Gender in job ads, and subconscious bias in language

You don't know what you are saying.

Sure, you think you know. You've chosen the content of what you want to say. You're thinking about what linguists call the "propositional content," or the "message" of what is being said. The fact is, though, that you're saying so much more. The complexity of language carries all kinds of information about social alignment, and the individual's stance in relation to social groups and in relation to larger discourses in society (other times the same topic has been referenced).

Yesterday I ran across this link through @geardrops on Twitter. I was fascinated, but not at all surprised, given my background in linguistic anthropology. The article talks about a study in which it was demonstrated that job postings contain language that is "gendered," or biased toward either a female or male expectation - and that potential applicants can feel this when they read the postings, and gravitate toward the ones that match their gender. Wow, right? Interesting. Within three minutes of having picked up this link, I ended up in an argument about whether we had left behind bias in the workplace, and whether a person could be considered sexist for writing an ad in this way, and whether or not "gendered" language was just something made up by academics that had no basis in reality. Geardrops' conclusion, which I loved, was this:

"Hey guess what language bias exists and is subtle."

That's right. The social messages in language are not just subtle, they are subconsicous. So let's look at what that means for a second, starting with the question of politeness.

If you ask someone, "You need to ask your professor for a pen. What do you say?" that person will give you an answer, but chances are it won't be exactly what that person would say if you recorded them in the situation. It will be - and this is important - what they think they ought to say. This is a trend backed up by all kinds of politeness research: live recordings will get you different results from what people say they do. In fact, I found precisely this in my own research. When I studied polite and casual forms in Japanese, I asked three teachers how much of each type they thought they were using in the classroom, and each one said they used formal forms most of the time. When I went in, took a videotape, transcribed and counted these forms, it turned out that they were using formal forms 35% of the time.

I'm sure you can see the difference.

The propositional content of what you say is consciously chosen. But for the most part, the manner in which you say it, and the social messages conveyed, are outside of your conscious control.

Can we say that there is "fault" involved, or accuse a person of being sexist, because of what they express in a subconscious manner?

Well, yes and no.

I often imagine language use within a culture as an enormous piece of fabric. Each person's contribution is a tiny thread within that fabric. The color of the fabric varies depending on which part you look at, but each thread will tend to be roughly the same color as the ones around it. We don't speak in a vacuum. The patterns of speech and expression that we use are learned from those around us, and the more closely our color matches the surrounding pattern, the more likely everything is to appear normal. Sexism, racism, and any other -ism that you might care to identify are mostly built into the fabric. If you're a member of an insider group, chances are pretty good that the language use patterns that show bias will be difficult to see. It's the whole "by saying mankind I mean all people" thing. The distinct color of the thread containing the word "man" will be more easily recognized by someone who doesn't match it - i.e. a woman.

I think it's more effective to talk about "gendered language" than "sexist language" because the latter implies intent. Intent is a tricky thing. In our society these days "bias" itself is seen as being wrong - which is I think a good thing - but what it means is that people can get attacked for subconsciously engaging in the fabric of the discourse around them. Should they be blamed? Probably not. Engaged with, probably yes. Every time we question biased language we're acting on the front lines of societal change. Increasing our consciousness of these mostly-invisible markers is the way to get people to notice biases they don't mean to convey, and act to change them.

Here's an important point, though. Social language is not a plus-or-minus proposition. You can go one direction or another on the road, but you're still on the road. We will always, always mark our social position, our posture, relative to others. We will always express our membership in social groups. We will strive to distinguish ourselves from groups that we don't want to be a part of by emphasizing our membership in other groups. I don't see "gendered language" ever going away; I do, however, see it changing.

Language is something that reinforces itself, and at the same time changes itself, every time that it is used.

So to be a positive force for cultural change in the world, think about increasing consciousness - your own as well as that of others. Go easy on yourself - be aware that you yourself are constantly enacting culture and social alignment without thinking, and you won't be able just to "stop." Don't blame yourself terribly if you find yourself doing something you don't want to do - just think through it and try to exert your conscious will to change it. Be willing to engage with others. Be willing to question yourself.

