being difficult

This is such a simple little phrase and yet I have found it hard to pin down the meaning.  It mostly turns up as You are just being difficult or Stop being so difficult and is often used with children.

 The essence of it is a deliberate and somewhat cantankerous opposition, either to a plan that is proposed or to the uniform thinking of a group.  In adults the opposition can have a tinge of anti-authority. There are circumstances, particularly at work, where the only opposition possible is to voice objections, delay, carry out orders slowly or not at all, deliberately be obstructive but not to the point where your own position is in danger.

 By the time it took, Bullco was being difficult, perhaps piqued by having something done over his head and now saying Told You So as nearly as it could be conveyed with official dignity …Poor Fellow My Country  Xavier Herbert

 In some circumstances being difficult just means that you do not follow the ways of the group. You are out on a limb, either because you want to part company with others or because you just don’t belong and never will.  Or because you have a genuine objection to what the group thinks is ok behaviour.  In the Australian context this can mean not going along with the various little rorts and subterfuges that are part of working life, the foreign orders, the sickies, the backhanders, the deals, the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.  To object to these is to be not part of the work culture. 

 Between individuals being difficult is a performance that is carefully stage-managed by the difficult person who often invents objections, knowing full well that the other person does not for a moment believe these arguments to be offered sincerely.  

 It can be, for both children and adults, as simple as being in a bad mood and making that apparent to everyone else by being as contrary as possible.

 Perhaps he was the trouble… He felt his parents gauging his moods. He knew he was being difficult; he knew he wasn’t trying not to be. Where’s Morning Gone?   Barney Roberts

 It is not to be confused with a difficult person whose difficultness springs from their nature. They don’t pretend or set out to be a problem. They just are.

 An actor, with a steady stream of work, but with a reputation for being “difficult”. He was also described as “weird”, apparently an even more heinous crime in some circles. M. Fincke writing in the Herald 1987.

 The phrase being difficult occurs in British and Australian English although I think the flavour is slightly different. The British use is more of a gentle put-down, using the way you might admonish a child to an adult who is being ‘naughty’. I don’t believe the Americans use it at all although this is not easy to establish.  The Americans are well acquainted with difficult people and there are many communications experts, particularly in the work context, who can give advice on how to deal with difficult people.  A difficult boss. A difficult colleague. But they don’t know about the subtle art of being difficult.