to make finer verbal distinctions than we do when communicating about it. By and large, we are unaffected by different kinds of snow and therefore expend little effort on making such distinctions. This does not mean that we are incapable of doing so. In fact, members of certain subgroups within our own linguistic community make more verbal distinctions about snow than the rest of us—weather forecasters, bobsled owners, ski resort managers, and so on. We can qualify the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by saying that as a person learns the language of a given culture or subculture, his or her attention is directed toward aspects of reality or relationships that are important in that context, and this focus affects the category system in the memory. Similarly, if someone tells you about several ways to view a certain painting, you will in some sense see more when you look at it—but not because the image on the retina is different.

Language does two important things. First, it serves as an aid to memory. It makes memory more efficient by allowing us to code events as verbal categories. Researchers have shown, for example, that we find it easier to recognize colors of low codability again if we named them for ourselves the first time we saw them (Brown and Lenneberg, 1954). It is now believed that an adult's memory is primarily verbal. And second, language also enables us to abstract indefinitely from our experience, which is especially important in communicating about ab­stract relationships (something animals are unable to do).