And next time you're looking for a job, be aware of gendered language. Be aware, too, that the person who wrote the ad probably didn't try to exclude anyone. Choose not to let that shut you down.

Change takes time, but it's worth the effort.

A new story for early humans

Here is a very interesting article about a new species of early humans, the Denisovans, who appear to have been widespread in Asia and to have contributed 4-6% of their genome to modern Melanesians. One of the conclusions drawn by the article is that the story of early hominids is more complex than originally thought.

A human story, complex?

Somehow, I'm not at all surprised.

Handling Caste Systems

When you read through fantasy and science fiction epics, it's not uncommon to find societies divided into strictly delineated groups. Perhaps this is because divisions exist within our own society and we want to explore existing issues of race and class. But what is actually involved in implementing a caste system in a work of science fiction or fantasy?

First, it's good to know what caste systems are. I suppose a general description would be something like this: caste systems are systems of societal organization that divide people into different structural categories (often ranked), each of which establishes behavioral expectations associated with membership.

Just in case that sounds vague (because it is, rather), I think it would be good to take a brief look at two examples from Earth: the Indian caste system, and the caste system of feudal Japan.

The Indian caste system has several categories. According to Wikipedia the four major "varna" are:

1. Brahmins (teachers, scholars and priests)
2. Kshatriyas (kings and warriors)
3. Vaishyas (agriculturists and traders)
4. Shudras (artisans, service providers)

By comparison, the divisions in feudal Japan (from both Wikipedia and my own schooling) were as follows:

1. samurai (warriors)
2. peasants (farmers)
3. craftsmen
4. merchants

At first glance, we can make several observations. First, the description of each group provides a sense of what kind of jobs you'd find these people in. Second, these systems don't cover the entire population. The Indian varnas don't include the Untouchables. The Japanese major divisions don't include the Court nobles (kuge), the Shogun and the daimyo at the top; or the Eta/Burakumin (filthy people: undertakers, slaughterers, tanners), and the Hinin (non-people: town guards, street cleaners, prostitutes, traveling minstrels and convicted criminals) at the bottom.

The idea of an undercaste is well-known in sf/f, but it's interesting to note that these groups usually don't "count" as part of a system; rather, they are perceived to be outside it. In a sense these groups are those who are considered to be exceptions to the system and not measurable within it; in the "exceptional" sense, it makes sense for the highest of the high to be excluded from a system like this as well.

According to the Wikipedia article, the Indian caste system has not always had the same degree of rigidity. Traditionally, although the political power lay with the Kshatriyas, historians portrayed that the Brahmins as custodians and interpreters of religious knowledge enjoyed much prestige and many advantages, and kings could come from any one of these groups. It was always possible for groups born into a lower caste to "rise to a higher position by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism" i.e. adopt the customs of the higher castes. While theoretically "forbidden", the process was not uncommon in practice. This gave caste relations additional complexity. However, see my Indian friend Keyan's note below, where she connects the caste groups specifically with Hinduism (not Buddhism) and notes that marriage between castes was strictly forbidden. Indeed, one of the major elements defining castes is endogamy, or the fact that people aren't supposed to marry outside the group.

The system did become somewhat more rigid with the arrival of the English. Faced with an unfamiliar social contract, the English tried to equate the categories of the Indian caste system with their own class system and their own sense of how occupation related to social standing and intellectual ability. Unintentionally, they ended up further codifying the Indian castes with their census practices.

I think it's interesting to note that the strictness of a caste system can change over time because of historical influences - even when people are not really intending to cause change.

Another kind of change occurred in the Japanese system toward the end of its existence. The merchants began to have more power than they "should" have within the system because they handled the money, and the Samurai debts had been growing. Twice the government forgave all Samurai debts in order to restore the proper order - but you can imagine this didn't solve the underlying problem, which eventually led to the downfall of the system as a whole.

