A First Look at Communication Theory - General

Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to accompany

A First Look at Communication Theory Sixth Edition Em Griffin Wheaton College prepared by

Glen McClish San Diego State University and

Emily J. Langan Wheaton College

Published by McGrawHill, an imprint of The McGrawHill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright Ó 2006, 2003, 2000, 1997, 1994, 1991 by The McGrawHill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in print form solely for classroom use with A First Look At Communication Theory provided such reproductions bear copyright notice, but may not be reproduced in any other form or for any other purpose without the prior written consent of The McGrawHill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

PREFACE Rationale We agreed to produce the instructor’s manual for the sixth edition of A First Look at Communication Theory because it’s a first-rate book and because we enjoy talking and writing about pedagogy. Yet when we recall the discussions we’ve had with colleagues about instructor’s manuals over the years, two unnerving comments stick with us: “I don’t find them much help”; and (even worse) “I never look at them.” And, if the truth be told, we were often the people making such points! With these statements in mind, we have done some serious soul-searching about the texts that so many teachers—ourselves included—frequently malign or ignore. As we have considered our quandary, we have come face-to-face with the central paradox that characterizes the genre: Teaching manuals tend to be distant, mechanical, impersonal, and lifeless, when in fact good teaching is immediate, flexible, personal, and lively. In this manual, therefore, we have attempted to communicate to fellow teachers as directly and vigorously as possible our advice for teaching with A First Look at Communication Theory. The best way to talk about teaching, of course, is to do just that— talk. In lieu of such conversation, we offer the manual as a sort of extended letter, or a series of epistles within a larger correspondence about teaching. We’ve done our best not to be concise, but expansive. Rather than merely hinting at pedagogical possibilities, we’ve attempted to flesh out classroom discussion and activities. In Chapter 1, Griffin features Glenn Sparks, a social scientist, and Marty Medhurst, a rhetorician, whose differing vantage points result in distinct readings of the Monster.com advertisement. For this edition of the manual, an empiricist (Emily) and a humanist (Glen) are collaborating and our hope is that our combined effort will be useful to you by suggesting novel approaches to complement your existing strengths and proposing ideas for how to approach areas in which you are not as proficient. Combining our experiences and insights with those of the author of the book and other teachers/scholars of communication theory, we’ve done our best to provide a genuinely helpful resource as you steel yourself to teach this exciting—and extremely challenging—material.

The Contents of This Manual In order to help you teach the theories in Griffin’s book as effectively as possible, we’ve included a wide variety of material in this manual. After this prefatory essay and the sample course schedules that follow, we move chapter by chapter through the textbook, providing information to help you plan for class discussion and activities, assignments, review, and examinations. In keeping with Griffin’s basic approach, we have for the most part treated each chapter as a discrete entity, thus allowing you to alter the sequencing of the theories or omit whole sections as needed. Each unit of the manual begins with an “Outline.” As closely as possible, these outlines follow the contours of Griffin’s prose, and in most cases his principal headings

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generate the titles of the sections designated by Roman numerals. For the sake of efficiency, we have omitted most of Griffin’s examples from life, literature, and the screen. In addition to helping you present the material and lead discussion, the “Outline” may function as a study guide for your students. If your students seem to be having difficulty understanding A First Look at Communication Theory, require them to bring their own outlines of the assigned reading to class. Whether you collect and evaluate their work or simply circulate the outline provided here and ask the students to compare the two, this exercise will help them understand the structure of academic prose and the level of detail for which they are responsible. (The concise chapter summaries in Appendix A may also serve as study guides and checks on reading comprehension.) Please note that these outlines should never serve as substitutes for the text itself. As basic summaries, they necessarily sacrifice the depth and development of the original. Next comes “Key Names and Terms,” a concise list of the principal theorists and concepts covered in the chapter. A good way to use this list to help students prepare for class is to circulate the names and terms without the definitions before the chapter is to be read. Have students supply all the definitions and submit them before the relevant class discussion. Whether you “correct” each entry and assign precise point totals to their work or simply give students full credit if they complete the exercise in good faith, your interest in their comprehension of the material will positively affect their study habits. This activity is particularly useful early in the semester, when it is important to reinforce careful reading. The third section, “Principal Changes,” has been included primarily for those instructors who have worked with the fifth edition of A First Look at Communication Theory. Here, we concisely summarize the major differences between the sixth edition and its predecessor. “Suggestions for Discussion” and “Exercises and Activities” are designed to assist you help students explore and apply the theory introduced in the chapter. This material supplements the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus included in the textbook. Some of the exercises and activities are intended as in-class work; others require advanced preparation by the students. Some may be used as graded assignments. Under “Exercises and Activities,” we’ve related many of Em Griffin’s favorite techniques for stimulating student learning. Please note that we include far more suggestions than you’ll want or be able to use—pick and choose as you desire. In addition, we would like to confess at the outset that the line between “suggestions for discussion” and “exercises and activities” is often somewhat arbitrary. Between “Suggestions for Discussion” and “Exercises and Activities,” we’ve included “Sample Application Logs,” brief essays written by Em Griffin’s students in response to his application log assignment. (Below, we have included Griffin’s description of this popular assignment.) Many of the logs we selected can also be found at Griffin’s website (described below), but others are unique to the manual. Please note that these samples have not been chosen for the purpose of advocating particular political, religious, or ideological positions. Selection was based solely on the student writer’s ability to respond insightfully to the assignment. Many of these texts may be used to illustrate key points in class. Supplementary bibliography has been provided under the heading “Further Resources.” These references are meant to augment, rather than to supplant, those already

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listed in the Second Look sections of A First Look at Communication Theory. Many of the books and articles we recommend are well known in the field; others are familiar to much smaller circles of scholars. Every reference, though, is connected to the central theory in ways that can enrich your teaching. As you work through this manual, you’ll notice that many of the readings listed as “Further Resources” tend more toward application than development or explication of theory. They have been included to help you create a ready store of examples. It is also our opinion that good discussions of theory lead inevitably to application; and, correspondingly, intriguing applications necessarily raise theoretical questions. You’ll find, not surprisingly, that Griffin’s textbook moves easily and productively between these two poles. Most of these selections may be assigned as auxiliary reading projects for individuals or groups of students. Incidentally, you’ll notice that we have more to suggest for some chapters than for others. This lack of uniformity is due largely to the unevenness of our knowledge, rather than deliberate bias or intentional neglect. It is our hope that you’ll help us out in the areas in which we need to expand our reading. If a source is recommended in more than one chapter treatment, all subsequent citations after the first are abbreviated. The final section of each chapter treatment, entitled “Sample Examination Questions,” contains a series of multiple choice, true-false, and essay questions designed to assess various levels of mastery. We admit at the outset that the multiple choice and true-false questions were particularly difficult for us to write. First, we do not use such assessment strategies in our own teaching, so we are less familiar with these forms than other forms of examination. Second, to write such questions, one must produce—or at least suggest— misinformation. Since potentially credible yet false or incomplete answers appear in print along with correct ones, the author of such material is indirectly encouraging students to embrace what is untrue. We realize, of course, that instructors who face huge sections must necessarily rely on such questions, and therefore we have provided them. Nonetheless, we are somewhat conflicted about doing so. In most chapters, Integrative Essay Questions have been included to bring together material from two or more chapters. Because instructors tend to assign chapters in the order Griffin presents them, most of the Integrative Essay Questions ask students to look back to previous material, rather than forward to theories not yet covered. (Please note that in essay questions the request to “compare” theories or concepts is meant to include the treatment of both similarities and differences.) To avoid redundancy and potential confusion, we’ve made an effort not to repeat questions. For this reason, you should feel welcome to use any question or exercise in any pedagogical context you believe is effective. If a discussion question looks appropriate for an examination, use it that way. If an examination question would make a good study guide, apply it in that manner. Ultimately, the categories we’ve established are meant simply to suggest possibilities, rather than to restrict your imagination. It’s also important to mention that some questions ask students to respond to current events, such as the destruction of the World Trade Center or to public figures such as Hillary Clinton, that may lose their relevancy as the semesters roll on. You may wish to substitute new events or figures as is appropriate.

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In addition to these full chapter treatments, we have provided briefer accounts of Griffin’s general Introduction, each specific section introduction (“Interpersonal Messages,” “Cognitive Processing,” and so forth), and each set of Ethical Reflections.

Lecture or Discussion? In addition to establishing a comfortable and appropriate pace, we urge you to conduct your class primarily as a discussion, rather than a lecture. A First Look at Communication Theory ably assumes the lecturer’s role, laying out the material in an orderly, engaging manner. In addition, Griffin employs a personal, down-to-earth writing style that can be seriously undermined by an instructor’s overly formal presentation. Come to class ready to ask and answer a wide variety of questions, to present and meet diverse challenges, and to offer intriguing exercises and activities that apply, supplement, and test the theoretical material presented in the book, and your course will shine. It’s far easier, of course, simply to prepare and present detailed notes about the material each day, but unless your charisma level is significantly higher than ours, you’ll run the risk of boring your audience and yourself. (The most meaningful moments in teaching, like those in all complex human interactions, transcend the script.) Worse yet, you’ll let your students off the educational hook. At least half of the responsibility for what happens each day ought to be theirs, and if you lecture, they’ll become passive participants in the process. Paulo Freire is right, after all—the most valuable education treats students not as passive vessels to be filled, but as thinking beings who must learn to ask questions and solve problems relating to issues that truly matter—issues such as how we communicate with one another. (If you’re not familiar with Freire, we recommend his classic work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos [New York: Continuum, 1970].) We realize, of course, that economic realities of educational institutions may necessitate large, impersonal classes that diminish the likelihood of fruitful discussion (see Ed McDaniel’s treatment of teaching theory to the large lecture class, below). Nonetheless, we encourage you to do everything in your power to get your audience involved in the process. Student participation, we’ll wager, will be the single best indicator of pedagogical success in this class, and the best way to inspire students to assume their rightful role is to relinquish some of the privilege, power, and predictability of the podium. It has been said that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it. In this spirit, you may wish to relinquish some of the responsibility of presenting the material and leading discussion to the students themselves. With a little coaching from you and with additional material from the Second Look and “Further Resources” sections, students can succeed in this role. When making the assignment, challenge students to teach as they would like to be taught. If the class size or other considerations prevent the assignment of one student to one chapter, consider assigning chapters as group projects. For the sake of variety, we would encourage you not to place all your student-led classes in a clump in the course schedule. Mix it up.

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SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL We recommend that you periodically supplement your presentation of communication theory with literary or cinematic examples. Throughout the semester, take time to assign and then discuss feature films, short stories, plays, or novels that illustrate the theories your students have been studying. Appendix B of A First Look at Communication Theory provides an excellent list of cinematic choices, organized by theoretical category. For a full treatment of the use of film, see Russell F. Proctor II, Communication in Film: Teaching Communication Courses Using Feature Films (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996), and Communication in Film II: Teaching Communication Courses Using Feature Films (International Thompson Publishing, 1997). Ronald Adler’s “Teaching Communication Theories with Jungle Fever,” Communication Education 44 (April 1995): 157-64 aptly demonstrates how an instructor can elucidate a number of theoretical perspectives with one film. A good stockpile of useful short stories can be found in Beverly Whitaker Long and Charles H. Grant III, “The ‘Surprising Range of the Possible’: Families Communicating in Fiction,” Communication Education 41, 1 (January 1992): 89-106. Most short-story anthologies are filled with excellent tales for illustrating theory. Over the course of this manual, we’ll suggest additional options for you to consider. The advantage to short stories, plays, and movies is that they can be read or watched and then discussed over the course of a few hours, efficiently vivifying a key theoretical point or two. To interweave multiple theories and recreate complex communication contexts, however, it may be more effective to assign full-length novels. Rather than reading and discussing the novel straight through, we recommend dividing it into several sections and interspersing them among chapters of the textbook. Students will find that the movement back and forth between the two different kinds of books breaks monotony and keeps them fresh. Almost any novel that is accessible to students and that features human relationships will do the job. Judith Guest’s Ordinary People, for example (which was first recommended to us by Roger Smitter, who is now Executive Director of the National Communication Association), effectively illustrates many of the theories presented in Chapters 4-15, as does Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, which also provides some interesting material for Chapters 33-35. Like Beloved, which Griffin uses to exemplify principles of standpoint theory in Chapter 34, Morrison’s earlier novel Song of Solomon includes extraordinary dialogue and narrative commentary that are ripe for analysis. Song of Solomon has the advantage of featuring more contemporary dialogue set in the mid-twentieth century. Both novels, of course, are particularly powerful sources of examples concerning issues of gender and power. More challenging and complex than novels such as Ordinary People and Waiting to Exhale, Song of Solomon or Beloved should easily hold the attention of your students and provide ample material for careful analysis. Novels with substantial intercultural components such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club are well suited for Chapters 4-15 as well as 30-32. A novel from another century such as Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility provides an intriguing platform for discussing cultural context. Of course any story can be analyzed in the terms of Burke’s dramatism (Chapter 23) or Fisher’s narrative paradigm (Chapter 24).

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A particularly exciting supplementary text to A First Look is Arthur Berger’s Postmortem for a Postmodernist (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 1997). This insightful, accessible, humorous account of postmodernism is a pleasure for students to read. If you devote about a week of class to this text early in the term, you can set up many of the larger theoretical issues that frame Griffin’s account of communication theory. Matters of ethics, feminism, power, meaning, intentionality, and media are especially well treated by Berger. The book’s rather harsh assessment of postmodernism is intriguing to us, and we’re curious to know how your students will respond to it. Because every writer has unique strengths and limitations, we also recommend consulting other communication theory textbooks. James Neuliep’s (unfortunately out of print) Human Communication Theory: Applications and Case Studies (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), for example, has extensive examples and does an outstanding job of covering rhetorical theory, particularly its complicated history. John Cragan and Donald Shields’s Understanding Communication Theory: The Communicative Forces for Human Action (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998) provides aggressive defenses of its six key or “general” theories (these defenses are entitled “Withstanding the Critics”). In contrast with Griffin, who critiques each theory rather objectively, Cragan and Shields assume the role of advocates, vigorously refuting the criticisms one by one. Although we prefer Griffin’s more circumspect approach, we enjoy—and have learned from—Cragan and Shields’s spirited advocacy. Stephen Littlejohn’s Theories of Human Communication, 7th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001), the senior textbook in the field, may be more appropriate for beginning graduate students than the undergraduates we teach, but it is an excellent resource. James Anderson’s Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations (New York: Guilford, 1996), which is deliberately pitched to graduate students and their professors, is also a good place to go for sophisticated supplements. Julia Wood’s Communication Theories in Action: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003) is particularly good on relational and gender issues. Richard L. West and Lynn H. Turner have a relatively recent contribution to the field, Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application, 2nd ed. (New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 2003). And so it goes. In addition to consulting other communication theory textbooks, we would like to encourage you to check out Griffin’s user-friendly website for A First Look at Communication Theory. www.afirstlook.com The site has been designed primarily as a companion to the textbook and this instructor’s manual. On the left side of the site are links to resource materials for the texts: a description of Conversations with Communication Theorists, (introduced below), film clips illustrating key components of the theories, primary resources, application logs (see below), thorough comparisons to other communication theory textbooks (including those we mention above), the publisher’s website, and information about the authors of the textbook and the manual, including e-mail addresses. At the top of the site are links to the theories featured in the book, as well as links to complete chapters from earlier editions that covered theories not included in the current text. If you want your students to read about Bandura’s social learning theory, Heider’s attribution theory, or a dozen other theories no longer featured in A First

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Look, the resources are available online. The search at the top left of the site is an easy way to find information in the current edition, instructor’s manual, archives, and the FAQ. An important new feature on the site for this edition is the chapter on Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology theory. We are fascinated by the move of the chapter-length treatment into a digital format and are pleased that this classic theory and its contemporary manifestation is still a critical part of A First Look. It will be available on the website in early September 2005. Along with Professor Griffin, we invite our students to use the site. Under McGraw-Hill’s sponsorship, Griffin produced Conversations with Communication Theorists, a video/CD comprised of interviews with 15 of the theorists featured in A First Look. This resource gives you a chance to personalize the theorists you introduce to your students. Its value, though, goes beyond helping students put faces and voices to names. Griffin asks provocative questions that frequently illuminate—or problematize—key theoretical issues raised in the book. In addition, the questions we wrote for the “User’s Guide” that accompanies the interviews encourage syntheses, applications, and extrapolations that complement—and, we hope, stretch—what goes on when one reads the book itself. In effect, Conversations with Communication Theorists should be seen not as peripheral to, but as an extension of, A First Look at Communication Theory. Another intriguing resource is the NCA-sponsored listserv, CRTNET, the Communication Research and Theory Network. Lively, free-ranging discussions on a wide variety of topics are featured, and all readers are invited to join the conversations. Instructions for a complimentary subscription are available at the following address: http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=crtnet&A=1 One of the simplest yet most powerful ways to supplement the text is to take a cue from its author and bring your own cartoons to class. These additional pedagogical artifacts are terrific for illustrating concepts that may seem otherwise abstract or irrelevant to students. Furthermore, you’ll find that if you make it a practice to enliven discussion with pieces you’ve discovered, students will begin to bring in their own. It is a delight to see them taking responsibility for their own educations. “Dilbert” is a particularly popular choice for communication instructors. In addition, Ed McDaniel, formerly from San Diego State University, recommends “Luann” and “Non Sequitur.” No doubt you’ll develop your own favorites.

Constructing Quizzes and Examinations As mentioned above, each chapter treatment in this manual concludes with “Sample Examination Questions.” The easiest require only a basic understanding of the material; the most difficult demand careful critical thinking and sophisticated synthesis. Beyond these questions, there are several other fruitful ways to test your students’ comprehension. Information listed under “Key Names and Terms” can form the basis of short answer or matching-type examination questions. Every multiple choice question can be altered to form a true-false question. When using true-false questions, consider requiring students to explain why any false statement is false—or to correct the statement so that it is true. Many of the xiii

Questions to Sharpen Your Focus included in the text make excellent quiz or examination questions. Assigning these questions for quizzes has the added benefit of encouraging students to prepare them in advance of class discussion. You may also wish to consider integrating the cartoons and other visuals featured in the text into your examinations. Because this book is so tightly packed with provocative ideas, we recommend scheduling at least three exams over the course of the term. Even with three exams, students may request additional tests in order to decrease the amount of material they’re responsible for on a given day.

Student Reports and Papers Students’ responses to exams are easy to quantify, and they provide useful measures of some kinds of learning, but most exams bear little resemblance to the professional activities our students will perform once they complete their formal education. Furthermore, the chapter-by-chapter mastery of material that examinations foster is crucial, but other kinds of understanding come only when one looks past the boundaries of such artificial units to the broad scope of knowledge. In many educational settings, thus, a course such as the one developed around A First Look at Communication Theory would include student oral reports and/or papers, assignments that would transcend the scope of the “Sample Examination Questions,” and the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus provided in the manual and the text, respectively. Although such assignments are difficult to assign and evaluate within the structure of some departments and institutions, we highly recommend them because—as we have suggested—they require students to synthesize and apply theories in complex ways. Furthermore, such assignments help students to improve the very public speaking and writing skills or competencies that communication programs claim to promote. One of the best ways to approach oral reports and papers is to assign individualized readings from the Second Look sections or the Ethical Reflections featured in the text. Ask students to summarize the key material presented in the source, place it within the context of the course, and critique its value. Of course, Griffin’s chapters provide excellent models for each step in the process. Many of the texts listed in the “Further Resources” sections of the manual will also serve this purpose. You can also encourage students to search out relevant articles in our profession’s scholarly journals—Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, Communication Theory, Southern Communication Journal, Western Journal of Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Women’s Studies in Communication, Human Communication Research, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Cultural Studies, and so forth. Another approach is to ask students to evaluate the theoretical significance of movies from Appendix B of the text or of movies, short stories, plays, or novels mentioned in this manual. (Students may also generate their own candidates for analysis.) Once again, A First Look at Communication Theory provides fine sample analyses of literary and cinematic texts. This kind of assignment is particularly useful for the more creative or applied student. A third strategy is to have students investigate theories, theoretical topics, and general approaches to communication not explicitly featured in the text. Theories that fall in xiv

this category include Plato’s dialectic (particularly as presented in the Phaedrus); Richard Weaver’s ethical rhetoric; Robert Scott’s epistemic rhetoric; Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument; Wayne Booth’s rhetoric of assent; Albert Mehrabian’s immediacy theory; Dolf Zillman’s mood management theory; Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, performance theory, and conversation analysis; Peter Anderson’s cognitive valence theory of intimate communication; Howard Giles’s communication accommodation theory; Wayne Brockreide’s notion of arguer as lover (which resembles, but is not identical, to Griffin’s topology of false lovers on page 242); Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction; John Stewart and Milt Jackson’s dialogic listening; John Bowlby’s attachment theory; Mary Ann Fitzpatrick’s theory of relationships; Caryl Rusbult’s equity theory; Mikhail Bakhtin’s heteroglossia; Carl Rogers’s empathic arguer; Mark Knapp’s theory of relational stages; Jack Webb’s theory of defensive communication; John Fiske’s consumer-oriented approach to media, uses, and gratifications theory, and diffusion of innovation theory; Frank Dance’s inner speech theory; Donald Cushman’s rules theory; Robert Sommer’s environmental approach; Susan B. Shimanoff’s rules theory; Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics; Joshua Meyrowitz’s theory of mediated place; William Stephenson’s play theory; Steven McCornack’s information manipulation theory; James Grunig’s situational theory of publics; Young Yun Kim’s cross-cultural adaptation theory; Jurgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere; and Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham’s Johari Window. Each is worthy of investigation by the right student or group of students. You may also consider assigning theories that were covered in the earlier editions of A First Look at Communication Theory but not in the current version: William Schutz’s FIRO theory; John O. Greene’s action assembly theory; Charles Osgood’s mediational theory of meaning; Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; Fritz Heider’s attribution theory; Aubrey Fisher’s interact system model of decision emergence; Albert Bandura’s social learning theory; Irving Janis’s groupthink; and Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass’s media equation. This strategy gives you an easy method for suggesting avenues of research. One way to approach the assignment is to ask students to write their reports as potential chapters for inclusion in a seventh edition of A First Look at Communication Theory. Require them to include Critique, Second Look, Questions to Sharpen Your Focus sections, as well as comics that bring to life key theoretical issues. Encourage them to keep in mind the principal virtues of Griffin’s text—a down-to-earth prose style, extended examples, careful organization, concision, and humor—as they write. This assignment works particularly well with students who are concurrently enrolled in other communication courses. Finally, you may wish to have students investigate their own communicative practice or the practices of people they know. Some of the finest student papers we’ve read have been analyses of communication that the author had either participated in or directly observed. Such papers are typically vivid and specific, and they have the extra advantage of encouraging students to think critically about their own lives and the quality of the communication in which they participate. One way to help students develop material for such papers is to encourage or require them to keep weekly journals in which they record the ways in which the theories they are studying apply to their lives or the lives of people they know. You can collect and grade this journal periodically or have students share their insights orally in class. If you are more concerned with process than formal writing and final product, these

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journals will serve as an end in themselves. To encourage this self-disclosure process, you may wish to keep your own journal and share selected entries with your class. One word of warning—you may encourage but should never require students to write formal papers about their personal experiences. Some students consider such assignments invasions of privacy and professorial voyeurism. To protect your students and yourself, always make this genre of essay optional, rather than compulsory. You may be interested to know that Griffin requires each student to write a paragraph of application for each theory. He collects a random sample of these writings each week. Over the course of the term, he grades five submissions from each student. Here is how he describes the “application log” assignment: Consistent with Kurt Lewin’s famous maxim that there is nothing as practical as a good theory, I ask students to apply each theory to their own lives. I collect a random sample of the logs each week and with the permission of the writer (obtained privately beforehand) read some of the best at the start of the next class session. I find that the entries increase the interest level of the course and provide a mini review of some parts of each theory. Even if you don’t make a similar assignment, you might consider using some of the entries available to validate Lewin’s claim. They are actual student entries responding to the following instructions: After you read a chapter on a theory in the First Look text, you are to write a paragraph making a specific application of the theory to your own life. Please type or write very clearly. Keep these applications bound together in a secure way and bring them to class each Thursday. I will collect a random sample of the logs each week and return them the following Tuesday. You will be asked to submit your log five different times during the semester. The logs will provide you with an opportunity to show that you understand the theories and see their practical implication for your communication interpretation and behavior.

Teaching Theory to the Large Lecture Class* Teaching an introductory theory class can be a somewhat daunting task. Teaching theory as a required course to a classroom with as many as 180 students, drawn from a variety of communication majors (e.g., advertising, journalism, public affairs, intercultural communication, etc.), offers even greater challenges. Each semester, San Diego State University School of Communication offers two sections of communication theory at the upper-division level. The course is required for all communication majors, and each section normally ranges from 120 to 180 students. This number of students more or less mandates a lecture format. However, lectures can be *

The following remarks were graciously provided by Ed McDaniel, who until recently taught communication theory at San Diego State University. xvi

infused with a variety of demonstrative activities and contextual relevance, which will help elicit and sustain student interest while furthering understanding. Theory, by nature, is abstract and often difficult for some to grasp. This difficulty can be exacerbated by equally abstract presentations offered to an audience with an inherently short attention span and an expectation that they should be amused. However, one way to kindle interest and promote understanding is by presenting the information in a context relevant to the audience’s interests and personal experiences. This will, of course, require a degree of familiarization with the lifestyle of students in your locale (i.e., where and how do they spend their leisure time, how many are employed, what are the student body social norms, what is on MTV, what are the current age-relevant movies, and so forth). This information, gained through reading the university paper, casual conversations with students, channel surfing, and simply being observant, can then be used to construct a context for the various theories taught. For example, local social events and frequented nightspots can be used to enliven your illustrations. The trials and tribulations normally encountered in dating will help exemplify interpersonal relations theories. The local newspaper is often a source of examples for various theories, which can then be shown in the classroom (but don’t expect the students to have read the paper!). When teaching theory to a large audience, it is tempting to adhere to a regimented lecture format. That procedure is also a sure way to lose your students’ attention and dampen their enthusiasm. Lecture materials can, and should be, enhanced through what I consider performance activities. These activities will involve only a few (volunteer) students and, frequently, the instructor. Although large lecture sections generally preclude small group interactions, there are activities (e.g., the elevator exercise discussed in Chapter 6 on expectancy violations theory, as well as others noted in this manual) that can be used to demonstrate a theory. In these instances, try to select only those students who will provide the greatest level of expression, yet not become personally embarrassed or defensive. It is important to remember that each class is different and has a personality of its own. What works for Monday’s class may not succeed with Tuesday’s section and vice versa. The administrative aspects of teaching a large lecture section are as important as pedagogical considerations. Managing a classroom with over 120 students requires considerable structure and drastically reduces the flexibility normally enjoyed with 25-30 students. The syllabus should clearly define what is to be covered on each class date and deviations must be kept to the absolute minimum. Test dates should be established at the beginning of the semester and strictly observed. Once you have announced a policy, stick to it and avoid making exceptions except in the case of verifiable emergencies. Dealing with almost 300 students each semester, I have encountered a wide variety of personal difficulties, including deaths, rape, and life-threatening disease. Sensitivity to these situations is mandatory, yet I find little need to provide an early or makeup exam because someone has, without prior consultation, purchased a cheap airline ticket home, is scheduled to go to Cancun for a family reunion, or simply overslept. Administering makeup exams can become a serious time drain. Accordingly, I only give makeup exams in the event of a verifiable emergency. To introduce some level of flexibility into the experience, though, I offer five exams during the semester, and the lowest score is dropped.

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Distribution of exams must also be considered. After two years, I finally acknowledged that returning individual Scantrons was too time intensive, and I now post grades. Going over the exam in class can also be a challenging endeavor. With such a large number of students, there will inevitably be points of contention. Unless handled correctly, the class can easily turn into a feeding frenzy as students try to gain that one additional point that will boost their score to the next letter grade. I now require students to come to my office to review exams. This has also reduced the number of lost (i.e., compromised) exam copies. There is also the question of student attendance—should attendance be mandatory or not? If required, then a method must be devised to rapidly assess who is present and who is absent, but taking role in a class of 180 students requires considerable time. From my experience, not requiring attendance is the best course of action. This helps eliminate those students who would come if required but would not be attentive and would probably create distractions for other students, as well as yourself. With large lecture sections, your class presentations must have a very discernable, easy-to-follow structure. This helps students, many of whom have probably not yet read the chapter, to better organize their notes. I use a document projector to display a lecture outline and ensure that students know when I move from topic to topic. Remember, not only is the material abstract, but each theory contains its own vocabulary marked by contextualized definitions. Often, students will find these situated definitions as confusing as the theory itself. Peer pressure and concern over self-embarrassment tend to inhibit many students in large classes from asking questions. To overcome these impediments, I normally conclude class about 10 minutes early and indicate I am available for questions. This provides the students an opportunity to ask questions, clarify their notes, or even discuss personal matters that would otherwise require an office visit. If structured and executed correctly, stepping in front of 180 students to explain a communication theory can be an exciting and rewarding experience. One only needs to tailor the environment to their style and maintain control of the situation. Personally, I have encountered considerable success by infusing lectures with humorous examples and offering frequent self-deprecating illustrations related to the theory. Not only does this approach help explain the concepts; it can serve to reduce the professor-student intimidation barrier. Large enrollment classes tend to dictate the use of objective examinations, which heighten students’ concerns about how tests are scored and the treatment of seemingly ambiguous questions or confusing answers. I have found much of this anxiety is reduced or eliminated by using Parscore software to grade the exams and by thoroughly explaining in class how the system works. Parscore is a software system that optically scans answer sheets (Scantrons) and statistically analyzes each test question. The statistics provided allow identification of a host of testing shortfalls, such as bad or misleading questions, poor answer choices, insufficiently

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covered materials, and so forth. Once identified, the exam answer key can then be adjusted as desired before the grades are printed and posted. Additionally, test questions need to be presented in a syntax and style similar to that used in the classroom. Accordingly, if questions are drawn from the test bank in this instructors’ manual, they might need rephrasing to ensure congruence with your lecture presentation style and vocabulary. If your institution has an online course delivery and management system (San Diego State University uses Blackboard), you can ease your administrative burden and concomitantly save the department money by reducing copy costs. I use the Blackboard system to post the course syllabus, class schedule, study tips, and, about a week before each exam, study guides. Lecture outlines and notes can also be uploaded. I am particularly fond of this system because it instills in the students a degree of selfreliance. They become responsible for the contents of material placed on the web, which tends to eliminate excuses such as “I never got a syllabus,” “I didn’t know an exam was scheduled for that date,” or “I was absent when the study guide was handed out.”

A Pitch for Pluralism As you construct your syllabus and prepare for the first day of the course, we want to encourage you to think as pluralistically as possible about communication theory. All of us come to such teaching assignments with our professional biases, developed over years of specialized graduate training, specific research programs, and pedagogical practice. The goal of A First Look at Communication Theory, however, is to reveal the full spectrum of theoretical possibilities, a goal that can only be achieved if the instructor facilitates openminded investigation of all perspectives. Glen, for example, comes to this material with years of work in the field of rhetoric. He’s extremely comfortable talking about Richards, Aristotle, and Burke, but must work especially hard to present the more scientific theories of Burgoon, Berger, and Gudykunst with proper care and consideration. Emily, whose background is in interpersonal and nonverbal communication, approaches this material as an empiricist. While she is at ease teaching the chapters on Burgoon, Baxter and Montgomery, and Petty and Cacioppo, she must be more vigilant on Weick, Hall, and Philipsen. Griffin, whose graduate training was more empirical than rhetorical, reports to us that he has become much more pluralistic over the course of writing and revising A First Look at Communication Theory. We believe that the text reflects his growing commitment to multiple perspectives. Writing about the intellectual foment of the late-nineteenth century in his famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” William James described rules of engagement for a proper “intellectual republic” that still serve as appropriate guidelines for classroom practice: “No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another’s mental freedom” (The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy [New York: Dover, 1956], 30). What we’ve learned about pluralism, of course, is that it’s not just a matter of fairness, etiquette, or of being a good sport—it facilitates a greater understanding of truth. Glen is xix

reminded of an analogy a professor of his once marshaled in a graduate course to explain how a multiplicity of diverse critical readings of a complex work of literature promotes, rather than confuses, our overall understanding of the text. Place a coin under a piece of paper and draw a pencil over it. Then again, and again, and again. Each stroke creates a limited picture of the coin below, but after many lines are drawn, a reproduction of the hidden image begins to emerge. After considering many critical perspectives, even James Joyce’s Ulysses begins to come into focus. Communication theory, as well, resembles this child’s diversion. Any one theory, bound by its inherent limitations, reveals only a slice or stroke of overall reality. The more theories we know and can apply, however, the clearer and broader our perspective becomes. Your students—like you and us—will not find each theory equally illuminating, but taken as a whole the approaches presented in the book provide a richer view of human communication than any subset offers. We’re sufficiently postmodern to believe that an entirely objective, complete understanding of reality is beyond our comprehension, but—like that coin beneath the paper—its rough image gradually takes shape if we work our critical pencils dutifully. The goal of achieving the best picture possible of the human condition, it seems to me, lies at the very heart of A First Look at Communication Theory. Closely related to pluralism is the value of partial theoretical applicability. Many students will be tempted to reject a theoretical construct if it does not fit perfectly with their perception of reality. Others become suspicious when they see well-known theories rigorously questioned in the Critique sections of this book. Em Griffin himself once shared with us the classic student lamentation: “Well, if every theory has something wrong with it, why bother studying the stuff?” Just as pluralism helps students see that many different theoretical paths lead to truth, the willingness to accept some aspects of a theory while reserving judgment on—or even rejecting—others allows us to avoid simple either/or judgments, judgments that may cause us to throw the theoretical baby out with the bathwater. We provide a specific example of the importance of partial applicability in our coverage of Chapter 24, but it is an approach that may be widely applied across the theoretical terrain. The notion of partial theoretical applicability may be another way of getting at the issue addressed by Karl Weick’s clock-face model, featured in the “communication theory” section of the textbook.

Good Luck, Take Heart, and Go to It! Having taken care of the preliminaries, there’s not much more for us to say here except “good luck” and “go to it.” We know the assignment seems overwhelming at times, but remember that as you face the task of teaching this daunting course, no one on earth is really qualified for the job. No one has the breadth of knowledge necessary to fully understand every theory covered in the field. The president of the NCA, Em Griffin, you, and we are ultimately all in the same boat. So take heart. If you prepare carefully, are willing to admit that you don’t know everything, and are able to make frequent trips to the library and the Internet to track down answers to the questions that you and your students will inevitably raise, you’ll do fine. Remember, as well, that our opening comments about desiring dialogue are genuine. This manual—or set of letters, or whatever we choose to call it—can’t really talk or write back to you, but we can, even if we’re temporarily buried in work and need some xx

time to dig out. If you want to communicate with us about anything we’ve presented here, email us. We look forward to hearing from you. Glen McClish and Jacqueline Bacon [email protected] Emily J. Langan [email protected]

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Supplementary Material We recommend that you periodically supplement your presentation of communication theory with literary or cinematic examples. Throughout the semester, take time to assign and then discuss feature films, short stories, plays, or novels that illustrate the theories your students have been studying. Appendix B of A First Look at Communication Theory provides an excellent list of cinematic choices, organized by theoretical category. For a full treatment of the use of film, see Russell F. Proctor II, Communication in Film: Teaching Communication Courses Using Feature Films (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996), and Communication in Film II: Teaching Communication Courses Using Feature Films (International Thompson Publishing, 1997). Ronald Adler’s “Teaching Communication Theories with Jungle Fever,” Communication Education 44 (April 1995): 157-64 aptly demonstrates how an instructor can elucidate a number of theoretical perspectives with one film. A good stockpile of useful short stories can be found in Beverly Whitaker Long and Charles H. Grant III, “The 'Surprising Range of the Possible': Families Communicating in Fiction,” Communication Education 41 (1992): 89-106. Most short-story anthologies are filled with excellent tales for illustrating theory. Over the course of this manual, we'll suggest additional options for you to consider. The advantage to short stories, plays, and movies is that they can be read or watched and then discussed over the course of a few hours, efficiently vivifying a key theoretical point or two. To interweave multiple theories and recreate complex communication contexts, however, it may be more effective to assign full-length novels. Rather than reading and discussing the novel straight through, we recommend dividing it into several sections and interspersing them among chapters of the textbook. Students will find that the movement back and forth between the two different kinds of books breaks monotony and keeps them fresh. Almost any novel that is accessible to students and that features human relationships will do the job. Judith Guest's Ordinary People, for example (which was first recommended to me by Roger Smitter who is now Executive Director of the National Communication Association), effectively illustrates many of the theories presented in Chapters 4-15, as does Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale, which also provides some interesting material for Chapters 33-35. Like Beloved, which Griffin uses to exemplify principles of standpoint theory in chapter 34, Morrison’s earlier novel Song of Solomon includes extraordinary dialog and narrative commentary that are ripe for analysis. Song of Solomon has the advantage of featuring more contemporary dialog set in the mid twentieth century. Both novels, of course, are particularly powerful sources of examples concerning issues of gender and power. More challenging and complex than novels such as Ordinary People and Waiting to Exhale, Song of Solomon or Beloved should easily hold the attention of your students and provide ample material for careful analysis. Novels with substantial intercultural components such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying, and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club are well suited for Chapters 4-15 as well as 30-32. A novel from another century such as Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility provides an intriguing platform for discussing cultural context. Of course any story can be analyzed in the terms of Burke's dramatism (Chapter 23) or Fisher's narrative paradigm (Chapter 24). A particularly exciting supplementary text to A First Look is Arthur Berger’s Postmortem for a Postmodernist (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 1997). This insightful,

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accessible, humorous account of postmodernism is a pleasure for students to read. If you devote about a week of class to this text early in the term, you can set up many of the larger theoretical issues that frame Griffin’s account of communication theory. Matters of ethics, feminism, power, meaning, intentionality, and media are especially well treated by Berger. The book’s rather harsh assessment of postmodernism is intriguing to us, and we’re curious to know how your students will respond to it. Because every writer has unique strengths and limitations, we also recommend consulting other communication theory textbooks. James Neuliep’s (unfortunately out of print) Human Communication Theory: Applications and Case Studies (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), for example, has extensive examples and does an outstanding job of covering rhetorical theory, particularly its complicated history. John Cragan and Donald Shields’s Understanding Communication Theory: The Communicative Forces for Human Action (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998) provides aggressive defenses of its six key or “general” theories (these defenses are entitled “Withstanding the Critics”). In contrast with Griffin, who critiques each theory rather objectively, Cragan and Shields assume the role of advocates, vigorously refuting the criticisms one by one. Although I prefer Griffin’s more circumspect approach, I enjoy—and have learned from—Cragan and Shields’s spirited advocacy. Stephen Littlejohn’s Theories of Human Communication, 7th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001), the senior textbook in the field, may be more appropriate for beginning graduate students than the undergraduates we teach, but it is an excellent resource. James Anderson’s Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations (New York: Guilford, 1996), which is deliberately pitched to graduate students and their professors, is also a good place to go for sophisticated supplements. Julia Wood’s Communication Theories in Action: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003) is particularly good on relational and gender issues. Richard L. West and Lynn H. Turner have a relatively recent contribution to the field, Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application, 2nd ed. (New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 2003). And so it goes. In addition to consulting other communication theory textbooks, we would like to encourage you to check out Griffin’s user-friendly website for A First Look at Communication Theory. www.afirstlook.com The site has been designed primarily as a companion to the textbook and this instructor's manual. On the left side of the site are links to resource materials for the texts: a description of Conversations with Communication Theorists, (introduced below), film clips illustrating key components of the theories, primary resources, application logs (see below), thorough comparisons to other communication theory textbooks (including those we mention above), the publisher’s website, and information about the authors of the textbook and the manual, including e-mail addresses. At the top of the site are links to the theories featured in the book, as well as links to complete chapters from earlier editions that covered theories not included in the current text. If you want your students to read about Bandura’s social learning theory, Heider’s attribution theory, or a dozen other theories no longer featured in A First Look, the resources are available on line. The search at the top left of the site is an easy way to find information in the current edition, instructor's manual, archives, and the FAQ.

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An important new feature on the site for this edition is the chapter on Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology theory. We are fascinated by the move of the chapter-length treatment into a digital format and am pleased that this classic theory and its contemporary manifestation is still a critical part of A First Look. It will be available on the web site early September 2005. Along with Professor Griffin, we invite our students to use the site. Under McGraw-Hill’s sponsorship, Griffin produced Conversations with Communication Theorists, a video/CD comprised of interviews with 15 of the theorists featured in A First Look. This resource gives you a chance to personalize the theorists you introduce to your students. Its value, though, goes beyond helping students put faces and voices to names. Griffin asks provocative questions that frequently illuminate—or problematize—key theoretical issues raised in the book. In addition, the questions we wrote for the “User’s Guide” that accompanies the interviews encourage syntheses, applications, and extrapolations that complement—and, we hope, stretch—what goes on when one reads the book itself. In effect, “Conversations with Communication Theorists” should be seen not as peripheral to, but as an extension of, A First Look at Communication Theory. Another intriguing resource is the NCA-sponsored listserv, CRTNET, the Communication Research and Theory Network. Lively, free-ranging discussions on a wide variety of topics are featured, and all readers are invited to join the conversations. Instructions for a complimentary subscription are available at the following address: http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=crtnet&A=1 One of the simplest, yet most powerful ways to supplement the text is to take a cue from its author and bring your own cartoons to class. These additional pedagogical artifacts are terrific for illustrating concepts that may seem otherwise abstract or irrelevant to students. Furthermore, you'll find that if you make it a practice to enliven discussion with pieces you've discovered, students will begin to bring in their own. It is a delight to see them taking responsibility for their own educations. “Dilbert” is a particularly popular choice for communication instructors. In addition, Ed McDaniel formerly from San Diego State University recommends “Luann” and “Non Sequitur.” No doubt you’ll develop your own favorites.

Constructing Quizzes and Examinations As mentioned above, each chapter treatment in this manual concludes with Sample Examination Questions. The easiest require only a basic understanding of the material; the most difficult demand careful critical thinking and sophisticated synthesis. Beyond these questions, there are several other fruitful ways to test your students' comprehension. Information listed under Key Names and Terms can form the basis of short answer or matching-type examination questions. Every multiple choice question can be altered to form a true-false question. When using true-false questions, consider requiring students to explain why any false statement is false—or to correct the statement so that it is true. Many of the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus included in the text make excellent quiz or examination

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questions. Assigning these questions for quizzes has the added benefit of encouraging students to prepare them in advance of class discussion. You may also wish to consider integrating the cartoons and other visuals featured in the text into your examinations. Because this book is so tightly packed with provocative ideas, we recommend scheduling at least three exams over the course of the term. Even with three exams, students may request additional tests in order to decrease the amount of material they’re responsible for on a given day.

