Masking of miscommunication

One of the most disturbing findings of the 'Sharing the True Stories' Project was the extent of unrecognised miscommunication.

Similar difficulties in recognising miscommunication were also described by Cooke (1998) in his study of Anglo/Yolŋu communication in the criminal justice system. Cooke explained that a 'veneer of adequacy in communication is often achievable through.. collaborative discourse, verbal scaffolding, prompting replies, and exploiting gratuitous concurrence' and served to mask English insufficiency (Cooke, 1998, p.340).

All of these features were also common in the interactions between Yolŋu and health staff in this study and contributed to the masking of miscommunication.

Serious unrecognised miscommunication also occurred with Yolŋu who are fluent speakers of conversational English. Their use of strategies to achieve effective communication, such as those described below, and their relative English fluency masked extensive misunderstanding which neither staff nor patients were aware of. Click here for more information.

Collaborative discourse:
The Yolŋu patients all worked hard to accommodate what they perceived to be the staff member's requirements: as a result patients gave the responses that they believed the staff member wanted to hear. Only through the process of triangulation of data did it become evident that these responses where not necessarily representative of the patients' true feelings or experience. In many instances the patient had either no understanding or only a partial understanding of the question.

Gratuitous concurrence ('yow' doesn't always mean 'yes'):
In Yolŋu discourse it is generally considered impolite to directly contradict or respond negatively to the questions or propositions of others, particularly in encounters of unequal power or when the participants do not have a close relationship. This communicative feature is also related to the Yolŋu orietation to knowledge production which is fundamentally one of negotiation. No matter what the other person says, it's best to agree with them if possible, just to keep open the possibility of a negotiated agreement further down the track. It is a principle of Yolŋu negotiation which has its underpinnings in a particular epistemology. Yolŋu therefore expect that the other party to the negotiation (i.e. the health professional in this case) is also struggling to build agreement from diverse perspectives - an expectation that is not necessarily warranted when the health professional has a very different epistemological orientation. Click here to listen to Marrŋanyin explain.

Verbal scaffolding:
Miscommunication in response to open-ended questions or questions expressed with multiple response options was also frequent due to the patients' use of verbal scaffolding i.e. the repetition of some or all of the staff member's utterance.

Click here for video examples from the Sharing the True Stories Project which illustrate the ways in which serious miscommunication can go unrecognised.

Download Masking information report