Here's a question that may occur to some of you: what advantages might there be to having a caste system (as opposed to having some other system)? I think Wikipedia makes a useful remark when it compares the Indian system to the medieval European guilds. Essentially, a system of this sort ensures division of labor and provides for apprentice training, thereby supporting economic activity (in addition to providing social groups that people can comfortably align with).

So, given these complex worldly examples, how do we go about implementing a caste system in a fictional world? I think it would be good to divide the process into three steps:

1. define structural divisions

Figure out what your structural divisions are called and how they are ranked. As you do this, make sure to give each division a concrete basis in societal function (like profession). Think about whether there are specific laws that apply to different groups concerning things like carrying weapons, attending schools, etc. Figure out where the financial support for each group comes from, and how large the population of each group is. These economic and demographic factors will have a significant influence later down the road.

2. determine the degree of mobility/fluidity in the system

A lot of fictional systems have zero legal mobility between groups. How is that enforced? What happens if a marriage occurs across caste borders? Will adopting certain forms of behavior allow someone to move up in caste so long as that person's background is kept quiet? You might also want to ask whether people in your system are in fact motivated to move up. In some systems such aspirations might be totally normal; in others it might be almost unheard of (my Varin system is one of the latter, in which many castes consider themselves better than those above them, and presumption is censured even among castemates).

3. elaborate on behaviors expected of, and accorded to, members of each group

This is where your system will stop being a set of bland categories and start taking on real dimension. What do members of each group believe (possibly religion, but also values, ideals, and a sense of what makes a "good"member of their caste)? What kind of behaviors or manners define them? Do they differentiate themselves by elements of dress? Do they differentiate themselves by dialect? How aware are they of the other castes and their ways? What do they think of them?

There is room for an incredible amount of complexity here, especially in the area of personal details, background and beliefs. Dig in as deeply as you can, taking advantage of what you know about existing social divisions around you. Race is an obvious thing to compare to, but don't forget things as common as cliques at school. For example, literature and movies give us abundant examples of cases where not all "popular" people are happy being popular, nor are their lives easy just because everyone looks up to them.

Let's look for a second at some details from the Japanese feudal caste system:
"The shogunate carried out a number of significant policies. They placed the samurai class above the commoners: the agriculturists, artisans, and merchants. They enacted sumptuary laws limiting hair style, dress, and accessories. They organized commoners into groups of five, and held all responsible for the acts of each individual. To prevent daimyo from rebelling, the shoguns required them to maintain lavish residences in Edo (the capital) and live at these residences on a rotating schedule; carry out expensive processions to and from their domains; contribute to the upkeep of shrines, temples, and roads; and seek permission before repairing their castles." Furthermore, "only the samurai could have proper surnames."

It's at this point that I'm sorely tempted to jump into an extensive description of my own Varin caste system... but I'll refrain. Since I like to keep my sense of social groups as personal as possible, I'll just give you a quick sketch of the characteristics I've developed for the Imbati servant caste (featured in my forthcoming story, "The Eminence's Match"), using the format I explained above.

The Imbati of Varin:

1. The Imbati are ranked third out of seven among the Variner castes. They are called servants, but are highly valued: by profession they are lawyers, prison wardens and low-level magistrates (servants of the Courts), bureaucrats (servants of the State/civil servants), and valets/political assistants (servants of the nobles). They aren't legally allowed to carry weapons, but can receive training in weaponless martial arts. They receive extensive schooling and are paid well by the nobility for their service. They have a large population in all the Cities.

2. Varin has no legal mobility between groups. The Imbati are legally marked by tattoos on their foreheads (different Marks depending on their areas of service); they also typically wear black, but that is only a tradition and not a law. They could theoretically drop in status to marry, but are unlikely to because of the difficulty of removing the tattoos (which they are usually proud of anyway). They consider themselves to be the luckiest and most powerful group in Varin because they have great advisory power to the nobility, because they function as the major information conduit across the country, and because they have excellent health and education.