Student Reports and Papers Students' responses to exams are easy to quantify, and they provide useful measures of some kinds of learning, but most exams bear little resemblance to the professional activities our students will perform once they complete their formal education. Furthermore, the chapter-by-chapter mastery of material that examinations foster is crucial, but other kinds of understanding come only when one looks past the boundaries of such artificial units to the broad scope of knowledge. In many educational settings, thus, a course such as the one developed around A First Look at Communication Theory would include student oral reports and/or papers, assignments that would transcend the scope of the Sample Examination Questions and the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus provided in the manual and the text, respectively. Although such assignments are difficult to assign and evaluate within the structure of some departments and institutions, we highly recommend them because—as we have suggested—they require students to synthesize and apply theories in complex ways. Furthermore, such assignments help students to improve the very public speaking and writing skills or competencies that communication programs claim to promote. One of the best ways to approach oral reports and papers is to assign individualized readings from the Second Look sections or the Ethical Reflections featured in the text. Ask students to summarize the key material presented in the source, place it within the context of the course, and critique its value. Of course, Griffin's chapters provide excellent models for each step in the process. Many of the texts listed in the Further Resources sections of the manual will also serve this purpose. You can also encourage students to search out relevant articles in our profession’s scholarly journals—Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, Communication Theory, Southern Communication Journal, Western Journal of Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Women’s Studies in Communication, Human Communication Research, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Cultural Studies, and so forth. Another approach is to ask students to evaluate the theoretical significance of movies from Appendix B of the text or of movies, short stories, plays, or novels mentioned in this manual. (Students may also generate their own candidates for analysis.) Once again, A First Look at Communication Theory provides fine sample analyses of literary and cinematic texts. This kind of assignment is particularly useful for the more creative or applied student. A third strategy is to have students investigate theories, theoretical topics, and general approaches to communication not explicitly featured in the text. Theories that fall in this

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category include Plato's dialectic (particularly as presented in the Phaedrus); Richard Weaver's ethical rhetoric; Robert Scott's epistemic rhetoric; Stephen Toulmin's model of argument; Wayne Booth's rhetoric of assent; Albert Mehrabian's immediacy theory; Dolf Zillman's mood management theory; Eric Berne's transactional analysis, performance theory, and conversation analysis; Peter Anderson’s cognitive valence theory of intimate communication; Howard Giles’s communication accommodation theory; Wayne Brockreide's notion of arguer as lover (which resembles, but is not identical to, Griffin's topology of false lovers on page 242); Jacques Derrida's deconstruction; John Stewart and Milt Jackson's dialogic listening; John Bowlby’s attachment theory; Mary Ann Fitzpatrick's theory of relationships; Caryl Rusbult’s equity theory; Mikhail Bakhtin's heteroglossia,; Carl Rogers's empathic arguer; Mark Knapp's theory of relational stages; Jack Webb's theory of defensive communication; John Fiske's consumer-oriented approach to media, uses and gratifications theory, and diffusion of innovation theory; Frank Dance's inner speech theory; Donald Cushman's rules theory; Robert Sommer's environmental approach; Susan B. Shimanoff's rules theory; Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics; Joshua Meyrowitz's theory of mediated place; William Stephenson's play theory; Steven McCornack's information manipulation theory; James Grunig's situational theory of publics; Young Yun Kim’s cross-cultural adaptation theory; Jurgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere; and Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham's Johari Window. Each is worthy of investigation by the right student or group of students. You may also consider assigning theories that were covered in the earlier editions of A First Look at Communication Theory, but not in the current version—William Schutz's FIRO theory; John O. Greene's action assembly theory; Charles Osgood's mediational theory of meaning; Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs; Fritz Heider's attribution theory; Aubrey Fisher's interact system model of decision emergence; Albert Bandura's social learning theory; Irving Janis’s groupthink; and Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass’s media equation. This strategy gives you an easy method for suggesting avenues of research. One way to approach the assignment is to ask students to write their reports as potential chapters for inclusion in a seventh edition of A First Look at Communication Theory. Require them to include Critique, Second Look, Questions to Sharpen Your Focus sections, as well as comics that bring to life key theoretical issues. Encourage them to keep in mind the principal virtues of Griffin's text—a down-to-earth prose style, extended examples, careful organization, concision, and humor—as they write. This assignment works particularly well with students who are concurrently enrolled in other communication courses. Finally, you may wish to have students investigate their own communicative practice or the practices of people they know. Some of the finest student papers we've read have been analyses of communication that the author had either participated in or directly observed. Such papers are typically vivid and specific, and they have the extra advantage of encouraging students to think critically about their own lives and the quality of the communication in which they participate. One way to help students develop material for such papers is to encourage or require them to keep weekly journals in which they record the ways in which the theories they are studying apply to their lives or the lives of people they know. You can collect and grade this journal periodically or have students share their insights orally in class. If you are more concerned with process than formal writing and final

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product, these journals will serve as an end in themselves. To encourage this self-disclosure process, you may wish to keep your own journal and share selected entries with your class. One word of warning—you may encourage but should never require students to write formal papers about their personal experiences. Some students consider such assignments invasions of privacy and professorial voyeurism. To protect your students and yourself, always make this genre of essay optional, rather than compulsory. You may be interested to know that Griffin requires each student to write a paragraph of application for each theory. He collects a random sample of these writings each week. Over the course of the term, he grades five submissions from each student. Here is how he describes the “application log” assignment: Consistent with Kurt Lewin’s famous maxim that there is nothing as practical as a good theory, I ask students to apply each theory to their own lives. I collect a random sample of the logs each week and with the permission of the writer (obtained privately beforehand) read some of the best at the start of the next class session. I find that the entries increase the interest level of the course and provide a mini review of some parts of each theory. Even if you don’t make a similar assignment, you might consider using some of the entries available to validate Lewin’s claim. They are actual student entries responding to the following instructions: After you read a chapter on a theory in the First Look text, you are to write a paragraph making a specific application of the theory to your own life. Please type or write very clearly. Keep these applications bound together in a secure way and bring them to class each Thursday. I will collect a random sample of the logs each week and return them the following Tuesday. You will be asked to submit your log five different times during the semester. The logs will provide you with an opportunity to show that you understand the theories and see their practical implication for your communication interpretation and behavior.

Teaching Theory to the Large Lecture Class* Teaching an introductory theory class can be a somewhat daunting task. Teaching theory as a required course to a classroom with as many as 180 students, drawn from a variety of communication majors (e.g., advertising, journalism, public affairs, intercultural communication, etc.), offers even greater challenges. Each semester, San Diego State University School of Communication offers two sections of communication theory at the upper-division level. The course is required for all *

The following remarks were graciously provided by Ed McDaniel, who until recently taught communication theory at San Diego State University. xvi

communication majors, and each section normally ranges from 120 to 180 students. This number of students more or less mandates a lecture format. However, lectures can be infused with a variety of demonstrative activities and contextual relevance, which will help elicit and sustain student interest while furthering understanding. Theory, by nature, is abstract and often difficult for some to grasp. This difficulty can be exacerbated by equally abstract presentations offered to an audience with an inherently short attention span and an expectation that they should be amused. However, one way to kindle interest and promote understanding is by presenting the information in a context relevant to the audience’s interests and personal experiences. This will, of course, require a degree of familiarization with the life style of students in your locale (i.e., where and how do they spend their leisure time, how many are employed, what are the student body social norms, what is on MTV, what are the current age-relevant movies, and so forth). This information, gained through reading the university paper, casual conversations with students, channel surfing, and simply being observant, can then be used to construct a context for the various theories taught. For example, local social events and frequented nightspots can be used to enliven your illustrations. The trials and tribulations normally encountered in dating will help exemplify interpersonal relations theories. The local newspaper is often a source of examples for various theories, which can then be shown in the classroom (but don’t expect the students to have read the paper!). When teaching theory to a large audience, it is tempting to adhere to a regimented lecture format. That procedure is also a sure way to lose your students’ attention and dampen their enthusiasm. Lecture materials can, and should be, enhanced through what I consider performance activities. These activities will involve only a few (volunteer) students and, frequently, the instructor. Although large lecture sections generally preclude small group interactions, there are activities (e.g., the elevator exercise discussed in Chapter 6 on expectancy violations theory, as well as others noted in this manual) that can be used to demonstrate a theory. In these instances, try to select only those students who will provide the greatest level of expression, yet not become personally embarrassed or defensive. It is important to remember that each class is different and has a personality of its own. What works for Monday’s class may not succeed with Tuesday’s section and vice versa. The administrative aspects of teaching a large lecture section are as important as pedagogical considerations. Managing a classroom with over 120 students requires considerable structure and drastically reduces the flexibility normally enjoyed with 25-30 students. The syllabus should clearly define what is to be covered on each class date and deviations must be kept to the absolute minimum. Test dates should be established at the beginning of the semester and strictly observed. Once you have announced a policy, stick to it and avoid making exceptions except in the case of verifiable emergencies. Dealing with almost 300 students each semester, I have encountered a wide variety of personal difficulties, including deaths, rape, and life-threatening disease. Sensitivity to these situations is mandatory, yet I find little need to provide an early or makeup exam because someone has, without prior consultation, purchased a cheap airline ticket home, is scheduled to go to Cancun for a family reunion, or simply overslept. Administering makeup exams can become a serious time drain. Accordingly, I only give makeup exams in the event of a

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verifiable emergency. To introduce some level of flexibility into the experience, though, I offer five exams during the semester, and the lowest score is dropped. Distribution of exams must also be considered. After two years, I finally acknowledged that returning individual Scantrons was too time intensive, and I now post grades. Going over the exam in class can also be a challenging endeavor. With such a large number of students, there will inevitably be points of contention. Unless handled correctly, the class can easily turn into a feeding frenzy as students try to gain that one additional point that will boost their score to the next letter grade. I now require students to come to my office to review exams. This has also reduced the number of lost (i.e., compromised) exam copies. There is also the question of student attendance—should attendance be mandatory or not? If required, then a method must be devised to rapidly assess who is present and who is absent, but taking role in a class of 180 students requires considerable time. From my experience, not requiring attendance is the best course of action. This helps eliminate those students who would come if required but would not be attentive and would probably create distractions for other students, as well as yourself. With large lecture sections, your class presentations must have a very discernable, easy-to-follow structure. This helps students, many of whom have probably not yet read the chapter, to better organize their notes. I use a document projector to display a lecture outline and ensure that students know when I move from topic to topic. Remember, not only is the material abstract, but each theory contains its own vocabulary marked by contextualized definitions. Often, students will find these situated definitions as confusing as the theory itself. Peer pressure and concern over self-embarrassment tend to inhibit many students in large classes from asking questions. To overcome these impediments, I normally conclude class about 10 minutes early and indicate I am available for questions. This provides the students an opportunity to ask questions, clarify their notes, or even discuss personal matters that would otherwise require an office visit. If structured and executed correctly, stepping in front of 180 students to explain a communication theory can be an exciting and rewarding experience. One only needs to tailor the environment to their style and maintain control of the situation. Personally, I have encountered considerable success by infusing lectures with humorous examples and offering frequent self-deprecating illustrations related to the theory. Not only does this approach help explain the concepts; it can serve to reduce the professor-student intimidation barrier. Large enrollment classes tend to dictate the use of objective examinations, which heighten students’ concerns about how tests are scored and the treatment of seemingly ambiguous questions or confusing answers. I have found much of this anxiety is reduced or eliminated by using Parscore software to grade the exams and by thoroughly explaining in class how the system works.

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Parscore is a software system that optically scans answer sheets (Scantrons) and statistically analyzes each test question. The statistics provided allow identification of a host of testing shortfalls, such as bad or misleading questions, poor answer choices, insufficiently covered materials, and so forth. Once identified, the exam answer key can then be adjusted as desired before the grades are printed and posted. Additionally, test questions need to be presented in a syntax and style similar to that used in the classroom. Accordingly, if questions are drawn from the test bank in this instructors’ manual, they might need rephrasing to ensure congruence with your lecture presentation style and vocabulary. If your institution has an online course delivery and management system (San Diego State University uses BlackBoard), you can ease your administrative burden and concomitantly save the department money by reducing copy costs. I use the BlackBoard system to post the course syllabus, class schedule, study tips, and, about a week before each exam, study guides. Lecture outlines and notes can also be uploaded. I am particularly fond of this system because it instills in the students a degree of selfreliance. They become responsible for the contents of material placed on the web, which tends to eliminate excuses such as “I never got a syllabus,” “I didn’t known an exam was scheduled for that date,” or “I was absent when the study guide was handed out.”

A Pitch for Pluralism As you construct your syllabus and prepare for the first day of the course, we want to encourage you to think as pluralistically as possible about communication theory. All of us come to such teaching assignments with our professional biases, developed over years of specialized graduate training, specific research programs, and pedagogical practice. The goal of A First Look at Communication Theory, however, is to reveal the full spectrum of theoretical possibilities, a goal that can only be achieved if the instructor facilitates openminded investigation of all perspectives. Glen, for example, comes to this material with years of work in the field of rhetoric. He’s extremely comfortable talking about Richards, Aristotle, and Burke, but must work especially hard to present the more scientific theories of Burgoon, Berger, and Gudykunst with proper care and consideration. Emily, whose background is in interpersonal and nonverbal communication, approaches this material as an empiricist. While she is at ease teaching the chapters on Burgoon, Baxter and Montgomery, and Petty and Cacioppo, she must be more vigilant on Weick, Hall, and Philipsen. Griffin, whose graduate training was more empirical than rhetorical, reports to us that he has become much more pluralistic over the course of writing and revising A First Look at Communication Theory. We believe that the text reflects his growing commitment to multiple perspectives. Writing about the intellectual foment of the late nineteenth century in his famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” William James described rules of engagement for a proper “intellectual republic” that still serve as appropriate guidelines for classroom practice: “No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought,

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on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom” (The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy [New York: Dover, 1956], 30). What we've learned about pluralism, of course, is that it's not just a matter of fairness, etiquette, or of being a good sport—it facilitates a greater understanding of truth. Glen is reminded of an analogy a professor of his once marshaled in a graduate course to explain how a multiplicity of diverse critical readings of a complex work of literature promotes, rather than confuses, our overall understanding of the text. Place a coin under a piece of paper and draw a pencil over it. Then again, and again, and again. Each stroke creates a limited picture of the coin below, but after many lines are drawn, a reproduction of the hidden image begins to emerge. After considering many critical perspectives, even James Joyce's Ulysses begins to come into focus. Communication theory, as well, resembles this child's diversion. Any one theory, bound by its inherent limitations, reveals only a slice or stroke of overall reality. The more theories we know and can apply, however, the clearer and broader our perspective becomes. Your students—like you and we—will not find each theory equally illuminating, but taken as a whole the approaches presented in the book provide a richer view of human communication than any subset offers. We’re sufficiently postmodern to believe that an entirely objective, complete understanding of reality is beyond our comprehension, but—like that coin beneath the paper—its rough image gradually takes shape if we work our critical pencils dutifully. The goal of achieving the best picture possible of the human condition, it seems to me, lies at the very heart of A First Look at Communication Theory. Closely related to pluralism is the value of partial theoretical applicability. Many students will be tempted to reject a theoretical construct if it does not fit perfectly with their perception of reality. Others become suspicious when they see well-known theories rigorously questioned in the Critique sections of this book. Em Griffin himself once shared with us the classic student lamentation: “Well, if every theory has something wrong with it, why bother studying the stuff?” Just as pluralism helps students see that many different theoretical paths lead to truth, the willingness to accept some aspects of a theory while reserving judgment on—or even rejecting—others allows us to avoid simple either/or judgments, judgments that may cause us to throw the theoretical baby out with the bathwater. We provide a specific example of the importance of partial applicability in our coverage of Chapter 24, but it is an approach that may be widely applied across the theoretical terrain. The notion of partial theoretical applicability may be another way of getting at the issue addressed by Karl Weick's Clock-Face Model, featured in the “communication theory” section of the textbook.

Good Luck, Take Heart, and Go to It! Having taken care of the preliminaries, there's not much more for me to say here except “good luck” and “go to it.” We know the assignment seems overwhelming at times, but remember that as you face the task of teaching this daunting course, no one on earth is really qualified for the job. No one has the breadth of knowledge necessary to fully understand every theory covered in the field. The president of the NCA, Em Griffin, you, and

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we are ultimately all in the same boat. So take heart. If you prepare carefully, are willing to admit that you don’t know everything, and are able to make frequent trips to the library and the Internet to track down answers to the questions that you and your students will inevitably raise, you’ll do fine. Remember, as well, that our opening comments about desiring dialogue are genuine. This manual—or set of letters, or whatever we choose to call it—can't really talk or write back to you, but we can, even if we’re temporarily buried in work and need some time to dig out. If you want to communicate with us about anything we've presented here, email us. We look forward to hearing from you. Glen McClish and Jacqueline Bacon [email protected] Emily Langan [email protected]

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SAMPLE COURSE SCHEDULES While constructing your course schedule, the single most important point to keep in mind—a point emphasized by Griffin in his Preface for Instructors—is that each chapter is designed to be covered in a minimum of approximately sixty minutes. Take our word for it— it’s true. We strongly urge you not to attempt to exceed the speed limit of one chapter per hour. Although the chapters are brief, the material is thought provoking. Books such as A First Look at Communication Theory, which summarize vast quantities of information in very short spaces, must necessarily leave out far more than they include. (In saying this, we do not mean to imply that Griffin’s text truncates theoretical explanation more drastically than others. All communication theory books are similarly space challenged.) Thus, the kind of brevity Griffin achieves requires the instructor to “unpack” and elaborate upon key paragraphs and sentences. In order to give these theories their due, do not rush through the book. If your course meets twice a week in ninety-minute sessions, of course, then you can reasonably expect to cover more than one chapter per class meeting. With ninety-minute sessions, in fact, it’s prudent to alternate between assigning two chapters and one chapter per class session. The material unfinished from the first day can be covered on the second before moving on to the third and final chapter. Correspondingly, courses that meet once a week in three-hour sessions can handle three chapters at a time. Griffin’s innovative Ethical Reflections—which raise some of the most enduring questions about communication and help to connect our discipline with other important fields of human inquiry such as philosophy and religion—are short enough to be effectively assigned along with the final chapter of each section. We have found the Ethical Reflections useful for reviewing and synthesizing the diverse theories that are grouped in each section of the textbook. Ultimately, though, you will discover that the contribution of each ethical theorist transcends the section in which it has been placed. The point of giving each a specific home within a particular set of chapters is not to compartmentalize but to offer a jumping-off point for discussion. The final destination is up to you and your students. Below, we have supplied six sample course schedules: three for a fifteen-week term and three for a ten-week term. For the fifteen-week schedules, we have included readings from Judith Guest’s novel Ordinary People, which we discussed in our Preface, above. You’ll note that only schedules #1 and #3 cover all of A First Look at Communication Theory (and for schedule #3 we had to break our one-chapter-per-hour rule to make it). When necessary, we’ve tried to reduce the book prudently, but a certain degree of arbitrariness is involved in any such cutting. Of course you’ll make your own choices. Ed McDaniel provides the following practical advice about selecting theories to teach in your class: Due to a combination of time available, complexity of the material, and large class size, I have found it very difficult to cover the entire textbook. Accordingly, I am selective about which theories I teach. This raises the question of which theories to teach and which to ignore. Of course one factor is personal preference. Those theories

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that I have studied in the past and understand well are always at the top of the candidate list. However, another criterion to consider is which theories will benefit the students in their future studies. In other words, which theories will they encounter in the specific topic courses (i.e., Public Affairs, Interpersonal, Intercultural, Persuasion, etc.). To help determine this, I periodically ask those faculty members teaching specific topic courses to identify what they consider the most important communication theories. I then incorporate these theories into my syllabus and at the start of class inform the students, “Professor Soandso, who teaches Public Affairs 450, has indicated this is an important theory. If you plan on taking that course, you will see this theory again, only in greater depth.”

ESSENTIAL THEORIES If you include supplementary texts and adhere to the one-hour, one-chapter guideline, of course, you may not be able to complete A First Look at Communication Theory over the course of the term. You’ll have to make some hard choices about what to cover and what to leave to other courses within your curriculum. In our experience, though, it is better to introduce fewer theories and reinforce them well than to include more theories and skimp on discussion and application. What you sacrifice in breadth you’ll gain in depth of understanding and appreciation for theoretical nuance. Again, we refer to Freire; teaching that challenges students to think for themselves is more valuable than instruction that merely fills their heads with “education.” The first time Glen taught A First Look at Communication Theory, he used a novel to illustrate and vivify the theory, and he introduced other aspects of his program’s curriculum into the course. As a result, he did not finish the book over the course of the semester. Students were so enthusiastic about the text, though, that several took it home over the summer to read further. The point is that teaching the book well is more important than covering every word of it. In 1998, the American Film Institute began producing a yearly “top 100” list featuring the best of their industry, starting with the top 100 films. If you wanted to be well-versed in American movies, that would be a good place to start. The films that made the list did so by having achieved critical acclaim and sustained popular approval, and are considered to have historical significance and enduring cultural impact. In like fashion, we’ve created our own list of essentials—theories we believe are indispensable in a course on communication theory. Along with Em, we each created a set of two lists—our top 15 and top 20. If the demands of your semester require you to scale back the number of theories you can teach, these lists may be helpful in determining what to include and what to leave out. In addition, we consider Chapters 1-3 and 36 essential, no matter how many theories are taught, and believe that every section introduction should be assigned, even if only one theory from that context is covered. In addition, Em would push for five ethical reflections to be incorporated (Kant, Buber, Aristotle, Habermas, and Gilligan). Not surprisingly, our lists have many similarities but also points of departure based on our own experiences, pedagogical practices, and personal

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ideologies. The ultimate decision is up to you, but we hope these lists will stimulate discussion.

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Our Essential Theories Em

Emily

Glen

Symbolic Interactionism (Mead)

µ

µ

µ

5

Coordinated Management of Meaning (Pearce & Cronen)

µ

µ

µ

6

Expectancy Violations Theory (Burgoon)

µ

20

20

7

Interpersonal Deception Theory (Buller & Burgoon)

8

Social Penetration Theory (Altman & Taylor)

9

Uncertainty Reduction Theory (Berger)

µ

µ

µ

10 11

Social Information Processing Theory (Walther) Relational Dialectics (Baxter & Montgomery)

µ

µ

µ

12

The Interactional View (Watzlawick)

µ

20

13 14

Constructivism (Delia) Social Judgment Theory (Sherif)

µ

µ

15 16

Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo) Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger)

µ

µ

µ

17

Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making (Hirokawa & Gouran)

µ

µ

µ

18 19

Adaptive Structuration Theory (Poole) Information Systems Approach to Organizations (Weick)

20 21

Cultural Approach to Organizations (Geertz & Pacanowsky) Critical Theory of Comm. Approach to Organizations (Deetz)

20 µ

µ

20

22

The Rhetoric (Aristotle)

µ

µ

µ

23

Dramatism (Burke)

20

20

µ

24

Narrative Paradigm (Fisher)

25 26

Semiotics (Barthes) Cultural Studies (Hall)

µ

µ

27

Media Ecology (McLuhan) [Online] Cultivation Theory (Gerbner)

µ

µ

µ

28

Agenda-Setting Theory (McCombs & Shaw)

20

20

20

29 30

Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann) Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory (Gudykunst)

20

31 32

Face-Negotiation Theory (Ting-Toomey) Speech Codes Theory (Philipsen)

µ

µ

µ

33 34

Genderlect Styles (Tannen) Standpoint Theory (Harding & Wood)

µ

35

Muted Group Theory (Kramarae)

µ

Ch. 4

20 µ

20 µ

µ

µ µ

µ

20

µ Denotes a “top 15” ranking

20 Denotes a “top 20” ranking

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µ

µ

Schedule #1 Three One-Hour Meetings per Week for Fifteen Weeks Covers Every Chapter (Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.

Introduction to Course

Open

2.

Talk about Theory

“Introduction” & Chapter 1

3.

Mapping the Territory

Chapter 2

4.

Weighing the Words

Chapter 3

5.

Symbolic Interactionism

“Interpersonal Messages” & Chapter 4

6.

Coordinated Management of Meaning

Chapter 5

7.

Expectancy Violations Theory

Chapter 6

8.

Interpersonal Deception Theory, Kant, Augustine & Bok

Chapter 7 & Ethical Reflections

9.

Literary Application

Ordinary People, pp. 1-85

10.

Social Penetration Theory

“Relationship Development” & Chapter 8

11.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Chapter 9

12.

Social Information Processing Theory

Chapter 10

13.

Relational Dialectics

“Relationship Maintenance” & Chapter 11

14.

Interactional View

Chapter 12

15.

Constructivism

“Cognitive Processing” & Chapter 13

16.

Midterm Exam #1

Open

17.

Social Judgment Theory

“Influence” & Chapter 14

18.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

Chapter 15

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19.

Cognitive Dissonance, Buber & Nilsen


20.


Ordinary People, pp.86-171

21.

Functional Perspective

“Group Decision Making” & Chapter 17

22.

Adaptive Structuration Theory

Chapter 18

23.

Information Systems Approach

“Organizational Comm.” & Chapter 19

24.

Cultural Approach to Organizations

Chapter 20

25.

Critical Theory of Organizations

Chapter 21

26.

Rhetoric

“Public Rhetoric” & Chapter 22

27.

Dramatism

Chapter 23

28.

Narrative Paradigm, Aristotle & West


29.

Semiotics

“Media and Culture” & Chapter 25

30.

Cultural Studies

Chapter 26

31.

Midterm Exam #2

Open

32.

Media Ecology

“Media Effects” & Media Ecology (online)

33.

Cultivation Theory

Chapter 27

34.

Agenda-Setting Theory

Chapter 28

35.

Spiral of Silence, Habermas & Christians


36.

Anxiety/Uncertainty Management

“Intercultural Comm.” & Chapter 30

37.

Face-Negotiation Theory

Chapter 31

38.

Speech Codes Theory

Chapter 32

39.

Genderlects Styles

“Gender & Comm.” & Chapter 33

40.

Standpoint Theory

Chapter 34

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41.

Muted Group Theory, Benhabib & Gilligan


42.



43.

Integration

“Communication Theory”

44.

Integration

Chapter 36

45.

Final Exam

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Schedule #2 Two Ninety-Minute Meetings per Week for Fifteen Weeks Covers 30 Theories (Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.


Open

2.

Talk about Theory & Mapping the Territory

“Introduction” & Chapters 1-2

3.

Weighing the Words

Chapter 3

4.

Symbolic Interactionism & Coordinated Management of Meaning

“Interpersonal Messages” & Chapters 4-5

5.

Expectancy Violations Theory

Chapter 6

6.

Interpersonal Deception Theory, Ethical Reflections

Chapter 7 & Kant, Augustine & Bok

7.



8.

Social Penetration Theory & Uncertainty Reduction Theory

“Relationship Development & Chapters 8-9

9.

Midterm Exam #1

Open

10.

Relational Dialectics & Interactional View

“Relationship Maintenance” & Chapters 11-12

11.

Constructivism


12.



13.

Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cognitive Dissonance & Buber & Nilsen

Chapters 15-16 & Ethical Reflections

14.



15.

Functional Perspective & Adaptive Structuration Theory

“Group Decision Making” & Chapters 17-18

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16.

Information Systems Approach


17.

Cultural Approach to & Critical Theory of Organizations

Chapters 20-21

18.

Rhetoric


19.



20.

Midterm Exam #2

Open

21.

Semiotics & Media Ecology

“Media & Culture,” Chapters 25 & Media Ecology (online)

22.

Cultural Studies & Cultivation Theory

“Media Effects” & Chapters 26-27

23.

Agenda-Setting Theory, Habermas & Christians


24.

Anxiety/Uncertainty Management & Face-Negotiation Theory

“Intercultural Comm.” & Chapters 30-31

25.

Speech Codes Theory

Chapter 32

26.

Genderlects Styles, Standpoint Theory

“Gender & Comm.” & Chapters 33-34

27.



28.



29.

Integration

“Communication Theory” & Chapter 36

30.

Final Exam

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Schedule #3 One Three-Hour Meeting per Week for Fifteen Weeks Covers Every Chapter (Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.

Introduction and Overview


2.

Interpersonal Messages

“Interpersonal Messages” & Chapters 4-7

3.

Kant, Augustine & Bok, Literary Application & Relationship Development

Ethical Reflections, Ordinary People, pp. 1-85 “Relationship Development” & Chapters 8-10

4.

Relationship Maintenance & Cognitive Processing

“Relationship Maintenance,” “Cognitive Processing” & Chapters 11-13

5.

Influence, Buber & Nilsen

“Influence,” Chapters 14-16 & Ethical Reflections

6.

Group Decision Making & Literary Application

“Group Decision Making,” Chapters 17-18, & Ordinary People, pp. 86-171

7.

Midterm Exam

Open

8.

Organizational Communication

“Organizational Comm.” & Chapters 19-21

9.

Rhetoric, Aristotle & West

“Public Rhetoric,” Chapters 22-24 & Ethical Reflections

10.

Media & Culture

“Media & Culture” & Chapters 25-26

11.

Media Effects, Media Ecology, Habermas & Christians

“Media Effects,” Chapters 27-29, Media Ecology (online) & Ethical Reflections

12.

Intercultural Communication

“Intercultural Comm.” & Chapters 30-32

13.

Gender & Communication, Benhabib & Gilligan

“Gender & Communication,” Chapters 33-35 & Ethical Reflections

14.

Integration & Literary Application

“Communication Theory,” Chapter 35 & Ordinary People, pp. 172-263

15.

Final Exam

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Schedule #4 Three One-Hour Meetings Each Week for Ten Weeks Covers 24 Theories (No Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.


Open

2.

Talk about Theory

“Introduction” & Chapter 1

3.

Weighing the Words

Chapter 3

4.



5.

Coordinated Management of Meaning

Chapter 5

6.

Expectancy Violations Theory, Kant, Augustine & Bok


7.

Social Penetration Theory

“Relationship Development” & Chapter 8

8.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Chapter 9

9.

Relational Dialectics

Chapter 11

10.

Interactional View

“Relationship Maintenance” & Chapter 12

11.

Constructivism


12.



13.

Elaboration Likelihood Model, Buber & Nilsen


14.

Functional Perspective

“Group Decision Making” & Chapter 17

15.

Adaptive Structuration Theory

Chapter 18

16.

Midterm Exam

Open

17.



18.

Critical Theory of Organizations

Chapter 21

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19.

Rhetoric


20.



21.

Media Ecology

“Media & Culture” & Media Ecology (online)

22.

Cultural Studies

Chapter 26

23.

Agenda-Setting Theory, Habermas & Christians

“Media Effects,” Chapter 28 & Ethical Reflections

24.

Anxiety/Uncertainty Management

“Intercultural Comm.” & Chapter 30

25.

Face-Negotiation Theory

Chapter 31

26.

Speech Codes Theory

Chapter 32

27.

Standpoint Theory

“Gender & Communication” & Chapter 34

28.



29.

Integration

“Communication Theory” & Chapter 36

30.

Final Exam

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Schedule #5 Two Ninety-Minute Meetings per Week for Ten Weeks Covers 24 Theories (No Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.


Open

2.

Talk about Theory & Weighing the Words


3.



4.

Coordinated Management of Meaning & Expectancy Violations Theory

Chapters 5-6

5.

Kant, Augustine & Bok Social Penetration Theory

Ethical Reflections, “Relationship Development” & Chapter 8

6.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory & Social Information Processing Theory

Chapters 9-10

7.

Relational Dialectics & Interactional View

“Relationship Maintenance” & Chapters 11-12

8.

Constructivism & Social Judgment Theory

“Cognitive Processing,” “Influence” & Chapters 13-14

9.

Elaboration Likelihood Model, Buber & Nilsen


10.

Midterm Exam

Open

11.

Functional Perspective & Adaptive Structuration Theory

“Group Decision Making” & Chapters 17-18

12.



13.

Critical Theory of Organizations & Rhetoric

Chapters 21-22 & “Public Rhetoric”

14.



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15.

Media Ecology & Cultural Studies

“Media & Culture,” Media Ecology (online) & Chapter 26

16.

Agenda-Setting Function, Habermas & Christians

“Media Effects,” Chapter 28, & Ethical Reflections

17.

Anxiety/Uncertainty Management & Face-Negotiation Theory

“Intercultural Communication” & Chapters 30-31

18.

Standpoint Theory

“Gender & Communication” & Chapter 34

19.

Muted Group Theory, Benhabib & Gilligan & Integration

Chapters 35-36, Ethical Reflections & “Communication Theory”

20.

Final Exam

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Schedule #6 One Three-Hour Meeting per Week for Ten Weeks Covers 21 Theories (No Supplementary Literary Reading Included)

Day Topic

Reading Assignment

1.

Talk about Theory, Weighing the Words & Symbolic Interactionism

“Introduction,” Chapters 1, 3-4 & “Interpersonal Messages”

2.

Coordinated Management of Meaning, Expectancy Violations Theory, Kant, Augustine & Bok & Social Penetration Theory

Chapters 5-6, 8, Ethical Reflections & “Relationship Development”

3.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Relational Dialectics & Interactional View

“Relationship Maintenance” & Chapters 9, 11-12

4.

Constructivism, Social Judgment Theory, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Buber & Nilsen

“Cognitive Processing,” “Influence,” Chapters 13-15 & Ethical Reflections

5.

Midterm Exam

Open

6.

Functional Perspective, Cultural Approach to & Critical Theory of Organizations

“Group Decision Making,” “Organizational Communication” & Chapters 17, 20-21

7.

Rhetoric, Narrative Paradigm, Aristotle & West & Media Ecology

“Public Rhetoric,” Chapters 22, 24, Ethical Reflections, “Media & Culture” & Media Ecology (online)

8.

Cultural Studies, Agenda-Setting Function, Habermas & Christians, Anxiety/Uncertainty Management

“Media Effects,” “Intercultural Communication,” Ethical Reflections & Chapters 26, 28, 30

9.

Face-Negotiation Theory, Muted Group Theory, Benhabib & Gilligan, Integration

Chapters 31, 35, 36, “Gender & Communication,” Ethical Reflections & “Communication Theory”

10.

Final Exam

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INTRODUCTION Outline I.

Theory helps us understand and improve human communication.

II.

Theories are maps of reality. A. Some depict objective facts “out there.” B. Others depict subjective meanings inside our heads.

III.

Theories are categorized according to the primary context in which they operate. A. Division I, overview, introduces the nature and scope of the field. B. Division II, interpersonal communication, focuses on one-on-one interaction. C. Division III, group and public communication, covers face-to-face involvement in collective settings. D. Division IV, mass communication, explores the electronic and print media. E. Division V, cultural context, considers systems of shared meaning so pervasive that their impact is easily overlooked.

IV.

Since communication isn’t value-free, ethical reflections are included.

V.

Division VI, integration, compares theories according to their basic assumptions.

VI.

Hints for more effective reading. A. Every communication issue has multiple interpretations. B. The link between theorist and theory is useful. C. Consider the questions at the end of each chapter. D. The cartoons both amuse and test your comprehension. E. Theory enriches and clarifies, rather than depletes or confuses, life.

VII. The text’s website offers student “Application Logs” and other features.

Suggestions for Discussion A few suggestions may be in order. On page 5, Griffin makes a brief pitch for pluralism, declaring, “Just as there is more than one effective way to deliver a speech, every communication issue has multiple interpretations.” We suggest that you push this point as hard as you can. This, in fact, may be a good place to bring up the penny analogy we feature in the Preface to this manual. We would also offer a word of caution about Griffin’s abiding commitment to his onechapter, one-theorist approach to organizing the book. We agree that this is a highly effective method of structuring this complex, diverse material. There is an undeniable elegance to this approach that encourages students to engage and recall communication theory. We’re also aware of the danger of creating a great man/woman mythology for the discipline. It’s true, for example, that Stuart Hall is the leading proponent of cultural studies, but it’s also a fact, 1

as Chapter 26 clearly points out, that Hall works out of a long tradition of critical theory that stretches back to Karl Marx and is shaped and refined by the work of the Frankfurt School, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault. Many other important cultural critics have contributed to this burgeoning field, offering important insights and challenges. Be sure, therefore, that your students understand that although there have been—and continue to be—giants among us, influence is the name of the game. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who come before, and the territory—to anticipate the metaphor of Chapter 2—is densely populated. A secondary caution related to the one-chapter, one-theory structure Griffin adopts concerns his tendency to discuss the development of each theory over time. In many chapters, we learn not only the essential elements of a theoretical position, but also the theory’s evolution, from original questions and claims to state-of-the-art constructs and conclusions. This historical approach enriches the experience of learning theory and helps students understand the process of theory building, but it adds layers of explication that increase the possibilities for confusion. It’s easy to mistake early and late theoretical developments, particularly when so much attention is paid to the first steps of theory construction. Be sure to caution your students against skimming or sampling the text—they must read each chapter through, page by page, and pay careful attention to chronology. Since these chapters read as stories, students must follow the plots diligently. Finally, we’d like to add an additional endorsement of Griffin’s closing point—that learning about theory won’t take the life out of one’s communication, but will in fact enhance it. For our students, we draw analogies to music and spirituality. Devotees of music seldom lose their love for their subject by serious study. Furthermore, highly spiritual people rarely lose interest in issues of religion, philosophy, and faith by pondering the great texts of our religious and philosophical traditions. In our experience, learning deepens the fundamental passions of our lives. Our affection for communication theory has only grown in the decades we’ve studied the subject.

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CHAPTER 1

TALK ABOUT THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Theorists grounded in behavioral science approach communication objectively (observing behavior). B. Theorists grounded in the humanities approach communication through interpreting texts. C. Theory encompasses all careful, systematic, and self-conscious discussion and analyses of communication phenomena.

II.

Objective or interpretive: a difference that makes a difference. A. The objective approach and the interpretative approach to communication study differ in starting point, method, and conclusion. B. Scholars who do objective study are scientists. C. Scholars who do interpretive study are concerned with meaning. D. Objective and interpretive scholars are passionately committed to their approaches. E. Readers will benefit from understanding the distinction between the approaches.

III.

Ways of knowing: discovering truth or creating multiple realities? A. Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge. B. Scientists assume that truth is singular. 1. Reality is accessible through our senses. 2. Collectively, scientists can understand the world. 3. Good theories are mirrors of nature, true as long as conditions remain the same. C. Interpretive scholars also seek truth, but they are more tentative about the possibility of revealing objective reality. 1. Truth is largely subjective; meaning is highly interpretive. 2. The knower cannot be separated from the known. 3. Multiple meanings are acceptable. 4. Successful interpretations are those that convince others.

IV.

Human nature: determinism or free will. A. Determinists argue that heredity and environment determine behavior. 1. Scientists favor this stance. 2. They stress behavior shaped by forces beyond our control or individual awareness. B. Free will proponents maintain that human behavior is voluntary. 1. Interpretive scholars endorse this position. 2. They focus on conscious choices of individuals, not on why choices are made. 3

C.

3. They believe that significant decisions are value laden. As free choice increases, predictability of behavior decreases.

V.

The highest value: objectivity or emancipation? A. Social scientists value objectivity; personal values should not distort human reality. B. Interpretive scholars seek to expand the range of free choice; they bring values to bear upon texts. C. Scientists seek effectiveness; humanists focus on participation.

VI.

The purpose of theory: universal laws or guides for interpretation? A. Scientists seek universal laws; humanists strive to interpret individual texts. B. Scientists test theories; humanists explore the web of meaning constituting human existence. C. Scientists seek prediction; humanists strive for interpretation.

VII. Methods: quantitative or qualitative? A. Scientists favor quantifiable experiments and surveys. 1. Through experiments, scientists seek to establish a cause-and-effect relationship by manipulating an independent variable in a tightly controlled situation in order to determine its effect on a dependent variable. Results are measured. 2. Surveys rely on self-report data to discover who people are and what they think, feel, and intend to do. 3. It is difficult to support cause-and-effect relations with surveys, but survey data more closely resemble “real life” than experimentation does. B. Interpretive scholars use qualitative textual analysis and ethnography. 1. Textual analyses describe and interpret messages. 2. Increasingly, textual analyses expose and publicly resist dominant social ideologies. 3. Through ethnography, participant-observers experience a culture’s web of meaning. VIII. Objective and interpretive labels anchor ends of a continuum, with many theories in between.

Key Names and Terms Ernest Bormann Emeritus theorist at the University of Minnesota who posits the broad definition of communication theory listed below. His theory of symbolic convergence is featured in Chapter Three. Tony Schwartz An advertising guru who developed the resonance principle of communication. Resonance Principle of Communication Broadcast messages are most effective when they strike a responsive chord in members of the audience, thus evoking stored experiences from the past. 4

Stanley Deetz Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who believes that every general communication theory has two priorities—effectiveness and participation. His theory of organizational communication is featured in Chapter 20. Communication Theory An umbrella term for all careful, systematic, and self-conscious discussion and analysis of communication phenomena. Behavioral/Social Scientist Theorist who assumes truth is singular and accessible through the senses, who assumes behavior has identifiable causes, who values objectivity and universal laws, and who relies on quantifiable experiments and surveys. Used interchangeably with objective scholar. Interpretive Scholar Theorist who is concerned with the web of meaning that constitutes human existence; who assumes multiple meanings are accessible and meaning is connected to the knower’s values; who believes human behavior is voluntary; who seeks to expand the range of free choice; and who uses textual analysis and ethnography to establish meaning. Closely related to the humanist. Interpretive Scholarship The work of assigning meaning or value to communicative texts. Epistemology The study of the origin, nature, method, and limits of knowledge. Determinism The assumption that behavior is caused by heredity and environment. Free Will The assumption that behavior is predominantly voluntary. Experiment A research method that manipulates an independent variable in a tightly controlled situation in order to judge its effect on a dependent variable and thus establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Independent Variable In a scientific experiment, the factor that the researcher systematically alters in the quest to discover its effect on one or more dependent variables; the cause in a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship. Dependent Variable In a scientific experiment, a measured outcome that presumably is influenced or changed by the independent variable; the effect in a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship. Survey Research A research method that employs questionnaires and face-to-face interviews to collect self-report data demonstrating what people think, feel, and intend to do. Textual Analysis A research method that describes and interprets the characteristics of any text. Ethnography A method of participant observation designed to help a researcher experience a culture’s complex web of meaning.

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Principal Changes The material in this chapter has been edited for clarity and precision and Griffin has added the depiction of the objective-interpretive scale (19).

