Chunking up and down
We can gain specificity in inter-personal communication by chunking down to uncover increasingly fine levels of detail by asking the questions 'What are examples of this?' or 'What specifically?'.
Detail and specificity are useful under certain particular circumstances and for certain applications. At the other end of the spectrum there are circumstances and applications that are better served by taking an overall or 'Big Picture' view.
When we've been 'down in the detail' and we want to move up to take look at the 'Big Picture' or, if you like, take a 'bird's eye view' of things we chunk up.
Questions that we can ask to assist us in chunking up include:-
- What is this an example of?
- For what purpose?
- What is your intention?
If we return to our previous example of car and chunk up one level by asking the question 'What is this an example of?' we may chunk up to motor vehicle.
If we chunk up one more level by asking the question again we may chunk up to vehicle. Chunk up again and we may arrive at transportation and eventually to movement or even existence.
Each time we chunk up one level we move to a higher level of abstraction and I'm pretty sure you would agree that existence is a far more abstract concept than car.