3. The Imbati follow the most common religion of Varin (a similarity with other castes) but unlike other castes, they value selfless service above all. Ideally they should strive to put love for their master (or for the needs of the Courts or State) above themselves. Not everyone does this, however; the strong-willed have to deal with holding these ideals in their own way, which can lead to internal conflict. Imbati also value personal autonomy. Because they are in charge of keeping secrets, they consider it impolite to ask questions, and this respect for the boundaries of the individual extends to an aversion to casual social touch. Their clothing, their manners and their speech thus clearly differentiate them from others. They learn systematically about all other castes because their bureaucratic and other functions bring them into contact with all levels - but their comprehension of other castes, though better than that of most groups, isn't very detailed.

Of course, once you've gotten to this point, the last step of all is taking all of your design knowledge and turning it into character behavior on the page. For me, that's the part that really gets to be fun. If you're curious to see the Imbati in action, look for "The Eminence's Match" in Eight Against Reality, which is now available for preorder at the Panverse Publishing website.

I hope you find this post gives you some good background on caste systems, and some material to work with on your own - either for creating a caste system of your own or for comprehending the ones you see in the pages of your books.

Insiders and Outsiders

This is another post that I've been planning for some time, but I decided this week that I should complete it, given the continuing discussion surrounding Norman Spinrad's article entitled "Third World Worlds" (the original text of which can be found here if you're curious what the furor has been about, and a compiled list of responses can be found here). As with my last post on the Myth of the Native Speaker, this is less a direct response to the debate than an aspect of anthropology, linguistics and writing that I feel is relevant.

I'm talking about the difference in perspective between someone on the inside of a cultural group, and someone on the outside. This is an issue I've given a great deal of thought to when working with my fictional societies, but it seems clear to me that it's relevant beyond just fiction, applying also to any time you're working with a real life social group, or speculated future group.

I think there would be little debate over the idea that in order to portray a social situation vividly, a writer needs to do research. If that situation happens to be fictional, the writer would do well to think through all the things they might discover if they did research. If we're talking about Japan, you'll want to know about the genkan where people take their shoes off before entering a house, and you'll want to know about manga and about the large number of convenience stores and vending machines, about enka singing and about Japanese-English pop rock, etc... all kinds of things that might go into creating a sense of the environment.

Research on its own, though, isn't enough. There's also point of view, which differs critically if you're a person who has grown up in this environment as opposed to being someone who visits it. Insiders versus outsiders.

In some cases the distinction may not even be as simple as just insiders and outsiders. In Japan, there is a very interesting cultural phenomenon I've noticed, of foreigners who live in Japan but who interact primarily with Japanese people who love to hang out with foreigners. Between the two groups a new group culture has been created: one that's uniquely Japanese and yet doesn't actually capture what someone would encounter if they lived with a host family. It's a "foreigner-Japanese" culture, or perhaps it's similar to the sort of mixing environment that has given rise to pidgins across the world. It was in this sort of context that I encountered Japanese people who told me that I spoke Japanese "too well." For whatever reason, my ability to understand Japanese was threatening to someone who wanted the different social contract that existed between the Japanese and non-Japanese participants in this social group. So being an "insider" in that specially defined cultural group is entirely different from being an "insider" or an "outsider" to Japanese society in a more general sense.

For writing purposes, I think it's important to ask the question: what makes the difference between an insider and an outsider perspective? We can feel the difference when we read it, but where does it actually arise?

It arises in language - specifically, the words and usages we choose when we write our stories.

If we're trying to achieve the sense of an insider perspective, either for a world culture or for a fictional culture, it's important to extend our research into the sensitive area of listening to language. It's easy to think of language as a tool for delivering messages, but it's easy to underestimate the sheer number of messages that it can deliver at once. The way that I ask someone to lend me a pen does more than just ask someone to lend me a pen. It conveys other messages about my perceived social relationship to the person I'm speaking to; it conveys the perceived importance of pens; it conveys the fact that in my society, pens exist; it conveys how I feel about being caught without one, etc. Sentences carry messages about judgment and emotion, and about how reality is divided into objects, concepts and categories.