Suggestions for Discussion Theory, what’s it good for? For many students, this may be their first foray into the world of theory and as such, you will need to lay some groundwork. In the past, we have found it productive to ask students what they know about “theory” in general. What connotations does the word, “theory” have for them? Many times, theory is seen as impotent (i.e. “only in theory”) or derogatory (“well, it’s a nice theory but…”). You might want to spend a few minutes discussing the purpose of a theory, a topic that will re-emerge in Chapter 3. Theories can focus attention, clarify observations, provide a framework, predict outcomes, trigger social change, and spark research. During your discussion, ask students the capacities of a good theory. Starting with a conversation about why develop and study theory may prove fruitful in future class sessions when discussing the virtues of any given theory. The dichotomy on a continuum The principal challenge in presenting this material is to communicate the important characteristics of the objective-interpretive dichotomy without oversimplifying, exaggerating, or polarizing the discipline in absolute terms. Students need to understand that fundamental differences exist between the two theoretical positions, but if they are seen as entirely separate and mutually exclusive, then the nuances of the theories discussed throughout A First Look at Communication Theory will be compromised. The theoretical continuum presented in the final chapter (Chapter 36) will bewilder students who have learned to stick too rigidly to this initial dichotomy. In discussion, therefore, remind students that the camps are themselves theoretical constructs designed to approximate, but not to straightjacket, reality. Make sure that students don’t characterize humanists as raving relativists or solipsists utterly uninterested in shared truths, common understanding, and the world “out there.” Nor should scientists be pictured as cold, impersonal beings that entirely forsake their values when they step into the lab. Remind your class that even the seemingly objective choices involved in pursuing a particular line of scientific inquiry or conducting one experiment and not another are inherently value laden. Stan Deetz’s terms “effectiveness” and “participation,” which Griffin presents on page 14, may be usefully considered the primary emphases of objective and interpretive theorists, respectively, but it would be simplistic to consider such a dichotomy as anything other than a general trend. It is no accident that when Griffin discusses the level of commitment present in the communication theorists he has met, he uses the word “passionate” (10) to describe both interpretive and objective scholars. As we suggest in our treatment of the elaboration likelihood model below, the attempt to separate reason and emotion in argument and in scholarship may be illusory. When discussing this chapter, be sure students understand that although Griffin uses the terms scientific and objective interchangeably, he notes that not all interpretive scholars are humanists and/or rhetoricians. You may want to explain and discuss why some

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postmodern communication scholars, for example, reject humanists’ emphasis on tradition or why some interpretive scholars mistrust rhetoricians’ emphasis on argument and conscious intentionality. Textual analysis In the past few decades, textual analysis—which has been aptly described by Michael Leff as “the close reading and rereading of the text, the analysis of the historical and biographical circumstances that generate and frame its composition, the recognition of basic conceptions that establish the co-ordinates of the text, and an appreciation of the way these conceptions interact within the text and determine its temporal movement” (“Textual Criticism: The Legacy of G.P. Mohrmann,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 [1986]: 380)—has been characterized by various theoretically minded scholars as atheoretical, inadequately theorized, and of secondary importance to contemporary rhetorical criticism. We contend, however, that such conclusions are far from inevitable. Robust textual analysis, David Henry maintains, goes beyond “the textual dynamics of discrete suasionary tracts” to “explor[e] broader theoretical issues, particularly rhetoric’s power to shape and to influence political philosophy, political culture, and political judgment” (“Text and Theory in Critical Practice,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 [1992]: 221). Leff asserts that “attention to the text” does not preclude “perception of larger discursive developments” that allow us to “understand the text as an assimilative social product” constituting “a productive moment in the unending process of interpreting and re-interpreting the social world” (“Lincoln Among the Nineteenth-Century Orators, Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, T.W. Benson, ed. [East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1997], 134). Conducting textual analysis does not require a choice between theory and close reading or questions about specific textual elements and larger ideological developments. To put a complex matter in simple terms, textual analysis is seen my many scholars as inherently theoretical. Theory and research Be sure to emphasize the intimate relationship between theory and research. Although the official subject of the book is the former, highlight how Griffin marshals methodology in his treatment of scientific and humanist theory. Remind your students to look for the connection throughout the text.

Exercises and Activities Ad analysis A good exercise is to ask students to bring their own print or television advertisements to class the day you discuss the chapter. Depending on the size of your class, require each student to write or present orally a short explanation of how the piece they’ve chosen would be analyzed by an objective and an interpretive communication scholar. They’ll appreciate the fine analyses produced by Sparks and Medhurst much more after they’ve tried their own, and you’ll be able to gauge their level of comprehension. The problems they encounter with this assignment will help you to see what concepts require further explanation. To help students see how diverse the realm of theory building can be, we like to have them scrutinize the two different explanations offered by Sparks and Medhurst, then offer alternatives. Sparks focuses on “resonance” with past experiences. Medhurst believes that 7

Kenneth Burke’s guilt-purification-redemption cycle and his concept of perspective by incongruity best explain the ad’s communicative power. There are, however, other explanations for the ad’s persuasive force. One might argue, for example, that the key to its power is its ability to play on our fear of negatively influencing children. How did these kids develop such low esteem? Could it have been through their exposure to their parents and other adults with dead-end jobs? Are we reproducing such expectations in the children that populate our lives? After all, many of us care more about our influence than our own selfperception. No doubt your students can come up with equally plausible explanations. Such hypothesizing will help them understand the origins of theory. It’s also useful to speculate about how alternative hypotheses could be shaped and molded by both objective and interpretive scholars. Lining up along the continuum When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he works through the components of the objective and interpretative perspectives systematically with his students, making sure that they understand each binary set: truth vs. multiple realities, determinism vs. free will, objectivity vs. emancipation, and so forth. With each pair, he asks the students to indicate which element they are more comfortable with. For example, a student may choose truth over multiple realities, or free will over determinism. After this territory has been mapped, Griffin creates a continuum across the blackboard or one wall of the classroom, with strong objectivism at one extreme and strong interpretivism at the other. He then asks the students to array themselves along the continuum. If students tend to bunch up on one end or the other, he plays the devil’s advocate in an effort to spread them a bit, but ultimately the choice is theirs. This exercise compels students—quite literally—to take a stand about communication theory in the early goings of the class. As the course develops and their knowledge of the field develops, this initial stand serves as a useful reference point. In addition, Griffin asks students to suggest where other courses in the major might be placed along the continuum. This activity helps contextualize the overall discipline for students. A simpler activity is to ask your students—at the close of the class period—to write one paragraph explaining why they consider themselves to be objectivists or interpretivists. Revisit these texts at the end of the course. Have their beliefs changed? If so, why? Essay Question #2 aims at this general territory. NOVA When Ed McDaniel teaches this class, he uses the following exercise to vivify theory construction and application while involving his students in the process: This class is often a student’s initial introduction to theory as a subject and some may find the abstractness of the material to be stultifying. One way of breaching this barrier is to demonstrate early on how application of theory can bring understanding and insight to a longstanding mystery. A method I have found particularly effective is the use of a video. NOVA has created a series of videos titled “Secrets of the Lost Empires” for PBS. In these videos, scientists, engineers, anthropologists, and so forth endeavor to recreate a historical event or a structure/devise whose origins remain unknown. I use “Easter Island,” which details an actual attempt to replicate how the original statutes may have been moved and erected. The video lasts approximately 55 minutes

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and demonstrates the formulation and application of over 10 theories. Information on the NOVA series can be obtained from WGBH Boston Video at 1-800-949-8670 or www.wgbh.org.

Further Resources §

In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age, ed. Theresa Enos (New York: Garland, 1996), see Stephen W. Littlejohn, “Communication Theory,” 117-21. § For a good collection of general essays on communication theory, see Fred L. Casmir, ed., Building Communication Theories: A Sociological Approach (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994). § In “The Third Way: Scientific Realism and Communication Theory,” Communication Theory 9 (May 1999): 162-88, Charles Pavitt further clarifies—and complicates—the “scientific” approach to communication theory. § If you’d like to read more about Em Griffin’s view of communication research, we recommend “Journal of Communication and Religion: A State-of-the-Art Review,” Journal of Communication and Religion 21 (1998): 108-40. § For essays on theory and research in interpersonal communication, see Barbara Montgomery and Steve Duck, eds., Studying Interpersonal Interaction (New York: Guilford, 1991). § For discussion of the ways in which science is inherently interpretive or rhetorical, see: o Alan Gross, Joseph Harmon, and Michael Reidy, Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); o Charles Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge: Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); o Alan G. Gross, The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); o Greg Myers, Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); o Herbert W. Simons, ed., Rhetoric in the Human Sciences (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989); o Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, ed. Alan Gross and William Keith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). Differences between the interpretive and the objective perspectives on communication § For additional discussion, see Glen’s article, “Humanist and Empiricist Rhetorics: Some Reflections on Rhetorical Sensitivity, Message Design Logics, and Multiple Goal Structures,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23 (Summer/Fall 1994): 27-45. Because he tries to offer a way in which interpretive scholars (whom he calls humanists) can learn from their objective (whom he calls empiricists) colleagues, you may wish to revisit this article as you prepare to teach the final chapter, which further explores the relationship between the two camps. Multiple interpretations of text § For further discussion, see Leah Ceccarelli, “Polysemy: Multiple Meanings in Rhetorical Criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (November 1998): 395-15. Free will and determinism 9

§

One of the finest discussions we know of the debate over free will and determinism is William James’s “The Dilemma of Determinism,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1956), 145-83. James’s analogy of the chess game between the novice and the expert demonstrates a kind of resolution or middle ground between the free will argument and the determinist argument (181-82). The fact that James works religion into the discussion makes his position even more interesting. Science and subjectivity § Two intriguing discussions of science and subjectivity are James Watson’s classic expose, The Double Helix (New York: NAL, 1969), and David Raup’s The Nemesis Star: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science (New York: Norton, 1986). Evidence § For discussion of the issue of what constitutes appropriate evidence in communication research, see: o The symposium “The Dialogue of Evidence: A Topic Revisited,” Western Journal of Communication 58 (1994): 1-71; o Stuart J. Sigman, “Question: Evidence of What? Answer: Communication,” Western Journal of Communication 59 (1995): 79-84; o Leslie Baxter and Lee West, “On ‘Whistler’s Mother’ and Discourse of the Fourth Kind,” Western Journal of Communication 60 (1996): 92-100. Ethnography § A good basic ethnography text is Wendy Bishop’s Ethnographic Writing Research: Writing It Down, Writing It Up, and Reading It (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999). § See also H. Lloyd Goodall, Writing the New Ethnography (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000). § One of the finest ethnographic studies we’ve encountered recently is David Sutherland’s Frontline documentary, The Farmer’s Wife. This approximately six-hour film explores the lives of Juanita and Darrel Buschkoetter, a Nebraska couple who struggle to save their farm and their marriage. In addition to serving as a profound example of “thick description,” the film can be used to discuss many of the theories presented in A First Look. § Another intriguing ethnographic effort is H. Lloyd Goodall’s trilogy, Casing a Promised Land: The Autobiography of an Organizational Detective as Cultural Ethnographer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), Living in the Rock n Roll Mystery: Reading Context, Self, and Others as Clues (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), and Divine Signs: Connecting Spirit to Community (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996). § For recent work on ethnography, see: o Lyall Crawford, “Personal Ethnography,” Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 158-70; o Dwight Conquergood, “Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,” Communication Monographs 58 (1991): 179-94; o AltaMira Press’s Ethnographic Alternatives series, particularly Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner’s Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996); o John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

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§

For specific discussion of power and ethics in ethnographic research, see: o Julian McAllister Groves and Kimberly A. Chang, “Romancing Resistance and Resisting Romance: Ethnography and the Construction of Power in the Filipina Domestic Worker Community in Hong Kong,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28 (June 1999): 235-65. o In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Annie-Marie Hall, “Ethnography,” 241-43.

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Sample Examination Questions Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual. To receive a copy of the Test Bank contact your local McGraw-Hill sales representative or email Leslie Oberhuber, Senior Marketing Manager at [email protected]

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Sample Questions are not reproduced in the online version of the Instructor's Manual.

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CHAPTER 2

MAPPING THE TERRITORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Communication scholars hold widely divergent views as to what communication is. B. Robert Craig suggests that communication should be viewed as a practical discipline; theory is developed to solve real world problems. C. Craig identifies seven established traditions of communication theory.

II.

The socio-psychological tradition—communication as interpersonal influence. A. This tradition epitomizes the scientific perspective. B. Carl Hovland was one of the founding fathers of experimental research on the effects of communication. C. Hovland’s Yale team studied the relationships among communication stimuli, audience predisposition, and opinion change. D. They explored three separate causes of persuasive variation. 1. Who—the source of the message. 2. What—the content of the message. 3. Whom—the audience characteristics. E. Hovland and his colleagues discovered that source credibility is vital to opinion shift. 1. They investigated two types of credibility—expertness and character. 2. Expertness was more important for boosting opinion change, but its effect didn’t last.

III.

The cybernetic tradition—communication as information processing. A. Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics to describe the field of artificial intelligence. 1. Wiener’s concept of feedback anchored the cybernetic tradition. 2. Communication is the link separating the separate parts of any system. B. Claude Shannon established the idea of communication as information processing. 1. Shannon’s goal was to establish maximal line capacity with minimum distortion. 2. He had little interest in the meaning of a message. C. Shannon defined information as the reduction of uncertainty. 1. The less predictable a message, the more information it carries. 2. Noise reduces the information-carrying capacity of the channel. D. Shannon regarded communication as the science of balancing predictability and uncertainty. E. Paired with Warren Weaver’s essay, Shannon’s diagram of information flow appears in many communication textbooks.

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F.

Although Weaver didn’t include feedback, other cybernetic theorists added it to the model.

IV.

The rhetorical tradition—communication as artful public address. A. Greco-Roman rhetoric was the main communication theory until the twentieth century. B. Six features characterize the tradition. 1. A conviction that speech distinguishes humans from other animals. 2. A confidence in the efficacy of public address. 3. A setting of one speaker addressing a large audience with the intention to persuade. 4. Oratorical training as the cornerstone of a leader’s education. 5. An emphasis on the power and beauty of language to move people emotionally and stir them to action. 6. Rhetoric was the province of males. C. There exists an ongoing tension between the relative value of theory and practice in the education of speakers.

V.

The semiotic tradition—communication as the process of sharing meaning through signs. A. Semiotics is the study of signs. B. Words are a special kind of sign known as a symbol. C. I.A. Richards was an early scholar of semiotics. 1. His “proper meaning superstition” identifies the mistaken belief that words have a precise meaning. 2. Meanings don’t reside in words or other symbols, but in people. D. C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards’s semantic triangle demonstrates the indirect relationship between a symbol and its referent. E. Although Richards and Ferdinand de Saussure were fascinated with language, many in the semiotic tradition focus on nonverbal communication.

VI.

The socio-cultural tradition—communication as the creation and enactment of social reality. A. Communication produces and reproduces culture. B. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf pioneered this tradition. 1. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity states that the structure of a culture’s language shapes what people think and do. 2. Their theory counters the notion that languages are neutral conduits of meaning. C. It is through language that reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.

VII. The critical tradition—communication as a reflective challenge of unjust discourse. A. Critical theory derives from the German Frankfurt School. B. The Frankfurt School rejected Karl Marx’s economic determinism, but embraced the Marxist tradition of critiquing society. C. The leaders of the Frankfurt School argued that all previous history has been characterized by an unjust distribution of suffering.

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D.

E.

Critical theorists challenge three features of contemporary society. 1. The control of language to perpetuate power imbalances. 2. The role of mass media in dulling sensitivity to repression. 3. Blind reliance on the scientific method and uncritical acceptance of empirical findings. Critical theorists share a common ethical agenda that emphasizes solidarity with suffering human beings.

VIII. The phenomenological tradition—communication as the experience of self and others through dialogue. A. Phenomenology refers to the intentional analysis of everyday life from the standpoint of the person who is living it. B. The phenomenological tradition places great emphasis on people’s perceptions and interpretations of their own subjective experiences. C. Within the context of therapy, Carl Rogers established three conditions for personality and relationship change. 1. Congruence—the match between an individual’s inner feelings and outer display. 2. Unconditional positive regard—an attitude of acceptance that isn’t contingent on performance. 3. Empathic understanding—the caring skill of entering into another’s world without prejudice. D. Rogers believed that his criteria applied to all interpersonal relationships. E. Martin Buber emphasized authentic human relationships through dialogue. IX.

Fencing the field of communication theory. A. These seven traditions have deep roots in communication theory. B. They have been mapped with respect to the objective/interpretive dichotomy. C. Hybrids are possible across traditions. D. They might not cover every approach to communication theory—thus the addition of the ethical tradition.

X.

The ethical tradition—communication as people of character interacting in just and beneficial ways. A. Since ancient Greece, scholars have grappled with the obligations of the communicator. B. The NCA recently adopted a “Credo for Communication Ethics,” which includes the conviction that ethical communication: 1. Advocates truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason. 2. Accepts responsibility for short-term and long-term consequences of communication. 3. Strives to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages. C. Concern for ethics spreads across the objective-interpretive landscape. D. Craig’s framework of seven traditions helps us make sense of the great diversity in the field of communication.

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Key Names and Terms Robert Craig A communication scholar from the University of Colorado who has defined seven traditions of communication theory. The Socio-Psychological Tradition An empirical approach to interpersonal influence that stemmed from media research. Carl Hovland A Yale University researcher who was one of the founding fathers of the sociopsychological tradition. Sleeper Effect The tendency for the impact of source credibility to dissipate over time, often because the audience remembers the message but forgets the source. The Cybernetic Tradition The study of information processing, feedback, and control in communication systems. Claude Shannon A Bell Telephone research scientist who developed an influential mathematical model for signal transmission that formed the basis of the cybernetic tradition. Warren Weaver A scholar whose interpretive essay applying the concept of information loss to interpersonal communication was paired with Shannon’s diagram of information flow. Information The opportunity to reduce uncertainty. Noise Anything that reduces the information-carrying capacity of the channel. Norbert Wiener An MIT scientist who coined the term cybernetics and pioneered the concept of feedback. Feedback Information that adjusts future behavior by introducing learning into the system. The Rhetorical Tradition An ancient approach to communication theory and practice that emphasizes persuasion through artful public address. The Semiotic Tradition An approach to communication theory that emphasizes the process of sharing meaning through signs. Proper Meaning Superstition The mistaken belief that words have precise definitions. I.A. Richards A Cambridge University literary critic who was one of the first in the semiotic tradition to systematically describe how words work. Sign Anything that can stand for something else. Symbol A special type of sign (including most words) that has no natural connection with the thing it describes. Semantic Triangle 19

Richards and Ogden’s graphic depiction of the indirect relationship between a symbol and its referent. C.K. Ogden Richards’s collaborator on the semantic triangle. The Socio-Cultural Tradition An approach to communication that emphasizes how language produces and reproduces culture. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf A University of Chicago linguist and his student who developed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The proposition that the structure of a culture’s language shapes what people think and do. The Critical Tradition An approach to communication theory that emphasizes reflective challenge of unjust discourse. Frankfurt School A group of German scholars lead by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse who critiqued the way in which discourse is controlled to perpetuate power imbalances. Praxis Theoretically reflective social action. The Phenomenological Tradition An approach to communication theory that emphasizes communication as the experience of self and others through dialogue. Carl Rogers A psychologist who developed a theory of personal and relationship growth. Congruence According to Carl Rogers, the match or fit between an individual’s inner feelings and outer display. Unconditional Positive Regard An attitude of acceptance of another person that is not contingent on his or her performance. Empathic Understanding The active process of laying aside personal views and of entering into another’s world without prejudice. Martin Buber A Jewish philosopher and theologian who emphasized authentic human relationships through dialogue. National Communication Association Credo for Communication Ethics A collection of nine principles of ethical communication recently adopted by the National Communication Association.

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Principal Changes The discussion of the seven traditions remains essentially the same with some light editing for clarity.

Suggestions for Discussion Pluralism While teaching this chapter, be sure to emphasize Robert Craig’s point that it’s probably a mistake to seek “some kind of grand theoretical overview that brings all communication study into focus” (21). Griffin’s decision to feature Craig’s catholic approach to the discipline reiterates the pitch for pluralism that anchors our Preface. Much of the pleasure—and, on occasion, pain—of our field comes from the diversity of the terrain. Cybernetic tradition of Shannon and Weaver Each of the seven traditions presented in this chapter could easily warrant a booklength treatment. We’ll curb our desire to present exhaustive analyses of all seven here, but we will provide sample discussion of the cybernetic tradition. The simplicity of Shannon and Weaver’s approach makes it an easy target for criticism. In Chapter 21, in fact, Griffin asserts that “a majority of human communication scholars now dismiss Shannon and Weaver’s information theory” (302). Nonetheless, it is important for students to know that the premises about communication underlying information theory still play important roles in the academy and in our culture. Discuss with your students Shannon and Weaver’s general emphases and goals: clear, efficient, linear transmission and reception of information, balance between novelty and redundancy, and so forth. With this theoretical foundation established, they will discover ample demonstrations of its utility all around them. A good place to commence the search is with communication pedagogy itself, particularly at the introductory level, where information theory remains the predominant way of beginning the discussion about our discipline. Most communication textbooks introduce their subject with ideas that stem directly from the information theory of Shannon and Weaver, including diagrams similar to figure 2.1. This is particularly true of texts covering public speaking and the fundamentals of communication. Stephen E. Lucas’s popular public-speaking text, The Art of Public Speaking, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), for example, presents “the speech communication process” in a format that draws heavily from Shannon and Weaver. To drive the point home, bring several of these textbooks to class. Better yet, have your students bring in the books they’ve used in their introductory courses. Although your students may not realize it, much of the language we habitually use to describe our speech and writing perpetuates the general perspective on communication created by this theory. The conduit metaphors we marshal, for example, in which language becomes a kind of pipeline for the efficient transfer of ideas from one mind to another, align closely with Shannon and Weaver’s approach. In addition, many metaphors that characterize communication as a journey also conform to their perspective. In fact, any time our metacommunication emphasizes the way in which language functions (or fails to function) as a medium for carrying our predetermined thoughts with fidelity and efficiency, we are

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perpetuating the philosophy of communication advocated by information theory. Playing the roles of transmitters and encoders, we talk about “putting our ideas into words”; “getting it all down in writing”; or “bogging down in the middle of a paragraph.” On the receiving and decoding end, we say, “His instructions are confusing”; “Her spelling errors are distracting”; “I had a hard time following his line of reasoning”; “She kept repeating her basic point over and over”; “His explanation lacks clarity”; “I was caught up in the flow of her description”; or “He really laid it out for me.” As instructors, many to most of the metaphors and analogies we use to evaluate student prose and speaking align with information theory. When you assign this chapter, you may wish to ask students to look back over their paper and speech evaluations from recently graded assignments for the presence of such metacommunication. Have them bring examples to class of teachers’ comments that conform to Shannon and Weaver’s approach to communication. Another genre of communication that fits well with information theory is the basic business transaction. Letters to and from one’s bank, accountant, and attorney often conform to the mold, as do the words we speak when we use the drive-up window at a fast-food establishment, give directions to a motorist who is new in town, or place a call to 911. Traffic signals and road signs also qualify. Comparing the traditions After you have covered the widespread applicability of Shannon and Weaver’s approach, it’s time to move to the other side of the theoretical fence—those communicative situations in which the linear model is not an effective approximation of human communication. The socio-psychological tradition shares Shannon and Weaver’s empiricism, although its interest in influence differs from the cybernetic emphasis on information. The rhetorical tradition, in which speakers and writers seek to change the feelings or beliefs of their audiences through persuasion, does not align well with the approach of Shannon and Weaver. The semiotic tradition is fairly compatible, but the socio-cultural approach, with its emphasis on constitutive power of communication, is not. The critical tradition is overtly suspicious of Shannon and Weaver’s sort of empiricism. Nor is the phenomenological tradition—which emphasizes communication’s power to shape the self and human relationships—particularly interested in messages beyond the specific context of persons-inconversation. Whereas the information model simply relays what is known by one person to another, genuine dialogue can function epistemically and ontologically—generating knowledge about the world and altering one’s sense of being. Of course communication designed to support or reinforce that which is previously known or believed has little to do with the reduction of uncertainty. We’ve belabored the characteristics of the cybernetic tradition too much, perhaps, but our intention has been to encourage you to inspire your students to spend a good deal of time comparing the seven traditions Griffin presents as basic to our disciplinary territory. If students master this material, and if they comprehend the essential differences and similarities among these theoretical zones, they’ll have a wonderful foundation for successfully understanding the entire book. An alternate order for presenting the traditions

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In this chapter, Griffin presents the seven traditions arranged according to where they fall on the scientific-interpretivistic continuum. If you or your students have a predilection toward history, you might consider presenting the traditions in a roughly chronological fashion, which lends itself to a discussion of world events that have impacted communication. Starting with the rhetorical tradition, communication has been a defining element of human history— both the experience and the re-telling. Students who have had public speaking or rhetoric classes may already have an understanding of early rhetoricians and may be able to explain how and why rhetoric achieved its high standing in the academic settings of the Greeks, Romans, Middle Ages, and Renaissance. The critical tradition marks the first in the twentieth century, with its European beginning between the first and second World Wars. Again, its historical context may help students by placing the thought tradition with world events, political climates, and social causes. Both the semiotic and socio-psychological tradition arose during the 1940s around the time of WW2. Your students might be interested to know that many of the founding fathers of the socio-psychological tradition (i.e., Harold Lasswell, Kurt Lewin, Paul Lazerfeld, Carl Hovland) were working in the US to escape the war and the Nazi regime. In some cases, their work was a direct result of wartime conditions (Lasswell’s studies of propaganda) or their sponsoring agencies (Lewin’s work on small groups for the US military). Cybernetics emerged toward the end of WW2 and reflects the emerging global interest in technology. Ask your students what other technological advances occurred at this time, such as the television, automobiles, and early computers, and how they might reflect the cybernetics view regarding parts of a system. As for the socio-cultural tradition of the late 1940s, you might choose to discuss sociologists, missionaries or cultural anthropologists (such as Margaret Mead) who lived and worked around the globe and emphasized tolerance and understanding after the atrocities of WW2. With advances in technology making the world “smaller,” people were exposed to places and populations previously unknown and these circumstances help shaped the socio-cultural perspective. Finally, the phenomenological tradition appears during the late 1950s and 1960s. Ask your students how they would characterize this period of history. Be sure to note important concepts such as encounter groups, the hippies, Vietnam War, peaceful and violent protest movements, sit-ins, and the rise of women’s rights, affirmative action, and Gay rights. With this backdrop, it may not surprise your students that academics were also thinking about the perspective of the individual’s own lived experience and subjective reality. Mapping the traditions Figure 2.3, Griffin’s “survey map” of the seven traditions, deserves comment. Griffin has done a fine job of placing the theories along the objective/interpretive continuum, and he provides a reasonable rationale for his placements. Nonetheless, one could question the positioning of particular traditions. We, for example, might extend the domains of semiotics and rhetoric toward the interpretive pole. We would encourage you and your students to think critically about any attempt to systematize our discipline.

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The ethical tradition Finally, it may be enlightening to invite students to discuss the principles of the NCA’s “Credo for Communication Ethics,” which Griffin did not include in his summary of the document on pages 34-35 (the complete text can be found in Appendix C). Griffin includes ethical reflections in five places throughout the textbook, and if you plan on using them in later discussions, you’ll likely want to pause and discuss his ethical tradition at this point.

Sample Application Logs Jessie This past summer I took a course in Israel. Our guide was a master at communicating his point ... “Look with me to the left of us. Do you see the Mount of Temptation Hotel? Now look at the roof. Do you see the set of colonnades? Move your eyes across the colonnade. Do you see the one lone palm tree? Everyone see it? Look at the top of the palm and to the right. Do you see the barren mound of earth? That is where Jericho’s hippodrome is.” Rarely did we not know what our guide was speaking about. He had taken a landscape full of “information” and “noise” and, through words, narrowed the wealth to one spot. That is the reduction of entropy. Alicia A girl walked up to me once and told me that she loved theatre as much as I did. After a brief conversation, I realized that she thought of theatre as sitting in an audience watching an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, while I thought theatre to be a group of friends working hard to put on a piece by Tennessee Williams. The chapter and the incident both reminded me that the thoughts I associate with words are not always what others mean.

Exercises and Activities Your genealogy To enrich your students’ understanding of and appreciation for the basic traditions of the discipline, you may wish to share with them your own intellectual background as well as the educational stories of some of your colleagues. Presenting selected branches of the departmental “family tree” can be a concrete way to demonstrate the broad applicability of the eight traditions of the discipline, as well as the objective/interpretive dichotomy that informs the field. You could also require the students themselves to reconstruct the genealogy by having them interview you and your colleagues before you cover the chapter in class. Encourage students to ask questions about the topics and locations of key articles written by your colleagues, their mentors, and perhaps even their mentors’ mentors.

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Same topic, differing traditions When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he focuses students very specifically on the definitions of communication favored by each tradition. As he did with the first chapter, he asks students to indicate which territory is most comfortable to them. Once again, he establishes an initial standpoint that can be referenced over the course of the semester. Finally, he takes a research area with which he is familiar (in his case, friendship) and discusses how each tradition would investigate the topic. For example, how would the sociopsychological tradition conduct research on friendship, and how would this research contrast with study done by the cybernetic tradition, and so forth. If you’re not currently conducting research on a communication topic, you could use your thesis as a sample area. This exercise helps students to understand the richness and complexity of our field, since both topics and perspectives differ so widely.

Further Resources § §

§

Bruce Gronbeck’s 1998 Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, “Paradigms of Speech Communication Studies: Looking Back to the Future” (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), provides an alternative view of the discipline’s “territory.” A perplexing, yet illuminating text is Richard Rodriguez’s autobiography, Hunger of Memory (New York: Bantam, 1982), in which the author both celebrates and agonizes over his one-way journey from the working-class, Spanish-speaking world of his Mexican-born parents to the English-speaking, American upper-middle class he and his siblings eventually enter. Rodriguez’s case is particularly intriguing because he denies the importance of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Arguing that language itself is merely a conduit, rather than a creator, of meaning, Rodriguez nonetheless chronicles his growing distance from his parents, a distance that seems inevitably linked to differences in communication. For sources on the rhetorical tradition, see our treatment of public rhetoric.

Carl Rogers § Although Carl Rogers—whom Griffin features in the phenomenological tradition—was not a communication scholar per se, his ideas have been extremely influential in our discipline. It is not surprising, thus, that John Stewart includes him as a key theorist for interpersonal communication in his popular communication anthology, Bridges Not Walls, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 640-49. § A good discussion of his contribution to our field is provided by Kenneth Cissna and Rob Anderson, “The Contributions of Carl R. Rogers to a Philosophical Praxis of Dialogue,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (1990): 125-47. Cissna and Anderson compare the work of Carl Rogers and Martin Buber, who is featured in an Ethical Reflection a bit later in the book. § For discussion of Rogers’s influence on rhetoric, see: o Richard E. Young, Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth Pike, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (New York: Harcourt, 1970), 273-90; o Doug Brent, “Rogerian Rhetoric: Ethical Growth through Alternative Forms of Argument,” Argument Revisited; Argument Redefined: Negotiating Meaning in the Composition Classroom (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996), 73-96;

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o Nathaniel Teich, “Rogerian Rhetoric,” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 635-36; Nathaniel Teich, ed., Rogerian Perspectives: Collaborative Rhetoric for Oral and Written Communication (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1992).

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CHAPTER 3

WEIGHING THE WORDS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Not all theories are equally effective. B. The utility of a theory may be judged by applying the appropriate criteria used by behavioral scientists and a wide range of interpretive scholars to weigh the theories of their colleagues.

II.

A test case: Ernest Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory. A. Bormann maintains that the sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence. B. During symbolic convergence, fantasy chain reactions build community or group consciousness. C. Fantasy themes voiced across many groups create a rhetorical vision.

III.

What makes an objective theory good? A. Scientific standard 1: Explanation of the data. 1. A good theory makes sense out of disturbing situations or draws order out of chaos. 2. It focuses attention on crucial variables and away from irrelevant data. 3. It explains what is happening and why. 4. It explains both the process and the results. B. Scientific standard 2: Prediction of future events. Prediction in physical science is more accurate than in social science, where it is based on probability. C. Scientific standard 3: Relative simplicity. The rule of parsimony dictates that all things being equal, we accept the simpler explanation over the more complex. D. Scientific standard 4: Hypotheses that can be tested. If there is no way to prove a theory false, then the assumption that it’s true is mere guesswork. E. Scientific standard 5: Practical utility. 1. A good objective theory provides increased control. 2. Don’t dismiss a theory as impractical unless you understand it.

IV.

What makes an interpretive theory good? A. Interpretive standard 1: New understanding of people. 1. Rhetorical theory elucidates texts. 2. It helps critics clarify complex communication. 3. It suggests universal patterns of symbol usage. 4. Whereas science wants objective explanation, humanism desires subjective understanding. 5. Klaus Krippendorff’s Self-Referential Imperative: Include yourself as a constituent of your own construction.

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B.

C.

D. E.

V.

Interpretive standard 2: Clarification of values. 1. Theorists acknowledge their own values. 2. They seek to unmask the ideology behind messages. 3. Many theorists value individual liberty and equality. Krippendorff’s Ethical Imperative: Grant others that occur in your construction the same autonomy you practice constructing them. Interpretive standard 3: Aesthetic appeal. 1. A theory’s form can be as captivating as its content. 2. As an artist, the critic sparks appreciation. Interpretive standard 4: A community of agreement. A theory must have widespread scrutiny and usage. Interpretive standard 5: Reform of society. 1. Theory challenges cultural assumptions. 2. It generates alternatives for social action.

Balancing the scale: similar weights and measures. A. The two sets of five criteria are not as different as they might seem. B. An explanation creates understanding by answering, Why? C. Both prediction and value clarification look to the future. D. Simplicity has aesthetic appeal. E. Hypothesis testing is a way of achieving a community of agreement. F. Theories that reform are practical. G. These parallels suggest important linkages between scientists and interpretive scholars. Many communication theorists are grounded somewhere between the two positions. H. Although all theories featured in this book have merit, most have weaknesses elucidated by the standards set forth in this chapter.

Key Names and Terms Symbolic Convergence Developed by Ernest Bormann, this theory posits that through the process of sharing common fantasies, a collection of individuals is transformed into a cohesive group. This theory draws from both the scientific and humanistic traditions. Fantasy Theme Analysis The study of the way in which groups use creative and imaginative interpretations of events to fulfill psychological and rhetorical needs. Fantasy theme analysis is the research method of Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory. Rhetorical Vision According to symbolic convergence theory, a collective view of social reality that develops when the same set of fantasy themes is voiced across many group situations. Falsifiability Karl Popper’s requirement that a good scientific theory must be able to be proven false. Karl Popper The British philosopher responsible for the concept of falsifiability. He suggested that theories are nets cast to catch what we call the world. Rule of Parsimony 32

Relative simplicity; given two plausible explanations for the same event, scientists favor the less complicated one. Klaus Krippendorff A theorist from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania who developed the Self-Referential Imperative and the Ethical Imperative for humanistic communication research. Self-Referential Imperative The premise that theorists must include themselves as participants in their own constructions; they affect and are affected by their ideas. Ethical Imperative The premise that theorists in their constructions must grant people they study the same autonomy they grant themselves.

Principal Changes This chapter remains the same with some light editing for clarity.

Suggestions for Discussion Parsimony—is it always a good thing? In discussion, you may wish to complicate the scientific standard of relative simplicity a bit. Although the rule of parsimony (students who have had a philosophy course may have also been introduced to this concept as “Occam’s razor”) dictates that we favor the simplest explanation of a given phenomenon (41-42), it is also the case that complex phenomena often require intricate theories. Therefore, expecting simplicity is not always useful (to invoke another scientific standard for good theory). An economics professor once compared theory building to magic. Some magicians pull big rabbits out of small hats, and some produce small, refined rabbits from big hats. Bormann’s symbolic convergence—which provides a great deal of bang for the theoretical buck (even though its power to predict is limited)—fits the former category, it seems to us. Who would not be impressed by such necromancy? Sometimes, though, it’s the refined rabbits we want, and we’re willing to reach into big hats to produce them. And in fact, as theories build on one another, the move toward intricacy is inevitable. Anxiety-uncertainty management theory, which we’ll meet in Chapter 30, exemplifies this second category. Gudykunst strives for the fine distinctions and precision that may be missing from a construct such as symbolic convergence, and thus he must develop extensive theoretical machinery. His magic may not be bold, but it is useful, nonetheless. The key to evaluating the worth of a big hat theory is to determine whether or not the added explanatory and predictive potential merits the increased complexity. If it does not, then the theory is not valuable. Objective explanation/subjective understanding When we teach this chapter, we pause very carefully over the objective explanation/subjective understanding dichotomy that Griffin establishes between scientific and interpretive theory. (It is located in his discussion of “Interpretive Standard 1,” page 44.) We want students to understand that the “self-referential imperative” (45) does not exclude the importance of developing understandings of texts that ring true to other readers. In fact,

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we would go so far as to suggest that the most enduring rhetorical criticism has a tendency to blur the line between explanation and understanding. Similarly, one can feel “the personal thrill of discovery and creation” (45) in the accounts of science given us by many of our colleagues in the sciences, including Watson and Raup, whose books we mention in the Further Resources section of our treatment of Chapter One. To continue this line of discussion, ask students for an objective definition of “utility,” which Griffin lists as a principal criterion of good scientific theory. What they’ll find is that you cannot talk about this standard without calling upon subjective values. Evaluating well-known theories To help solidify the standards presented in the chapter, it may be useful to choose one or two well-known theoretical systems such as capitalism, Marxism, Darwinism, creationism, or Freudianism and run them through the twin criteria for scientific and interpretive theories. In particular, discuss falsifiability with respect to these theories; students may better understand Popper’s concept if they consider, for example, why Marxism and creationism are not falsifiable—yet Darwinism is. Discredited theories such as Lamarckian evolution, spontaneous generation, or Ptolemaic geocentrism may be particularly illuminating. Aesthetic appeal We can’t help but pause for a moment on interpretive standard #3, “aesthetic appeal,” which Griffin discusses on page 46. Although it’s true that many interpretive scholars view their work as art, or at least as artistic (and we applaud this belief), many do not. Unfortunately ponderous prose is prevalent in the theorizing of many of our best and brightest interpretive scholars. Postmodernism, with its disdain for clarity, simplicity, and directness and its skepticism about meaning and certain knowledge, is partially—but not exclusively— to blame. Symbolic convergence theory You may be interested to know that in Understanding Communication Theory (which we introduced in the Preface to this manual), Cragan and Shields present symbolic convergence theory as one of the six “general theories” of the discipline. Why is it that Griffin has demoted it to a sample theory for this introductory chapter?

Sample Application Log Robyn I always wondered if the three of us were sort of sick. Whenever Jenn, Lynn and I would get together and hang out, we would always talk about the past. I don’t know why, but all the funny things we had shared in the past always seemed so much more exciting than anything we were doing in the present. When one of us would start to share a common yarn, the other two would immediately pick up the fantasy and create a chain reaction of energy. We had a million fantasy themes that we would re-create through time. I always thought that we were pretty weird, but Bormann declares that we are just natural symbol users and storytellers who voice fantasies and create cohesiveness.

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Exercises and Activities Fantasy themes To help explicate Bormann’s theory of symbolic convergence, Griffin asks his students to discuss examples of group fantasies that they have helped create or perhaps witnessed. To what extent did the fantasies chain out? Was symbolic convergence attained or perhaps even a rhetorical vision? Such discussion helps to clarify and vivify what might otherwise be fairly abstract concepts. To increase your students’ grasp of fantasy theme analysis and symbolic convergence, you might want to have them read an article using the technique and follow it up with an inclass discussion. We recommend Thomas G. Endres’s “Father-daughter dramas: A Qinvestigation of rhetorical visions” in Journal of Applied Communication Research, 25, 4 (1997): 317-41; “He’s in a New Neighborhood Now: Religious Fantasy Themes about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” by Stephen D. Perry, and Amanda Roesch. Journal of Media & Religion 3, 4 (2004): 199-219; or “The World’s Nicest Grown-Up: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of News Media Coverage of Fred Rogers” by Ronald Bishop, Journal of Communication, 53, 1 (2003): 16-32. The latter two work well especially if you want to simulate fantasy chaining by asking students their recollections of Mr. Rogers. If you want to explore further fantasy themes and symbolic convergence, you may wish to extend the example Griffin presents of the Montana ranchers (38-39). To do so, have your students imagine the conversation that their counterparts, the federal agents, might have about them. Picture Mr. Clayton Rogers having dinner with a group of his fellow federal agents in an upscale Washington restaurant. Taking advantage of a lull in the conversation, he begins to tell the story of his encounter with a fiercely independent Montana rancher. “As I introduced myself at his door,” Rogers says, “I noticed a sign over his gun rack declaring, ‘Shoot first, ask questions later.’” How might that line create a fantasy chain reaction and symbolic convergence? What sort of rhetorical vision could eventually emerge from such conversations? Which standard is indispensable? When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he works through the ten standards of objective and interpretative theory building (explanation of data or understanding of people, prediction of future or clarification of values, and so forth) systematically with his students, making sure that they understand both five-part sets and the relationship between them. Then he asks each student to indicate which of the ten standards is, for him or her, indispensable to good theory building. Next, if they could add a second essential standard, which would it be? Are the first and second essential standards they chose from the same tradition, or have the students drawn one standard from each set? As the students indicate their choices, Griffin tallies the cumulative results on the board so that the students can visualize the class trend. When Ed McDaniel teaches this chapter, he employs the following exercise to apply the criteria for evaluating theories: To supplement information in the text, I bring in news articles relating to the neverending debate on teaching evolution and creationism in the public schools. I then engage the class in a discussion and ask them to determine what evolution and 35

creation are based on. This helps demonstrate that a good theory must meet a number of empirical criteria, unlike a strictly faith-based concept. Feature film example The film Moonlight and Valentino, which centers on a tight circle of women whose fantasy chains feature a hunksome house painter, cleverly exemplifies symbolic convergence.

Further Resources Symbolic convergence theory § For further discussion of Bormann’s work, see Sonja Foss’s fifth chapter on “fantasytheme criticism” in Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice, 2nd ed. (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1996). § In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Bormann, “Fantasy Theme Analysis,” 258-60; and Gary Layne Hatch, “Bormann,” 82-83. § For a provocative book-length application of Bormann’s notion of symbolic convergence to the culture of a small group, see Moya Ann Ball, Vietnam-on-thePotomac (Westport: Praeger, 1992). A condensed version of this study is “Vacillating about Vietnam: Secrecy, Duplicity, and Confusion in the Communication of President Kennedy and His Advisors,” Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups, ed. Lawrence R. Frey (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), 181-98. We say more about Ball’s work in our treatment of Griffin’s introduction to group decision making. § For further application of Bormann’s theory, see: o Susan Schultz, “Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, and Angelina Grimké: Symbolic Convergence and a Nascent Rhetorical Vision,” Communication Quarterly 44 (Winter 1996): 14-28. o Thomas G. Endres, “Father-Daughter Dramas: A Q-Investigation of Rhetorical Visions,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 25 (November 1997): 317-40. o Margaret Duffy, “High Stakes: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of the Selling of Riverboat Gambling in Iowa,” Southern Communication Journal 62 (Winter 1997): 117-32. o Linda Putnam, Shirley A. Van Hoeven, and Connie A. Bullis, “The Role of Rituals and Fantasy Themes in Teachers’ Bargaining,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 55 (1991): 85-103. o Christee Lucas Lesch, “Observing Theory in Practice: Sustaining Consciousness in a Coven,” Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups, 5782. o Mara B. Adelman and Lawrence Frey, The Fragile Community: Living Together with AIDS (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997), 41. o Ernest Bormann, Ellen Bormann, and Kathleen C. Harty, “Using Symbolic Convergence Theory and Focus Group Interviews to Develop Communication Designed to Stop Teenage Use of Tobacco,” Innovations in Group Facilitation: Applications in Natural Settings, ed. Lawrence Frey (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995), 200-32.

