the.com/indirectness
Saying 'it's a bit cold in here' when you mean 'close the damn window'.
means The habit of expressing what you want or mean through hints, implication, and roundabout phrasing instead of stating it outright.
from Built from 'direct' — from Latin 'directus,' the past participle of 'dirigere,' to arrange in lines or guide straight — plus the negating prefix 'in-' and the noun suffix '-ness.' So the word literally means 'the quality of not going straight,' and English has simply taken that spatial idea of a bent path and applied it to speech that circles its target rather than aiming at it.
- power move
- lets you blame the listener's interpretation, not your words
- culture dial
- high-context cultures run on it, low-context cultures hate it
- evolutionary perk
- deniability reduces risk of social retaliation
- backfire mode
- clarity dies so feelings can survive