I think the history of Anthropology is somewhat relevant to this question. The early anthropologists weren't exactly like Indiana Jones, but they typically considered the societies they visited, described and judged them from the perspective of their own cultural viewpoint (s). This was a context in which casting aspersions of savagery was far easier than it is today. More modern anthropology draws a distinction between "etic perspectives" and "emic perspectives," that is, outsider perspectives and insider perspectives. Modern anthropologists strive to understand how a group of people defines itself, rather than contenting themselves with observing details of its behavior and judging them from the outside.

Listening to language - i.e. listening to the group members talk about themselves and about outsiders - is critical to the process of understanding the group and how it defines itself. The listener (writer or anthropologist) can listen for overarching cultural metaphors and values, categories that are widely applied, how words are used to label people and objects and how that influences people's perception of them. Words that seem familiar can be applied to things in an unfamiliar way.

This is the kind of thing that we as writers can take advantage of as we write stories. We can tap into our understanding (from literature or personal experience) of the cultural metaphors of a group and bring those to bear when writing a character from that group. I remember discovering Kij Johnson's The Fox Woman and being impressed not just with the settings and objects that filled her fantasy Japan, but also the kinds of things that her characters worried about. The concerns they had, their definitions of success and failure, their justifications for action, and what motivated them to keep going forward in their lives, fit extremely well with my experiences of Japan, Japanese people and literature. It felt real, and spoke to me.

When we try to create an insider perspective, sometimes it's harder than other times. I suppose, though, that the object is not so much to pass for an insider as to create a story that speaks to readers in a meaningful way (interesting thoughts on this at OF Blog of the Fallen, here). And if the perspective is not quite what we'd expect from a full insider, that may indeed give us different kinds of insights - as I remarked in my discussion of what non-native speakers can bring to language and to stories.

I'd like to finish by talking more concretely about insider and outsider language. In my own stories, I usually try to create both insider and outsider points of view that I then contrast with one another. I think this is because of how I've been struck, throughout my experience in anthropology and life in general, by misunderstandings and the divergent ways different cultures invest meaning in what they say. The result is that I'm often looking for ways to describe the same objects and experiences while investing them with divergent value (as in my "different value" posts).

Here are a couple of basic principles to keep in mind. (You may notice that A and B are arbitrary, and can be switched without changing the basic principle.)

• An outsider (say, from culture A) will notice things in an unfamiliar culture (B) when things that are typically meaningful in culture A differ in culture B.
• An outsider (A) may not notice things that differ in culture B when those things are not meaningful in culture A - but if they are meaningful in culture B, the culture B insider will probably notice the difference.
  
• An insider (of culture B) will not remark on the existence of things/practices/people that are normal to him/her, except when 1) those things/practices/people are seen by the insider to have a distinct value within an ongoing activity, or 2) when those things/practices/people diverge in some way from the insider's expectation.
• Sometimes a shared activity between members of culture A and culture B will involve things/practices/people that are unremarkable to both parties, particularly if the shared activity is something the two cultures developed together (but aren't currently refining).
  

There are many ways an author can use principles like this. You can have have insiders find something meaningful while an outsider doesn't notice them at all. You can have an outsider notice something and have an emotional reaction to it that differs completely from the reaction that an insider would have when exposed to the same thing. As an example of this second possibility, I'll point you to something I always wondered about in Star Trek: facial ridges. The way they were treated was that people used them to tell the difference between the different interstellar races. But that was typically it. I could see a human saying, "gee, these guys have facial ridges" because a human in this case is an outsider to the facially ridged culture. But if the features of a face (heavy brows, unibrow, thick/thin lips, nose shape) are invested with so much meaning in human cultures, why wouldn't some quality of the facial ridges have additional meaning?

I tend to think about levels of detail and experience. If a character brings attention to the existence of something, then I automatically guess that person is an outsider; if instead a character expresses a judgment that presupposes the existence of something, I consider that evidence that the character is an insider.

Here are a couple of examples from fictional worlds I've been working with.