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o John Cragan and Donald Shields, “Using SCT-Based Focus Group Interviews to Do Applied Communication Research,” Innovations in Group Facilitation: Applications in Natural Settings, 233-56. Critiques of SCT § For a critique of symbolic convergence theory, see Joshua Gunn’s article “Refiguring Fantasy: Imagination and Its Decline in U.S. Rhetorical Studies,” in Quarterly Journal of Speech 89, 1 (2003): 41-60. In the November 2003 issue of Quarterly Journal of Speech 89, 4: 366-73, Bormann, John Cragan, and Donald Shields respond to Gunn’s article followed by a one-page response from Gunn. § Donald Shields marshals symbolic convergence theory to attack a recent form of communication scholarship in “Symbolic Convergence and Special Communication Theories: Sensing and Examining Dis/Enchantment with the Theoretical Robustness of Critical Autoethnography,” Communication Monographs 67 (March 2000): 392421.

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INTERPERSONAL MESSAGES Key Names and Terms Interpersonal Communication The interactive process of creating unique shared meaning.

Further Resources For a feminist reading of interpersonal communication, see Julia Wood, “Enlarging Conceptual Boundaries: A Critique of Research in Interpersonal Communication,” Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques of Communication Studies, ed. Sheryl Perlmutter Bowen and Nancy Wyatt (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1993), 19-49.

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CHAPTER 4

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM Outline I.

Introduction. A. George Herbert Mead was an influential philosophy professor at the University of Chicago, but he never published his ideas. B. After his death, his students published his teachings in Mind, Self, and Society. C. Mead’s chief disciple, Herbert Blumer, further developed his theory. 1. Blumer coined the term symbolic interactionism, and claimed that communication is the most human and humanizing activity in which people are engaged. 2. The three core principles of symbolic interactionism are concerned with meaning, language, and thought. 3. These principles lead to conclusions about the formation of self and socialization into a larger community.

II.

Meaning: The construction of social reality. A. First principle: Humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people or things. B. Once people define a situation as real, it’s very real in its consequences.

III.

Language: The source of meaning. A. Meaning arises out of the social interaction people have with each other. B. Meaning is not inherent in objects. C. Meaning is negotiated through the use of language, hence the term symbolic interactionism. 1. Second principle: As human beings, we have the ability to name things. 2. Symbols, including names, are arbitrary signs. 3. By talking with others, we ascribe meaning to words and develop a universe of discourse. D. Symbolic naming is the basis for society—the extent of knowing is dependent on the extent of naming. E. Symbolic interactionism is the way we learn to interpret the world. 1. A symbol is a stimulus that has a learned meaning and a value for people. 2. Our words have default assumptions.

IV.

Thought: The process of taking the role of the other. A. Third principle: An individual’s interpretation of symbols is modified by his or her own thought process. B. Symbolic interactionists describe thinking as an inner conversation, or minding. 1. Minding is a reflective pause. 2. We naturally talk to ourselves in order to sort out meaning.

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C.

D.

Whereas animals act instinctively and without deliberation, humans are hardwired for thought. 1. Humans require social stimulation and exposure to abstract symbol systems to have conceptual thought. 2. Language is the software that activates the mind. Humans have the unique capacity to take the role of the other.

V.

The self: Reflections in a looking glass. A. Self cannot be found through introspection, but instead through taking the role of the other and imagining how we look from the other’s perspective. This mental image is called the looking-glass self and is socially constructed. B. Self is a function of language. 1. One has to be a member of a community before consciousness of self sets in. 2. The self is always in flux. C. Self is an ongoing process combining the “I” and the “me.” 1. The “I” sponsors what is novel, unpredictable, and unorganized about the self. 2. The “me” is the image of self seen through the looking glass of other people’s reactions.

VI.

Community: The socializing effect of others’ expectations. A. The composite mental image of others in a community, their expectations, and possible responses is referred to as the generalized other. B. The generalized other shapes how we think and interact within the community. C. The “me” is formed through continual symbolic interaction. D. The “me” is the organized community within the individual.

VII. A sampler of applied symbolic interaction. A. Creating reality. 1. Erving Goffman develops the metaphor of social interaction as a dramaturgical performance. 2. The impression of reality fostered by performance is fragile. B. Meaning-ful research. 1. Mead advocated study through participant observation, a form of ethnography. 2. Experimental and survey research are void of the meaning of the experience. C. Generalized other—the tragic potential of symbolic interaction: Negative responses can consequently reduce a person to nothing. D. Naming. 1. Name-calling can be devastating because it forces us to view ourselves through a warped mirror. 2. These grotesque images are not easily dispelled. E. Self-fulfilling prophecy. 1. Each of us affects how others view themselves.

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2.

F.

Our expectations evoke responses that confirm what we originally anticipated, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Symbol manipulation—symbols can galvanize people into united action.

VIII. Critique: A theory too grand? A. Mead’s theory is hard to summarize and lacks clarity. B. Mead overstates his case, particularly when distinguishing humans from other animals. C. Nonetheless, Mead’s theory has greater breadth than any in this book. D. Most interpretive theorists featured in this book owe a great debt to Mead.

Key Names and Terms George Herbert Mead The University of Chicago philosophy professor whose teachings were synthesized into the theory called symbolic interactionism. Symbolic Interactionism Coined by Herbert Blumer, this term is meant to express the essence of Mead’s theory: The self is defined through the interconnection of meaning, language, and thought. Herbert Blumer Mead’s chief disciple, this University of California, Berkeley, professor coined the term symbolic interactionism. Default Assumption Douglas Hofstadter’s term for a belief inscribed in language that limits our thinking. Minding An inner dialogue used to test alternatives, rehearse action, and anticipate reactions before overtly responding. Taking the Role of the Other The process of placing yourself in another’s position and viewing the world as you believe he or she would. Looking-Glass Self The mental image that results from taking the role of the other. I The spontaneous driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredictable, and unorganized in the self. Me The image of the self seen in the looking glass of other people’s reactions—the self’s generalized other. Self The ongoing process of combining the “I” and the “me.” Generalized Other The composite mental image of others in a community, their expectations, and possible responses to one’s self. Erving Goffman University of California, Berkeley, sociologist who developed the metaphor of social interaction as a dramaturgical performance.

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Participant Observation Advocated by Mead, this ethnographically based approach requires the researcher to adopt the stance of an interested, yet ignorant visitor who carefully notes what people say and do in order to discover how they interpret their world. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy The tendency for our expectations to evoke responses that confirm what we originally expected. Symbol Manipulation The process whereby symbols galvanize people into united action.

Principal Changes This chapter has been edited for clarity and precision. The theoretical material remains the same.

Suggestions for Discussion The impact of symbolic interactionism At the outset, it’s important to note that one cannot overemphasize the influence of this theory on our specific subject of communication, as well as on the twentieth-century social sciences and the humanities in general. Closing the chapter, Griffin presents a list of theorists who owe a debt to Mead (63). Considering the extent of his impact on our field, though, it might be easier and more revealing to provide a list of the few theorists he hasn’t touched. A good indication of the enduring importance of this theory is the existence of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Both communication scholars and sociologists are active in this organization. One way to illustrate the tremendous influence of symbolic interactionism is to analyze several of the interpersonal communication textbooks used in your department with your students. In Bridges Not Walls, for example, John Stewart doesn’t explicitly reference the founder of symbolic interactionism, but he demonstrates his debt to Mead when he argues, “who we are—our identities—is built in our communicating. People come to each encounter with an identifiable ‘self,’ built through past interactions, and as we talk, we adapt ourselves to fit the topic we’re discussing and the people we’re talking with, and we are changed by what happens to us as we communicate” (30). In the tenth edition of Looking Out, Looking In (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003), Ronald Adler and Neil Towne don’t mention Mead by name, but their discussion of self-perception is based on his framework (48-53). In Everyday Encounters: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996), Julia T. Wood explicitly mentions Mead as she discusses “communication and the creation of the self” (51-54) and symbols (107-08). Trenholm and Jensen, as well, credit Mead and the symbolic interactionists as they build their notion of self-concept in Interpersonal Communication, (3rd edition [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996], 213-18). It seems to us that important interpersonal concepts such as rhetorical sensitivity, perspective taking, and selfmonitoring can also be traced back to Mead’s ideas. Mead in other classes

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Often, students may have encountered symbolic interactionism concepts in previous communication classes and, rather than have the overlap go unaddressed, it is may be useful to discuss these now-commonplace ideas which were novel for Mead. A good starting place is the concept of meaning as situated in people, not things. Asking students how they might explain this concept to a young child often initiates a productive dialogue about what it means to say that meaning is not inherent but socially constructed. Explaining this apparently simplistic notion is quite challenging. It is also useful to discuss how an arbitrary symbol can take on great significance based on a socially ascribed meaning. A recent Newsweek report claimed that copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, had been flushed down the toilet at a prison camp, and though the story was eventually retracted, it produced global outcry and violence. The reaction was based on the belief that desecration of the manuscript was evidence of disrespect for the religion. Other religious texts (i.e. the Bible, the Torah) might produce a similar response. Challenge your students to think of objects that are important to them for symbolic reasons. This conversation can often be resumed when discussing semiotics and helps to illustrate the links between the theories. Critique As Griffin mentions in the Critique section for this chapter, Mead’s work suffers from a lack of clarity. When introducing this rather amorphous theory, we like to give students a fairly specific, concrete handle, something like the following: “Human realities are socially constructed through communication.” A concise formulation such as this provides students with a way to begin processing this material. The self Despite its current status as a reigning deity of the academy, symbolic interactionism may provide quite a challenge to some of your students. Many college-age men and women embrace a Romantic or essentialist conception of self that clashes with Mead’s fluid, malleable, “deconstructed” approach to personhood. These students, who have—unknowingly, most likely—adopted what David Darnell and Wayne Brockriede in Persons Communicating (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976) called a “noble self” (176), may be troubled by what they may construe as the absence of a unique, individual, immutable human core. To them, symbolic interactionism seems to turn everyone into “rhetorical reflectors” (178). Some students may raise religious objections, claiming that Mead’s approach de-emphasizes what often is called the soul. If these potential challenges aren’t presented, you very well may wish to do so yourself. After all, there is a level of determinism in the interactionist orientation that deserves careful scrutiny. One method of handling the challenge, it seems to us, is to reexamine the function of the “I” element of the self. This, perhaps, is the component of the self where an element of the “noble self”—and perhaps the soul—resides. Clearly, this is a question that deserves discussion. The self-fulfilling prophesy Griffin’s treatment of self-fulfilling prophecy warrants further elaboration. Since he specifically references George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (61), we like to introduce students to the social scientists’ version, the Pygmalion effect (see sources, below).

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Default assumptions In this day of increased gender equality, we’re curious to see how students react to Griffin’s example of the default assumption—the puzzle about the woman surgeon. Another example to consider might be the seventies pop hit “You Light Up My Life.” Through default assumptions of listeners, “you” was considered to be a reference to a person of the opposite sex and “light up” was quickly assigned a romantic meaning, but it’s our understanding that the original motivation of the song was religious. The Police’s hit song, “Every Breath You Take” may evoke a similar response. While it is often interpreted as a love song and frequently used by newlyweds as their wedding song, the writer (Sting) described the song as being about unhealthy obsession and stalking. Challenge students to come up with their own examples of default assumptions, particularly those outside the common category of gender stereotypes.

Sample Application Logs Susan The theatre is a world where you really do step into someone else’s shoes. You examine how the character views herself and how she is viewed by others. My theatre professor suggests some questions for studying a character—What do other people say about my character? How do other people react to my character? These questions help examine how the character is viewed by others and, thus, create the “looking-glass self.” To act the character you need to understand her “me” (the “looking-glass self”). This understanding of the character should allow the “I” to come naturally. The “I” is the spontaneous self, the source of motivation. It defies study, as when it is closely examined, it disappears. Glinda A ring. A class ring. A guy’s class ring. In high school it was the ultimate sign of status, whether dangling from a chain or wrapped with a quarter inch of yarn. Without ever speaking a word, a girl could tell everybody that she was loved (and trusted with expensive jewelry), that she had a protector (and how big that protector was, based, of course, on ring size—the bigger the better), the guy’s status (preferably senior), and his favorite sport (preferably football). Yes, if you had the (right) class ring, you were really somebody.

Exercises and Activities “I am”: An exercise in the looking-glass self You may wish to try the following exercise, which explores the connection between personal identity and the judgments of others. The class period before you discuss this chapter, ask students to write and turn in a short description of their personalities/characters. The next class, after you’ve discussed the material, ask your students to complete the following phrase with as many different endings as they are able: “My friends say I am . . .” Then return the descriptions they wrote the class before and ask them to compare the two documents. How do their own descriptions compare to those attributed to others? How would Mead account for the data they’ve supplied? What do these results tell us about the self and communication?

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When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he uses a simple fifteen-question survey to help students better understand one’s sense of self and its relationship to communication.* After the words “I am . . .” students supply fifteen terms that describe them: student, self-confident, young, timid, boisterous, and so forth. After completing their fifteen-part lists, they are asked to think about the elements as a whole. Nouns tend to indicate components of identity, and adjectives indicate components of self-esteem. You can get an idea of a person’s relative selfesteem by the ratio of positive to negative adjectives. With each term, Griffin asks students to speculate about when they began associating this word with themselves and how this association was created. With respect to the latter speculation, Griffin pushes students to ponder the role that communication played in creating the link between the student and the term. Symbolic interactionism would suggest that the link is strong, although such investigation may be difficult to conduct at the spur of the moment. After all, these associations go deep. The significant other Students are often interested in a discussion of the term “significant other” which has become a popular substitute for boy/girlfriend, same-sex companion, or any non-marital, romantic partner. Mead, borrowing the term from Charles Horton Cooley, used it to describe people whose opinions of us alter our own self-perceptions and distinguish them from those who are only seen as a non-specific composite (the generalized other) and do not have the same impact. It might be useful to ask students to think of who comprises their significant others using this description. Be sure to note that from a Meadian perspective, the term “significant other” did not necessarily mean a single person or exclusive distinction. Literature and feature films Since it is short and powerful, we recommend reading aloud and then discussing the text of “Cipher in the Snow.” It’s also interesting to discuss how—to a certain extent, at least— our treatment of that story exemplifies Mead’s approach. Because we read the piece in the context of symbolic interaction, we are influenced by concepts such as self-fulfilling prophecy and the looking-glass self, and thus we attribute the boy’s death to the negative image that is continually reflected back to him by those in his environment. Our expectations, in this sense, become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, and the events of his life come to mean what we perceive them to signify. If the story were told emphasizing slightly different facts in a different social context, the death might be attributed to very different causes. “Generalized other” (63), Griffin’s heading for the paragraph describing “Cipher in the Snow,” is also a useful bit of text. Why has he chosen this phrase to introduce the story? To test comprehension, ask students to rename this application of symbolic interaction in more specific, practical terms. There are a number of feature-length films that illustrate the power of communication to shape self-concept including To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Billy Elliott, *

Griffin’s survey derives from the work of Manfred Kuhn and his students. See, for example, L. Edward Wells and Gerald Marwell, Self-Esteem: Its Conceptualization and Measurement (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976), 114-21; Chad Gordon, “Self-Conceptions: Configurations and Content,” The Self in Social Interaction, ed. Chad Gordon and Kenneth J. Gergen (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1968): 115-36. 48

The Full Monty, and Calendar Girls. The last two may be of particularly interest as both films focus on body image from non-traditional angles and the perceptual shifts that are the result of other’s feedback, illustrating—among other things—the principle of the looking-glass self. An intriguing application of symbolic interactionism is offered by noted communication theorist William Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing, which is readily available on video. Sworn enemies Beatrice and Benedick fall deeply in love simply because of brief, contrived conversations they are tricked into “overhearing.” The play vividly demonstrates the power of language to create important social realities. Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which is also available on video (including creative adaptations such as Roxanne and The Truth about Cats and Dogs), demonstrates the power of language to create social realities. For a grim look at the widespread cultural damage done by processes of communication aptly described by symbolic interactionism, we recommend Toni Morrison’s Beloved (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1988), which is featured by Griffin in his treatment of standpoint theory. For example, relatively late in the narrative, Morrison’s narrator describes the devastating effect of white perceptions about race on both African-American and white psyches: Whitepeople believe that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. . . . But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. . . . The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own. (198-99) Morrison’s predecessor Ralph Ellison provides one of the most powerful literary examples of the substantial effects described by symbolic interactionism in his masterful novel of dysfunctional race relations, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1952). The firstperson narrator, an African-American male whose name is never given, uses the term “invisibility” to describe the way whites perceive him. In the following quote, notice how he renders the mirror imagery so central to symbolic interactionism: I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me. (3) The narrator suggests that others either don’t see him as a human being, or view him as a means toward political, social, and personal goals. Thus, his individuality or unique character is “invisible.” The narrator pushes the point even further by suggesting that many African Americans, particularly those who are complicit with the racist power structure that dominates the country at the time, also render him invisible for their own purposes. Of course his invisibility has a profound effect on his self-perception and his response to those who perpetuate his marginalized status in society. Since many students read this novel in high-

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school or college literature courses, you may be able to introduce it into your discussion, or perhaps particular students may wish to pursue the novel as an individual project. Depending on the racial/ethnic composition of your class, you may wish to discuss the extent to which the narrator’s invisibility may still be felt by minorities in contemporary American society. Responses may surprise, disturb, and enlighten white students—as Invisible Man has for over half a century.


§

Good general texts are Joel M. Charon, Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, An Interpretation, An Integration, 7th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000), and John P. Hewitt, Self and Society: A Symbolic Interactionist Social Psychology (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1991). Because Mead is a root, rather than a branch, of communication theory, symbolic interactionism’s influence is pervasive in our field. Recent studies that owe a heavy intellectual debt to Mead and Blumer include: o William A. Donohue, “An Interactionist Framework for Peace,” Emerging Theories of Human Communication, ed. Branislaw Kovacic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 65-87; o H. Lloyd Goodall, “A Cultural Inquiry Concerning the Ontological and Epistemic Dimensions of Self, Other, and Context in Communication Scholarship,” Speech Communication: Essays to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Speech Communication Association, ed. Gerald Phillips and Julia Wood (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), 264-92; o Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “Culture, Self, and Communication in Japan and the United States,” Communication in Japan and the United States, ed. William B. Gudykunst (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 51-87; o Shirley A. Staske, “Talking Feelings: The Collaborative Construction of Emotion in Talk between Close Relational Partners,” Symbolic Interaction 19 (1996): 11135; o Ralph LaRossa, “Stories and Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12 (1995): 553-58.

Applied Symbolic Interactionism § For a study that applies social interactionism to cross-cultural communication research, see Peggy J. Miller, Heidi Fung, and Judith Mintz, “Self-Construction through Narrative Practices: A Chinese and American Comparison of Early Socialization,” Ethos 24 (1996): 237-80. § For an interesting exploration of the connections between symbolic interactionism and human sexuality, see Monica A. Longmore, “Symbolic Interactionism and the Study of Sexuality,” Journal of Sex Research 35 (February 1998): 44-57. § If you or your students have an interest in the dramaturgical issues raised by Goffman, we recommend recent work in performance theory. The journal Text and Performance Quarterly is a good place to begin.

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The Pygmalion effect § For discussion of the Pygmalion effect and self-fulfilling prophecy, see: o Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, 1968). o Robert Rosenthal, “The Pygmalion Effect Lives,” Psychology Today 7 (1973): 5663. o Paul M. Insel and Lenore Jacobson, What Do You Expect? An Inquiry Into SelfFulfilling Prophecies (Menlo Park, CA: Cummings, 1975). o Mark Snyder, “Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes,” Psychology Today 16 (1982): 60-68.

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CHAPTER 5

COORDINATED MANAGEMENT OF MEANING Outline I.

Introduction. A. Barnett Pierce and Vernon Cronen hold that the quality of our personal lives and of our social worlds is directly related to the quality of communication in which we engage. B. Their theory, coordinated management of meaning (CMM), is based on the assertion that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create. C. They present CMM as a practical theory designed to improve life. D. Instead of seeking truth claims, they seek to help real people enhance their understanding and act more effectively.

II.

CMM in action: Stories from the field. A. Mediation. B. Family therapy. C. Cupertino Community Project.

III.

Persons-in-conversation: Creating bonds of union. A. As social constructionists, CMM users believe that the social world is not found or discovered, but created. B. The experience of persons-in-conversation is the primary social process of human life. C. The way people communicate is often more important than the content of what they say. D. The actions of persons-in-conversation are reflexively reproduced as the interaction continues. 1. Reflectivity means that our actions have effects that bounce back and affect us. 2. Pearce and Cronen are social ecologists who raise questions about the long-term effects of our communicative practices. E. As social constructionists, CMM researchers see themselves as curious participants in a pluralistic world. 1. They are curious rather than certain. 2. They are participants rather than spectators. 3. They live in pluralist worlds rather than seek a singular Truth. 4. They advocate community-based action research, a collaborative approach to investigation that seeks to engage community members as equal and full participants in the research process.

IV.

Stories told and stories lived. A. CMM theorists distinguish between stories lived and stories told.

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1. 2.

B.

C.

Stories lived are the co-constructed actions we perform with others. Coordination takes place when we fit our stories lived into the stories lived by others in a way that makes life better. 3. Stories told are the narratives that we use to make sense of our stories lived. 4. The management of meaning involves the adjustment of our stories told to fit the reality of stories lived—or vice versa. Bringing coherence to stories told. 1. The hierarchy model shows that all four contexts interact with every speech act. a. An episode is a communication routine that has boundaries and rules. b. A relationship between persons-in-conversation suggests how a speech act might be interpreted. c. Identity addresses how the story might affect and be affected by one’s self-concept. d. Culture describes webs of shared meanings and values. 2. The contexts of episode, relationship, identity, and culture rarely have equal importance. 3. The key to interpretation is to determine which context dominates a particular conversation. 4. The serpentine model suggests that in interpersonal communication, both parties affect—and are affected by—each other. Coordination—the meshing of stories lived. 1. Coordination is the process by which persons collaborate in an attempt to bring into being their vision of what is necessary, noble, and good and to preclude the enactment of what they fear, hate, or despise. 2. Coordination is possible without sharing a common interpretation. 3. CMM advocates want to function as peacemakers.

V.

Dialogic Communication: a new way to talk with others. A. Pearce has used a variety of terms to describe communication he values. 1. Cosmopolitan communicators seek ways of coordinating with others with whom they do not agree. 2. Dialogic communication means speaking in a way that makes it possible for others to listen, and listening in a way that makes it possible for others to speak. B. Communicating dialogically involves an equal concern for one’s own identity and for the relationship between communicators.

VI.

Critique: What does the language of CMM create for you? A. CMM is an impressive macrotheory for face-to-face communication, yet the scope of the theory makes its core ideas hard to pin down. B. CMM suffers from somewhat inconsistent, unclear terminology and claims. C. CMM is the most comprehensive statement of social construction crafted by communication scholars.

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Key Names and Terms Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen Communication scholars from the Fielding Institute and the University of Massachusetts, respectively, who co-created the theory of coordinated management of meaning (CMM). Social Constructionism The belief that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities. Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) A social constructionist theory of communication that seeks to explain how persons-inconversation negotiate meaning and coordinate action. Persons-in-Conversation A term used to designate interpersonal communication as seen from inside the process. Bond of Union A lithograph by M.C. Escher that illustrates several key concepts about persons-inconversation, particularly their interrelatedness. Stories Told The narratives persons-in-conversation tell as they attain coherence in an attempt to interpret the world and assign meaning to their lives. Stories Lived The narratives persons-in-conversation act out as they engage in coordination in an attempt to mesh their lives with others. Coherence The process of interpreting the world and assigning significance to our lives; persons-incommunication who achieve coherence have created shared meanings. Coordination Joint action, the process by which persons collaborate in an attempt to bring into being their vision of what is necessary, noble, and good and to preclude the enactment of what they fear, hate, or despise. Episode The first and narrowest of the four contexts in which we interpret any given speech act, an episode is a recognized communication routine that has definite boundaries and rules—a recurrent language game. Relationship The second of the four contexts in which we interpret any given speech act. Identity The third of the four contexts in which we interpret any given speech act. Culture The fourth and broadest of the four contexts in which we interpret any given speech act. Community-Based Action Research A collaborative approach to investigation that seeks to engage community members as equal and full participants in the research process. Martin Buber Featured in an “Ethical Reflection” below, a philosopher who developed the concept of dialogic communication.

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Dialogic Communication Originally developed by Martin Buber, in CMM this term refers to speaking in a way that others can and will listen, and listening in a way that others can and will speak. Cosmopolitan Communicators People who intentionally converse in a socially eloquent way that promotes respectful dialogue and coordination, closely related to dialogic communication.

Principal Changes Although many of the core concepts remain the same, Griffin has significantly revised this chapter—once again. For the most part, we see an effort to simplify his treatment of this complex, often unwieldy theory. He has cut or reduced the importance of the cosmopolitan communicator and stories not yet told. In addition, two new figures (5.1 and 5.3) depict the problem of coherence. The treatment of dialogical communication has been adjusted to reflect Pearce’s conception. A CMM-inspired alternative response to September 11, 2001 has been added and the Second Look references have been updated.

Suggestions for Discussion A complex theory We must emphasize from the outset that Pearce and Cronen’s material is exceedingly difficult to summarize. This fact should come as no surprise; any theory borrowing heavily from Ludwig Wittgenstein is bound to be challenging to present, whether one is succinct or verbose. Because this is such complex material, you may need to go beyond the text to fill in some of your students’ blanks. As Griffin mentions in his Critique, Pearce and Cronen are not particularly consistent “in how they define their terms or in the way they state their claims” (78). The founders of CMM marshal a postmodern philosophical writing style that is stimulating but not always systematic or linear. Thus, one is often entertained and enlightened, but just as frequently perplexed, by their prose. As your students read Griffin’s chapter, some of that perplexity will no doubt visit them, especially if they expect clear definitions and rock-solid central principles. As we prepare students to read this chapter, therefore, we caution them not to expect to understand it entirely. After all, Pearce and Cronen are still trying to get it right! CMM and symbolic interactionism Because both symbolic interactionism and CMM emphasize the ways in which communication creates—rather than merely reflects—human realities, it’s easy to confuse the two theories. As Griffin presents it, though, symbolic interactionism is more concerned with the ways in which communication creates identity and self-perception. This might be considered the ontological function of communication. In contrast, Griffin’s portrayal of CMM focuses more on the ways in which communication fashions social realities that are shared among people. You might start this discussion by asking students if they feel that their reality is affected by, and in turn affects their interactions with others (a symbolic interactionists perspective) or if the reality is created through interactions with others. It’s a subtle, but important distinction. (Integrative Question #4, below, may set up such discussion.)

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Real-life examples Despite the inherent confusion and ambiguity that come with this chapter, CMM is consistently provocative and revealing. Many principles will sink in and become increasingly useful as the book unfolds. Several specific concepts can be solidified and enriched through class discussion. For example, have students generate examples of common communicative episodes from their own lives: the pre-class chat with a classmate, the plea for an extension on the paper’s deadline with a professor, the phone call home, and so forth. Discuss how the professor and student may have very sharply contrasting names for the discussion about the extension, and the parent and child may also label the call differently. Since the student-tostudent pre-class chat is less hierarchical, though, the students are more likely to give it a similar name. Such distinctions about status may reveal some important aspects of coherence. CMM in other classes CMM’s influence on the field of communication can be observed in our textbooks, a point that you may wish to make with your students. In Bridges Not Walls, for example, Stewart refers to communication as “the continuous, complex, collaborative process of verbal and nonverbal meaning-making through which we construct the worlds we inhabit” (22). His discussion of “emphatic and dialogic listening” specifically refers to the concepts of the cosmopolitan communicator, coordination, and coherence (219-20); and he includes an extended section of Pearce and Stephen Littlejohn’s book, Moral Conflict, as well as a useful summary of the material (503-18). In Looking Out/Looking In, Adler and Towne feature CMM in their chapter on language (186-89). Coordination without coherence The notion that coordination can be achieved without coherence can be productively illustrated in class. (Exercise #3 in the textbook under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus relates to this issue.) Often, a good dialogue in class can be started by asking students to think about a situation when two people or groups of people can coordinate action without holding the same meaning (coherence). For example, although it can be a precarious way to pursue happiness, many marriage partners enter into and coexist in unions for rather different reasons. At the other end of the tunnel, many couples agree to divorce, yet ascribe very different meanings to the dissolution of the bond. Two students may view their education in entirely different ways, yet both willingly attend your class and study for the final together. One of our favorite examples concerns religious services. People who join together to perform rituals of faith may hold vastly different beliefs about the ultimate meaning of these events, yet they gain strength through the common experience of worship. Thus, ten communicants at the communion rail may hold ten different perceptions of the act of consuming the wine and the wafer, yet they all participate in a uniform manner. Griffin marshals this example to make a similar point about relational dialectics on page 69. It’s also important to note that sometimes, even when persons-in-conversation engage in dialogic communication in good faith, coordination is not possible when their premises, values, and expectations differ significantly. In the powerful memoir Scribbling the Cat (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), Alexandra Fuller describes an intense, but ultimately failed friendship between a veteran of the Rhodesian war (whom she calls K) and herself, a

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relationship that does not work because of their differing notions of coherence. Although both participants were Africans who experienced the Rhodesian conflict, what they do not share about that tragic war—and life in general—drives them apart. Marshaling ceramic metaphors, she concludes, K and I, each of us cracked in our own way by our participation on the wrong side of the same war, gravitated to each other, each sure that the other had a secret balm—the magic glaze—that would make us whole. I thought he held the shards of truth. He thought I held love. . . . K and I met and journeyed and clashed like titans. And, at the end of it all, he asked me not to contact him again. Instead of giving each other some kind of peace and understanding, we had inflamed existing wounds. Far from being a story of reconciliation and understanding, this ended up being a story about what happens when you stand on tiptoe and look too hard into your own past and into the things that make us war-wounded the fragile, haunted, powerful men-women we are. K and I fell headlong—freefall—into terror, love, hate, God, death, burial. It’s more than a body can take. (250-51) Social injustice It is important to note that injustice and oppression can be furthered by what appears to be coordination. For example, the fact that many workers willingly toil under oppressive working conditions does not justify the immoral labor practices administered by their bosses. The joint action in which these workers and employers participate is hardly admirable. True coordination is predicated on the belief that the mutual activity involved must uphold the worth and dignity of all concerned. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that there are limits to which persons-in-communication are able to co-construct social realities, particularly when power imbalances persist. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, schoolteacher—a harsh slave owner who systematically dehumanizes the men and women he owns—interrogates his slave Sixo about a hog the latter man “stole” from this master. The slave politely and cogently makes the argument that although he did indeed kill, butcher, and eat his owner’s animal, he did so not out of disrespect, but in order to improve schoolteacher’s property: “Sixo plant rye to give the high piece a better chance. Sixo take and feed the soil, give you more crop. Sixo take and feed Sixo give you more work” (190). Nonetheless, “schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined” (190). Griffin quotes this passage as part of his treatment of standpoint theory in Chapter 34. Reflexivity The concept of reflexivity is new to many students and a solid understanding will assist them with later chapters (most notably, Chapter 19, Weick’s information systems theory). We use the analogy of playing a game or sport in turns, such as croquet. Each person’s turn is really three things: it is a reaction to the turn that came before it, an action for that particular turn, and finally, it sets up what the next turn will look like. In croquet, hitting another person’s ball may be in retaliation for being previously knocked out while at the same time, it is my turn, and may also make me a target for a future strike. The example works equally well with a host of activities from checkers and chess to soccer and football.

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Social action If there is one idea we want students to take away from this chapter, it’s that Pearce and Cronen are dedicated to helping people who disagree live in relative harmony and act in concert. In a world burdened with mass deprivation, runaway technology, and diametrically opposed fundamentalisms of every kind, it’s a crusade that deserves our attention and support. Mediation A final consideration—be sure that students do not simplistically equate mediation with CMM. The prevalence of examples featuring mediation in this chapter may give them this mistaken notion. Although Pearce is becoming more and more interested in the process of mediation, be sure your students understand that CMM has broad theoretical implications and applicability.

Sample Application Log Kerry I stumbled into a conversation taking place between three of my girlfriends and one of our mutual guy friends, Marty. They were attempting to define the word “sexy” as a combination of a person’s attractiveness and unattainability. Their speech acts were coherent because they were shaped by the episode of defining a word over dinner. The relationship between them, their self-identities, and their culture helped them to be talking about the same thing and understanding each other. The relationship between them is close and open, and not strained by any romantic interest. Each of the four has good self-esteem and receives assurance of their attractiveness from other friends. Thus, the conversants were less likely to be driven to “prove” anyone sexy. Finally, our Christian college culture shaped what was said. The word “sexy” was stripped of its emotional charge and defined as the more quantifiable “attractive and unattainable.” This made the word safe to talk about, where it might otherwise have been too carnal for Christian discussion.

Exercises and Activities Analyzing art An interesting exercise to begin this section is to have students view various pieces of art and together create an interpretation of the piece. Reproduce the image (many are available on the Internet) and ask students to discuss their impressions or understanding of the piece. A good place to start is with a familiar piece (such as Monet’s Waterlilies, van Gogh’s Starry Night, or Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). Then, move to pieces that may be more controversial in their reading, such as Pollock’s One or Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Finally, end with a painting such as a Cubist piece by Picasso (Guernica) or Braque (The Portuguese). Focus your discussion on how various individuals can come together and co-create an interpretation although they may originally have started from very different vantage points. This exercise blends nicely into a discussion about coherence and coordination.

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Escher’s Bond of Union When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he puts great emphasis on the reproduction of M.C. Escher’s Bond of Union (70). He asks the students the following question: “If this image were all you had to explain coordinated management of meaning, how would you do it?” And, in fact, every major facet of the theory—as Griffin presents it in A First Look—can be glossed via the image. Persons-in-communication In a metacommunicative manner, Griffin also enjoys asking his students, “What, as persons-in-communication, are we creating in this class?” Since this chapter comes relatively early in the semester, this question incites discussion that may be useful both in explicating the theory and plotting the direction of the course. An intriguing follow-up question is following: “What would we want to do differently?” This query should move the class into a productive critique, particularly of power relations and their effect on the way meanings and relationships are sculpted in conversation. Let’s hope you don’t respond like schoolteacher. To demonstrate the dynamics of persons-in-conversation and to show how reality is socially constructed through communication, Griffin particularly enjoys using a clip from the beginning of the film Don Juan de Marco in class. This scene, which begins six minutes into the film and runs for five minutes, features a psychiatrist who saves a man from suicide by entering into his world through conversation. The rest of the film chronicles how the two men co-construct one another. Life is Beautiful tells the story of a man who constructs an alternative world for his son in order to help him survive a concentration camp.


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For additional scholarship from Pearce, see: o “Bringing News of Difference: Participation in Systemic Social Constructionist Communication,” Innovations in Group Facilitation: Applications in Natural Settings, 94-116. o “Extending the Theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) through a Community Dialogue Process,” by W. Barnett Pearce and Kimberly Pearce, Communication Theory 10, 4 (2000): 405-24. o “Looking for Justice in All the Wrong Places: On a Communication Approach to Social Justice,” by Lawrence R. Frey and W. Barnett Pearce, Communication Studies 47 (Spring/Summer 1996): 110-28. For an applied CMM analysis, see Edith Montgomery, “Tortured families: A Coordinated Management of Meaning Analysis,” Family Process 43, 3 (2004): 349-71. For a thoughtful—if somewhat dated—critique of CMM, see Gerry Philipsen, “The Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory of Pearce, Cronen, and Associates,” in Watershed Research Traditions in Human Communication Theory, ed. Donald Cushman and Branislav Kovocic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 13-43. An entire issue of Human Systems (Vol. 15, 2004) is devoted to CMM. It’s available online at http://www.cios.org/www/opentext.htm.

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CHAPTER 6

EXPECTANCY VIOLATIONS THEORY Outline I.

Personal space expectations: conform or deviate? A. Judee Burgoon defines personal space as the invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual’s preferred distance from others. 1. The size and shape of our personal space depends upon cultural norms and individual preferences. 2. Personal space is always a compromise between the conflicting approachavoidance needs that we as humans have for affiliation and privacy. B. Edward Hall coined the term proxemics to refer to the study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture. 1. He believed that most spatial interpretation is outside our awareness. 2. He believed that Americans have four proxemic zones. a. Intimate distance: 0 to 18 inches. b. Personal distance: 18 inches to 4 feet. c. Social distance: 4 to 10 feet. d. Public distance: 10 feet to infinity. 3. He maintained that effective communicators adjust their nonverbal behavior to conform to the communicative rules of their partners. C. Burgoon suggests that, under some circumstances, violating social norms and personal expectations is a superior strategy to conformity.

II.

An applied test of the original model. A. According to Burgoon’s early model, crossing over the “threat threshold” that forms the boundary of the intimate distance causes physical and psychological discomfort. B. Noticeable deviations from what we expect cause a heightened state of arousal and spur us to review the nature of our relationship with a person. C. A person with “punishing” power should observe proxemic conventions or stand slightly farther away than expected. D. An attractive communicator benefits from a close approach. E. Burgoon’s original theory was not supported by her research, but she has continued to refine her approach to expectancy violations.

III.

A convoluted model becomes an elegant theory. A. Burgoon dropped the concept of the threat threshold. B. She has substituted “an orienting response” or a mental “alertness” for “arousal.” C. Arousal is no longer a necessary link between expectancy violation and communication outcomes such as attraction, credibility, persuasion, and involvement, but rather a side effect of a partner’s deviation.

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D.

She has dropped the qualifier “nonverbal” because she believes the principles of expectancy violations theory (EVT) apply to verbal interaction as well.

IV.

Core concepts of EVT. A. EVT offers a soft determinism rather than hard-core universal laws. B. Burgoon does, however, hope to link surprising interpersonal behavior and attraction, credibility, influence, and involvement. C. Expectancy. 1. Expectancy is what is predicted to occur rather than what is desired. 2. Expectancy is based on context, relationship, and communicator characteristics. 3. Burgoon believes that all cultures have a similar structure of expected communication behavior, but that the content of those expectations differs from culture to culture. D. Violation valence. 1. The violation valence is the positive or negative value we place on the unexpected behavior, regardless of who does it. 2. If the valence is negative, do less than expected. 3. If the valence is positive, do more than expected. 4. Although the meanings of most violations can be determined from context, some nonverbal expectancy violations are truly ambiguous. 5. For equivocal violations, one must refer to the communicator reward valence. E. Communicator reward valence. 1. The communicator reward valence is the sum of the positive and negative attributes that the person brings to the encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future. 2. Puzzling violations force victims to search the social context for clues to their meaning and that’s when communication reward valence comes into play.

V.

Interpersonal Adaptation—Burgoon’s Next Frontier A. EVT has been used to explain and predict attitudes and behaviors in a wide variety of communication contexts. B. Paul Mongeau studied men and women’s expectations for first dates and compares those expectations with their actual experiences. C. Burgoon has also re-assessed EVT’s single-sided view and now favors a dyadic model of interpersonal adaptation. 1. Interpersonal adaptation theory is an extension and expansion of EVT 2. Interpersonal interaction position encompasses three factors: a. Requirements: outcomes we all need to fulfill our basic needs to survive, be safe, belong, and have sense of self-worth b. Expectations: what we think really will happen c. Desire: what we personally would like to see happen. D. Burgoon outlined two shortcomings of EVT. 1. EVT does not fully account for the overwhelming prevalence of reciprocity that has been found in interpersonal interactions

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2.

E. VI.

It is silent on whether communication valence supersedes behavior valence or vice versa when the two are incongruent. Interpersonal adaptation theory is her attempt to address these problems.

Critique: a work in progress. A. Burgoon concedes that we can’t yet use EVT to generate specific predictions regarding touch outcomes and calls for further descriptive work before applying the theory to any nonverbal behavior. B. Despite these problems, Burgoon’s theory meets four of the five criteria for a good scientific theory, and recent research suggests improvement in the fifth criterion, prediction.

Key Names and Terms Judee Burgoon A theorist from the University of Arizona who developed expectancy violations theory. Personal Space The invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual’s preferred distance from others. Edward Hall An anthropologist from the Illinois Institute of Technology who coined the term proxemics. Proxemics The study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture. Intimate Distance The American proxemic zone of 0 to 18 inches. Personal Distance The American proxemic zone of 18 inches to 4 feet. Social Distance The American proxemic zone of 4 to ten feet. Public Distance The American proxemic zone of 10 feet to infinity. Threat Threshold The hypothetical boundary that marks a person’s intimate distance. Initially, Burgoon believed that crossing the threat threshold causes physical and psychological discomfort. Expectancy What people predict will happen, rather than what they necessarily desire. Violation Valence The perceived positive or negative value of a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is. Communicator Reward Valence The sum of the positive and negative attributes that the person brings to the encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future.

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Paul Mongeau A communication researcher from Arizona State University whose research on dating demonstrates expectancy violations theory’s increased predictive power. Interactional Adaptation Theory Theory developed by Burgoon, Lesa Stern, and Leesa Dillman that extends and expands EVT. Interactional Position A person’s initial position in an interaction, based on three factors: requirements, expectations, and desires. Requirements A term of interactional adaptation theory referring to outcomes that fulfill our basic human needs. Desires A term of interactional adaptation theory referring to what is personally desired as a situation’s possible outcome; what we’d like to see happen.

Principal Changes Griffin has extended his treatment of expectancy violations to include Burgoon’s interaction adaptation theory. In addition, the critique section has been amended and references in the Second Look have been updated.

