I do think that it is unfair, and a common failure mode, to use the guess culture and then get angry if the other person doesn’t read you correctly.
I think it is unfair to get angry at another person (or equivalently, to label him/her “rude”) for asking or saying anything when he/she doesn’t have good reason to know that the speech is unwelcome.
However, I don’t like the notion of these protocols as “cultures” because I don’t think anybody follows, or should follow, any one of them consistently all or nearly all the time.
Instead, I believe reality is and should be, that the meaning of a statement which can be parsed as a request depends on how reasonable it would be if the asker (1) expects compliance (perhaps to the point of getting upset if it doesn’t happen), (2) intends it merely as a request (“asker culture”), and/or (3) would only dare ask if he is fairly sure the hearer will not take offense. Obviously, as a request goes up the spectrum from something trivial (“Excuse me” as I push through a crowd to get out of a bus) to something the hearer is likely to find quite burdensome, both speakers and hearers tend to move up from interpretation (1) to (2) to (3). Familiarity with the other person also modifies this calculation, but that change can go in either direction depending on what you know about that person and about how he views you.
But where I part ways from the article writer is where he talks about “ask culture” as being superior to “guess culture”. About the only place I see anything resembling “guess culture” is where a request (or a statement being parsed as a request, maybe erroneously) is about a subject the hearer has issues about{1}, for instance, when trying to get laid. And as I see it, the mere fact that a typical woman hearing such a request interprets it as a demand (and/or “an example of the guess culture”) does not mean that the asker should be blamed for anything of the kind.
{1} I have phrased this to step on as few toes as possible, and thus am avoiding conclusions about what such “issues” may imply about anyone’s rationality. And for the same reason I should probably stop here.
I think it is unfair to get angry at another person (or equivalently, to label him/her “rude”) for asking or saying anything when he/she doesn’t have good reason to know that the speech is unwelcome.
However, I don’t like the notion of these protocols as “cultures” because I don’t think anybody follows, or should follow, any one of them consistently all or nearly all the time.
Instead, I believe reality is and should be, that the meaning of a statement which can be parsed as a request depends on how reasonable it would be if the asker (1) expects compliance (perhaps to the point of getting upset if it doesn’t happen), (2) intends it merely as a request (“asker culture”), and/or (3) would only dare ask if he is fairly sure the hearer will not take offense. Obviously, as a request goes up the spectrum from something trivial (“Excuse me” as I push through a crowd to get out of a bus) to something the hearer is likely to find quite burdensome, both speakers and hearers tend to move up from interpretation (1) to (2) to (3). Familiarity with the other person also modifies this calculation, but that change can go in either direction depending on what you know about that person and about how he views you.
But where I part ways from the article writer is where he talks about “ask culture” as being superior to “guess culture”. About the only place I see anything resembling “guess culture” is where a request (or a statement being parsed as a request, maybe erroneously) is about a subject the hearer has issues about{1}, for instance, when trying to get laid. And as I see it, the mere fact that a typical woman hearing such a request interprets it as a demand (and/or “an example of the guess culture”) does not mean that the asker should be blamed for anything of the kind.
{1} I have phrased this to step on as few toes as possible, and thus am avoiding conclusions about what such “issues” may imply about anyone’s rationality. And for the same reason I should probably stop here.