Example 1: (physical features)
The species called "Cochee-coco" has a noticeable facial feature. When a human sees this species, her first gut reaction is that they look like otters. However, she then notices that they have no eyebrows, but a bare patch of "pebbly" skin that goes from their eyes up to their ears. For the human character, this facial feature acts as a confirmation that these creatures are not familiar Earthlike creatures, but aliens that humankind has never encountered before. When a Cochee-coco sees this feature, she doesn't bring attention to the feature itself, but gives it its own special name (brow-character) and mentions what the qualities of this feature say about the people who have it: the two people she's looking at are quite masculine (indicating that masculinity is one of the meanings this feature can convey) and that they aren't related because the patterns they have in this skin are different (indicating that family relation is another meaning of the feature). You can see this is a deliberate departure from the Star Trek situation.

Example 2: (manners)
In my Varin world, there is a caste called the Imbati who are servants - but high-level servants, so they serve the nobility as body servants and bodyguards, but also serve as political assistants and secret-keepers. They also are lawyers (servants of the Courts) and bureaucrats (servants of the State). In their role as guardians of information, they've developed manners surrounding the asking of questions. As an author, I want to make it clear to my readers that this rule affects Imbati life, but I have to be careful about how I make it clear - because it doesn't make sense for either the nobility or the servants to "tell" the reader about the rule (here we are again with "show don't tell"). So in the point of view of a noble boy I have him asking the servant a question in exasperation, then saying, "no, don't answer that" and apologizing for having "poor Imbati manners." I'll also add that he can do this because he's more self-aware and respectful of servant ways than most of the nobility. Then in the servant point of view I have to treat it a different way. I have the servant character giving another character permission to ask a question, and then I have the servant notice the mischievous look his girlfriend gets "when about to ask a question without permission."

Example 3: (setting/practices)
The undercaste of my Varin world are downtrodden - no surprise there. But I've spent quite a long time looking for ways to push beyond the obvious evidence for their downtrodden-ness. I have decided that though they are offered health care at clinics, they prefer not to get it there because they're abused by the staff. But if it's normal for them not to go to doctors, it's unlikely that they'll mention it. Instead, since being sick is a departure from the norm, they would talk about what they actually do when they're sick (getting help from neighbors, drinking from natural mineral springs in the vicinity, etc.). A person who actually dealt with doctors on a daily basis through work or other means would be pitied.

We have to work hard when dealing with the portrayal of fictional worlds, because we can't rely on our subconscious sense of belonging to make the language behave the way it needs to. But as I mentioned in my post about the myth of the native speaker, subconscious instincts can be both help and problem.

When dealing with world cultures, as opposed to fictional cultures, it's often easy to rely on one's instinctive, unconscious abilities in pragmatics to express the meanings that we invest in objects, people, and practices. But keep in mind that we have to push away from our subconscious when dealing with other cultures, because it can diminish the effectiveness of our portrayal of them. This is where you see the real skill of a sensitive researcher come into play. No matter what culture you belong to, you need to spend some time closely observing, and especially listening to, the cultures you hope to portray from the inside. Authors who can keep themselves attentive to the meanings created by insiders of a world culture will be able to create a similar effect of their own, while at the same time bringing their own insights to the story.

It's something to think about.

Ursula K. LeGuin's birthday

I learned online today that it is the birthday of Ursula K. LeGuin - and I feel that this isn't something that should pass without comment, at least by me. I don't remember quite which day it was, or precisely how old I was, but I remember reading LeGuin and being terribly impressed with how real everything felt in it. When I mentioned this to my mother, she told me it could have something to do with the fact that Ursula K. LeGuin was the daughter of an anthropologist, Alfred L. Kroeber (her mother was a writer).

When I think about this now I wonder if it wasn't a moment that planted a seed in my head. Not that I detected it at the time.

I heartily recommend LeGuin's work to everyone, from her Earthsea books to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, and Changing Planes... The list goes on and on. Her style is generally straightforward rather than florid, but the way she puts things will make you think. I did an analysis of her writing (a Ridiculously Close Look) earlier in this blog, which you can check out if you're interested, here.