Suggestions for Discussion Comparing with other theories Closely following coordinated management of meaning—which disdains efforts to isolate individual variables in the communication process—expectancy violations theory provides an excellent opportunity to compare the characteristics of traditional empiricism with thoroughgoing humanism. Whereas Burgoon’s approach to communication is primarily strategic, Pearce and Cronen view the process more broadly, emphasizing its power to constitute or create social reality. Such comparison will give you a good chance to gauge your students’ understanding of Chapters 1 and 3. (Item #4 in the textbook under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus constitutes a good vehicle for such discussion.) Comparisons with symbolic interactionism (Chapter 4) may also be fruitful. It’s important to emphasize that Mead and his followers were more interested in the ways in which communication shapes the human psyche (its ontological character) than its use to enhance one’s strategic position. Whereas for Burgoon communication seems primarily instrumental in function, for symbolic interactionists it is fundamentally constitutive. (Integrative Essay Question #30, below, addresses this issue.) Other factors that impact an outcome We find Griffin’s willingness to disclose his “stereotyped assessments” of his four students (90-91) refreshingly honest. We are also pleased with the way in which he uses these assessments to exemplify the importance of the communicator reward valence. Building on this analysis, we have found it productive to speculate further on other factors that might

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explain why he complied with Dawn’s and Andre’s requests while refusing Charlie’s and Belinda’s. For example, the content of these requests could be viewed as the salient variable. Griffin’s responses may have had less to do with his perception of the askers and more to do with the desirability or appropriateness of what was asked of him. Andre desires a letter of recommendation, which is a highly appropriate request for a student to make. These letters are part of a typical day’s work for a professor, who understands their importance—a good letter can make the difference between acceptance or rejection. Likewise, Dawn’s luncheon invitation is appropriate, considering the close relationship that exists between students and teachers at liberal arts colleges such as Wheaton. Besides, eating lunch is something you’ve got to do over the course of the day, so it doesn’t require a major time commitment. Belinda’s pitch for help on a term paper in a different class mandates extra work unrelated to Griffin’s direct responsibilities. In addition, some professors believe that such assistance constitutes an unfair advantage; thus, there’s a potential ethical dilemma here. A negative response to her is therefore predictable. Charlie’s request that Griffin join in the splash means that our already overworked professor must spend the evening away from his family and/or work, and he’ll have nothing to show for the time he’s lost but the bumps and bruises he’s acquired in the pool. Again, his refusal follows. We offer these counter-explanations not to refute Burgoon’s approach, but simply to complicate matters. Clearly, there are many variables to examine in any human interaction. Confusing terms For many students, the clarity and relative simplicity of Burgoon’s theory is a welcome departure from the abstraction of CMM. There are a couple of sticking points that often trip students and you might want to pay special attention to be sure they are clear on those areas. The term violation generally has a negative connotation and thus, may be a source of confusion. How can something that, in the end, is evaluated positively, be a violation? Remind students that Burgoon’s use of violation involves the breaching of an expectation that may be done in a positive manner or by a valued partner. In your discussion, you might want to solicit examples of when a situation resulted in a pleasant, though unexpected outcome. Griffin writes that Hall, who coined the term “proxemics,” believed “that most spatial interpretation is outside our awareness” (84). If this is true, then a knowledge of EVT—which teaches us that in some circumstances violating social norms and personal expectations is “a superior strategy to conformity” (86)—gives a persuader a considerable advantage over an audience unaware of its principles. This advantage is particularly significant when we consider that in many contexts nonverbal cues seem to be more important than their verbal counterparts. If, in effect, expectancy violations amount to interpersonal secret weapons, then important questions about communication ethics spring to mind. Often, students can get engaged in a lively discussion about the morality of using EVT’s principles to one’s own benefit. In addition, it may be interesting to speculate about the relationship between expectancy violations and sexual harassment. One man’s effort to create a state of mental alertness in the woman with whom he’s talking may in her eyes constitute harassing behavior. In effect, behavioral violations must be approached very carefully. (Essay Question #29, below, considers this matter.)

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Sample Application Log Leanne My freshman year of college I expected everyone to like me. On the second day of class I walked into my suitemate’s room, gave her a warm greeting, sat close to her, smiled, browsed through her room acknowledging our similar tastes in music and then left. My suitemate was NOT expecting someone like myself to barge in. She had been sitting in her room in a melancholy state which, she would admit, is her usual demeanor, when I entered into her life with a bang. She admitted to me that her first impression of me was “snoopy.” Yet she will also say that the valence was positive. She saw in me something that was positive that had high reward potential—she called it my “spunk.” With positive valence, our friendship has grown immensely. I violated her expectations for a suitemate and became her best friend.

Exercises and Activities Proxemics Classroom exercises can help to vivify features of proxemics and personal space. One such activity begins by dividing the class into two groups. Give one group instructions to keep a distance of no more than 18 inches from conversation partners. Instruct members of the other group to maintain eye contact at all times with their conversation partners. Then tell all the students to pair up with someone from the opposite group and discuss their respective plans for the weekend. After a few minutes of conversation, reconvene the class and discuss how it felt to be involved in a discussion under these nonverbal conditions and how students adjusted—consciously or unconsciously—to the imposed closeness of the contact. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he asks a male and female volunteer to choose a topic they wish to discuss. Standing at opposite ends of the classroom, they discuss the topic while they slowly approach each other and stop when they are at a comfortable distance. Once they are stationary, the class discusses issues of proxemics, eye contact, and so forth. Next, Griffin repeats the exercise, but this time both students move toward each other while facing the class rather than each other, again stopping when they feel the distance is appropriate. Griffin then has each of them pivot 90 degrees and face each other. There is usually a visible reaction from the pair at how close they are. This leads to a discussion of how eye contact and interpersonal distance interact. Griffin also asks his students to describe a time when someone violated their expectations. Was the communicator reward valence positive or negative? How did they know when they were rewarding violations of expectations? Proxemics in the imaginary elevator One of our favorite exercises is to create an imaginary elevator at the front of the room and gradually fill it—floor by floor—with student passengers. As each rider enters, note how he or she chooses a spot so as to maximize personal space. After four or five passengers have situated themselves, enter the elevator yourself and deliberately break the time-honored pattern by standing inappropriately close to one of the riders. You’ll get a laugh from the class,

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and the adjustment that takes place will be instructive. As the elevator continues to fill to capacity, note how passengers adjust to the close proximity of bodies. Demonstrate that when the packed elevator temporarily malfunctions and goes down instead of up, people who were insulating themselves from the close contact of strange bodies suddenly begin talking or joking, and broken eye contact is temporarily established. Then when the elevator corrects itself and heads back up, the passengers grow insular again. EVT beyond proxemics While proxemic considerations are central to Burgoon’s original theory, it is important to remind students of EVT’s more global considerations for interpersonal communication. This point is clearly made using a hypothetical situation and asking students to give their expectations for the encounter. For example, what do they “expect” when on a first date, shopping for an apartment, or buying a new TV? Encourage them to think about nonverbal expectations (i.e. spatial distance, touch, vocal tone, dress code) as well as verbal ones (i.e. formality of word choice, directness, reciprocity).

Further Resources Close relationships § For discussion of expectancy violations in the context of close relationships, see o Jennifer Bevan, “Expectancy Violation Theory and Sexual Resistance in Close, Cross-Sex Relationships,” Communication Monographs 70, 1 (2003): 68-82. o Kory Floyd and Michael Voloudakis, “Affectionate Behavior in Adult Platonic Friendship: Interpreting and Evaluating Expectancy Violations,” Human Communication Research 25 (March 1999): 341-69. o Walid Afifi and Sandra Metts, “Characteristics and Consequences of Expectation Violations in Close Relationships,” Journal of Personal and Social Relationships 15, 3 (1998): 365-92. EVT in applied situations § Burgoon’s theory has been applied to a wide variety of situations. The following represent only a few of those projects, and only ones that center around EVT. See the “Further Resources” section of IDT (Chapter 7) for projects that involve violations of expectations in deceptive situations. o Shelly Campo, Kenzie Cameron, Dominique Brossard, and Somjen Frazer, “Social Norms and Expectancy Violation Theories: Assessing the Effectiveness of Health Communication Campaigns,” Communication Monographs 71, 4 (2004): 448-71. o Pamela Lannutti, Melanie Laliker, and Jerold Hale, “Violations of Expectations and Social-Sexual Communication in Student/Professor Interactions,” Communication Education 50, 1 (2001): 69-82. o Paul Mongeau and Colleen Carey, “Who’s Wooing Whom II? An Experimental Investigation of Date-Initiation and Expectancy Violation,” Western Journal of Communication 60, 3 (1996): 195-204. Interaction Adaptation Theory

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For a comprehensive look at IAT, see Judee Burgoon, Lesa Stern, and Leesa Dillman, Interpersonal Adaptation: Dyadic Interaction Patterns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). IAT is applied to verbal and nonverbal immediacy and comforting messages in Laura Guerrero, Susanne Jones, and Judee Burgoon’s article, “Responses to Nonverbal Intimacy Change in Romantic Dyads: Effects of Behavioral Valence and Degree of Behavioral Change on Nonverbal and Verbal Reactions,” Communication Monographs 67, 4 (December 2000): 325-46. Beth A. Le Poire and Stephen M. Yoshimura exemplify research on EVT and IAT in “The Effects of Expectancies and Actual Communication on Nonverbal Adaptation and Communication Outcomes: A Test of Interaction Adaptation Theory,” Communication Monographs 66, 1 (March 1999): 1-30.

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CHAPTER 7

INTERPERSONAL DECEPTION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. David Buller and Judee Burgoon explain that people often find themselves in situations where they make statements that are less than completely honest. B. There are three deception strategies: falsification, concealment, and equivocation. 1. Falsification creates a fiction. 2. Concealment hides a secret. 3. Equivocation dodges the issue. C. Most people believe they can spot deception, but interpersonal deception theory (IDT) says most cannot. D. In contrast to common assumptions, deception research shows that various nonverbal cues are not reliable indicators of deception.

II.

An emergent theory of strategic interaction. A. Buller and Burgoon discount the value of highly controlled studies—usually oneway communication experiments—designed to isolate unmistakable cues that people are lying. B. Buller noted the need for an IDT based on two-way communication. C. Interpersonal communication is interactive. 1. Active participants in communication constantly adjust their behavior in response to feedback from other participants. 2. Interaction, rather than individuality, is at the core of the theory. D. Strategic deception demands mental effort. 1. A successful deceiver must consciously deal with multiple complex tasks. 2. Cognitive overload may cause a deceiver to exhibit a nonstrategic display, usually in the form of nonverbal behavior. 3. Leakage refers to the unconscious nonverbal cues signaling an internal state.

III.

Manipulating information: the language and look of liars. A. Deception is accomplished by manipulating information. B. Buller and Burgoon judge a deceptive act on the basis of the deceiver’s motives, not on the act itself. C. Every deceptive act has at least three aims. 1. To accomplish a specific task or instrumental goal. 2. To establish or maintain a relationship with the respondent. 3. To “save face” or sustain the image of one or both parties. D. The interpersonal and identity motivations inherent in deception stimulate a recurring “text” that marks the communication as less than honest.

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E.

F. G. H.

There are four message characteristics that reflect strategic intent. 1. Uncertainty and vagueness. 2. Nonimmediacy, reticence, and withdrawal. 3. Disassociation. a. Disassociation is a way of distancing yourself from what one has done. b. Speech often includes levelers, group references, or modifiers to sever the personal connection between the actor and the act of deception. 4. Image- and relationship-protecting behavior. a. Speakers consciously strive to suppress the bodily cues that might signal deception. b. Deceivers try to appear extra sincere. Almost all communication is intentional, goal directed, and mindful; deceptive communication is simply more so. Multiple factors strongly affect the extent of a deceiver’s strategic behavior. IDT suggests that the outcome depends not only on the quality of the message, but also on the nonstrategic cues a deceiver can’t control.

IV.

Leakage—the truth will come out (maybe). A. Buller and Burgoon believe that behavior outside of the deceiver’s conscious control can signal dishonesty. B. Miron Zuckerman’s four-factor model explains why this leakage occurs. 1. The intense attempt to control information can produce too-slick performances. 2. Lying causes psychological arousal. 3. The predominate emotions that accompany deceit are guilt and anxiety. 4. The complex cognitive factors involved in deception can tax the brain, leading to unintentional nonverbal behaviors. C. Buller and Burgoon move beyond micro-behaviors to focus on the decline of the deceiver’s overall performance, but whether or not the deceiver “pulls off” the deception depends on how suspicious the respondent actually is.

V.

Respondent’s dilemma: truth bias or suspicion? A. Humans have a persistent expectation that people will tell the truth, known as “truth bias.” 1. There is an implied social contract that all of us will be honest with each other. 2. The expectation of honesty is a cognitive heuristic. B. Despite a powerful and prevailing truth bias in face-to-face interaction, people can come to doubt the honesty of another’s words. C. Buller and Burgoon picture suspicion as a mid-range mind-set, located somewhere between truth and falsity. D. In spite of the many ways that respondents could become suspicious, Buller and Burgoon have found that it’s difficult to induce a deep-seated skepticism. E. Doubters tend to favor indirect methods to gain more information, but there is scant evidence that these probes help unmask deception.

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F.

IDT and CMM both conclude that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities.

VI.

Putting doubts to rest: deceiver adjustment to respondent suspicion. A. Respondents’ suspicions of deceivers can be seen through their own nontypical behaviors—even when they try to appear natural. B. Deceivers are usually more successful at sensing suspicion than respondents are at spotting deception. C. Deceivers usually reciprocate the mood and manner of the person they are trying to mislead. D. IDT explains why detection of deception is a hit-and-miss business because truth tellers react the same way when falsely accused or confronted by suspicion. E. The “Othello error” occurs when, in the context of suspected deception, a truth teller’s adaptation to a false accusation strikes the respondent as devious.

VII.

Critique: Does it have to be so complicated? A. Buller and Burgoon offer multiple explanations for what takes place during deceptive communication. B. Other deception theories with a narrower focus are definitely more concise. C. Bella DePaulo questions the explanatory power of Buller and Burgoon’s theory. D. Buller and Burgoon assert that EVT could unify their theory. E. The strength of IDT may be found in its practical advice. F. Buller and Burgoon are silent on the morality of deception.

Key Names and Terms David Buller and Judee Burgoon Theorists from the Cooper Institute (formerly from the AMC Cancer Research Center) and the University of Arizona, respectively, who developed interpersonal deception theory (IDT). Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) An interpersonal theory that posits a set of unchanging assumptions concerning interpersonal communication in general and deception in particular. Deception A message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the receiver. Falsification A form of deception that creates a fiction; a lie. Concealment A form of deception that tells only a portion of the truth. Equivocation A form of deception that uses vague language to dodge the issue. Leakage Unconscious nonverbal cues that signal an internal state. Levelers

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Inclusive words that imply a shift of responsibility to others by downplaying individual choice. Modifiers Terms that shift personal responsibility by downplaying the intensity of unwelcome news. Miron Zuckerman University of Rochester social psychologist who developed the four-factor model of deception to explain why leakage occurs in deception. Steven McCornack and Malcolm Parks Communication researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Washington, respectively, who coined the phrase “truth bias.” Truth Bias The persistent and pervasive expectation that people will tell the truth. Cognitive Heuristic A mental shortcut used to bypass the huge clutter of verbal and nonverbal signals that bombard people throughout every conversation. Othello Error An error that occurs when, in the context of a suspected deception, a truth teller’s adaptation to a false accusation strikes the respondent as devious. Bella M. DePaulo A University of Virginia psychologist who questions the explanatory power of IDT. Disassociation A linguistic strategy of distancing oneself from what one has done. Nonimmediacy A strategy for symbolically removing oneself from the situation. Suspicion A state of doubt or distrust that is held without sufficient evidence or proof.

Principal Changes This chapter remains the same, although Griffin has updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Teaching a big theory in a small amount of time This chapter is often a difficult one to teach as students get easily confused by Buller and Burgoon’s 18 propositions and fail to see any unifying principles of the theory. As will be the case with other chapters to come (notably, anxiety-uncertainty management, Chapter 30), the challenge here is to teach a broad theory in a short amount of time. To address this problem, it may be helpful to focus on a few main concepts and link the salient variables together once you’ve laid some firm footing. You might want to start by asking students about the last time they deceived someone--and would admit it! While some students are reluctant to confess their ill deeds, others will quickly provide details of their encounters. As students recount their experiences, many of the underlying concepts of IDT will surface and the connections will be easier to make when introducing the core ideas.

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It works well to start with the idea of interactivity and the interpersonal nature of deception. This concept is integral to the first two propositions and can easily be coupled with the concept of strategic behavior. Emphasize the goal-based nature of the interaction, and that deception can be regarded as strategic and an effortful feat requiring skill in execution. It is often fruitful to ask students what tactics they think are most effective in deception and what skills are required to be a good deceiver. Additionally, you may want to address the emotions tied to deception before returning to the propositions. Leakage is the result of emotions “leaking” out or revealing themselves in subtle ways. Again, it generally works well to ask students to return to their own experiences—what were they feeling? Now, the tricky part is linking these three concepts (interactivity, strategy, and leakage) with the salient propositions without losing sight of the basic ideas. These three variables are critical to 11 of the 18 propositions and, when students grasp the links, they are well on their way to understanding IDT. From here, you might want to move on to the truth bias and suspicion if time permits. Listed below are the core concepts and their corresponding propositions: Core concepts § Interactivity (1, 4, 5)* § Strategic behavior (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 17) § Leakage (3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 17) § Truth bias (5, 6, 10, 11, 17) § Suspicion (7, 12, 13 14, 15, 17, 18) Concepts addressed as time permits § Motivation (6, 7) § Familiarity (2, 8, 11) § Communication skills (9, 10, 11, 17) § Credibility (10, 17) § Deception detection (11, 17) * Numbers in parentheses correspond to the proposition number from Buller and Burgoon. Apparent contradictions in the theory Taken together, Buller and Burgoon’s assertions that nonverbal cues (such as avoidance of eye contact or nervous laughter) are not reliable indicators of deception (99), that deceivers exhibit more leakage than truth tellers (Proposition 3), and that “behavior outside of the deceiver’s conscious control can signal dishonesty” (103) may seem confusing. These statements seem contradictory, yet the key to the difficulty lies in other propositions of the theory: that truth tellers also exhibit these behaviors (99); that truth tellers behave the same way as deceivers when confronted by suspicion (106); and that a deceiver’s success depends on the respondent’s level of suspicion (104). These issues should spark interesting discussion among students. First of all, do they think (some, all, or none of) these propositions are valid? (Do they seem to square with their experiences?) Why might truth tellers behave in the same way as deceivers when confronted with suspicion? (Essay Question #22 below invites students to explore these issues.) Ultimately, though,

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students may still find these aspects of the theory somewhat contradictory. If so, push them to challenge Buller and Burgoon’s assumptions and to explore whether their theory needs adjustment. Discussing other propositions You may also wish to discuss other propositions of Buller and Burgoon’s theory (Figure 7.1). For example, Propositions 5 and 8 point to a tension—if truth bias rises with interactivity and relational warmth, why do deceivers become more afraid of deception as relational familiarity increases? Does guilt play a larger role if deceivers know someone well? Do people in close relationships overestimate the other person’s knowledge and/or suspicion of them? If so, why? Does relational familiarity always mean a higher level of trust or can it actually lead to more suspicion? Can we achieve familiarity only by interacting with another person, or do we get to “know” media figures, for example? This issue, it seems, connects well to exercise #3 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook. People felt they “knew” President Clinton well enough to judge his messages about the relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but this level of familiarity was achieved via the media rather than through interactive relationships. (This phenomenon, of course, also has intriguing implications for the way people interact with the media, an issue that is taken up at length later in the book.) As they discuss and critique the propositions, ask students about the issue of the theory’s complexity raised in the Critique section, as well as DePaulo’s concern over the theory’s explanatory power. Is there a “why” question worth answering here? These concerns over the theoretical soundness of IDT provide an excellent opportunity to review key principles and assumptions presented in Chapter 3. Since the students have studied EVT, it may be fruitful to speculate together about the suggestion that it could be the unifying feature of IDT. (Integrative Essay Question #29, below, addresses this issue.) Finally, Buller and Burgoon’s silence on the question of ethics of deception should open the door for you to explore related ethical questions with your students, particularly in conjunction with the Ethical Reflection that follows this section. (Integrative Essay Question #28, below, may be a good way to focus such discussion.)

Sample Application Log Jenny I am very intrigued by this theory, which, stated very simply, says that humans are bad at detecting lies. Mainly this is because, as Buller says, “receivers react to deceivers’ messages and these reactions alter the communication exchange and, perhaps, deception’s success.” I find that this is very true. I have been told by many people that I am too good a liar. Not because I lie a lot. In fact, it is probably because I am so honest most of the time (resulting in a high truth bias in my relationships), that my lies go easily undetected. In one particular instance, I was playing a joke on my roommate. I told her that I had eaten a cake that our other roomie had made for a friend’s birthday. When roommate number one responded in a skeptical manner, I included more details to my story—eliminating characteristics of 86

uncertainty and vagueness, which reflects strategic intent. When roommate number one still didn’t seem convinced, I involved myself more in the situation and started accepting responsibility for my actions—hereby eliminating two more strategic characteristics of withdrawal and disassociation. Several times I interrupted my roommate and did not try to “appear extra sincere,” breaking down the final strategic characteristic of image-protecting behavior. When I realized that my roommate fully believed me, and was even getting worried and upset, I couldn’t keep up the charade and I told her the truth. If humans really were good lie detectors, there would be no such thing as practical jokes. Nobody would believe them at the outset. Where would the fun be in that?

Exercises and Activities A deception diary A 1996 study by Bella M. DePaulo, et al. (see “Further Resources,” below) suggests a potentially intriguing exercise for students. Researchers had subjects keep a diary of their social interactions for a week, noting particularly when they lied. They were asked to evaluate these acts of deceptive communication and to record the quality of the interaction, the seriousness of the lies they told, how they felt and behaved while lying, and the respondent’s reaction to their deception. The study results found not only that subjects frequently told lies in their social interactions, but also that they felt these deceptions were not serious, that they found it was easy to deceive others, and that they did not worry about being caught or expect their deceit to be detected. Having your students keep a similar diary may bring IDT to life and give them interactive examples to refer to while discussing Buller and Burgoon’s theory. You may, however, run into an ethical issue with respect to this exercise—students may feel that they will be more likely to lie to others in order to gather “evidence” for their diaries. They may also question whether deception is “rewarded” through this exercise, since the more honest a student, the less he or she has to write about. If some or all students feel uncomfortable with this exercise, you can modify your approach. Have them discuss or write about the ethics of such experimentation. Conversely, Buller and Burgoon’s perspective on truth telling may also lead to a productive assignment (inspired by a 1997 article by Steven McCornack cited in “Further Resources,” below). Ask students to record or recall incidents in their everyday lives when telling the truth was/is more difficult than lying. For example, what if a best friend asks for an honest opinion of his or her new romantic partner, who seems unacceptable? Regardless of whether they choose honesty or deceit to resolve their dilemmas, have them speculate on the different levels of cognitive effort required to tell the truth rather than to lie in these situations. As a result of this exercise, your students should be ready to probe Buller and Burgoon’s assertions that truth tellers may adapt their messages in the same ways as do liars (106). Is it really sufficient to posit that truth tellers respond to suspicion or a false accusation as do deceivers, or might there be other variables involved, such as the higher level of cognitive effort required to tell the truth rather than lie in these situations, the tensions caused by the need to help another party “save face,” or the anxieties raised in a communicative situation that could become confrontational? These questions also raise

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ethical issues—lying in these situations may seem not only an easier but also a better solution to an interpersonal dilemma than telling the truth. Deceiving the class When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he solicits a volunteer to assist him in conducting an experiment in front of the class. Griffin asks him or her to answer a list of questions similar to the following:* 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Please describe where you are from. What event from your childhood do you remember most fondly? If you found an unidentified wallet containing $1,000, what would you do with it? Why? What types of people tend to rub you the “wrong way”? How would you describe your religion and religious beliefs? If your best friend were caught cheating on his or her spouse, what would you do? Why? Do you thoroughly investigate the qualifications of all the candidates before you vote? Describe a job you now have or have had. Do you support sending troops into countries hostile to the United States for the purpose of capturing Osama bin Laden? What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done? What do you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses? Have you ever taken revenge on someone? If so, how? If you won a million dollars in the lottery, how much would you give to charity?

By prearrangement, the volunteer agrees to lie on some of the questions. A variation on the theme is to ask at least one question that is not on the prearranged list. (For example, How do you think I could improve my physical appearance?) If you have the resources, you can provide the class with additional data by hooking the student up to a GSR meter. After the questions have been asked, the class predicts which answers are false and which are truthful. Most likely, the experiment will suggest that most people are relatively poor lie detectors. Ask your students what this finding tells us about IDT. Second, ask students to critique the experiment itself. Is it a credible simulation of reality? A similar experiment comes from Rajiv Rimal, who teaches communication at the University of Texas at Austin. After discussing the chapter, he e-mails ten students and asks them to participate in a game during the next class. Half of them are asked to respond untruthfully to the following five questions, and the other have are told to respond honestly to the same queries: 1. 2.

Did you party this past Friday? Have you ever walked barefoot into a store to buy something?

*

We’ve adapted this list from Griffin’s standard questions, which he adapted from a list published by Judee Burgoon, et al, in “Interpersonal Deception: V. Accuracy in Deception Detection,” Communication Monographs 61, 4 (December 1994): 322. 88

3. 4. 5.

Have you ever taken a shower with your watch? Have you ever participated in a pro-life or pro-choice rally? Have you ever downloaded music from the Internet for free?

The class, of course, won’t know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. After the student volunteers give their answers, the instructor asks the class to guess who was honest and who was not. If Buller and Burgoon are correct, the class should not have a particularly good success rate. Feature-length documentary A provocative—and in many ways heartbreaking—study of honesty and deception is Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini’s documentary about the American political asylum system, A Well-Founded Fear (New York: Epidavros Project, 2000). The film crew, which has access to actual asylum proceedings, records intense interviews about legitimate and manufactured persecution, as well as revealing discussions about truth and deception with government agents.


§

Hee Sun Park, et al. provide state-of-the-art research on deception, engaging Buller and others in “How People Really Detect Lies,” Communication Monographs 69, 2 (June 2002): 144-57. For additional discussions of IDT, see: o Burgoon and Buller, “Reflections on the Nature of Theory Building and the Theoretical Status of Interpersonal Deception Theory,” Communication Theory 6 (August 1996): 311-28. o James B. Stiff, “Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Deceptive Communication: Comments on Interpersonal Deception Theory,” Communication Theory 6 (August 1996): 289-96. o Norah E. Dunbar, Artemio Ramirez, Jr., and Judee K. Burgoon, “The Effects of Participation on the Ability to Judge Deceit,” Communication Reports 16, 1 (Winter 2003): 23-33. For further work by McCornack on deceptive messages, see “The Generation of Deceptive Messages: Laying the Groundwork for a Viable Theory of Interpersonal Deception,” in Message Production: Advances of Communication Theory, ed. John O. Greene (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997): 91-126.

Deception Detection and Suspicion § For a recent review of research on the detection of deceptive communication, see Thomas H. Feeley and Melissa J. Young, “Humans as Lie Detectors: Some More Second Thoughts,” Communication Quarterly 46 (Spring 1998): 109-26. § For further discussion of suspicion, deception, and truth bias, see: o Murray G. Millar and Karen U. Millar, “The Effects of Suspicion on the Recall of Cues Used to Make Veracity Judgments,” Communication Reports 11 (Winter 1998): 57-64.

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o Timothy R. Levine, et al., “Accuracy in Detecting Truth and Lies: Documenting the ‘Veracity Effect,’” Communication Monographs 66, 2 (June 1999): 12544. Deception in close relationships § Susan D. Boon and Beverly A. McLeod, “Deception in Romantic Relationships: Subjective Estimates of Success at Deceiving and Attitudes toward Deception,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 18, 4 (2001): 463-77. § Pamela J. Kalbfleisch, “Deceptive Message Intent and Relational Quality,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 20, 1/2 (2001): 214-33. § Steven McCornack and T. Levine, “When Lovers Become Leery: The Relationship Between Suspicion and Accuracy in Detecting Deception,” Communication Monographs 57, 3 (September 1990): 219-30. Truth Bias § Tim Cole, Laura Leets, and James J. Bradac explore the truth bias in “Deceptive Message Processing: The Role of Attachment Style and Verbal Intimacy Markers in Deceptive Message Judgments,” Communication Studies 53 (June 2002): 74-89. § For a very interesting look at the reverse truth bias (a lie bias), see Gary Bond, Daniel Malloy, Elizabeth Arias, Shannon Nunn, and Laura Thompson’s article, “Lie-Based Decision Making in Prison,” Communication Reports 18, 1 (2005): 9-20. Other variables related to deception § For the results of an interesting study of deception in everyday communicative interactions, see Bella M. DePaulo, et al., “Lying in Everyday Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996): 979-95. § Wade C. Rowatt, et al. provide an interesting discussion of the relationship between attractiveness and deceptive communication in “Lying to Get a Date: The Effect of Facial Physical Attractiveness on the Willingness to Deceive Prospective Dating Partners,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 16 (April 1999): 209-23.

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ETHICAL REFLECTIONS KANT, AUGUSTINE, AND BOK Key Names and Terms Immanual Kant A German philosopher who created the categorical imperative. Categorical Imperative The ethical rule to act only on that maxim which you can will to become universal law; duty without exception. Sissela Bok A philosopher who developed the principle of veracity. Principle of Veracity The ethical assumption that truthful statements are preferable to lies in the absence of special considerations that overcome their negative weight. Test of Publicity Bok’s point that in assessing ethical behavior, one must check with a variety of fairminded people to see if they would endorse a proposed course of action. Augustine A fifth-century Catholic bishop who believed that those who sincerely desire to follow God will discern truth telling as a central tenet of the divine will.

Exercises and Activities When Em Griffin teaches this reflection, he asks the students to tell the class how they would respond if they found themselves in Mark’s dilemma. Which—if any—of the principles outlined in the section would guide them?


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In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Richard L. Johannesen, “Ethics” (235-40), which relates to many of the Ethical Reflections featured in A First Look at Communication Theory. Other general sources are o R.L. Johannesen, Ethics in Human Communication, 5th ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 2001). o Karen Joy Greenberg, Conversations on Communication Ethics (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1991). o James A. Jaska and Michael S. Pritchard, Communication Ethics: Methods of Analysis (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1988). o James Herrick, “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Virtue,” Communication Studies 43 (1992): 133-49. For Augustine, see Richard Penticoff, “Augustine,” in the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 50-52.

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§ § §

For an excellent biography of Augustine, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). For fine recent films that feature the complex issue of truth telling, see Lone Star; Europa, Europa; and Schindler’s List. Two recent novels that provocatively engage the complexity of truth telling and deception, particularly the constitutive power of the latter, are Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003) and Tobias Wolff’s Old School (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

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RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT Key Names and Terms Close Relationship A relationship characterized by strong, frequent, and diverse interdependence that lasts over a considerable period of time. Gary Becker A Nobel Prize–winning economist from the University of Chicago whose supply-anddemand market models predict the behavior of everyday living—including love and marriage. Erich Fromm A humanist who defines love in economic terms. John Bowlby A British developmental psychologist who developed attachment theory. Attachment Theory A theory which speculates that personal differences in ability or desire to form close relationships are based on attachment styles developed in infancy which are relatively stable throughout one’s life. Attachment Styles Four distinct approaches to close relationships based on an infant’s experience with his or her primary caregiver and carried over into adult relationships: secure, dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful.


An alternative theory about relationship development is Peter Andersen’s cognitive valence theory of intimate communication, which employs some concepts introduced in Griffin’s treatment of expectancy violations theory (see Peter Andersen, “The Cognitive Valence Theory of Intimate Communication,” Progress in Communication Sciences, Vol. XIV: Mutual Influences in Interpersonal Communication, ed. Mark T. Palmer and George Barnett (Stanford, CT: Ablex, 1997), 39-72.

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Interesting films that feature various aspects of relationship development include: o Love and Basketball; o 10 Things I Hate about You; o Sense and Sensibility; o Moonstruck; o Something’s Gotta Give; o To Sir, with Love; o The Bridges of Madison County; o Sex, Lies and Video Tape; o Good Will Hunting (this one has been extremely popular with our students); o As Good As It Gets; o Playing by Heart; o The Shawshank Redemption; and

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o Louis Malle’s stunning Au Revoir, Les Enfants (Goodbye, Children).

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CHAPTER 8

SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Developed by social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor, social penetration theory explains how relational closeness develops. B. Closeness develops only if individuals proceed in a gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of both immediate and forecast outcomes.

II.

Personality structure: a multilayered onion. A. The outer layer is the public self. B. The inner core is one’s private domain.

III.

Closeness through self-disclosure. A. With the onion-wedge model, the depth of penetration represents the degree of personal disclosure. B. The layers of the onion are tougher near the center.

IV.

The depth and breadth of self-disclosure. A. Peripheral items are exchanged more frequently and sooner than private information. B. Self-disclosure is reciprocal, especially in early stages of relationship development. C. Penetration is rapid at the start but slows down quickly as the tightly wrapped inner layers are reached. 1. Societal norms prevent too much early self-disclosure. 2. Most relationships stall before a stable intimate exchange is established. 3. Genuine intimate exchange is rare but when it is achieved, relationships become meaningful and enduring. D. Depenetration is a gradual process of layer-by-layer withdrawal. E. For true intimacy, depth and breadth of penetration are equally important.

V.

Regulating closeness on the basis of rewards and costs. A. If perceived mutual benefits outweigh the costs of greater vulnerability, the process of social penetration will proceed. B. Social penetration theory draws heavily on the social exchange theory of John Thibaut and Harold Kelley.

VI.

Outcome: rewards minus costs. A. Thibaut and Kelley suggest that people try to predict the outcome of an interaction before it takes place. 1. The economic approach to determining behavior dates from John Stuart Mill’s principle of utility.

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2. The minimax principle of human behavior claims that people seek to maximize benefits and minimize costs. 3. The higher we index a relational outcome, the more attractive the behavior that might make it happen. B. Social exchange theory assumes that people can accurately gauge the benefits of their actions and make sensible choices based on their predictions. C. As relationships develop, the nature of interaction that friends find rewarding evolves. VII. Comparison level (CL)—gauging relational satisfaction. A. A person’s CL is the threshold above which an outcome appears attractive. B. One’s CL for friendship, romance, or family ties is pegged by one’s relational history, the baseline of past experience. C. Sequence and trends play large roles in evaluating a relationship. VIII. Comparison level of alternatives (CLalt)—gauging relational stability. A. The CLalt is pegged by the best relational outcomes available outside the current relationship. B. When existent outcomes slide below an established CLalt, relational instability increases. C. Social exchange theories have an economic orientation. D. The CLalt explains why people sometimes stay in abusive relationships. 1. Some women endure abuse because Outcome > CLalt. 2. They will leave only when CLalt > Outcome. E. The relative values of Outcome, CL, and CLalt help determine one’s willingness to disclose. 1. Optimum disclosure will occur when both parties believe that Outcome > CLalt > CL. 2. A relationship can be more than satisfying if it is stable, but other satisfying options are also available (in case this relationship turns sour). IX.

A simple notion becomes more complex in practice A. Altman originally thought that openness is the predominant quality of relationship changes. The desire for privacy may counteract a unidirectional quest for intimacy. B. A dialectical model suggests that human social relationships are characterized by openness or contact and closedness or separateness between participants. C. Sandra Petronio’s privacy management theory maps out the intricate ways people handle their conflicting desires for privacy and openness. 1. Petronio’s theory describes the way people form their personal rules for disclosure, how those who disclose private information need to coordinate their privacy boundaries with the borders drawn by their confidants, and the relational turbulence that occurs when parties have boundary rules that don’t match. 2. Petronio claims that the personal rules that guide our privacy/disclosure decisions are based on five different criteria: culture, gender, motives, context, and risk-benefit ratio. 3. Boundary coordination depends on: boundary linkage, boundary ownership, and boundary permeability.

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4. Boundary turbulence is the product of parties’ inability to coordinate their privacy rules and boundary management. X.

Critique: pulling back from social penetration. A. Social penetration is an established and familiar explanation of how closeness develops in friendships and romantic relationships. But, it also has many critics. B. Petronio thinks it’s simplistic to equate self-disclosure with relational closeness. C. She also challenges the theorists’ view of disclosure boundaries as being fixed and increasingly less permeable. D. Can a complex blend of advantages and disadvantages be reliably reduced to a single index? E. Are people so consistently selfish that they always opt to act strictly in their own best interest? F. Paul Wright believes that friendships often reach a point of such closeness that selfcentered concerns are no longer salient.

Key Names and Terms Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor Social psychologists who created social penetration theory. Altman is a researcher at the University of Utah; Taylor, now deceased, was affiliated with Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. Social Penetration Theory A theory that portrays relational closeness as a function of systematic reciprocal selfdisclosure. Penetration Altman and Taylor’s metaphor for relational closeness that results from interpersonal vulnerability, especially self-disclosure. Depenetration Altman and Taylor’s metaphoric conceptualization of the gradual process of withdrawing from closeness in a relationship. Index of Relational Satisfaction The balance of positive and negative experiences in a social relationship. Social Exchange Theory An economically based theory of human behavior that assumes that people accurately gauge the outcomes of a variety of interactions and rationally choose the action that will provide the best result. John Thibaut and Harold Kelley Psychologists who developed social exchange theory or the attempt to quantify the value of different outcomes for an individual. Thibaut, now deceased, was affiliated with the University of North Carolina; Kelley is a researcher at UCLA. Outcome Value The rewards minus the costs of a given course of action. Minimax Principle An economic approach to human behavior stating that people seek to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs as they interact with others. Comparison Level (CL) 100

The threshold above which an outcome seems attractive. It is the minimal level for personal satisfaction. Comparison Level of Alternatives (CLalt) The value of the best outcomes available outside the current relationship. It is the worst outcome a person will accept and still stay in a relationship. Sandra Petronio Communication theorist from the University of Indiana, Indianapolis who developed communication privacy management theory about the intricate ways people handle conflicting desires for privacy and openness. Paul Wright A psychologist from the University of North Dakota who believes that friendships often reach a point of such closeness that self-centered concerns are no longer salient.

Principal Changes This chapter, previously Chapter 9, has been revised to include Sandra Petronio’s communication privacy management theory, which expands and critiques social penetration theory. In addition, Griffin has revised the Critique and updated the Second Look sections.

Suggestions for Discussion Comparison level and comparison level of alternatives Because it reinforces many of the metaphors and analogies we use to discuss self, social penetration theory should intuitively appeal to your students. It is easy to diagram and to grasp. We have found that the majority of students easily follow the discussion about the onion model and social penetration; some students may get confused when talk turns to calculating comparison level and comparison level of alternatives. These concepts, while interrelated, concentrate on separate cognitions about a relationship’s outcome. The comparison level (CL) gauges satisfaction level (i.e. happy or unhappy) while the comparison level of alternatives (CLalt) estimates permanence (i.e. stay or leave). To illustrate that the calculations occur simultaneously, it may be helpful to provide your students with the following chart and ask if they can provide an example of each quadrant:

Outcome > CL Outcome < CL

Outcome > CLalt

Outcome < CLalt

Happy Stay Unhappy Stay

Happy Leave Unhappy Leave

Two of the quadrants are relatively simple to explain. The top left-side quadrant (happy, stay) might illustrate most people’s “happily-ever-after” ideal relationship where you’re content and feel that nothing could be better. The bottom right-side quadrant (unhappy, leave) is also easily pictured- an unhappy situation and something better comes along. It means leaving a relationship you didn’t enjoy for something more promising. The remaining two squares present more of a challenge. The top right-side box (happy, leave) might be characterized as a

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midlife crisis. It’s the person who, though content and relative to their past relationships has a good situation, still leaves for something potentially even more enticing. Another example is a person who likes their job and income, but gets a better offer. Finally, the bottom left-side box (unhappy, stay) may be illustrative of an unhealthy or abusive relationship. This relationship isn’t enjoyable and, compared with others’ relationships, it’s really not promising, but it’s better than any of the other options. This person may think, “I’d rather be in a miserable relationship than no relationship at all.” Problems with the theory In several ways, social penetration theory relies upon a problematic construction of the self, self-disclosure, and overall process of communication itself, and thus it should provide more thoughtful students with a good exercise in theory critique. For example, characterizing self-disclosure as penetration may confound the issues of agent and agency. It is, after all, the speaker who discloses, rather than the audience of the disclosure, who acts—who exposes the previously unknown information. In most cases, self-disclosure is not an invasive surgical procedure, an act of interrogation, or form of torture practiced upon a passive or unwilling subject, but a voluntary pouring forth. Perhaps those who disclose more closely resemble founts of information, rather than dense masses that require probing and piercing. Another image would be someone gradually pulling back a curtain to reveal more and more details of the landscape of the self. An additional problem is that the images of the wedge and the onion suggest that selfdisclosure is an asymmetrical, rather than a reciprocal, egalitarian process. After all, someone must be the onion, and someone else must be the wedge. Although, as Griffin notes, the sexual connotations of the term penetration were not intended by Altman and Taylor (120), it is difficult to remove the power relations suggested by the imagery. Penetration inherently calls to mind the notions of dominance, force, and control, when in fact disclosure is offered freely and equally in the kinds of social situations the theory is meant to describe. In addition to the problems inherent in the image of the penetrating wedge are the difficulties brought on by the comparison of the self to an onion. Although this analogy is easy to visualize, it suggests that the self is a stable, completed, private, knowable entity that is gradually exposed or discovered, but not shaped, by the process of communication. To evoke a parallel, but more risqué, analogy, Altman and Taylor’s disclosure imitates the stripper, gradually peeling off his or her sartorial layers until the genuine article—the naked self—is revealed. Other theories previously examined, however, insist that social realities such as the self are not merely presented, but actually constructed, through the process of communication. Theorists such as Mead and Pearce (and later, Delia) would suggest that because communication has an ontological function, the process of disclosing intimate details itself would shape the nature of a person’s inner self. Communication does not simply reveal— it creates. (Integrative Essay Question #32 below addresses this issue.) The onion metaphor The onion metaphor is also problematic because of the remarkable uniformity of this particular vegetable. As one peels away the outer layers of this pungent sphere, what one finds are more and more layers. In this sense, then, the actual structure of the onion suggests that there is no immutable essence of personhood at the center of our psyches, and that we are all

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packaging and no content. Like a Russian nesting doll, nothing unique is contained in the center, only more and more dolls. It is ironic that this most postmodern view of self, which works against the fundamental assumptions of social penetration theory, is evoked by its central analogy. During the class session before you discuss this chapter, encourage your students to compare the fictitious example of Pete and Jon to their own experiences with their roommates or close friends as they read. (Essay Question #30 below addresses this topic.)

