Tōne, Tóne, Tǒne, Tòne

The first week of my fieldwork placement started out rather slowly, I must admit. Research projects are all well and good, particularly when someone like me can really use the practice, but they’re pretty cut and dry and it feels like homework. (For those not in the know, my placement is focused around working with community development and support groups, but on an administrative level rather than an actual hands-on nitty gritty level.) Simply put, I spent the first week thinking that my classmates, who do get to work face-to-face with clients, were surely luckier than I am and were getting more out of their placements than I was.

Halfway into week two, well, I’m withholding judgment. More on that later. (Maybe.) (If I feel like it.)

I recently got to observe and participate in a training workshop. I won’t go into detail as to what this workshop was about, as it’s not all that relevant, but I will say that it was a fascinating complement to what we had covered in class during the semester and it definitely lifted my spirits somewhat. One of the topics that caught my attention was the topic of nonverbal communication.

Albert Mehrabian, years and years ago in 1967, published a couple of groundbreaking articles into his examination of nonverbal communication. The workshop facilitator basically relayed those findings, saying that communication constitutes of the spoken word, tone, and non-verbal cues. These components contribute 7%, 38%, and 55% respectively to overall communication, which obviously places huge emphasis on tone and non-verbal cues.

Now, to be fair, his findings were misrepresented in this workshop. Mehrabian only meant to impart that tone and non-verbal cues made up the majority of how someone responded to verbal communication. That is, whether they liked or disliked what was said. This does not in itself translate into effective communication.

Even so, this reminded of me of an experience I had during one of my first big meetings ever out of university. In the fall of 2005, I had arrived in Shanghai to participate in a massive undertaking: I was to help run a Fortune 500 company’s global management committee meeting. The opening points of this meeting were, essentially, an introduction to China, and I will share with you something the Asia Pacific CEO shared during that introduction.

Chinese, as most know, is a language spoken in tones. The same sound is pronounced in varying tones, and each tone points not just to a different meaning, but a different word. Take “ma.” In Mandarin, “ma” can be pronounced four ways. These four sounds generate completely different words, even though they are, at the base, the same syllable. Multiple words in Chinese can also share the exact same sound. Some examples are below. Click on the links to hear the tones spoken.

• mā is the pronunciation for characters that mean “mother” (妈) and “dragonfly” (蚂).
• má – to numb (麻)
• mǎ – horse (马), ant (蚂), or even a unit of weight (码)
• mà – to scold (骂), or a headboard (杩)

Without going into too much detail, in essence, four different tones for the same syllable can yield different meanings. Confusing? It shouldn’t be, because it’s the same in pretty much every language.

Consider the word “mother” in English. There are many ways for you to say this word and have it convey completely different meanings. It all comes down to your tone. “Mother!” shouted in a loud and high-pitched sound paired with a bright smile, is excitement at seeing or greeting one’s mother. “Mo-THER,” said more slowly and a roll of the eyes is exasperation at one’s mother, possibly at her inability to work a computer or her continued nagging at you to clean your damn room. “Mother-!” said angrily and perhaps cut a little short, well, probably nothing to do with your mother, but rather that of the person you’re addressing and your implications that they fornicate their mother. “Mother,” can also be whispered between sobs, shouted in alarm, you get the idea.

The CEO then went into a bit of a tangent about Chinese history and doing business in China and it was all very interesting, but wholly irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make.

The point is: tone is important. It’s how you say something, not just what you’re saying. It goes beyond sound and includes things like word choice and sentence structure. The words you’re using may be fine on their own and impart their own meanings when spoken in monotone like you just had a tracheotomy (sidebar: DON’T SMOKE), but you pick up so much more when you factor in a colourful and expressive tone. You could even point out that monotone speaking imparts its own meaning, whether it’s boredom or that the speaker is super-genius stuck in a wheelchair and speaking through a computer.

Whether it’s a speech or just a conversation with your better half, I find people just don’t pay enough attention to their tone. We spit out the words because we know we have to, or we say them because they’re the “right” things to say, but we don’t try hard enough with tone. I’m guilty of it, too. Most people are. Your tone can betray insincerity, underlying anger, excitement, anxiety, apathy, passion, or depression. The question then becomes: how can you use tone to become a great communicator?

Good communication is equal parts receiving and imparting. That is, you are just as good at receiving information as you are at imparting it. That information can be anything from the technical to the abstract, but the point is, you need to know how to express as well as read, and just one of the two isn’t good enough.

So, when you’re communicating information to someone, use your tone to support you. If you want someone to buy something from you, you can sound excited about the product to get someone wanting to buy it and you use buzzwords every other second. You can even sound sheepish if you’re holding up a box of fundraising chocolates trying to convince people to feel sorry enough for you to buy them (volleyball club fundraising; don’t judge me, it totally works). You can control your tone to the academic to take on the face of an expert by speaking slowly, liltingly, and using 20-dollar words. You can even hide what you’re really feeling or thinking (in situations that warrant it) by controlling and striking the right tone.

When being communicated to, most people think they pick up on tone easily while others get so fixated on the words that they miss out on the tone behind them. The latter is true, but the former all depends on the context. Tone isn’t always obvious; it’s only obvious when the speaker intentionally or inadvertently makes it obvious. Did they use a word they don’t usually use? What does that imply? Does their tone give away something else that they’re not saying?

Most importantly: why are you interpreting their tone this way?

Body language and other non-verbal cues are certainly important, but not enough attention really gets drawn to tone. Let’s say someone says to you: “I don’t like the tone of your voice.” What then? What is the tone of that voice? What if you don’t agree with their assessment of your tone? What if the tone they picked up on is not the tone you intended to use? How do you strike the right tone?

If the situation was reversed, the big question becomes: how do you express to someone why you picked up on the tone you did? It can be your culture, your personal experience with that tone of voice, a word you associate with a certain connotation because of its usage in a particular situation, and any other myriad of reasons. The trick, I think, is finding out what makes you tick and keeping that in mind and then asking yourself…is that what they meant to say to me (tone and all), or is that just how I’m taking it because of such and such a reason?