In The Left Hand of Darkness she takes on the question of gender. This is central to our way of thinking, and she's put together a story that questions all of that by dealing with a people who have no gender - or who have both, depending on how you view it. One of the things I like about the story is that she uses multiple different means to convey her extensive thoughts on the subject of the people of Winter and their gender. She shows a human man's viewpoint on these people, and how he struggles with things like pronouns etc. But she doesn't stop there. She also takes us into the native perspective, allowing us to forget about the difficulty of pronouns and consider another view of human behavior. And she tells myths of these people, which speak volumes to a reader about what kinds of things are considered basic traits of human behavior in a vastly different model. There's too much richness here to consider it merely a feminist piece. If you never read it, you'll really be missing out.

When I first started writing, I thought to myself that I wanted to write like Ursula K. LeGuin. I discovered thereafter that my natural style wasn't much like hers - so I'm a bit more realistic about that at this point - but the fact remains that she was my first inspiration. The world is a richer place for her being in it.

Happy birthday, Ms. LeGuin, and thank you.

A crazy anthropologist's view on close POV

Those who know me well (and even some who don't) know that I love to talk about point of view. On my publications page you can find a whole article I wrote about POV in 2006, for IROSF. This link will take you there if you'd like to see it - it deals with the tiny little words that authors use in order to create the sensation of point of view.

For this post, I thought I'd look at close point of view, but approach it from a slightly different direction. I call it the "crazy anthropologist's view" because later in this post I'll be talking about techniques I learned for writing field notes. What I'm really doing here is considering the distribution of two types of information:

1. information that the point of view character is aware of
2. information that the point of view character is NOT aware of

I'll start with information the point of view character knows. This can include perceived sensation, emotional reaction, and judgment based on past experience. It may or may not be conscious.

I've seen discussions on Absolute Write forum (among others) about the problem of using the pronoun "I" too much in first person narrative. In fact, I'd say it would also apply to the overuse of a character's name, or the pronoun "he/she" in close internal third person narrative.
In order to avoid this myself, I operate on the assumption that people are not highly self-conscious. One function of the pronoun "I" is drawing a distinction between you and another person, and it involves stepping outside to look at yourself a little. Here is my general rule:

Use "I" for actions by the protagonist that involve conscious will.

"I look at him."

I use this sentence when the protagonist is deliberately turning to look at another character, out of curiosity, surprise, indignation etc. Compare that with a situation where the protagonist looks at the other character and observes something, but hasn't turned intentionally to look. In that case, I'll be more likely to use something like this:

"He's looking at me, suddenly."

In order for the character to know that someone's looking, he must have observed the fact himself - but the action of his observation here is less important than the content of what he's observed. This will apply to all kinds of sensory perceptions including sound, smell, taste, etc. Judgments can be delivered by your protagonist without him or her having to use a pronoun for him or herself.

"It's hot today." "That curry was spicy." "Boy, what an idiot!" etc.

I go on about judgment a lot. This is because it's one of the major tools I use for characterization. You can learn a lot about an individual based on the way he/she/it reacts to a given situation. Here's an example I've cited before in other contexts, from "Cold Words."

"I've told him many times that decorative cloth is most appropriately displayed on a wall, not dragged through mud and weather, but I won't chide now."

In this sentence, Rulii is expressing his judgment about the fact that Parker wears clothes. I've seen aliens judge humans for their clothes before in SF/F, so it's not an unfamiliar problem. In fact, Tom Ligon was the one who pushed me to take this concept further than just the typical one of surprise or disdain. When I wrote the sentence, I was taking advantage of the fact that people (of all sorts) do a lot of teaching of manners to those unfamiliar with them (children, newcomers, aliens), and had Rulii react like a parent/teacher of his culture toward Parker.

Let me call attention to the word I use for the clothes, "decorative cloth." Having Rulii use this word does something very specific: it establishes the function of cloth in his society for the reader. This is information that Rulii knows, and though it's not something he thinks about consciously, it's something really important, because it lies close to the heart of the misunderstanding between humans and Aurrel.