Sample Application Log Dan I have always been cautious about what I tell people about myself. I never want to reveal something that I might later regret. But I do like to have close relationships. The problem is, I find it takes a long time for me to form that closeness. When I was in sixth grade I moved to a new school. I didn’t begin to feel like people really knew me until my junior year in high school. I really enjoyed those last two years of high school, but maybe if I had been a little less cautious about telling people about myself earlier, I could have had more fun all throughout junior and senior high. Maybe I should go out on a limb a little more; I may find that people are willing to let me come closer to them as a result.

Exercises and Activities The onion In Figure 8.1 on page 120, Griffin presents an onionized version of Pete’s personality structure. Consider asking your students to create onions of their own psyches. How would they designate their own personality layers? As you discuss the results of their models, see what sorts of similarities and differences emerge among your students. Is Pete’s personality structure a good approximation of your average student? And speaking of onionization, when Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he brings a healthy representative of that very vegetable and three knives to class. He asks five volunteers to talk through five key components of the theory: personality, closeness, self-disclosure, rewards and costs, and relationship termination. Students can use any method they wish to explain or illustrate their concept, including, of course, the onions and knives. Griffin notes that in order for this exercise to be effective, the instructor must be willing to correct inaccurate descriptions and to provide helpful nudges at key moments. As we have done above, you may enjoy developing alternative analogies or metaphors for the process of self-disclosure with your students. We always find their suggestions provocative. (Essay Question #25 below addresses this issue.) “Who are you?” Interviews and self-disclosure

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If you and your students enjoy in-class demonstrations/tests of theory, consider the following exercise. Divide your students into pairs to conduct interviews. Tell them to decide who will be the interviewer and who will be the interviewee for the first phase, and indicate that the roles will be reversed in the second phase. Allow approximately five minutes for each. During the first phase, the interviewers begin by asking their partners, “Who are you?” After the interviewee has answered, the interviewer repeats the question or offers follow-up queries. After the time has expired, the students switch roles for the second phase. This time, the interviewer begins by asking, “What do you want?” Once again, the interviewer may repeat the question or offer follow-up queries during the time remaining. When you debrief the exercise with the class, ask your students where their questions led and what the answers revealed about the theory. If you can, compare the results of male-male, female-female, and femalemale dyads. Feature-film examples An entertaining film that vividly demonstrates the links between social penetration and relational development is Remember the Titans. Set in Virginia, the story centers on the relationships of several white and African-American football players and their coaches who find themselves on the same team following integration. Another provocative film is Almost Famous, the story of a teenage boy who develops quirky and revealing relationships with rock stars, their groupies, and the writers who cover them in an early 1970s setting. As a budding journalist, he finds that his efforts to penetrate their psyches are motivated both by friendship/romance and professional ambition. When these motivations conflict, intriguing ethical issues emerge. One of the more pertinent issues explored in the film is the asymmetric self-disclosure among the characters as the young journalist probes his subjects and their social scene. Not surprisingly, the consequences of such asymmetry are significant. Ron Adler—a well-known communication teacher at Santa Barbara City College and much respected textbook writer—identifies the scene in which the featured rock band believes it is about to perish in a plane crash as a vivid demonstration of the potential downside of intimate self-disclosure. The Johari window An alternative model of self and self-disclosure that you might consider sharing with your class is the Johari window, which characterizes the issues of agency and reciprocity more effectively than does the social penetration approach, perhaps. One must not forget, though, that this model, too, has its limitations, including a failure to handle the ontological element of communication. In addition, it may not be particularly useful in conceptualizing issues of depth and breadth disclosure. Comparing the two models can be a very useful exercise.


For a study that builds on the work of John Thibaut and Harold Kelley, see Michael Sunnafrank, “‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’: Romance Loss as a Function of Relationship Development and Escalation Processes,” Communication and Social Influence Processes, ed. Charles R. Berger (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995), 133-53.

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For additional discussion of depenetration, see Betsy Tolstedt and Joseph Stokes, “SelfDisclosure, Intimacy, and Depenetration Process,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46 (1984): 84-90. If students want to learn more about social exchange theory, Griffin’s chapter-length treatment from the Second Edition (available on the website discussed in the Preface to this manual) is a good place to begin.

Johari window § If you present the Johari window to complement and contrast with social penetration, see: o Joseph Luft, Of Human Interaction (Palo Alto, CA: National Press, 1969); o Ronald Adler and Neil Towne, Looking Out/Looking In (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, 1990), 341-44. o Gerald L. Wilson, Alan M. Hantz, and Michael S. Hanna, Interpersonal Growth through Communication, 4th ed. (Dubuque, IA: Wm C. Brown, 1995), 53-55. o Richard Weaver, Understanding Interpersonal Communication, 7th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 430-32.

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CHAPTER 9

UNCERTAINTY REDUCTION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Charles Berger notes that the beginnings of personal relationships are fraught with uncertainties. B. Uncertainty reduction theory focuses on how human communication is used to gain knowledge and create understanding. C. Any of three prior conditions—anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, or deviance—can boost our drive to reduce uncertainty.

II.

Uncertainty reduction: To predict and explain. A. Berger’s focus on prediction echoes Shannon and Weaver. B. His emphasis on explanation (our inferences about why people do what they do) comes from the attribution theory of Fritz Heider. C. There are at least two types of uncertainty. 1. Behavioral questions, which are often reduced by following accepted procedural protocols. 2. Cognitive questions, which are reduced by acquiring information.

III.

An axiomatic theory: Certainty about uncertainty. A. Berger proposes a series of axioms to explain the connection between uncertainty and eight key variables. B. Axiom 1, verbal communication: As the amount of verbal communication between strangers increases, the level of uncertainty decreases, and, as a result, verbal communication increases. C. Axiom 2, nonverbal warmth: As nonverbal affiliative expressiveness increases, uncertainty levels will decrease. Decreases in uncertainty level will cause increases in nonverbal affiliative expressiveness. D. Axiom 3, information seeking: High levels of uncertainty cause increases in information-seeking behavior. As uncertainty levels decline, information-seeking behavior decreases. E. Axiom 4, self-disclosure: High levels of uncertainty in a relationship cause decreases in the intimacy level of communication content. Low levels of uncertainty produce high levels of intimacy. F. Axiom 5, reciprocity: High levels of uncertainty produce high rates of reciprocity. Low levels of uncertainty produce low levels of reciprocity. G. Axiom 6, similarity: Similarities between persons reduce uncertainty, while dissimilarities produce increases in uncertainty. H. Axiom 7, liking: Increases in uncertainty level produce decreases in liking; decreases in uncertainty produce increases in liking. I. Axiom 8, shared networks: Shared communication networks reduce uncertainty, while a lack of shared networks increases uncertainty.

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IV.

Theorems: The logical force of uncertainty axioms. A. Through pairing axioms, Berger creates 28 theorems. B. These 28 theorems suggest a comprehensive theory of interpersonal development based on the importance of reducing uncertainty in human interaction.

V.

Strategies to cope with certain uncertainty. A. Most social interaction is goal-driven; we construct cognitive plans to guide our social interaction. 1. Berger claims plans are hierarchically organized with abstract representations at the top of the hierarchy and progressively more concrete representation toward the bottom. 2. Switching strategies at the top of the hierarchy causes changes down the hierarchy, altering behavior. B. Uncertainty is central to all social interaction. C. There is an interaction between uncertainty reduction theory and plan-based message production that suggests various strategies individuals use to cope with uncertainty and hedge against risk when deploying messages. 1. Seeking information through a passive, active, or interactive strategy. 2. Choosing plan complexity—the level of detail a plan includes and the number of contingency plans. 3. Hedging—planning ways for both parties to “save face” when at least one of them miscalculated. 4. The hierarchy hypothesis: When individuals are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to alter lower-level elements of their message.

VI.

Critique: Nagging doubts about uncertainty. A. As Berger himself admits, his original statement contained some propositions of dubious validity. 1. Critics such as Kathy Kellermann consider theorem 17 particularly flawed. 2. The tight logical structure of the theory doesn’t allow us to reject one theorem without questioning the axioms behind it. 3. In the case of theorem 17, axioms 3 and 7 must also be suspect. 4. Kellermann and Rodney Reynolds challenge the motivational assumption of axiom 3. 5. They also have undermined the claim that motivation to search for information is increased by anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, and deviance. B. Michael Sunnafrank challenges Berger’s claim that uncertainty reduction is the key to understanding early encounters. 1. He believes that predicted outcome value more accurately explains communication in early encounters. 2. Berger insists that you can’t predict outcome values until you reduce uncertainty. C. Despite these problems, Berger’s theory has stimulated considerable discussion within the discipline.

Key Names and Terms 111

Charles Berger A communication theorist at the University of California, Davis, who developed uncertainty reduction theory. Fritz Heider As the founder of attribution theory, this psychologist argued that we constantly draw inferences about why people do what they do. Axiom A self-evident truth that requires no additional proof. Malcolm Parks and Mara Adelman Communication researchers from Michigan State University and Seattle University, respectively, who have demonstrated that there is a relationship between shared communication networks and uncertainty reduction. Action Plans Mental representations of anticipated behavioral sequences that may be used to achieve goals. Hierarchy Hypothesis Berger’s prediction that when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to make low-level, minor adjustments to their plans. Hedging Finding ways for both parties to save face when at least one of them has miscalculated. Kathy Kellermann and Rodney Reynolds Communication scholars from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Regent University, respectively, who have questioned the motivational assumption of Berger’s axiom 3 and the claim that motivation to search for information is increased by anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, and deviance. Michael Sunnafrank A communication scholar from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who believes that predicted outcome value more accurately explains communication in early encounters than does Berger’s account of uncertainty reduction.

Principal Changes This chapter, previously Chapter 10, remains the same aside from light editing and a few new additions to the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Comparison with other theories Berger’s approach to getting to know someone conflicts with Altman and Taylor’s, yet they share important assumptions about communication and the human psyche worth discussing with your class. Although they differ on the motivation for communicating with strangers, both theories view communication as primarily informative in nature and the self as a stable, fixed entity that exists prior to interpersonal interaction. As we mentioned in our treatment of Chapter 8, theorists such as Mead and Pearce (and later, Delia), who emphasize the transactional or ontological function of communication, would suggest that the process of

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talking not only provides desired information about people, but actually shapes those engaged in the conversation. To a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist (or constructivist), thus, the act of “reducing uncertainty” not only reveals but creates the individuals involved. When you throw this ontological function of communication into the mix, Berger’s axioms and theorems assume new complexity and challenges. Berger’s empirical approach towards interpersonal communication No doubt your students will comment—some enthusiastically and some disparagingly— on the thoroughgoing empiricism of uncertainty reduction theory. Along these lines, it’s important for them to see not only that this theory is empirically grounded, but that it posits the average communicator as an amateur scientist at heart whose first interest is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. As the first major heading in the chapter declares, predictability and explanation—those scientific pillars emphasized by Griffin in Chapter 3—become the basic motivators of our talk. Whereas a humanist such as John Stewart defines interpersonal communication as transactional activity that maximizes “the presence of the personal” (Bridges Not Walls 41), and economically oriented scholars such as Altman and Taylor approach one-on-one discourse in terms of cost-benefit analysis, Berger theorizes humans in conversation as cerebral, primarily information-seeking beings. Whether or not this is an appropriate way to characterize all interpersonal interaction is a question we’ll not try to answer here. However, if you push your students to think pluralistically and to evaluate critically the variety of interpersonal contacts they’ve had in the last week, month, or year, no doubt they’ll see that all three models have considerable descriptive value. Just as humanists often find themselves involved in conversations in which they are driven primarily by the desire to learn about the other, pursuing information for its own sake, empiricists often communicate with the intention of maximizing “the presence of the personal.” Gender issues Essay Question #30 below is designed to anticipate the section of the book that focuses on gender and communication. Particularly relevant, perhaps, is Deborah Tannen’s genderlect styles. Axioms and theorems Many times, students will quickly absorb the eight axioms and can articulate their agreement or disagreement with these basic premises. Be sure to stress that axioms suggest a causal relationship and thus the order of the variables is critical while theorems correlate two variables; one does not by necessity precede the other. Math-phobic students may turn off swiftly when faced with understanding how the 28 theorems and the corresponding relationships are deducted from the initial eight. For some students, the plus/minus chart on p. 135 in the textbook may be confusing and for these students, you may want to stress that the theorems take two different variables each with a relationship to uncertainty. Just as in mathematical fractions, the axioms can be made to have a common term, which then drops out. For example:

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Axiom 1:

Uncertainty á Verbal Comm á

Axiom 3:

Uncertainty Info seeking

Theorem 3:

á á

Uncertainty Verbal Comm

á á

Uncertainty Info seeking

á á

Theorem 3:

Verbal Comm Info seeking

Drop out the common term uncertainty

Strategies to reduce uncertainty and cultural implications Various attempts to cope with uncertainty—such as hedging or the passive, active, or interactive strategies for seeking information—have different meanings in different cultures. In some cultural contexts, direct requests for information about people are considered rude, while other cultures may view such messages as natural. Confucian modesty dictates that one downplay one’s own ability in making requests—giving the concept of hedging particular salience. Ask students to reflect on examples of cultural implications of the strategies to reduce uncertainty discussed in the chapter, drawing on their own experiences or examples from literature and film. Such issues are taken up at considerable length in Chapter 30, which treats William Gudykunst’s anxiety/uncertainty reduction theory. Gudykunst extends Berger’s work into intercultural contexts.

Sample Application Log Alicia I hate meeting new people. In fact, I pride myself on having very bad first impressions of all my dearest friends. First meetings always overwhelm me, with their stilted conversation and suspicious feelings on both sides. This theory helped me to formulate a new plan for the next time I meet a person. I can establish common ground as quickly as possible. The faster we find similarities, the more nonverbal warmth, verbal communication, self-disclosure, and liking will increase. If I can get over having bad first impressions, I may be on my way to starting better friendships.

Exercises and Activities Axioms and theorems When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he makes sure to review the eight axioms and twenty-eight theorems in class. Then, he creates a kind of theorem machine with students. To do this, he asks eight volunteers representing the eight axioms to stand next to chairs at the front of the class. Next, he has student one—representing axiom one—raise his or her hand to represent increasing verbal communication. Correspondingly, the other volunteers— representing the remaining seven axioms—will either raise their hands to indicate positive correlation or sit to indicate negative correlation. In this instance, two, three, seven, six, and eight will raise their hands; and three and five will sit. Once the volunteers get the hang of this theorem machine, their responses will help vivify the movement from axioms to theorems that is so crucial to the logic of this theory. Finally, Griffin likes to speculate with his class about the possibility that axiom three is inaccurate. If this is the case, then the theorem machine insightfully illustrates the consequences.

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á á

As budding critics of communication theory, your students should be encouraged to analyze Berger’s approach axiom by axiom and theorem by theorem. Conduct a survey in class to see which propositions are most and least convincing. Encourage your students to defend their judgments with common sense and personal experience. Be sure they understand that a theorem is only as good as the axioms on which it is based. Applying uncertainty reduction strategies We have found it helpful to keep a consistent example and show how each type of uncertainty reduction strategy may be used to gather more information in the same situation. For example, when spotting an attractive member of the opposite sex for the first time, how might you use passive, active, and interactive strategies to size them up? How about starting a new job or taking a class from an unknown professor? Be sure to probe when each type of strategy may be more/less useful, and more/less appropriate. As Essay Question #21 suggests, college orientation programs may serve as useful vehicles for thinking about and applying uncertainty reduction theory. It may be productive to discuss the sessions your students attended as they became members of your campus community. Working through the eight axioms featured in this chapter, have them predict what should happen as a result of their experiences. Discuss how official activities encouraged or discouraged passive, active, or interactive strategies for increasing knowledge. In addition, use Berger’s theory to generate suggestions about how your institution could improve the process. If you have transfer or nontraditional students in class who attended different introductory programs (or perhaps none at all), compare their entry experiences at your institution with those of students who matriculated directly from high school. Feature film and literary illustrations Set in the 1960s, the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is the story of an AfricanAmerican family (the Prentices) and a European-American family (the Draytons) who are suddenly thrown together by the prospect of an unexpected interracial marriage that will unite them. The complex relationships that quickly develop among the characters constitute an intriguing testing ground for uncertainty reduction theory. Because the film features many vivid, powerful arguments—particularly those that lead Mr. Drayton to change his mind and approve of the nuptials—it is also a good vehicle for illustrating the elaboration likelihood model, which is introduced in Chapter 15. The relationships that develop in Remember the Titans, which was introduced in the previous chapter, also provide good testing ground for uncertainty reduction theory. The novel and the movie The Joy Luck Club represent white, Asian-American, and Asian communicators interacting and often violating cultural norms as they try to reduce uncertainty. The memoir Scribbling the Cat, which we introduced in our treatment of CMM, demonstrates what happens when people who disclose and seek to reduce uncertainty are motivated by different goals, assumptions, or “cognitive plans”: “I thought he held shards of truth. He thought I held love” (250).


William Gudykunst assesses uncertainty reduction theory in “The Uncertainty Reduction and Anxiety-Uncertainty Reduction Theories of Berger, Gudykunst, and Associates,” in 115

§ §

§

§

Watershed Research Traditions in Human Communication Theory, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 67-100. Another essay of interest is Charles Berger and Nancy Kellerman, “Acquiring Social Information,” in John Daly and John Wiemann, Strategic Interpersonal Communication (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), 1-31. Walid A. Afifi and Josephine W. Lee apply Berger’s theory of planing in “Balancing Instrumental and Identity Goals in Relationships: The Role of Request Directness and Request Persistence in the Selection of Sexual Resistance Strategies,” Communication Monographs 67, 3 (September 2000): 284-305. In “Communication in the Management of Uncertainty: The Case of Persons Living with HIV or AIDS,” Communication Monographs 67, 1 (March 2000): 63-84, Dale E. Brashers, et al. discuss a theory of management of uncertainty “in which the desire to reduce uncertainty is assumed to be only one of several responses to events and circumstances marked by unpredictability, ambiguity, or insufficient information” (64). Michael Boyle, Mike Schmierbach, Cory Armstrong, Douglas McLeod, Dhavan Shah, and Pan Zhongdang explore how uncertainty reduction theory might explain people’s reaction to tragedy in their article, “Information Seeking and Emotional Reactions to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 81, 1 (2004): 155-68.

Uncertainty reduction in close relationships § Kimberly Downs, “Family Commitment Role Perceptions, Social Support, and Mutual Children in Remarriage: A Test of Uncertainty Reduction Theory,” Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 40, 1/2 (2003): 35-54. § Leanne K. Knobloch and Denise Haunani Solomon explore how URT might affect existing relationships in their article, “Information Seeking beyond Initial Interaction: Negotiating Relational Uncertainty within Close Relationships,” Human Communication Research 28, 2 (2002): 243-57. Uncertainty reduction strategies § In “Strategic and Nonstrategic Information Acquisition,” Human Communication Research 28, 2 (April 2002): 287-97, Berger explores information seeking. § Tara M. Emmers and Daniel J. Canary explore uncertainty reduction strategies used in established relationships in their article, “The Effect of Uncertainty Reducing Strategies on Young Couples’ Relational Repair and Intimacy,” Communication Quarterly 44, 2 (1996): 166-83.

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CHAPTER 10

SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY Outline XXI. Introduction. A. Scholars who studied new electronic media have offered a variety of theories to explain the inherent differences between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face communication. 1. Social presence theory suggests that text-based messages deprive CMC users of the sense that other people are jointly involved in the interaction 2. Media richness theory classifies each communication medium according to the complexity of the messages it can handle efficiently. 3. A third theory concentrates on the lack of social context cues in online communication. B. Each of these theories favors a cues-filtered-out interpretation in regard to the absence of nonverbal cues as the medium’s fatal flaw. C. Joe Walter, a communication professor at Cornell University, argued that given the opportunity for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational growth, face-to-face and CMC are equally useful mediums for developing close relationships. XXII. CMC versus face-to-face: A sip instead of a gulp. A. Walther labeled his theory social information processing (SIP) because he believes relationships grow only to the extent that parties first gain information about each other and use that information to form impressions. B. SIP focuses on the first link of the chain—the personal information available through CMC and its effect on the composite mental image of the other. C. Walther acknowledges that nonverbal cues are filtered out of the interpersonal information sent and received via CMC, but he doesn’t think this loss is fatal. D. Two features of CMC provide a rationale for SIP theory. 1. Verbal cues: CMC users can create fully formed impressions of others based solely on linguistic content of messages. 2. Extended time: Though the exchange of social information is slower via CMC than face-to-face, over time the relationships formed are not weaker or more fragile. E. You’ve got mail—A case study of online romance 1. The film You’ve Got Mail portrays an online relationship. 2. It also illustrates verbal cues and extended time, concepts crucial to SIP theory. XXIII. Verbal cues of affinity replace nonverbal cues. A. Walter claims that humans crave affiliation just as much online as they do in faceto-face interactions. But, with the absence of nonverbal cues, which typically signal affinity, users must rely on text-only messages.

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B. He argues that verbal and nonverbal cues can be used interchangeably. C. Experimental support for a counter-intuitive idea. 1. Walther and two of his former graduate students ran a comparative study to test how CMC users pursue their social goals and if affinity can be expressed through a digital medium. 2. In their study, the participants discussed a moral dilemma with a stranger via either CMC or face-to-face. The stranger was in actuality a research confederate told to pursue a specific communication goal. Half the confederates were told to interact in a friendly manner and the remaining pairs were told to interact in an unfriendly manner. 3. The mode of communication made no difference in the emotional tone perceived by the participants. 4. Self-disclosure, praise, and explicit statements of affection successfully communicated warmth as well as indirect agreement, change of subject, and compliments offered while proposing a contrasting idea. 5. In face-to-face interactions, participants relied on facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice, body position, and other nonverbal cues to communication affiliation. XXIV. Extended time: The crucial variable in CMC. A. Walther is convinced that the length of time that CMC users have to send messages is the key determinant of whether their message can achieve a comparable level of intimacy as face-to-face interactions. B. Messages spoken in person take at least four times as long to say via CMC. This differential may explain why CMC is perceived as impersonal and task-oriented. C. Since CMC conveys messages more slowly, Walther advises users to send messages more often. D. Anticipated future interaction and chronemic cues may also contribute to intimacy on the Internet. 1. People will trade more relational messages if they think they may meet again and this anticipated future interaction motivates them to develop the relationship. 2. Walther believes that chronemic cues, or nonverbal indicators of how people perceive, use, or respond to issues of time, is the only nonverbal cue not filtered out of CMC. XXV. Hyperpersonal perspective: It doesn’t get any better than this. A. Walther uses the term hyperpersonal to label CMC relationships that are more intimate than romances or friendships would be if partners were physically together. B. He classifies four types of media effects that occur precisely because CMC users aren’t proximal. 1. Sender: Selective self-presentation. a. Through selective self-presentation, people who meet online have an opportunity to make and sustain an overwhelmingly positive impression. b. As a relationship develops, they can edit the breadth and depth of their self-disclosure to conform to the cyber image they wish to project. 2. Receiver: Overattribution of similarity.

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4.

a. Attribution is a perceptual process where we observe people’s actions and try to figure out what they’re really like. b. In the absence of other cues, we are likely to overattribute the information we have and create an idealized image of the sender. c. Martin Lea and Russell Spears describe this identification as SIDE— social-identity-deindividuation. i. Users meet around a common interest. ii. In the absence of contrasting cues, they develop an exaggerated sense of similarity and group solidarity. Channel: Communicating on your own time. a. Walther refers to CMC as an asynchronous channel of communication, meaning that parties can use it nonsimultaneously. b. A benefit is the ability to plan, contemplate, and edit one’s comments more than is possible in spontaneous, simultaneous talk. Feedback: Self-fulfilling prophecy. a. A self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a response from them that confirms what was anticipated. b. Self-fulfilling prophecy is triggered when the hyperpositive image is intentionally or inadvertently fed back to the other person, creating a CMC equivalent of the looking-glass self.

XXVI. Critique: Walther’s candid assessment. A. Walther rejected the notion that online communication is an inherently inferior medium for relational communication. B. Walther’s empirical studies show that relationships in cyberspace often form at the same or even faster pace than they do for people who meet offline. C. CMC users who join online discussion groups or enter chat rooms may have a higher need for affiliation than the typical person whose relationships are developed through multichannel modes. D. The hyperpersonal perspective lacks a central explanatory mechanism to drive synthesis of the observed effects. E. The hyperpersonal perspective has also been less explicit in predicting negative relational outcomes in CMC.

Key Names and Terms CMC Computer-mediated communication. Social Presence Theory Earlier CMC theory that suggests that text-based messages deprive CMC users of the sense that other people are jointly involved in the interaction. Media Richness Theory CMC theory that classifies each communication medium according to the complexity of the messages it can handle efficiently.

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Flaming Hostile language that zings its target and creates a toxic climate for relational growth on the Internet. Cues Filtered Out Interpretation of CMC that regards the absence of nonverbal cues as the medium’s permanent flaw, which limits its usefulness for developing interpersonal relationships. Joseph B. Walther Communication professor at Cornell University who argues that given the opportunity for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational growth, face-toface and CMC are equally useful mediums for developing close relationships. Social Information Processing (SIP) Walther’s perspective regarding CMC, so labeled because he believes relationships grow only to the extent that parties first gain information about each other and use that information to form impressions. Verbal Cues In the absence of any other cues, CMC users will use verbal cues to form impressions. Extended Time Because CMC information is exchanged at a much slower rate, online relationships will develop the same intimacy possible in face-to-face relationships only if given an extended time. Anticipated Future Interactions In Walther’s perspective, it’s a way of extending psychological time. The possibility of future interaction motivates CMC users to develop a relationship. Chronemics Nonverbal scholars label used to describe how people perceive, use, and respond to issues of time in their interactions with others. Hyperpersonal CMC relationships that are more intimate than romances or friendships would be if partners were physically together. Attribution A perceptual process where we observe people’s actions and try to figure out what the person is really like. Martin Lea and Russell Spears European social psychologists who explain over-the-top identification as social-identitydeindividuation (SIDE). Self-Fulfilling Prophecy The tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a response from them that confirms what was anticipated.

Principal Changes This chapter is entirely new to the sixth edition.

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Suggestions for Discussion Only a theory of “new media” relationships? Social information processing theory appears to be an exciting new approach to the “new media,” a way of accounting for online communication, particularly as it stacks up against face-to-face encounters. On the other hand, could the central ideas developed in this theory apply just as well to old-fashioned letters, even those sent through the U.S. Postal Service? Is this simply a theory of written communication? Glen’s great-grandfather became engaged to a woman he’d never met through written correspondence. Their relationship developed gradually, letter by letter, until they were sufficiently attached to one another to get married. It’s possible that Walther’s theory building applies as well to their communication as it does to You’ve Got Mail. Longevity of relationships It’s likely that some students in your class have developed a relationship through CMC, either via e-mail, chat rooms, or as part of a virtual community. As such, they are likely to warmly embrace SIP’s perspective about online relationship develop and be vocal advocates that relationship development is not only possible, but probable. But, with the relative newness of technologies such as digital cameras, webcams, text messaging, and e-mail, can we predict how technology might affect the longevity of these mediated relationships? Some might speculate that physical closeness at some time in the relationship is necessary to guarantee the long-term survival of close bonds. The virtual girlfriend Your students may be familiar with Asia’s “virtual girlfriend.” After joining (and paying a subscription fee), a “girlfriend” appears as an animated message on the subscriber’s mobile phone video screen. Disclosure comes at a price—literally, as the anime only responds when she has been bought flowers or gifts by paying more money. The “relationship” develops as money is exchanged for more information about one’s “girlfriend,” sweet talk, and introduction to her “friends.” You might want to engage students in a comparison of the differences between online relationships with real people versus connections established with such simulations. Given Walther’s position regarding the possibility of idealizing one’s online partners, are these “sims” very different than such relationships? Distance education You might want to discuss online education and the development of relationships with professors and other students when the only contact you have is through e-mails, message boards, and chat rooms. Does that environment help or hinder the learning process? A host of communication scholars, led by the work of James McCroskey, suggests that nonverbal immediacy is a critical component of teaching effectiveness. How might effectiveness be moderated by a mediated relationship? If your students have participated in online only or technology-assisted classes, how have the various modes of communication affected their relationships with students and professors? Critiquing the theory As speculated by Griffin in the chapter’s Critique, Walther’s theory hasn’t addressed a perhaps fundamental question: why do people choose to develop online relationships? 125

Encourage students to probe some motivations. How might these varied motivations affect the quality and quantities of one’s relationships, both online and off?

Sample Application Log Laine I’ve definitely seen Walther’s hyperpersonal “selective self-presentation” at work in my relationship with my boyfriend. In the beginning stages of our relationship, our self-disclosure was most often via instant messaging for the very reason that Walther claimed—“people who meet online have an opportunity to make and sustain an overwhelmingly positive impression.” IM allowed us to carefully process and edit what were going to say before we committed to saying it by pushing “send.” I would often type on the instant message screen, read it through, delete it and start over if there was something that I said in a way that might leak information that I wasn’t yet ready to disclose. I have found that once you move beyond the slower pace of online interaction and get used to the pace of face-to-face interaction, it’s hard to go back. For example after we became comfortable with each other face-to-face, our CMC became almost nonexistent. When we are living in separate states, the different pace of online communication becomes frustrating.

Exercises and Activities Comparing CMC and face-to-face relationships Ask your students to compare a relationship that they have developed via CMC (or maintained if they don’t have online relationships) to a face-to-face relationship. How would they characterize the relationship, their impression of the other person, and what they believe they have portrayed about themselves? Walther suggests that a self-fulfilling prophesy may be at work in which impressions are carefully crafted and messages obtained at one’s own convenience. In comparison to flesh-and-blood people, do students have a more idealized version of the other when the relationship has been mediated? Feature film illustration In addition to You’ve Got Mail, another feature film that may provide interesting discussion is Simone. It is the story of a movie producer, played by Al Pacino, who— unbeknownst to the audience—creates a digital actress. The film demonstrates the power of technology to “create” people and you might find it a good tool to stimulate discussion about simulating reality.


Barbara Warnick takes a rhetorical approach to theoretical issues of the Internet in “Rhetorical Criticism of Public Discourse on the Internet: Theoretical Implications,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28 (Fall 1998): 73-84. She has also produced a full-length treatment of rhetoric and technology entitled Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric, and the Public Interest (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), and a review essay on the

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relationship between argument and new media, “Analogues to Argument: New Media and Literacy in a Posthuman Era,” Argument and Advocacy (Spring 2002): 262-70. Relationship development § For more on verbal and nonverbal affinity exchange, see Joseph B. Walther, Tracy Loh, and Laura Granka, “Let Me Count the Ways: The Interchange of Verbal and Nonverbal Cues in Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Affinity,” Journal of Language & Social Psychology 24, 1 (March 2005): 36-66. § Kevin B. Wright explores relational maintenance in online relationships in his article, “Online Relational Maintenance Strategies and Perceptions of Partners within Exclusively Internet-Based and Primarily Internet-Based Relationships,” Communication Studies 55, 2 (2004): 239-54. § For more on disclosure, see Lisa Collins Tidwell and Walther “Computer-Mediated Communication Effects on Disclosure, Impressions, and Interpersonal Evaluations: Getting to Know One Another a Bit at a Time,” Human Communication Research 28, 3 (July 2002): 317-48. § Sonja Utz explores friendship development in her article, “Social Information Processing in MUDs: The Development of Friendships in Virtual Worlds,” Journal of Online Behavior 1, 1 (2000): n.p. § Artemio Ramirez, Jr., Joe Walther, Judee Burgoon, and Michael Sunnafrank intersect SIP with URT in “Information-Seeking Strategies, Uncertainty, and Computer-Mediated Communication,” Human Communication Research 28, 2 (April 2002): 213-29. § For more on relationship initiation, see Jeffrey S. McQuillen’s article “The Influence of Technology on the Initiation of Interpersonal Relationships,” Education 123, 3 (Spring 2003): 616-24. Communication and technology For discussion of information technology and the computer’s effect on communication, see: § Alan L. Porter and William H. Read, The Information Revolution: Current and Future Consequences (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1998). § Nick Heap, et al., eds., Information Technology and Society: A Reader (London: Sage, 1995). § Nicolas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). § Frank Biocca and Mark Levy, eds., Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995). § Steven G. Jones, Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997); and Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting ComputerMediated Communication and Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). § David Holmes, Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). § Tharon W. Howard, A Rhetoric of Electronic Communities (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1997). § Sara Kiesler, Cultures of the Internet (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997). § David Slayden and Rita Kirk Whillock, Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired World (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999). § Tom Koch, The Message Is the Medium: Online All the Time for Everyone (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996).

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§ §

Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughs, Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 1998); Bosah Ebo, ed., Cyberghetto or Cybertopia? Race, Class and Gender on the Internet (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998). James W. Chesebro and Donald G. Bonsall, Computer-Mediated Communication: Human Relationships in a Computerized World (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989). One of Chesebro and Bonsall’s principal contentions is that “computerized communication is altering human communication itself” (7).

Distance Education § Karen Swan, “Building Learning Communities in Online Courses: The Importance of Interaction,” Education, Communication & Information 2, 1 (May 2002): 23-50. § Jennifer Waldeck, Patricia Kearney, and Timothy Plax explore e-mail messages between educators and students in their article, “Teacher E-mail Message Strategies and Students’ Willingness to Communicate Online,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 29, 1 (February 2001): 54-70. § Paul L. Witt and Lawrence R. Wheeless, “Nonverbal Communication Expectancies about Teachers and Enrollment Behavior in Distance Learning,” Communication Education 48, 2 (April 1999): 149-54. § For more on teacher immediacy in online classes, see: o Lori J. Carrell and Kent E. Menzel, “Variations in Learning, Motivation, and Perceived Immediacy between Live and Distance Education Classrooms,” Communication Education 50, 3 (July 2001): 230-40. o Roger N. Conaway, Susan S. Easton, & Wallace V. Schmidt, “Strategies for Enhancing Student Interaction and Immediacy in Online Courses,” Business Communication Quarterly 68, 1 (March 2005): 23-36. o J.B. Arbaugh, “How Instructor Immediacy Behaviors Affect Student Satisfaction and Learning in Web-based Courses,” Business Communication Quarterly 64, 4 (December 2001): 42-54.

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RELATIONSHIP MAINTENANCE Key Names and Terms John Stewart A humanistic communication scholar from the University of Washington who has applied the concept of the spiritual child to interpersonal communication. Spiritual Child A metaphor for an interpersonal relationship. A couple’s spiritual child is born as the result of their coming together. Like a child, a relationship requires continual care and nurture. Although, as Griffin mentions, Stewart applied the concept of the spiritual child to interpersonal communication, Stewart credits Loraine Halfen Zephyr and John Keltner with developing the term.


§ §

§ § §

For further information on relational maintenance and related issues, see: o Daniel J. Canary and Laura Stafford, Communication and Relational Maintenance (San Diego: Academic Press, 1994); o Steve Duck, “Talking Relationships into Being,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12 (1995): 535-40; o Steve Duck, Meaningful Relationships: Talking, Sense, and Relating (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); o Richard L. Conville, Evolution of Personal Relationships (New York: Praeger, 1991); o Brian H. Spitzberg, The Dark Side of Close Relationships (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998). For discussion of feminist approaches to relationships, see Julia T. Wood, “Feminist Scholarship and the Study of Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12 (1995): 103-20. For a study that connects relational communication to cognitive complexity (creating a link to chapter 13), see Robert Martin, “Relational Cognition Complexity and Relational Communication in Personal Relationships,” Communication Monographs 59 (1992): 15063. For a thorough study of intimacy, see Karen J. Prager, The Psychology of Intimacy (New York: Guilford, 1995). A good recent general collection of essays on relationships is Richard L. Conville and L. Edna Rogers’s The Meaning of “Relationship” in Interpersonal Communication (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998). Films that feature relationships over time include o The Coal Miner’s Daughter; o Same Time Next Year; o Scenes from a Marriage; o Annie Hall; o Love and Basketball o Shadowlands; and o Tender Mercies. 133

§

Other films relevant to this area of communication include The Big Chill and The Four Seasons.

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CHAPTER 11

RELATIONAL DIALECTICS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery study the intimate communication of close relationships. B. They quickly rejected the idea of discovering scientific laws that order the experience of friends and lovers. C. They were struck by the conflicting tensions people face in relationships. D. They believe that social life is a dynamic knot of contradictions. 1. Their theory on romantic relationships parallels work on friendship and family systems. 2. The basic premise is that personal relationships are a ceaseless interplay between contrary or opposing tendencies. 3. Relational dialectics highlight the tensions in close personal ties.

II.

The tug-a-war dialectics of close relationships. A. Contradiction is a core concept of relational dialectics. 1. Contradiction refers to the dynamic interplay between unified oppositions. 2. Every personal relationship faces the tension between intimacy and independence. 3. Paradoxically, bonding occurs in both interdependence with and independence from the other. B. Baxter and Montgomery draw heavily on Mikhail Bakhtin. 1. Bakhtin saw dialectical tension as the deep structure of all human experience. 2. Unlike Hegelian or Marxist dialectical theory, Bakhtin’s oppositions have no ultimate resolution. 3. Dialectical tension provides opportunity for dialogue. C. To avoid the anxiety Westerners experience with paradox, Baxter used terms such as the tug-of-war in her research interviews. D. Relational dialectics is not referring to being of two minds—the cognitive dilemma within the head of an individual who is grappling with conflicting desires. Instead she’s describing the contradictions that are located in the relationship between parties. E. Dialectical tension is the natural product of our conversations. F. Baxter and Montgomery believe that these contradictions are inevitable and can be constructive.

III.

Three dialectics within relationships. A. Although other theories emphasize closeness, certainty, and openness, people also seek autonomy, novelty, and privacy. 1. Conflicting forces in relationships aren’t reducible to either/or decisions.

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2. Dialectical tensions exist within a relationship (internal) and between a couple and their community (external). 3. There is no finite list of relational dialectics. B. Integration and separation. 1. This tension is a primary strain in all relationships. 2. If one side prevails, the relationship loses. 3. Within their social network, this tension is felt as inclusion pulling against seclusion. C. Stability and change. 1. Baxter and Montgomery acknowledge the need for both interpersonal certainty and novelty. 2. In the couple’s relationship with others, this dialectic takes the form of conventionality versus uniqueness. D. Expression and nonexpression. 1. The pressures of openness and closedness wax and wane like phases of the moon. 2. A couple also faces the revelation and concealment dilemma of what to tell others. IV.

A second generation of relational dialectics: Emphasis on dialogue. A. Baxter’s early emphasis with Montgomery was on contradictory forces inherent in all relationships. B. Baxter has increasingly focused on the relational implications of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of dialogue. C. Baxter highlights five dialogical strands within Bakhtin’s thought. Without dialogue, there is no relationship. 1. Dialogue as a constitutive process. a. This dialogical notion is akin to the core commitments of symbolic interactionism and coordinated management of meaning in that communication creates and sustains the relationship. b. A constitutive approach suggests that communication creates and sustains a relationship. c. Differences are just as important as similarities and both are created and evaluated through dialogue. 2. Dialogue as dialectical flux. a. The contradictory forces are in an unpredictable, unfinalizable, and indeterminate process of flux. b. Rather than single binary contradictions, each relational force is in tension with every other pole. 3. Dialogue as an aesthetic moment. a. Dialogue can be “a momentary sense of unity through a profound respect for the disparate voices in dialogue.” b. A meaningful ritual can be an aesthetic moment for all participants because it’s a joint performance of normally competing and contradictory voices.

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4. Dialogue as utterance. a. An Utterance is only one of many communication links forming a dialogic chain based on a minimum of two voices. b. Baxter and Montgomery identify two typical strategies for responding to both voices: Spiraling inversion (switching back and forth between contrasting poles) and segmentation (compartmentalizing different aspects of a relationship). 5. Dialogue as critical sensibility. a. Dialogue is obligated to critique dominant, oppressive voices. b. Baxter opposes any communication practice that ignores or gags another’s voice. V.

Critique: Meeting the criteria for a good interpretive theory? A. Some scholars question whether relational dialectics should be considered a theory at all as it lacks prediction and explanation, and does not offer any propositions. B. Baxter and Montgomery agree and offer dialectics as a sensitizing theory. C. Relational dialectics should be evaluated based on the interpretive standards.

Key Names and Terms Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery Scholars from the University of Iowa and the University of New Hampshire, respectively, who champion the relational dialectics approach to close relationships. William Rawlins A communication scholar at Ohio University who studies the communicative predicaments of friendship. Arthur Bochner A communication scholar at the University of South Florida who focuses on the complex contradictions within family systems. Relational Dialectics An approach to close relationships that emphasizes inherent, ongoing tensions, struggles, and contradictions. Contradiction Ceaseless interplay between contrary or opposing tendencies. Mikhail Bakhtin A Russian intellectual who saw dialectical tension as the deep structure of all human experience. Baxter and Montgomery draw heavily on his work. Internal Dialectics The ongoing tensions played out within a relationship, including integration-separation, stability-change, and expression-nonexpression. External Dialectics The ongoing tensions between a couple and their community, including inclusionseclusion, conventionality-uniqueness, and revelation-concealment. Aesthetic Moment A momentary sense of unity through a profound respect for the disparate voice in dialogue.

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Spiraling Inversion Dialectical conversational strategy of switching back and forth between contrasting voices, responding first to one pull, then the other. Segmentation Dialectical conversational strategy of compartmentalizing by which partners isolate different aspects of their relationship.

Principal Changes This chapter, previously Chapter 11, has been significantly revised to include the second generation of the theory that focuses on the meaning of dialogue and dialectics described as creations of communication rather than motives. In addition, Griffin has updated the Second Look section and an interview with Leslie Baxter has been added to “Conversations with Communication Theorists.”

Suggestions for Discussion Accepting the messiness of relationships So many college students come to the communication major clinging stubbornly to the romantic notion that the perfect relationship lies just around the corner; once it has been discovered, all contradictions and tensions will melt away in an ocean of bliss. The secret to success is finding one’s spiritual double, or someone so close to that mythic entity that differences can be “worked out” through a few late-night, heart-to-heart talks. For such students, Baxter and Montgomery’s approach to communication in close relationships is both disappointing and liberating. Disappointment comes when students realize that in the wake of dialectical difficulties, “happily ever after” is an unlikely possibility. On the other hand, liberation can follow when students come to understand that there’s nothing particularly wrong with them, their parents, or the relational struggles they’ve witnessed and experienced in their lives. Griffin makes a similar point on page 171 as he discusses “a new understanding of people.” More than anything else, this theory frees individuals to accept who they are in relation with others. Furthermore, like the “sadder but wiser girl” wooed by Harry Hill in the musical The Music Man, they’ll find that their knowledge and acceptance of the messiness of intimacy actually increases, rather than diminishes, their chances for ultimate happiness in human relationships. Ultimately, Heraclitus’ maxim that “All is flux, nothing stays still” should not be a statement of despair, but an acknowledgment of a rich reality. Tensions present in all relationships Don’t let your students attribute the presence of irresolvable tensions in James and Sarah’s relationship to her status as a nonhearing person. As Griffin writes, “the tensions they face are common to all personal relationships” (161). Incidentally, students familiar with deaf culture may question the assumptions on which the film Children of a Lesser God is based, premises that are reiterated in Griffin’s discussion of the film. Many deaf people do not compare their world to that of hearing people (and thus would not use words such as “silent” or “muted”) and do not feel they are compromised if they do not speak or lip-read.

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Managing tensions without resolution For those of your students familiar with Marxism and its derivatives, be sure to reiterate Griffin’s point that, unlike dialectical materialism, this theory does not emphasize synthesis or ultimate resolution (162). For better or for worse, Baxter and Montgomery’s tensions are ongoing. For many students, this is a troublesome part of the theory and one they are reluctant to accept. You might find it useful to discuss the coping strategies which are no longer included in Griffin’s chapter. The rather abstract theory may appear more graspable through the analysis of how tensions might be coped with in various relationships. Baxter reviews these points in her article, “Dialectical Contradictions in Relationship Development,” Journal of Social & Personal Relationships 7, 1 (1990): 69-88. Genuine gender differences or perpetuating stereotypical assumptions? As you discuss dialectical tensions with your class, you may wish to float the hypothesis that gender may play some role in relational struggles over dichotomies such as connectedness-separateness and openness-closedness. As we’ll discover in Griffin’s treatment of Deborah Tannen’s work in Chapter 33, some scholars believe that there are typical masculine and feminine responses to several basic relational tugs and pulls. Anticipating Tannen’s work, you can speculate about the theoretical value of casting dialectics in terms of gender. Does it help us to explain the way men and women act, or does it simply perpetuate stereotypes about them? Introducing gender into the equation may reveal much more about the way we think men and women should behave than the way they really do, but knowledge of such expectations can be extremely important. Are, for example, women reticent to express the desire for separateness because they are told they should prefer connectedness? Such questions are very intriguing and may be worthy of class time. A communication theory As Griffin emphasizes on page 162, Baxter argues that the tensions prevalent in relational dialectics are not intrapersonal or intrinsic to people, but interpersonal, brought into being through communication. The point is driven home in the discussion of “dialogue as a constitutive process” (167-68). This distinction is crucial, since it qualifies relational dialectics as a homespun theory of communication, rather than import from a field such as psychology. Given Berger’s comments about the “intellectual trade deficit” (139), it is no wonder that communication theorists are concerned—perhaps overly so—about theoretical turf. The tensions of friendship and other relationships Griffin mentions the work of William Rawlins, who studies the communicative dialectics of friendship. His book-length study, Friendship Matters (mentioned in the Second Look section of the text), is eclectic, highly readable, and full of ideas and examples for class discussion. The fundamental dialectical tensions featured by Rawlins augment those emphasized by Baxter and Montgomery. When we teach this chapter, therefore, we share with students a brief summary of Rawlins’s findings in order to suggest that dialectical tensions are numerous and pervasive in all the relationships of our lives. As noted in the “Further Resources” section below, dialectical research has pushed far beyond only examining romantic relationships. Your students might be interested in discussing what tensions they believe would be found in other relationships.

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Carnivalesque The carnivalesque is a particularly intriguing concept that has attracted considerable attention in the academy—particularly in literary study, rhetoric, and philosophy—in the last twenty years. In historical terms, carnivals—beginning with feasts that took place before the commencement of the Lenten fast—were settings in which social hierarchy and conventional roles were obscured and subverted through humor, masquerade, costume, dance, revelry, and other means of confusing traditional class and gender distinctions. Reviewing other theories Item #2 of the textbook’s Questions to Sharpen Your Focus section is an excellent vehicle for review and may be particularly useful if an exam is looming. If item #3 stimulates productive student response, then you may wish to consider using Essay Question #25. The previous chapter on social information processing discusses the possibility of relationship development through CMC. But, from a dialectical perspective, SIP doesn’t address the competing needs for being known and being mysterious. Ask students how these conflicting desires might be both served and hindered by a computer-mediated relationship. Critiquing the theory Item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook can be used to launch a revealing discussion of the potential difficulties and ambiguities of survey research. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, in fact, he asks his students to respond to the question with respect to three relationships: a good friend, a romantic partner (real or imagined), and a family member. In the Second Edition of the book, Griffin included the sample question in the text of the chapter itself. He went on to discuss explicitly how a midscale response could be interpreted as noncommittal or wishy-washy, when in fact it could really indicate a penchant for both ends of the continuum. He concludes that unless such questions provide the option of multiple responses, dialectical tensions will be masked. By removing this analysis from the text and moving the scale into the questions, Griffin compels the students to think through this intriguing issue on their own. As you discuss the Critique section of this chapter with your class, you may wish to entertain the possibility that this approach to relational communication may be overly broad. If dialectical tension becomes the cause of all relational challenges, then what, specifically, have we really learned? Another way to approach the issue is to ask your class how they could falsify the theory—or, in Baxter and Montgomery’s own terms, the metatheoretical perspective. Also with respect to the Critique section, you may wish to focus some attention on Griffin’s treatment of the “aesthetic appeal” of the theory. Although it’s easy to focus on the inherent messiness of it all, it could be argued that the dialectical form—with its ever-present oppositions and contrasts—has an intrinsic beauty all its own. This is certainly the case with Taoist representations of a similar sort of dialectic, the relationship between yin and yang. Finally, is it realistic to view communication as the primary force behind all dialectical phenomena, when in fact some pushes and pulls seem to exist prior to relational talk? And here, of course, we are back to the intellectual trade deficit issue raised earlier!

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Sample Application Log Glinda In discussing the ways in which couples deal with their various conflicting needs, Baxter overlooked one that has come into play (dare I say) constantly in my romances. I will name it inverse response cyclical alteration (Irca). Irca means that each partner switches from one pole to the other, and their position is inversely correlated to the direction that the other is pulling at that moment. This sounds like it would create unbearable tension, but actually has the effect of balancing out both extremes. When I am being predictable, my boyfriend will do something completely unexpected. Then, when I’m acting completely out of character, he will slow me down with his desire for predictability. And when all I want is to be alone, his desire for independence will save us from over-indulgent self-destruction. So I will likely respond with my own surge of independence; but as I pull away, my boyfriend will suddenly seem to take every opportunity for connection. The Irca seems to keep a relationship balanced, ever changing, yet progressing at a slow and steady pace.

Exercises and Activities Coping strategies If you’d like the opportunity to test out the strategies with your students in more concrete terms, consider something like the following scenario: Shelley and Jim have been dating very seriously for about six months. From the beginning of the relationship, Jim has known that Shelley has kept a private diary that she has never shown anyone. At first, he wasn’t too interested in this activity, but as they have drawn closer, he has become intrigued by her personal writings. Yet whenever he asks if she would share her prose with him, she responds that she needs a secret place to work out her thoughts and emotions. In conversation, she never holds back from him, freely self-disclosing about herself and their relationship, but the diary remains all her own, and Jim is perplexed, even disturbed by this. The more interest he shows in her private writings, the more adamant about her privacy she becomes. What should they do? Media and literary portrayals of the dialectical tensions An excellent example of dialectics, particularly connection-separation, occurred on during the seventh season of Seinfeld in an episode entitled, “The Pool Guy” (#112). In it, the tension between independent George and relationship George comes to light when, to his horror, Elaine invites his fiancée Susan to an art exposition, creating his separate worlds “to collide.” The segment works exceptionally well as many students are familiar with the television show and can relate to George’s desire to keep his worlds apart. A lively discussion usually ensues when students are asked if this technique for managing one’s tensions, a form of segmentation, would “really work.” For an interesting portrayal of the connectedness-separateness and certaintyuncertainty dialectics, see Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, which is available on video. To

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illustrate the certainty-uncertainty dialectic, Steve Hillis of Asbury College uses the popular film The Mirror Has Two Faces. In particular, he focuses on the scene in which the husband, who has been in Paris for some time, returns to find that his wife has made significant changes in her life and appearance. An instructive argument ensues about his expectations for predictability and her need for change.

Further Resources Other relevant essays by Baxter § “A Tale of Two Voices: Relational Dialectics Theory,” Journal of Family Communication, 4, 3/4 (2004): 181-93. § “Relationships as Dialogues,” Personal Relationships 11, 1 (2004): 1-22. § “A Dialogic Approach to Relationship Maintenance,” Communication and Relational Maintenance, ed. D.J. Canary and L.S. Stafford (San Diego: Academic Press, 1994), 25773. § “Dialectical Contradictions in Relationship Development,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 7 (1990): 69-88. § “The Social Side of Personal Relationships: A Dialectical Perspective,” Social Context and Relationships (Understanding Relational Processes 3), ed. Steve Duck (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), 139-65. State-of-the-art research § Erin M. Sahlstein, “Relating at a Distance: Negotiating Being Together and Being Apart in Long-Distance Relationships,” Journal of Social & Personal Relationships 21, 5 (2004): 689-710. § L.A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, and Leah Bryant, “Stepchildren’s Perceptions of the Contradictions in Communication with Stepparents,” Journal of Social & Personal Relationships 21, 4 (2004): 447-67. § Angela Hoppe-Nagao and Stella Ting-Toomey, “Relational Dialectics and Management Strategies in Marital Couples,” Southern Communication Journal 67 (Winter 2002): 14259. § Dawn O. Braithwaite and Leslie Baxter, “‘I Do’ Again: The Relational Dialectics of Renewing Marital Vows,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12 (1995): 17798. § Carol Masheter, “Dialogues between Ex-Spouses: Evidence of Dialectical Relationship Development,” in Uses of “STRUCTURE” in Communication Studies, ed. Richard L. Conville (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 83-101. Literary examples § If you enjoy using literature in your classroom, o I highly recommend selections from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. The poems entitled “On Marriage” and “On Love” are particularly relevant to the connectednessseparateness dichotomy.

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o Although less well known, Denise Levertov’s poem “About Marriage,” in O Taste and See (New York: New Directions, 1962), artfully lends a woman’s perspective to Gibran’s themes. o Eudora Welty’s pensive, subtle story “The Bride of Innisfallen,” which can be found in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 495-518, poignantly captures a young woman’s struggles with the openness-closedness and connectedness-separateness dichotomies. o For your male students in particular, we recommend Patrick O’Brian’s extensive series of sea novels, which features the extroverted, passionate, practical Captain Jack Aubrey and the introverted, cerebral, scientifically minded Stephen Maturin, naval surgeon, naturalist, and secret agent. Aubrey and Maturin’s complex, often tense, always vibrant friendship, which is developed and nurtured in vividly recorded dialogue, illustrates many dialectical elements and demonstrates that long-term close relationships embodying Baxter and Montgomery’s approach need not be romantic or familial. The first novel in the series is Master and Commander, which is also the title of a popular film based on the series.

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CHAPTER 12

THE INTERACTIONAL VIEW Outline I.

The family as a system. A. Paul Watzlawick believes that individuals must be understood within the context of the family system. B. He was a member of the Palo Alto Group, which draws inspiration from Gregory Bateson. 1. They reject the idea that individual motives and personality traits determine the nature of communication within a family. 2. They are less concerned about why a person acts in a certain way than how that behavior affects the group. C. Relationships are complex functions resembling equations linking multiple variables. D. Along with his colleagues Janet Beavin and Don Jackson, Watzlawick presents key axioms describing the tentative calculus of human communication. 1. The axioms comprise the rules of the game. 2. Games are sequences of behavior governed by rules. 3. Each family plays a one-of-a-kind game with homemade rules and creates its own reality.

II.

Axioms of interpersonal communication. A. Family homeostasis is the tacit collusion of family members to maintain the status quo. B. The only way to recognize this destructive resistance to change is to understand the axioms. C. One cannot not communicate. 1. Communication is inevitable. 2. Corollary: one cannot not influence. D. Communication = content + relationship. 1. Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the latter classifies the former. 2. Content is what is said. 3. Relationship is how it is said. 4. Metacommunication is communication about communication. 5. Relationship messages are always the most important element in any communication, but when a family is in trouble, metacommunication dominates. 6. Sick family relationships only get better when members are willing to engage in metacommunication. E. The nature of a relationship depends on how both parties punctuate the communication sequence. 1. Punctuation concerns how a person marks the beginning of an interpersonal interaction.

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2. Punctuation becomes a problem when each person sees himself or herself as only reacting to, rather than provoking, a cyclical conflict. F. All communication is either symmetrical or complementary. 1. The interactional view emphasizes issues of control, status, and power. 2. Symmetrical interchange is based on equal power, whereas complementary communication is based on differences of power. 3. Healthy relationships include both kinds of communication. 4. Relationships can only be assessed through an exchange of at least two messages. 5. Edna Rogers and Richard Farace’s coding system categorizes control in ongoing marital interaction. a. One-up communication seeks to control the exchange. b. One-down communication yields control. c. One-across communication neutralizes control. d. Bids for dominance do not necessarily result in control of the interaction. III.

Trapped in a system with no place to go. A. Family systems are highly resistant to change. B. Double binds are contradictory demands on members of the system. C. The paradox of the double bind is that the high-status party in a complementary relationship insists that the low-status person act as if the relationship were symmetrical.

IV.

Reframing: changing the game by changing the rules. A. Destructive rules can be changed only when members analyze them from outside the system. B. Reframing is the process of altering punctuation and looking at things in a new light. C. Accepting a new frame means rejecting the old one. D. Adapting a new interpretive frame usually requires outside help.

V.

Critique: adjustments needed within the system. A. Recently, Janet Beavin Bavelas recommended modifying some axioms of the theory. 1. Not all nonverbal behavior is communication. In the absence of a senderreceiver relationship and the intentional use of a shared code, nonverbal behavior is informative rather than communicative. 2. A “whole message model” integrates verbal and nonverbal communication. 3. The term metacommunication should be reserved for explicit communication about the process of communicating, not all communication about a relationship. B. Systems theories involving people are difficult to evaluate because of equifinality—a given behavioral outcome could be caused by various interconnected factors. C. Despite these problems, the interactional view has had a terrific impact on the field of interpersonal communication.

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Key Names and Terms Gregory Bateson A prominent anthropologist who inspired the Palo Alto Group. Palo Alto Group A group of theorists committed to the study of interpersonal interaction as part of an entire system. Paul Watzlawick A prominent member of the Palo Alto Group, coauthor of Pragmatics of Human Communication, and champion of the interactional view of family communication. Janet Beavin Bavelas A researcher at the University of Victoria who coauthored Pragmatics of Human Communication and published important modifications of the interactional view in 1992. Don Jackson A coauthor of Pragmatics of Human Communication. Pragmatics of Human Communication Coauthored by Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson in 1967, this book marked the beginning of widespread study of the way communicative patterns sustain or destroy relationships. Game A sequence of behavior governed by rules. Family Homeostasis The tacit collusion of family members to maintain the status quo. Symptom Strategy A ploy by which one seeks to avoid communication by attributing his or her inability to talk to outside forces. Metacommunication Communication about communication, sometimes referred to as communication about relationships. Punctuation The way in which a person marks the beginning of an interpersonal interaction. Symmetrical Communication Interchange based on equal power. Complementary Communication Interchange based on accepted differences in power. One-Up Communication Interchange that seeks to control the exchange. One-Down Communication Interchange that yields control of the exchange. One-Across Communication Interchange that neutralizes control of the exchange. Transitory Communication An interaction that includes one one-across message and one one-up or one-down message.

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Edna Rogers and Richard Farace While at Michigan State University, these communication researchers developed a coding system for categorizing control in ongoing marital interaction. Double Bind A set of mutually exclusive expectations between parties that places the low-status person in a no-win situation. Reframing The process of stepping outside the current perspective and giving new meaning to the same situation. Equifinality A systems-theory assumption that a given outcome could have been effectively caused by any or many interconnected factors.

Principal Changes Previously Chapter 12, Griffin’s treatment remains essentially the same. The chapter has been edited for clarity and precision.

Suggestions for Discussion Applying the theory to one’s own family College students, who are in the midst of the process of breaking many of the formal bonds that link them to their families, are keenly aware of problems with communication that distinguish these complex systems, and thus this chapter may have special resonance for them. To give students license to speak about their own situations, remind them that the phrase “dysfunctional family” is redundant. It’s also important for students to understand at the outset that although the family is the explicit subject of this chapter, much of the theoretical material presented in the interactional view applies well to romantic relationships, friendships, and interpersonal interactions on the job. Effects, not causes One point of contention for many students is the focus on the effects of the family system on communication, but with no accompanying examination of the causes of the family’s unhealthy condition. Watzlawick and his co-authors were committed to this approach, and indeed it is reflected in the title of their book, The Pragmatics of Human Communication. In the introduction, the focus of the book is described as, “the pragmatic (behavioral) effects of human communication, with special attention to behavioral disorders” (p. 13). How might this alter one’s perspective—if the underlying problem is not the subject matter, but the outward signs? To drive this point home, you might consider reading directly from The Pragmatics of Human Communication: The impossibility of seeing the mind “at work” has in recent years led to the adoption of the Black Box concept from the field of telecommunication. Applied originally to certain types of captured enemy electronic equipment that could not be opened for study because of the possibility of destruction charges inside, the concept is more generally applied to the fact that electronic hardware is by now so complex that it is sometimes

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more expedient to disregard the internal structure of the device and concentrate on the study of its specific input-output relations. While it is true that these relations may permit inferences into what “really” goes on inside the box, this knowledge is not essential for the study of the function of the device in the greater system of which it is a part. (pp. 43-44, italics original) If seen in this light, the possible or hypothetical causes of behavior assume a secondary importance, but the effect of the behavior emerges as a criterion of prime significance in the interaction of closely related individuals… In general, we feel that a symptom is a piece of behavior that has profound effects on influencing the surroundings of the patient. A rule of thumb can be stated in this connection: where the why? of a piece of behavior remains obscure, the question what for? can still supply a valid answer. (p. 45, italics original) These two passages often lead to very interesting discussion matter for students, who tend to be immersed in a system where the cause trumps the effect in terms of importance. But in the case of families, taking the system apart is often an impossibility and discovery of root causes an improbability. By assuming Watzlawick, et al.’s Black Box approach, valuable information can be obtained without dismantling the system. Metacommunication In this discussion of the axiom that “communication = content + relationship,” Griffin notes Watzlawick’s assertion that when a family is in trouble, metacommunication dominates the discussion. We would be curious to know if your students confirm this claim, particularly since the ability to discuss patterns of communication is essential to curing an unhealthy family system. Has metacommunication solved problems in their families? It’s also interesting to note that the concept of metacommunication is very similar to Deborah Tannen’s notion of the “metamessage,” which accounts for the relational context of the words spoken in discussion. For Tannen, of course, men and women respond differently to metamessages, an issue not explicitly raised in the interactional view. If you’d like to begin anticipating Tannen’s work (featured in Chapter 33), then you may wish to raise issues of gender tentatively here. One-across messages Due to space considerations, Griffin has not provided very much explanation of the oneacross message, which—according to Rogers and Farace—is a neutralizing or control-leveling utterance that carries the interaction along with a minimized effort at controlling the relationship (181). They view the one-across message as an assertion of extension that continues the flow or theme of the proceeding message. In addition, a noncommittal response to a question (for example, “I don’t know”) would also be classified as a one-across response. You may wish to discuss these messages more fully in class. Reframing Reframing is a difficult concept for many students to understand. To help them, we liken this “aha” experience to a well-known historical shift in paradigm. Our view of the solar system is much enhanced when we realize that the sun, rather than the earth, is its center. We also refer to reframing as “getting out of the fishbowl,” since the whole point is to remove yourself from the system long enough to view it objectively. Reframing is most likely closely

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linked with perspective taking, a fundamental communication skill that may be introduced in other communication courses in your program such as interpersonal communication. In addition, perspective taking is central to the next chapter on constructivism. It important to note that reframing may take place with distance in time and space. For example, students may experience reframing when they go away to college. Having thought through the complex family dynamics that are now removed from their daily lives, they may find that—for better and for worse—they “can’t go home again.” They may find this process a fruitful topic for discussion. Em Griffin elucidates the concept of reframing with the example of the perennially controversial Senator (former First Lady) Hillary Rodham Clinton. He asks his students to discuss how changes in punctuation can allow her to be reframed positively or negatively. The same can be done with her husband’s successor, President George W. Bush.

Sample Application Log Matthew My family could be a perfect model for this theory. As of a year ago, my father has developed a mental disorder that has truly affected every member of our family, not just him. He is the one with the “problem,” however, the rest of the family perpetuated this problem until we learned to reframe the situation. My mother was truly the “enabler” of the family, always providing the back door out for my dad. My brothers and I often had fiery tempers whenever certain subjects pertaining to his disorder would arise. Our resistance to even broach the topic kept everything nicely swept under the rug. It wasn’t until half of my family sought counseling that we had the nerve to approach my dad and exercise “tough love” by no longer allowing his disorder to rule our lives. As the book said, “I can change myself. Others I can only love.” My response to my father changed when I realized that I could not make him well, I could only place my love for him in a different picture frame. It may not be a pretty picture frame, but it’s functional, and contains my love for him in a way that no other picture frame does.

Exercises and Activities Dear Abby: In need of advice Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, #4 can be extremely effective, particularly since the letters featured in these columns are written by interested parties within family systems and thus usually reveal the subjective perspective of an ardent punctuator. It can also be instructive to discuss with students the fact that, in many cases, the responses from the columnists fail to take the intricate family systems into account. So often, the advice offered by the “expert” simply perpetuates the letter writer’s punctuation without helping him or her to reframe, to see the system from the outside. If you or your students are more in tune with the electronic media, then examples from radio therapists or television talk shows may serve you well. The popular radio therapist “Dr. Laura,” for example, produces simplistic, glib advice that usually misses the significance of families as systems. You may also wish to discuss how the view of families (and other groups) as systems contrasts with the more individually oriented assumptions of uncertainty reduction theory and social penetration theory (see also Integrative Essay Question #29 below).

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Reframing: A narrative exercise College teachers and academic advisors often hear versions of the following story from students, particularly those in their first year away from home. It is, we believe, a good illustration of key tenets of the interactional view to which students can readily relate: I enjoyed seeing my old high school friends over the winter break, but my parents really got on my nerves. They nagged me to come in early in the evenings, and they saw to it that sleeping-in was impossible. I had to eat on their schedule. My mother’s having a real problem letting go of mothering me—she still treats me like I’m ten. When I protest she says, “You have to understand that you’ll always be my precious little child.” For some reason, that bothers me, and I stomp around and say something like “I’m an adult, so treat me like one!” or “As my mother, you ought to understand that I need my autonomy!” Then she gets huffy and claims that my manner and tone of voice are unpleasant. Or she’ll say, “I don’t like your body language.” I wish she’d focus on what I’m saying instead of getting off on tangents. One time she said to me, “You just hurt my feelings,” but I hadn’t even said anything! My father’s obsessed with my smoking. He claims that the secondhand smoke bothers him, but it really bothers me that he never complains when his buddies smoke in his presence. He’s also been riding me because I changed my major from premed to communication. He says, “I wish you’d go back to being premed—not for me, but for your own future.” From my first day at home, I tried to be assertive about my needs and values and have done my best not to back down, but they just don’t seem to appreciate my efforts to be my own person. There’s not much giving in around the house. I wish they would let go. And my little sister is acting strange. My parents claim that she was an angel all fall, but when I arrived home I quickly saw that this couldn’t have been the case. The whole time I was there, she was getting into trouble right and left, continually requiring my parents to drop whatever they were doing—especially when it was something with me—to deal with her crises. Just when Dad and I were about to leave to attend a concert I’d been looking forward to for days, she announces that she thinks she’s pregnant. Of course that brings down the house, and the concert is forgotten. And of course she isn’t pregnant. Later, when I called her on it, she told me that I was the one who was out of line. She complains about my yelling, and the way I talk to her. Can you believe that? I told her, “You ought to take my advice because I’m older than you!” She shoots back, “You ought to leave me alone because you don’t really live here anymore!” Honestly, I love my family, but they’re nuts, and they drive me crazy. I’m sure glad to be back at school. Now if I could just get my roommate to listen to reason . . . . After your students have read or heard this narrative (or one like it that you have supplied or one they create about their own college experience), discuss the key theoretical issues it raises. How can they help the storyteller to understand the dynamics of his or her family from a vantage point outside the system? How can this new perspective lead to reframing? The point, of course, is not to vilify the student or particular members of the family, but to understand the complex system in which they interact. Depending on your interests and the viewing habits of students, examples of families in soap operas, dramas, and situation comedies can also serve to enliven the interactional view.

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Punctuation Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, #2 is thought-provoking, although in these times many of our students view the cold war as ancient history. If you or your students enjoy talking about politics, an interactional perspective on nuclear stockpiling may be augmented by a more specific discussion of U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1960s. The dramatic reactions and counterreactions that characterized the controversial rise of Castro, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis can help students to see how adversaries punctuate in order to define provocation and reaction to their own advantage. More recently, political statements involving the Persian Gulf War, the IsraeliArab conflict (which Em Griffin particularly likes to use), the Irish conflict, the Bosnian civil war, the crisis in Kosovo, and the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq have all exhibited the tragic consequences of punctuation. Peace negotiators, the family therapists of global politics, have worked with varying success to help world leaders step outside the systems of national and ethnic conflict to reframe. You might ask your students how al Qaeda terrorists might punctuate September 11. The double bind If students have difficulty coming up with responses to #3 under the textbook’s Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, remind them of this notorious professorial request: “Tell me what you really think of this exam/course/assignment?” That should get them going! Media portrayals Interesting films featuring complex, dynamic family systems include When a Man Loves a Woman, Eat Drink Man Woman, and A River Runs through It. When a Man Loves a Woman features a family wracked by alcoholism. As the wife/mother, played by Meg Ryan, slips deeper and deeper into drinking, other members of the family system alter their behavior to adjust to her condition. A particularly good moment illustrating the dynamic nature of the system is the two-minute breakfast scene that takes place 28 1/2 minutes into the film. It’s also important to note that even after the wife/mother has ceased to drink, other members of the family continue to exhibit the patterns of behavior that began when she was heavily dependent on alcohol. To improve the family system, everyone must reframe. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? showcases a dysfunctional couple who stage—among other things—a clinic on one-up communication. In fact, the play is the central feature in the fifth chapter of The Pragmatics of Human Communication. For historians, A Lion in Winter features the tortured communication of one of medieval England’s most famous—and most dysfunctional— families. Family dysfunction When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he commissions a volunteer troupe of student actors to stage a brief improvised play featuring a family in which the system is out of balance. Such dramas—when carefully debriefed in class—bring light and levity to Watzlawick’s systematic machinery. Griffin also uses these lyrics (sung to the tune of “Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer”) to illustrate the interrelatedness of family dysfunction: I am the Great Enabler There is nothing I wouldn’t do To make sure my kids are happy, Even though they’re chugging brew.

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Tough love is so disturbing; On setting limits I’m not keen. What if my friends and family Look at me and think I’m mean? Life is best when I detach— Let my children feel The consequences of their acts— Choices in world that’s real. But I’m the Great Enabler, Crazy, but I just don’t see, Faced with my codependence, My kid could soon be history.

Further Resources § We highly recommend Janet Yerby, Nancy Buerkel-Rothfuss, and Arthur P. Bochner’s excellent textbook, Understanding Family Communication, 2nd ed. (Scottsdale: Gorsuch Scarisbrick, 1995), which is largely based on the interactional approach championed by Watzlawick and his associates. The book is filled with useful examples and case studies, and it provides in-depth discussion, elaboration, and extension of the basic principles set forth by Griffin in this chapter. It is also a good source for further discussion and examples of social constructionism and relational dialectics. § For more reading on the controversial axiom “one cannot not communicate,” see the exchange among Michael Motley, Janet Beavin Bavelas, and Wayne Beach, Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (1990): 1-20, 593-623. § James Price Dillard, et al. discuss recent developments in relational communication (as opposed to content) in “Structuring the Concept of Relational Communication,” Communication Monographs 66 (March 1999): 49-65. Literary sources § If you enjoy using literature to illustrate theory, I heartily recommend Eudora Welty’s humorous short story, “Why I Live at the P.O,” which can be found in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, 46-56, and numerous literary anthologies. The storyteller’s intriguingly punctuated version of her family’s behavior constitutes a wonderful example of dysfunctional communication. § For collections of stories about families, see Barbara H. Solomon, American Families: 28 Short Stories (New York: Penguin, 1989); Geri Giebel Chavis, Family: Stories from the Interior (St. Paul: Graywolf, 1987).

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Feature films § There is an abundance of feature-length films that highlight families and can be used as fitting examples of the interactional view. Some favorites include Pieces of April, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, and Mi Familia (My Family).

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COGNITIVE PROCESSING Key Names and Terms Information Processing An academic field of study that examines systematic similarities and differences between mental input and output and develops models of mental structures and processes. Structure Akin to computer equipment, structure refers to the mental hardware. Process Akin to computer software, process refers to the mind’s programming tools. Sensory Input Raw material taken in by the brain that is then subject to filtering and sorting. Central Processing Mental process of applying meaning to sensory inputs. Information Storage The classification and retention of information into long-term or short-term memory. Information Retrieval Recalling memories, facts, and information from the brain’s long-term memory. Utilization Response in both actions and thought to retrieved information.

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CHAPTER 13

CONSTRUCTIVISM Outline I.

Introduction. A. Led by Jesse Delia, constructivists view one’s implicit theory of communication as a tool for aligning one’s culture, cognition, and communication. B. Constructivists use Walter Crockett’s role category questionnaire (RCQ) to “get inside your head.”

II.

Personal constructs as evidence of cognitive complexity. A. The core assumption of constructivism is that persons make sense of the world through systems of personal constructs. B. The RCQ is designed to sample these constructs. 1. Constructs are contrasting features we use to classify other people. 2. The RCQ centers on the categories of personality and action that we use to define the character of another person. C. The RCQ is used to measure the respondent’s degree of cognitive complexity. 1. People with a large set of personal constructs have better social perception skills than those with less constructs. 2. Researchers are more concerned with the structure of the constructs than with the content of judgments. 3. Cognitive complexity allows us to make distinctions that are more sophisticated than binary classifications.

III.

Scoring the RCQ for construct differentiation. A. Differentiation concerns the number of separate personality constructs used to portray the person in question. B. Delia makes a good case for the RCQ’s validity. C. Research has established that RCQ scores are independent of IQ, empathy, writing skill, and extroversion. D. Some critics charge that the RCQ simply measures wordiness. E. Constructivists believe that cognitive complexity enhances communication.

IV.

Person-centered messages: the interpersonal edge. A. Delia and his colleagues claim that people who are cognitively complex have a communication advantage over those with less developed mental contructs. B. Person-centered messages reflect an awareness of and adaptations to subjective, affective, and relational aspects of the communication contexts. C. Ruth Ann Clark and Delia’s study of schoolchildren links person-centered messages to cognitive complexity. D. Constructivists assume that strategic adaptation is a developmentally nurtured skill, but not all differences in construct differentiation are due to age.

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E. The capacity to create person-centered messages relates to rhetorical sensitivity, taking the role of the other, identification, self-monitoring, audience awareness, and listener adaptation. F. Cognitive complexity is a “necessary but not sufficient condition” of person-centered messages. V.

Message production: Crafting goal-based plans for action. A. Models of message production can be used to tie cognitive structures to speech acts. B. Berger’s model of goal-directed, hierarchical plans is one such model. C. James Dillard’s goals-plans-action model can also be used to explain the link between cognitive complexity and message production. 1. Goals—what do you want to accomplish? a. Primary goals set into motion an ensemble of lower-level cognitive processes that occur in parallel and align with the overall aim of the primary goal. b. Secondary goals are of less importance than and often in conflict with primary goals. c. People with higher levels of cognitive complexity develop more complex goals for many social situations. 2. Plans-—how to accomplish the goals. a. Procedural records are long-term memory recollections of actions taken in a specific situation paired with their consequences. b. Dillard suggests that we first look for tried-and-true plans to achieve our goals. c. Plan-making usually takes place very quickly and below our level of consciousness. 3. Action—communicating skillfully a. The communication context can be used as a resource by a cognitively complex individual. b. Women use more person-centered messages and score higher on the RCQ than men.

VI.

Beneficial effects of sophisticated communication. A. Brant Burleson demonstrates that sophisticated messages are more comforting than clumsy attempts at social support. B. Burleson and Wendy Samter suggest that the degree of similarity in communicative skill may be more important than sophisticated communication for maintaining close friendships. C. Beverly Sypher and Theodore Zorn suggest that cognitive complexity enhances organizational effectiveness.

VII. Socializing a new generation of sophisticated speakers. A. Constructivist researchers show that cognitive complexity is transmitted culturally from parent to child. B. Because sophisticated messages are more often the product of parents from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, advantage is self-perpetuating.

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VIII. Critique: second thoughts about cognitive complexity. A. Constructivists’ total reliance on the RCQ is problematic. B. Constructivists are open to the charge of elitism unless they champion the development of cognitive complexity across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Key Names and Terms Jesse Delia A communication scholar and acting provost from the University of Illinois who has played a leading role in developing the theory of constructivism. Constructivism A communication theory based on the assumption that persons make sense of the world through systems of personal constructs. Walter Crockett A scholar from the University of Kansas who created the role category questionnaire. Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ) A free-response instrument used by constructivists to measure a person’s cognitive complexity in interpersonal communication. Cognitive Complexity A sophisticated set of mental constructs that enables a person to distinguish subtle differences among people. Construct The cognitive template or stencil we fit over social reality to order our impressions of people. Differentiation A component of cognitive complexity measured by the number of separate personality constructs used to describe someone on the RCQ. Person-Centered Messages Sophisticated communication that reflects an awareness of and adaptations to subjective, affective, and relational aspects of the communication contexts. Causally linked to cognitive complexity, person-centered messages are better able to accomplish multiple goals. Ruth Ann Clark A communication researcher from the University of Illinois who teamed up with Delia to study the link between person-centered messages and cognitive complexity in schoolchildren. James Dillard A communication researcher from Pennsylvania State University who has developed the goals-plans-action model of message production. Procedural Record A recollection of an action taken in a specific situation paired with its consequences. Brant Burleson A communication researcher from Purdue University who has explored the link between cognitive complexity and the success of comforting messages. Wendy Samter A communication researcher from Bryant College who has teamed up with Burleson to test the relationship between cognitive complexity and relationship maintenance. 165

Beverly Sypher and Theodore Zorn Communication researchers from the Virginia Tech (formerly from the University of Kansas) and the University of Waikato, New Zealand (formerly from the University of North Carolina), respectively, who have demonstrated the connection between cognitive complexity and organizational effectiveness. James Applegate A communication scholar from the University of Kentucky who—along with Burleson and Delia—has demonstrated that cognitive complexity is transmitted culturally.

Principal Changes Previously Chapter 8, this chapter constitutes a major revision. The discussion of cognitive processing has been moved so that it now follows the relational development theories. Griffin has included a detailed explanation of how cognitive plans are transformed into specific messages in place of a discussion of O’Keefe’s message design logics. This chapter has also been edited for precision and clarity, and the Second Look section has been updated.

Suggestions for Discussion Cognitive complexity = communication IQ? As you discuss the importance of the RCQ and cognitive complexity with your students, carefully take up the claim that Delia has separated cognitive complexity from other character traits and extraneous factors such as IQ and writing skill (193). The fact of the matter is that in the hands of constructivists, cognitive complexity has gained great prominence. For the sake of argument, at least, we suggest that it has become de facto a communication IQ of sorts, a broad-sweeping measure of a person’s ability to speak, write, and—ultimately—reason about communication effectively. Its very name, cognitive complexity, indicates that it is a measure of the sophistication of one’s thought. In this sense, it is but a small step from the constructivists’ favorite term to intelligence. What are the consequences of putting so much weight on this concept? Another way to address this issue is to ask the following kinds of questions: Should prospective students’ level of cognitive complexity be evaluated for admission to college? Should cognitive complexity be measured en masse by organizations such as E.T.S.? Should such scores be available to academic advisors and professors? Should employers use it to screen potential employees? Should dating services include RCQ scores in their profiles of potential partners? We’re pushing the point here, but you can see the overall logic of the queries. Causation The issue of causation also deserves a few extra minutes of class time. Does cognitive complexity truly enhance or cause message plans, which in turn produce person-centered messages” (198), or is it merely correlated with them? If the latter is the case, then constructivists need to look for the more basic skill or ability that lies behind both cognitive complexity and sophisticated communication.

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Cross-cultural implications Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, we find #4 particularly intriguing and problematic. Although definitive statements here are tempting, it may be a little unfair to be anything but cautiously speculative about this line of inquiry until the theories concerning intercultural communication have been considered. Across cultures, complex goals may reside in seemingly simplistic arguments. Of course issues of translation and the SapirWhorf hypothesis quickly work their way into such a discussion. In sum, we would approach this query as an exercise in theoretical caution. Essay Question #26 below is meant to anticipate such discussion.

Sample Application Log Kerry Because I recently broke up with my boyfriend, I’ve received many expressions of concern and care from friends. Most of them comment on the situation, and ask me how I’m doing. I’ve noticed that some conversations leave me uplifted, and others frustrated or sad. As I read over Delia’s constructivism theory, I realized how the degree of person-centeredness explained the differences in these conversations. A friend had remarked one evening, “Well, I’m sure you feel bad now, but things will be better in the morning. You’ll see.” Thank you. Could she have empathized any less? I recalled how this same person had bulldozed over my feelings last year when I learned that my parents were selling our house. Basically, she told me that new homes were nice and exciting, and that I’d be over the old one in no time. I don’t feel comforted by these interactions. In fact, it’s as if she doesn’t care enough about how I’m feeling to try to understand me. Her words cannot smooth things over, they merely deny the validity of my emotions. The social norm in these situations is to show concern, and undoubtedly my friend felt like that goal was accomplished by what she said. In contrast, another friend said something along these lines in regard to the break-up, “I’m sorry, sweetie. This just stinks. I wish I could say something to make it better, but nothing will. But I know that if God wants you to be together, nothing can mess that future up.” Her more sophisticated message offered me comfort, validated my feelings, and redefined the situation as one in God’s hands. Knowing how much better the communication was when feelings, goals, and constructing a social reality were taken into account, I want to develop sophisticated message in my conversations.

Exercises and Activities Administering the RCQ We strongly recommend that you formally test out the RCQ—constructivism’s principal instrument—on your students. Ideally, the test should take place prior to their reading of the chapter. A good way to do this is to administer the RCQ during the last ten minutes of the class period that falls directly before your discussion of constructivism. Have your students score themselves or one another at home, then bring their results to class the day you actually cover the chapter. Such firsthand experience with the RCQ will give your students a good sense of its strengths and weaknesses. Having taken the test, they’ll be better able to assess the criticism that “it’s merely a measure of loquacity or wordiness” (193). No doubt students who achieve high scores will look favorably upon the RCQ, while those who do not do so well will come up

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with reasons why it is faulty. Either way, they’ll have valuable exposure to the instrument upon which constructivists rely so heavily, and they’ll appreciate more fully Griffin’s critique of the test. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he has his students compose a brief fundraising letter. Next, each student exchanges his or her letter with a partner and identifies the primary and secondary goals within the other’s pitch. After the analysis is complete, students’ conclusions about their partners’ letters are compared to students’ RCQ scores (which have been determined earlier by the process suggested above). Theoretically, the presence of multiple goals and person-centered messages should align with high RCQ scores. What actually occurs in your class?


§

§ §

§

Anne Maydan Nicotera assesses constructivism in “The Constructivist Theory of Delia, Clark, and Associates,” Watershed Research Traditions in Human Communication Theory, ed. Donald P. Cushman and Branislav Kovacic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 45-66. For a strongly worded ideological critique of constructivism, see Patricia Bizzell’s review of The Social Construction of Written Communication, ed. Bennett A. Rafoth and Donald L. Rubin (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988), which appeared in College Composition and Communication 40 (1989): 483-86. Communication Reports 15, 1 (2002) is a special issue on comforting and social support edited by Burleson. Joy Koesten and Karen Anderson explore constructivist issues in families in their article, “Exploring the Influence of Family Communication Patterns, Cognitive Complexity, and Interpersonal Competence on Adolescent Risk Behaviors,” Journal of Family Communication 4, 2 (2004): 99-122. For further discussion of self-monitoring, a trait related to the ability to create personcentered messages, see: o Mark L. Snyder, “The Self-Monitoring of Expressive Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30 (1974): 526-37; o “Self-Monitoring Processes,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 12, ed. Leonard Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 86-131; o “The Many Me’s of the Self-Monitor,” Psychology Today 13 (1980): 32-40.

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INFLUENCE Key Names and Terms Compliance-Gaining Strategies The verbal strategies people use to elicit behavioral compliance to their wishes, usually in the form of promises, threats, explanations, hints, compliments, warnings, accusations, direct requests, and so forth.


§ §

Three good general textbooks are the first and second editions of Daniel J. O’Keefe’s Persuasion: Theory and Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1990 and 2002), and Richard M. Perloff’s The Dynamics of Persuasion (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993). These books offer thorough coverage of social judgment theory,* the elaboration likelihood model, and cognitive dissonance theory, as well as many other approaches to interpersonal influence. Perloff’s Persuading People to Have Safer Sex: Applications of Social Science to the AIDS Crisis (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001) applies the elaboration likelihood model, cognitive dissonance, and many other influential theories to this pandemic. For an intriguing theory of influence focusing on the emotion of fear (which has been a component of influence study since the ancient Greeks), see Kim Witte, “Fear as Motivator, Fear as Inhibitor,” in Handbook of Communication and Emotion: Research, Theory, Applications, and Contexts, ed. Peter Andersen and Laura Guerrero (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998): 423-50.

*Interestingly

enough, O’Keefe elects not to feature social judgment theory in the second edition of his book. (This is why, perceptive readers will note, Griffin references the First Edition in the Second Look section of his chapter treatment of social judgment theory.) Most communication scholars we talked to about this theory like it and believe that it has considerable explanatory power, but admit that it has spurred little new research in recent years. It is, in effect, on ice. 173

CHAPTER 14

SOCIAL JUDGMENT THEORY Outline I.

Three attitude zones: acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment. A. Social judgment theory says that at the instant of perception, people compare messages to their present point of view. B. Individuals’ opinions are not adequately represented as points along a continuum because degrees of tolerance around their positions must also be considered. C. Muzafer Sherif established three zones of attitudes. 1. The latitude of acceptance. 2. The latitude of rejection. 3. The latitude of noncommitment. D. A description of a person’s attitude structure must include the location and width of each interrelated latitude.

II.

Ego-involvement—how much do you care? A. Ego-involvement refers to the importance of an issue to an individual. B. The favored position anchors all other thoughts about the topic. C. High ego-involvement can be defined as membership in a group with a known stand. D. Three features are typical of high ego-involvement. 1. The latitude of noncommitment is nearly nonexistent. 2. The latitude of rejection is wide. 3. People who hold extreme views care deeply. E. Moving from the cognitive structure of a person’s attitude, attention shifts to the judgment part of the theory.