One of the things that I learned in my anthropological studies was how to pay attention to the words that people use to describe things. In particular, it was critical to pay attention to the metaphors people use for familiar and unfamiliar things, and to the judgments implied by those words. Anthropologist Edward Sapir (working in insurance before he got into anthropology) noticed that people tended to smoke around empty gas cans - a far more hazardous thing to do than smoking around full gas cans because of the volatility of gasoline vapor - because they felt reassured by the word "empty." To them, the word "empty" implied on an unconscious level that they were safe from the dangers associated with the presence of gasoline. Not such a good plan.

When you think about your character's judgments, think about labels he or she uses, which can imply information that he or she knows unconsciously about the society he or she lives in. This can allow you to create sensations of belonging, of closeness, or of discomfort and alienation, without having to explain them.


Enough for now on the topic of what the POV character knows. What about things he or she doesn't know?

This is where I like to call on the difference between observing something, noticing it, and understanding/judging it. Here's an example from my experience in language classrooms: a student can listen to Japanese or French all day, but unless they notice features of the language, they can't possibly learn them. On the other hand, they can notice these features and learn to use them without ever being able to explain how they work.

Say you have a boy and a girl talking to each other, and you happen to be in the boy's point of view, but you want to tell the reader something about what the girl is thinking. This is a moment when you can easily go "argh!" and throw up your hands, or decide that close POV was a mistake and you really need an omniscient narrator (which is a perfectly valid choice, if not always the right one).

This is where I go back to my experience learning about taking field notes. Field notes require the anthropologist to observe social interactions and write down every detail of what happens as quickly as possible without casting judgment. So instead of saying "the atmosphere was tense in the boardroom" you would record that the CEO was red-faced and scowling, and the people at the table were either sweating or sitting in closed body positions with their legs crossed in a direction away from the CEO, and that one guy was biting his fingernails every few seconds, then pausing, then biting them again. The idea of this kind of recording is to remove the level of summary judgment that we can so easily fall into, and provide the evidence to a reader, so that the reader can draw the same conclusions that we do.

This is exactly what we do as writers.

So let's go back to our boy and girl.

Situation 1: The boy is keen on getting a good reaction from this girl and having her judge him favorably. He'll be observing her, looking for evidence of that. So we can have him look at her: "He looked at her." Then we can describe what he sees on her face, in her body posture, her movements, etc. and show her feelings - or in this case, his perception of her feelings, for the reader to understand. We can then show the conclusions he draws from her motions, and his emotional response to the receptiveness, or standoffishness, he perceives in her. This situation thus includes all three parts: observing something, noticing it, and understanding/judging it.

Situation 2: The boy wants a good reaction from this girl, and observes her as they talk. He sees her posture and movements, and her expressions - notices them, but doesn't understand them. We still show the evidence of her emotional state so that readers can pick it up clearly, but instead of heading into his conclusions about her emotional state, we can give him expressions of uncertainty and confusion about the meaning of her behavior. This gives us observing and noticing, but not understanding it - which leads to a different kind of judgment. On the other hand, it doesn't have to mean leaving the reader behind.

Situation 3: The boy would be better off if he got a good reaction from this girl, but he doesn't know this and doesn't pay proper attention to her. Maybe he's looking at something else in the room, or talking about his own prior concerns. In this case, we can't give lots and lots of descriptive evidence of her state of mind, because he's not paying attention and wouldn't be able to notice. However, if it's critical for readers to understand her state of mind, we can still give her one highly relevant cue of body posture, expression or words that he'll observe, and which will deliver an explicit message to the reader who is looking for it, but he will remain in the dark. This is observing, but not noticing or understanding.

One of the things I really enjoy about using these distinctions is the possibility of creating something in a story that I can share with a reader - but not have any of the characters be consciously aware of it. When one of my critique partners comes back and shows that they've noticed what I've done, the crazy anthropologist in me gets an enormous grin on her face.