III.

Judging the message: contrast and assimilation errors. A. Contrast occurs when one perceives a message within the latitude of rejection as being more discrepant than it actually is from the anchor point. This perceptual distortion leads to polarization of ideas. B. Social judgment-involvement describes the linkage between ego-involvement and perception. C. Assimilation, the opposite of contrast, occurs when one perceives a message within the latitude of acceptance as being less discrepant than it actually is from the anchor point. D. Although Sherif is unclear as to how people judge messages that fall within the latitude of noncommitment, most interpreters favor a neutral reading.

IV.

Discrepancy and attitude change. A. If individuals judge a new message to fall within their latitude of acceptance, they adjust their attitude to accommodate it. 1. The persuasive effect will be positive but partial. 2. The greater the discrepancy, the more individuals adjust their attitudes.

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3. The most persuasive message is the one that is most discrepant from the receiver’s position, yet still falls within his or her latitude of acceptance. B. If individuals judge a new message to be within their latitude of rejection, they may adjust their attitude away from it. 1. For individuals with high ego-involvement and broad latitudes of rejection, most messages that are aimed to persuade them and that fall within their latitudes of rejection have an effect opposite of what the communicator intended. 2. This boomerang effect suggests that individuals are often driven rather than drawn to the positions they occupy. C. Sherif’s approach is quite automatic. 1. He reduced interpersonal influence to the issue of the distance between the message and the hearer’s position. 2. Volition exists only in the choice of messages available to the persuader. V.

Practical advice for the persuader. A. For maximum influence, select a message right on the edge of the audience’s latitude of acceptance. B. Persuasion is a gradual process consisting of small movements. C. The most dramatic, widespread, and enduring attitude changes involve changes in reference groups with differing values.

VI.

Evidence that argues for acceptance. A. Research on the predictions of social judgment theory requires highly ego-involved issues. B. Studies have demonstrated three significant findings. 1. Messages from highly credible speakers will stretch the latitude of acceptance. 2. Ambiguity effectively places statements within the latitude of acceptance. 3. Dogmatic people have chronically wide latitudes of rejection.

VII. Critique: how wide is your theoretical latitude of acceptance? A. Application of the theory raises ethical problems. B. Like all cognitive explanations, social judgment theory assumes a mental structure and process that are beyond sensory observation. C. Application of the theory is problematic since the analysis necessary to determine an individual’s three latitudes is often impractical. D. Most research fails to confirm the boomerang effect Sherif predicted for messages falling deep in the latitude of rejection. E. Despite these reservations, social judgment theory is an elegant, intuitively appealing approach to persuasion.

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Key Names and Terms Muzafer Sherif A psychologist associated with the University of Oklahoma who developed social judgment theory. Latitude of Acceptance The range of ideas and statements that strike a person as reasonable and worthy of consideration. Latitude of Rejection The range of ideas and statements that a person finds objectionable and unreasonable. Latitude of Noncommitment The range of ideas and statements that a person finds neither objectionable nor acceptable. Ego-Involvement The centrality or importance of an issue to a person’s life. High Ego-Involvement A frame of mind reached when a particular issue becomes extremely important to an individual. It is often accompanied by membership in a group with a known stand on the issue. Social Judgment-Involvement A term for the linkage between ego-involvement and perception. Contrast A judgment that occurs when one perceives a message within the latitude of rejection as being more discrepant than it actually is from the anchor point. Assimilation The opposite of contrast, this judgment occurs when one perceives a message within the latitude of acceptance as being less discrepant than it actually is from the anchor point. Anchor Point One’s favored position within the latitude of acceptance, it secures all other thoughts about the topic. Boomerang Effect Sherif’s prediction that because people who are highly ego-involved have broad ranges of rejection, most messages that are aimed to persuade them and that fall within their latitudes of rejection are in danger of driving them further away from the desired position. Reference Groups Associations that members use to define their identities, these groups can bring about the most dramatic, widespread, and enduring changes in attitude.

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Principal Changes Griffin’s treatment of social judgment theory, previously Chapter 13, remains essentially the same, but has been edited for clarity and precision.

Suggestions for Discussion Extreme positions Griffin’s assertion that “extreme positions and high ego-involvement go together” deserves additional scrutiny from your class (209). A well-known Texas political figure once said that the only things you find in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos, but nonetheless every society contains committed moderates, pragmatists, pluralists, and other catholically minded individuals who feel strongly and believe deeply, but who also search for the middle way whenever possible. Bill Clinton fits this category, as does dedicated mediator and former President Jimmy Carter. Such figures may provide an intriguing test for the categories of social judgment theory. In fact, Daniel O’Keefe clarifies that “egoinvolvement and extremity of most preferred position are distinct concepts” (Persuasion: Theory and Research, 33). He goes on to report that “one might take an extreme stand on an issue without being highly ego-involved” and that “one can be highly ego-involved in a middleof-the-road position” (33). He does, however, confirm that “social judgment theory does suggest that ego-involvement and position extremity will be empirically related, such that those with more extreme positions on an issue will tend to be more ego-involved in that issue” (33). Reference groups Some students may need more explanation of Sherif’s point that “most dramatic cases of attitude change, the most widespread and most enduring, are those involving changes in reference groups with differing values” (212). This complex notion may be better understood if students consider an example. Within a fraternity or sorority, for instance, there may be liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. It’s likely that their shared social bond would enhance the possibility of significant attitude change within the membership. Ask your students for examples from reference groups to which they belong. Essay Question #23 below addresses this issue. Automatic responses Griffin writes that the mental processes described by Sherif are “automatic” and that Sherif “reduced interpersonal influence to the issue of the distance between the message and the hearer’s position” (212). We would encourage you to ask your students to respond to these assertions. Are they bothered by these claims? If Griffin is correct, what are the consequences of these theoretical characteristics? Integrative question #27 takes up this issue. Ties to constructivism In the current edition of the text, this chapter is immediately preceded by the treatment of constructivism, a fact that you might want to exploit in your discussion. Both theories spotlight the cognitive capacities of communicators, and though constructivism is not framed as an influence theory per se, there are clearly areas of the theory that speak to it and, in fact,

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Delia was first concerned with persuasion. You might want to engage your students in a discussion about how a more cognitive complex person is more persuasive and has a greater ability to create person-centered messages within the acceptable range than someone with few mental schemata. Obviously, a greater ability to perspective-take would allow a person to more accurately assess someone else’s position and to imagine how to best influence the other. Persuasion in public speaking classes If your students are having a hard time understanding why social judgment theory may be different from approaches to persuasion they have been taught or currently practice, ask them to compare Sherif’s approach to public speaking classes on campus. In most cases, public speaking texts instruct readers to decide on a specific thesis, then tailor their presentation of the argument to the specific audience. For example, in The Art of Public Speaking, Stephen Lucas discusses “determining the specific purpose” or thesis of one’s speech in Chapter 4, then covers audience analysis in Chapter 5. In Sherif’s case, though, one chooses a very general position, analyzes the audience’s perceptions, and only then selects the specific argument or thesis that is appropriate for maximum effect. It is, as Griffin suggests, a difference that may lead to ethical reservations (214), but nonetheless the theory’s pragmatism is hard to dismiss. Persuading the low ego-involved? Griffin’s chapter does a fine job explaining the issues surrounding persuasion in the context of high ego-involvement, but little is said about those whose ego-involvement would be classified as low. We are told that such individuals have a wide latitude of noncommitment and that they are likely to “see more grays,” but not much other information is given. It would be useful to have students speculate about how we would apply what we know about social judgment theory to persuade those with low ego-involvement. See the application log example, below.

Sample Application Log Toby Time and time again I find myself easily persuaded. So often I find myself thinking, “How did I get talked into this one?” Credit it to my flexibility, willingness to try, or naïve trust in people’s motives. I always pay attention to advice given by a friend or an “expert.” The social judgment theory would say that I simply have a wide latitude of non-commitment. What that means is, I have low ego involvement in the situation. The situation is not a hill to die on, so why should I get my pride involved?

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Exercises and Activities Your own latitudes, attitudes, and ranges of acceptability One of the best ways to engage social judgment theory is to grapple with your own continua and latitudes of attitude. When you assign the chapter, therefore, strongly encourage your students to work through the opinions about the safety of flying, as Griffin directs. In addition to this exercise, which is convincingly analyzed throughout the chapter, we recommend that you distribute a second set of opinions for judgment the day you actually discuss the chapter in class. Taking our cue from the second exercise in the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus section of the textbook, we require our students to evaluate the following series of statements about gun ownership and gun control (other issues about which students naturally express a wide range of opinions include abortion, the death penalty, drugs, and working on group projects): A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N. O. P. Q. R.

If guns were outlawed, only outlaws would have guns. The overall impact and value of gun ownership in America is difficult to measure. Cities and states should have the right to place limits on gun ownership. Guns are a threat to a safe society. Law-abiding citizens should not fear a waiting period for buying guns. Gun control is anti-American. Certain kinds of violent crimes could not be committed without guns. Gun ownership promotes lawlessness. Waiting periods for gun purchase will lead to further restrictions. The Second Amendment does not necessarily guarantee private citizens the right to own guns. Most kinds of guns should remain legal and readily accessible. Citizens should be able to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons. Your chances of dying from a gunshot wound increase by a factor of six if you have a gun in your house. Guns don’t kill people, people do. Although some firearms are questionable, hunting rifles have a legitimate purpose and should remain legal. Have you hugged your gun today? All gun ownership is protected by the Constitution. A ban on assault rifles will control some kinds of violent crime.

After your students have chosen their anchor points and indicated which statements fall within their latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment, have them sketch cognitive maps similar to Figure 14.1. As you discuss the exercise, you’ll find that students choose diverse anchor points and latitudes. Based on the widths of their latitudes and placements of their anchor points, you can determine varying degrees of ego-involvement among them. In addition, you may discover that they have arranged the opinions along the continuum differently. When we used this exercise with our class, we chose the following order: D—H—C—R—E—J—G—M—B—O—K—L—I—N—A—P—Q—F

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As we began to discuss their opinions, though, it became clear that the latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment established by some students required different arrangements of the statements. Students who generally concurred on this issue occasionally expressed strong disagreement on one or two statements. Correspondingly, they located them in very different places along the continuum. Our discussion gave us a newfound respect for the complexity of opinions and the challenge of systematizing them. In order to use this theory to sway others, the persuader must understand the vast differences in the ways individuals structure belief. It’s why persuading a diverse audience is so difficult. The following items reflect diverse attitudes towards the death penalty and work well for the same class exercise as above. A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L.

An eye for an eye is just and biblical. Closure for victim’s families is the most important goal. It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It’s always wrong to take a life. It’s only acceptable with positive DNA evidence. Keeping criminals on death row is too expensive. No one has the right to play God. Repentance is a necessary part of forgiveness. The death penalty is cruel, inhuman, and violates one’s right to life. The decision should be based on each case’s own circumstances. There’s no such thing as rehabilitation. Those without the capital get the punishment.

Used car prices and persuasion on the margins of acceptability If you desire to explore further this kind of experimentation with your students, conduct a similar test with used car prices. Choose a car ad from a current paper that includes a thorough description and a reasonable asking price. Duplicate the ad for each student, but vary the price. For one-fourth of the students, list the price actually given by the ad. For the second fourth, inflate the price by $1,000. For the third fourth, add $2,000 to the price. For the final fourth, raise the price by $5,000. Distribute the ads and ask the students to write whether or not they believe the price is appropriate. If they feel the price is too high, ask them to place a fair bid. To hypothesize about students’ latitudes of acceptance and rejection and to test the boomerang effect, chart the students’ conceptions of fair prices for the car using deviations from the actual asking price as the basis for the two axes. After completing the chart, compare it with Figure 14.2 in the chapter. Did the three inflated prices consistently result in higher estimates of the car’s value than the true asking price achieved? Was there an optimal level of price inflation? The discussion that arises from the exercise may develop into an interesting debate about the ethical assumptions of social judgment theory. Similar experiments can also be conducted with apartment rentals or housing prices, depending on the knowledge and interests of your students. Incidentally, some students may suggest that optimal hours of sleep and fair prices of cars may not be appropriate variables for testing social judgment theory because high ego-involvement is not suggested. This criticism is worth careful consideration. Perhaps it is unfair to look for a boomerang effect in cases in which a strong emotional or value component is probably absent.

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It is important that your students carefully scrutinize the sleep experiment Griffin presents as partial confirmation of social judgment theory, particularly since it also undermines the boomerang effect by demonstrating that even messages that fell into the students’ latitudes of rejection were somewhat persuasive. Be sure they understand that, as Griffin mentions in the Critique, even the irresponsible claim that students need no sleep at all had a positive persuasive effect. (We estimate the effect as approximately the same as the relatively reasonable assertion that students need five hours of sleep.) Feature film illustration When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he finds clips from Dead Man Walking particularly effective. He writes, “This film provides an opportunity to assess attitudes toward capital punishment using latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment. Discuss the cognitive map of Sister Helen, the father of the boy, and the parents of the girl. Do any of these change in response to what others say?” In particular, he recommends two segments: 0:30 (prosecutor in hearing) to 0:39 (end of visit to boy’s father); and 0:45 (visit to girl’s parents) to 0:53 (end of visit). Ego-involvement Griffin also enjoys vivifying the contrast effect by actually enacting the three-bucket experiment found on page 210. To help bring home another important concept, Griffin asks students to identify an artifact in their wallets, backpacks, or on their person that indicates ego involvement. This could be a membership card in a club, association, or interest group, a pin or button, a religious symbol, a book or magazine, a telltale item of clothing, or even a tattoo or piercing. Constructing a persuasive argument Ron Adler has developed the following exercise for applying social judgment theory: You’ve been at your job for about six months. In one sense, things are going well. You have made many suggestions that management has adopted, suggestions that have improved the company’s effectiveness. You run the place when the manager is away, which he often is. You now train all new employees. Both your manager and her boss frequently praise you, saying that you’re the best employee they have ever had. But despite the success and praise, you aren’t getting the rewards you think you deserve. You want the title of “Assistant Manager,” which you believe will strengthen your resume. Your bosses have told you that the company has a policy of not giving this title to part-time employees. (Officially, you work about 30 hours per week, although most weeks you are actually on the job more than that.) You are convinced that you deserve a five-dollar-per-hour raise. This would still mean that you would be earning less than an assistant manager’s salary, even though that’s the job you are currently performing. (They recently gave you a 50-cents-per-hour raise.) You want full health benefits (medical, dental, vision, and life insurance). Again, they tell you that benefits are available only to full-time employees. Apply social judgment theory to improve your position:

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Identify a set of proposals you could make to your bosses about improving your position at work, using the goals outlined in the second paragraph. Array these proposals on a continuum, using the format on page 181 of the text. Identify your boss’s probable latitudes of rejection, noncommitment, and acceptance. Based on what you have learned about persuasion from social judgment theory, identify the proposal that has the best chance of improving your job situation. Be prepared to justify your answer based on the theory.

One of the primary values of this exercise is that it gets students to create a continuum not for themselves, but for another person’s argument. Then, they must choose a strategy based on theoretical principles.

Further Resources § For the original statement of the theory, see Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland’s book, Social Judgment: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change (Oxford, England: Yale University Press, 1965). § Siero, F.W. and Doosje, B.J., “Attitude Change Following Persuasive Communication: Integrating Social Judgment Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model,” European Journal of Social Psychology 23, 5 (1993): 541-54. § Sorrentino, R.M., Bobocel, D.R., Gitta, M.Z., Olson, J.M., and Hewitt, E.C., “Uncertainty Orientation and Persuasion: Individual Differences in the Effects of Personal Relevance on Social Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55, 3 (1988): 35771. § Pollis, N.P., Pollis, C.A., and Rader, J.A., “Attitude Change without Persuasion,” Journal of Social Psychology 84, 2 (1971): 225-32.

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CHAPTER 15

ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL Outline I.

The central route and the peripheral route: alternative paths to persuasion. A. Richard Petty and John Cacioppo posit two basic routes for persuasion. B. The central route involves message elaboration, defined as the extent to which a person carefully thinks about issue-relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication. C. The peripheral route processes the message without any active thinking about the attributes of the issue or the object of consideration. 1. Recipients rely on a variety of cues to make quick decisions. 2. Robert Cialdini has identified six such cues. a. Reciprocation. b. Consistency. c. Social proof. d. Liking. e. Authority. f. Scarcity. D. Although Petty and Cacioppo’s model seems to suggest that the routes are mutually exclusive, they stress that the central route and the peripheral route are poles on a cognitive processing continuum that shows the degree of mental effort a person exerts when evaluating a message. E. The more listeners work to evaluate a message, the less they will be influenced by content-irrelevant factors; the greater the effect of content-irrelevant factors, the less impact the message carries.

II.

Motivation for elaboration: is it worth the effort? A. People are motivated to hold correct attitudes. B. Yet the number of ideas a person can scrutinize is limited, so we tend to focus on issues that are personally relevant. C. Personally relevant issues are more likely to be processed on the central route; issues with little relevance take the peripheral route (credibility cues take on greater importance). D. Certain individuals have a need for cognitive clarity, regardless of the issue; these people will work through many of the ideas and arguments they hear.

III.

Ability for elaboration: can they do it? A. Distraction disrupts elaboration. B. Repetition may increase the possibility of elaboration.

IV.

Type of elaboration: objective vs. biased thinking. A. Biased elaboration (top-down thinking) occurs when predetermined conclusions color the supporting data underneath.

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B. Objective evaluation (bottom-up thinking) considers the facts on their own merit. V.

Elaborated messages: strong, weak, and neutral. A. Objective elaboration examines the perceived strength of an argument. 1. Petty and Cacioppo have no absolute standard for differentiating between cogent and specious arguments. 2. They define a strong message as one that generates favorable thoughts. B. Thoughtful consideration of strong arguments will produce positive shifts in attitude. 1. The change is persistent over time. 2. It resists counterpersuasion. 3. It predicts future behavior. C. Thoughtful consideration of weak arguments can lead to negative boomerang effects paralleling the positive effects of strong arguments (but in the opposite direction). D. Mixed or neutral messages won’t change attitudes and in fact reinforce original attitudes.

VI.

Peripheral cues: an alternative route of influence. A. Most messages are processed through the peripheral route, bringing attitude changes without issue-relevant thinking. B. The most obvious cues for the peripheral route are tangible rewards. C. Source credibility is also important. 1. The principal components of source credibility are likability and expertise. 2. Source credibility is salient for those unmotivated or unable to elaborate. D. Peripheral route change can be either positive or negative, but it won’t have the impact of message elaboration. E. Celebrity endorsements constitute some of the most effective peripheral cues, yet the change can be short-lived.

VII. Pushing the limits of peripheral power. A. Penner and Fritzsche’s study of Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement suggests that the effect of even powerful peripheral cues is short-lived. B. Although most elaboration likelihood model (ELM) research has measured the effects of peripheral cues by studying credibility, a speaker’s competence or character could also be a stimulus to effortful message elaboration. C. It’s impossible to make a list of cues that are strictly peripheral; cues that make a listener scrutinize a message are no longer mindless. VIII. Choosing a route: practical advice for the persuader. A. If listeners are motivated and able to elaborate a message, rely on factual arguments—i.e., favor the central route. B. When using the central route, however, weak arguments can backfire. C. If listeners are unable or unwilling to elaborate a message, rely on packaging rather than content—i.e., favor peripheral route. D. When using the peripheral route, however, the effects will probably be fragile.

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IX.

Critique: elaborating the mode. A. ELM has been a leading theory of persuasion and attitude change for the last twenty years, and its initial model has been very influential. B. Petty and Cacioppo have elaborated ELM to make it more complex, less predictive, and less practical, which makes it problematic as a scientific theory. C. As Paul Mongeau and James Stiff have charged, the theory cannot be adequately tested and falsified, particularly in terms of what makes a strong or weak argument. D. Despite these limitations, the theory synthesizes many diverse aspects of persuasion.

Key Names and Terms Richard Petty and John Cacioppo Psychologists from Ohio State University and the University of Chicago, respectively, who created the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion. Elaboration The extent to which a person carefully thinks about the issue-relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication. Central Route Cognitive processing that involves scrutiny of message content; message elaboration. Peripheral Route Cognitive processing that accepts or rejects a message based on nonrelevant cues as opposed to actively thinking about the issue. Biased Elaboration Top-down thinking, in which predetermined conclusions color the supporting data. Objective Elaboration Bottom-up thinking, in which the facts are scrutinized without bias. Strong Argument A message that generates favorable thoughts when heard and scrutinized. Paul Mongeau and James Stiff Arizona State University researcher and communication consultant, respectively, who charge that descriptions of ELM are imprecise and ambiguous and thus cannot be adequately tested. Robert Cialdini Arizona State University researcher who has identified six peripheral cues that trigger automatic responses. Louis Penner and Barbara Fritzsche University of South Florida psychologists whose study of Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement suggests that the effect of even powerful peripheral cues is short-lived.

Principal Changes This chapter, which previously was Chapter 14, remains essentially the same. Griffin has updated his examples and the Second Look section. In addition, he has edited for clarity and precision.

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Suggestions for Discussion A strict line between the central and peripheral routes? When discussing this chapter, we believe it is important to stress the notion of the two routes as poles on a cognitive processing continuum. Drawing a bold line between the “extensive cognitive work” of the central route and the “automatic pilot” of the peripheral route is theoretically clean and elegant, yet as Petty and Cacioppo stress, it may not be true to the complex reality of influence. We like to discuss, for example, how Cialdini’s six cues for the peripheral route (217) may not always indicate a complete abnegation of strong cognitive processing. For example, the appeal to consistency resembles the very credible rule of justice emphasized by rhetoricians Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 218-19, as well as the argument from precedent, which lies at the heart of legal reasoning. Our judiciary depends upon the practice of marshaling earlier cases as guideposts for present decisions. Social proof may seem mindless at the outset. It is very similar to the rhetorician’s bandwagon fallacy, yet its central mechanism is far from illogical. Thus, in the midst of tough decisions about policy, wise college administrators often research how other schools have handled the same issue. Many times, the trends that other institutions have established encourage a president or dean to follow suit. Heeding authority can be extremely logical if—as is so often the case in this age of increasingly complex technology—the essential reasoning in the case is beyond our expertise. It is perfectly reasonable, for example, to heed the advice of one’s mechanic and replace bald tires, even though the precise physics of friction and steering may be unknown to us. Likewise, although the intricate chemistry of cholesterol is known to very few laypersons, millions of us have wisely altered our long-term eating habits based primarily on the authority of relatively few health professionals. There is skill involved in evaluating persuasive elements such as consistency, social proof, and authority that is both complex and rational. Emotional appeals Petty and Cacioppo’s reason-based approach does not put much stock in appeals to the emotions of the audience. It may be useful to challenge your students to imagine instances when such appeals may be the most appropriate available, even with a motivated audience capable of elaboration. For example, campaigns to ban the killing of harp seals and whales have been based primarily on establishing affection for these creatures. One of the strongest arguments in favor of the death penalty is based on vindicating or avenging the relatives of murder victims, a goal that is primarily emotional in nature. In recent years, many interpretive scholars have come to believe that emotions are legitimate—in fact, essential—components of the persuasive process. Said another way, the rigid distinctions between passion and judgment/reason (or heart and head) are in many academic circles being increasingly challenged. More and more, humanists are coming to believe that emotion and reason work together to forge belief. Instead of compartmentalizing the human psyche, such scholars are piecing together an integrative picture of the mind (and of discourse) that is inclusive, rather than exclusive. Along these lines, Lynn Worsham writes that emotion is “the tight braid of affect and judgment, socially and historically constructed 190

and bodily lived, through which the symbolic takes hold of and binds the individual, in complex and contradictory ways, to the social order and its structure of meanings” (“Going Postal: Pedagogical Violence and the Schooling of Emotion,” JAC 18, 2 [1998], 216). Concerning research in the history of rhetoric, Patricia Bizzell praises scholars who have adopted “radically new methods . . . which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, her body, her emotions, and dare one say, her soul, into the work” (“Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30 [Fall 2000], 16). Thus, the work of Worsham, Bizzell, and others suggests that it is mistaken to think of emotional arguments as peripheral in relation to—or even separate from—logical appeals.* And, although he is hardly a new name, William James makes a very famous argument in “The Will to Believe” that in the arguments most significant to us, we must accept—embrace—the inevitable links between reason and belief, passion, faith, and emotion. Which is central and which is peripheral? Peter Andersen, a communication theorist from San Diego State University, shared with us a very intriguing critique of ELM. He argues that the two routes are misnamed. The central route, because it is seldom used in public discourse, should really be labeled peripheral. Likewise, the peripheral route, because it is the more common road to persuasion, should be considered central. Try this out on your students. Biased and objective elaboration The difference between biased and objective elaboration should also be scrutinized carefully by your students. As Griffin mentions, social judgment theory suggests that our evaluation of arguments is inherently based on our own opinions. Is it therefore possible to receive an objective hearing from a motivated audience? Would an elaboration continuum be more appropriate than a binary opposition here? It’s also important that students expose the potentially circular reasoning that underlies Petty and Cacioppo’s definition of strong arguments. (Essay Question #25 addresses this issue.) A useful classroom exercise would be to attempt to generate more specific criteria for solidly reasoned argumentation. Cialdini’s programmed responses You may want to devote some time to unpacking Cialdini’s programmed response cues with your students. As Griffin mentions in the text, these cues form an automatic pilot response when faced with an influence attempt—they allow for a snap decision. But, be sure to note for your students that Cialdini’s responses do not suggest that we have no cognition about the decision, only that they are already preprogrammed much like the buttons on a car radio. After the user has tuned their dial and saved it to memory, they can be used again without having to think through the listening choices. Bringing back the issue of ethics in persuasion, you might want to ask students if pulling on one of these “presets” is ethical. While short-term response might be favorable, will the persuaded still think well of you if they later feel they have been manipulated by reciprocity, authority, or scarcity?

*

Many classical scholars argue that at least as far back as Aristotle, rhetorical theorists have sought to characterize the inherent logic of emotions and emotional appeals. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. 191

Revising the flowchart No doubt you’ve noticed that Figure 15.1 (the flow chart on p. 218) may be incomplete. As you work down the central route, there is no line showing the path of biased elaboration or “top-down thinking,” which Petty and Cacioppo believe simply boosts the audience’s original beliefs. You may enjoy working with your class to revise the chart to account for biased elaboration. Richard Perloff offers a somewhat more complex chart in The Dynamics of Persuasion, 120.

Sample Application Log Andy It’s the peripheral route that I want to emphasize here. For several years I’ve been aching to go skydiving. My parents, especially my mom, were adamantly opposed. However, two years ago my dream came true. It was near the beginning of the summer and I had just graduated from high school. I was really working on my mom to allow me to go. I’d be turning 18 in a month, so the only thing stopping me was the okay from the parents. I tried everything—literature, brochures, movies—everything I knew about skydiving I shared with them. But no matter what I tried, the answer kept coming back “NO.” Then things changed in my favor. A new employee started at the daycare where my mom worked, and she was an avid skydiver. She was 20 years old and had been jumping for several years now. And thanks to her I was able to go. My mom wouldn’t listen to reason, she wouldn’t read any of the literature that I brought home (the central route), but she listened to this girl she worked with (peripheral route: likeness). I have to admit that the girl at the daycare probably knew less about skydiving than I did, but because my mom liked her, and she felt it was safe, my mom decided it would be okay for me to go. (Of course, now she says I’ll never get to go again, but I’m working on it.)

Exercises and Activities Constructing an argument Griffin’s discussion of Rita’s crusade aptly exemplifies ELM in action, but it may be useful to assign for homework or to discuss in class other situations in which the two routes toward persuasion can be applied. (Essay Question #23 below addresses this issue.) We’ve asked students to imagine that they are development officers putting together a capital campaign for the college. How would they craft their message to encourage alumni to give generously? If your institution is currently involved in a persuasive effort of another sort, it may also serve as a useful case study for ELM. It may be useful to compare such arguments with those made in high-school peer groups to encourage participation in forbidden behaviors such as drinking, sex, and so forth. Media advertising and college recruitment literature also make excellent texts for such analysis. “Need for Cognition Scale” When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he walks through Figure 15.1 (the flow chart on p. 218) very deliberately with the class. With a specific example not included in the chapter, he demonstrates the step-by-step approach of the theory. He is particularly interested in making the point that it is ultimately the audience that picks the route to be taken in the argument.

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Griffin also finds it useful to share with students the “Need for Cognition Scale” he discusses on p. 200. (Footnote 5 in the textbook directs you to the source.) A fruitful exercise would be to administer the 18-item scale to your students. Political pamphlets When Ed McDaniel teaches this theory, he finds political election pamphlets and brochures to be effective illustrators for ELM. Election materials can easily be divided into those directing the reader toward the central or peripheral routes, and those focusing on the peripheral route can be used to point out persuasive cues (e.g., the brochure contains only a list or organizations endorsing the candidate). Adapting a social judgment exercise for ELM Ron Adler’s social judgment exercise (see our treatment of social judgment, Chapter 14) could easily be adapted for ELM. What does ELM elucidate in this communicative situation that social judgment theory does not consider? Likewise, what does social judgment theory make clear that ELM cannot address?


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For a brief history of social influence research, see William Crano’s article, “Milestones in the Psychological Analysis of Social Influence,” Group Dynamics 4, 1 (2000): 68-80. For studies that follow in the tradition of Petty and Cacioppo, see: o Satish Joseph and Teresa L. Thompson, “The Effect of Vividness on the Memorability and Persuasiveness of a Sermon: A Test of the Elaboration Likelihood Model,” Journal of Communication and Religion 27, 2 (2004): 21745. o Arjun Chaudhuri and Ross Buck, “Affect, Reason, and Persuasion: Advertising Strategies that Predict Affective and Analytic-Cognitive Responses,” Human Communication Research 21 (1995): 422-41. Perloff’s Persuading People to Have Safer Sex: Applications of Social Science to the AIDS Crisis applies ELM to disease prevention (80-81). For a discussion of persuasion resistance see B.J. Sagarin, R.B. Cialdini, W.E. Rice, and S.B. Serna’s 2002 article, “Dispelling the Illusion of Invulnerability: The Motivations and Mechanisms of Resistance to Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 3 (2002): 526-41.

Other relevant articles by Richard Petty § Wheeler, S.C., Petty, R.E., and Bizer, G.Y., “Self-Schema Matching and Attitude Change: Situational and Dispositional Determinants of Message Elaboration,” Journal of Consumer Research 31, 4: 787-97. § Tormala, Z.L. and Petty, R.E., “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger: The Effects of Resisting Persuasion on Attitude Certainty,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 6 (2002): 1298-1313. § Petty, R.E., Wheeler, S.C., and Bizer, G.Y, “Attitude Functions and Persuasion: An Elaboration Likelihood Approach to Matched versus Mismatched Messages,” in G. Maio and J. Olson, eds., Why We Evaluate: Functions of Attitudes (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 133-62. 193

Emotions in persuasion § DeSteno, D., Petty, R.E., Rucker, D.D., Wegener, D.T., and Braverman, J., “Discrete Emotions and Persuasion: The Role of Emotion-Induced Expectancies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86, 1 (2004): 43-56. § DeSteno, D., Petty, R.E., Wegener, D.T., and Rucker, D.D., “Beyond Valence in the Perception of Likelihood: The Role of Emotion Specificity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, 3 (2000): 397-416. § Petty, R.E., Cacioppo, J.T., and Sedikides, C., “Affect and Persuasion: A Contemporary Perspective,” American Behavioral Scientist 31, 3 (1988): 355-71. *Note: this article appears in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on the subject of communication and affect. Cialdini’s programmed responses § Guadagno, R.E., Asher, T., and Demaine, L.J., “When Saying Yes Leads to Saying No: Preference for Consistency and the Reverse Foot-in-the-Door Effect,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 27, 7 (2001): 859-67. § Cialdini, R.B., Trost, M.R., and Newsom, J.T., “Preference for Consistency: The Development of a Valid Measure and the Discovery of Surprising Behavioral Implications,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, 2 (1995): 318-28. § Cialdini, R.B., Green, B.L., and Rusch, A.J., “When Tactical Pronouncements of Change Become Real Change: The Case of Reciprocal Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63, 1 (1992): 30-40. Feature films § Four films that feature masterful manipulation of the peripheral route are Glengarry Glen Ross, The Last Seduction, Body Heat, and Bob Roberts.

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CHAPTER 16

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY Outline I.

Dissonance: discord between behavior and belief. A. Identified by Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state that people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold. B. Humans have a basic need to avoid dissonance and establish consistency. C. The tension of dissonance motivates the person to change either the behavior or the belief. D. The more important the issue and the greater the discrepancy, the higher the magnitude of dissonance.

II.

Three hypotheses: ways to reduce dissonance between attitudes and actions. A. Hypothesis #1: selective exposure prevents dissonance. 1. We avoid information that is likely to increase dissonance. 2. Selective exposure works only when we anticipate hearing ideas that run counter to our beliefs. 3. Dieter Frey concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat. 4. Warm personal relationships are the best environment for considering discrepant views. B. Hypothesis #2: postdecision dissonance creates a need for reassurance. 1. The more important the issue, the more dissonance. 2. The longer an individual delays a choice between two equally attractive options, the more dissonance. 3. The greater the difficulty involving reversing the decision once it has been made, the more dissonance. C. Hypothesis #3: minimal justification for action induces a shift in attitude. 1. Conventional wisdom suggests that to change behavior, you must first alter attitude. 2. Festinger reverses the sequence. 3. In addition, he predicts that attitude change and dissonance reduction depend on providing only a minimum justification for the change in behavior.

III.

A classic experiment: “Would I lie for a dollar?” A. Festinger’s minimal justification hypothesis is counterintuitive. B. The Stanford $1/$20 experiment supported the minimal justification hypothesis because subjects who received a very small reward demonstrated a change in attitude.

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IV.

State-of-the-art revisions: the cause and effect of dissonance. A. Most persuasion researchers today subscribe to one of three revisions of Festinger’s original theory. B. Self-consistency: the rationalizing animal. 1. Elliot Aronson argued that dissonance is caused by psychological rather than logical inconsistency. 2. Humans aren’t rational, they are rationalizing. 3. Research such as the $1/$20 experiment provides evidence of self-esteem maintenance. 4. The amount of dissonance a person can experience is directly proportional to the effort he or she has invested in the behavior. C. Personal responsibility for bad outcomes (the new look). 1. Joel Cooper argues that it’s the knowledge that one’s actions have unnecessarily hurt another person that generates dissonance. 2. Cooper concludes that dissonance is a state of arousal caused by behaving in such a way as to feel personally responsible for bringing about an aversive event. D. Self-affirmation to dissipate dissonance. 1. Claude Steele focuses on dissonance reduction. 2. He believes that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction. 3. Steele asserts that most people are motivated to maintain a self-image of moral and adaptive adequacy. E. These three revisions of Festinger’s theory are not mutually exclusive.

V.

Theory into practice: persuasion through dissonance. A. Festinger’s theory offers practical advice for those who wish to effect attitude change as a product of dissonance. B. Apply the concepts of selective exposure, postdecision dissonance, and minimal justification to manage dissonance effectively. C. As long as counterattitudinal actions are freely chosen and publicly taken, people are more likely to adopt beliefs that support what they’ve done. D. Personal responsibility for negative outcomes should be taken into account.

VI.

Critique: dissonance over dissonance. A. Cognitive dissonance may not be falsifiable. B. Festinger never specified a reliable way to detect the degree of dissonance a person experiences. 1. Patricia Devine applauds researchers who have attempted to gauge the arousal component of dissonance. C. Daryl Bem believes that self-perception is a much simpler explanation of attitude change than cognitive dissonance is. 1. His version of the $1/$20 experiment supports his contention. 2. Bem suggests that cognitive dissonance does not follow the rule of parsimony. D. Despite detractors, cognitive dissonance theory has energized objective scholars of communication for 45 years.

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Key Names and Terms Leon Festinger A former Stanford University social psychologist and creator of the theory of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action; an adverse motivation to change a belief. Selective Exposure The principle that people pay attention only to ideas they already believe because discrepant information would be mentally distressing. Dieter Frey A German psychologist who concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat. Postdecision Dissonance Distressing doubts about the wisdom of a decision after it has been made; the resulting need for reassurance is highest the more the decision was important, difficult, or irrevocable. Minimal Justification Hypothesis The best way to achieve private attitudinal change is to offer just enough reward or punishment to elicit public compliance. $1/$20 Experiment Festinger and James Carlsmith’s famous and controversial test of the minimal justification hypothesis, which has been replicated and reinterpreted by many other researchers. Elliot Aronson A University of California social psychologist who argued that cognitive dissonance is caused by psychological—rather than logical—inconsistency. Joel Cooper A Princeton University psychologist who argues that dissonance is caused by the knowledge that one’s actions have unnecessarily hurt another person. Claude Steele A Stanford University psychologist who argues that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction. Patricia Devine A University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist who believes that dissonance needs to be measured more accurately, particularly by a self-report measure of affect. Daryl Bem A Cornell University psychologist who argues that self-perception is a much simpler explanation of attitude change than is cognitive dissonance.

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Principal Changes Previously Chapter 15, Griffin’s treatment of cognitive dissonance has been edited for clarity and precision. In addition, the Second Look section has been updated.

Suggestions for Discussion Minimal justification hypothesis In our experience, this is a difficult chapter to teach because at least one principal tenet of the theory is hard to grasp and/or counterintuitive. In particular, the minimal justification hypothesis perplexes students, who have come to understand that more is better than less. As upwardly mobile individuals, they believe they understand the calculus of rewards and punishments, and they know that the stakes in the professional world they will soon enter are high. We suggest that you tackle their confusion and skepticism head-on. As a class, scrutinize the examples Griffin provides, seeking to determine if other explanations for the reported behavior are more compelling than those offered by the featured theory. Take Griffin seriously, for example, when he asks in question #2 in the textbook’s Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, “The results of Festinger’s famous $1/$20 experiment can be explained in a number of ways. Which explanation do you find most satisfying?” (239). Festinger and Carlsmith’s findings are based on a belief that the $1 liars really think they’re telling the truth when they claim to have enjoyed the boring task. Is this assumption warranted? Are there other explanations besides the minimal justification hypothesis for why students such as Joan would find the island experience more memorable with a lower emphasis on tests (232)? Challenges such as these help students to think critically about the interpretation of key studies and examples. Some students may wonder how one determines the proper minimal level of justification. Can one aim too low? They will be interested to know that Festinger asserts that if the reward falls below a certain minimum, the results will be counterproductive, thus strengthening the audience’s original attitude. Exactly how one determines the proper minimum, of course, is difficult to quantify. The value of a counterintuitive theory To alter the pedagogical perspective slightly, you may wish to propose to your students that cognitive dissonance’s counterintuitive core may be its greatest strength. In a field that is so often perceived as driven by mere common sense and traditional wisdom, it is important to stress moments when knowledge and theory building work against the grain of received wisdom. With your students’ help, generate a short list of important ideas, hypotheses, or theories that were originally considered bizarre, heretical, or nonsensical. Remind them that if common sense were always in charge, the earth might still be flat, the sun might still revolve around it daily, and human flight might remain a fantasy. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t explain everything We suggest that you speculate with your students about the fact that cognitive dissonance may not account for situations in which individuals act rationally, decisively, and on occasion even heroically to eliminate discrepancies between their beliefs and their behaviors. Many people strive to think through the inconsistencies in their lives, and these reason-driven

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struggles lead individuals to give up destructive habits such as substance abuse, join or leave organizations, movements, and churches. Others terminate relationships they believe to be destructive. In extreme cases, when individuals cannot find ways to justify their actions, they commit suicide, an act that offers a particularly strong challenge to the assumption that humans are inherently rationalizing animals. How, for example, would Festinger account for Judas’s death? Why didn’t the fallen disciple simply rationalize that his former master deserved to die, or that the reward money proved the value of his service to the state? Why, if people inherently explain away their dubious actions, are deathbed confessions not uncommon occurrences? Cognitive dissonance has great explanatory power in some instances, but it is hard-pressed to explain the full gamut of human behavior. A negative view of human nature? To put it another way, this theory of behavior and belief does not seem to be built on a particularly flattering or optimistic view of our species, but rather a Hobbesian foundation of human weakness, deficiency, and manipulation. (Integrative Essay Question #31 below seeks to address this issue.) Without falling into rationalization (and thus acting out of the very mindset we seek to understand), can one advocate cognitive dissonance theory and still maintain a positive view of the species and the process of influence? The problem is compounded when one considers the hierarchical emphasis on manipulating rewards and punishments inherent in the theory. Are the great majority of humans mere pigeons, readily handled by the elite cognitive dissonance specialists among us? Does successful persuasion constitute nothing more honorable or value-centered than cagily controlling behavior, stimulating the rationalization process in others by dropping the right-sized feed pellet at the right moment? Such challenges will help enliven your discussion and show your students that the implications of theories truly matter. “Fake it till you make it” If students are perplexed by the counterintuitive proposition that behavior causes attitude, rather than the other way around, you may wish to mention that Alcoholics Anonymous successfully employs this premise to help with recovery. Their motto, “Fake it till you make it,” encourages their followers to go through the motions of the proper lifestyle so that the belief will follow. By practicing abstinence, the recovering alcoholic eventually achieves the healthful mind-set. This positive application of the theory may serve to counteract some of the potentially negative aspects we raised above. $1/ $20 experiment Initially, we were somewhat confused by the section of the chapter entitled “Three State of the Art Revisions: The Cause and Effect of Dissonance.” In his discussion of the major reinterpretations of the classic $1/$20 experiment, Griffin does not explicitly mention the way each scholar theorized both the $1 and the $20 responses to the lie. As Griffin explained it to us, this apparent omission is due to the fact that all of the theorists involved would interpret the $20 response in the same basic way. At the time, $20 was enough money to allow the subjects to rationalize a small lie and thus to destroy any potential dissonance. The key issue in this section, thus, is not the $20 response, but the revisionist scholars’ differing interpretation of the cause and effect of the $1 responses. More specifically, each state-of-theart revision has a different way of understanding the dissonance created when lying for such a small amount of money.

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Falsifiability Another troublesome section of the chapter for students to grasp is the theory’s trouble with falsifiability despite the famous research trial. While the $1/$20 experiment is a hallmark in social psychology, it does not address the problematic questions, “how do we know dissonance existed in the first place?” and “did dissonance cause the change in attitude?” The theory’s inability to validate the existence of dissonance and to document its causal impact creates the appearance of a never-miss-shot. For your students, this idea might take some unpacking. If something is tested, doesn’t that mean it is testable and as such, falsifiable? In the case of cognitive dissonance, this is not necessarily true. You may also want to take some time to remind your students of the important relationship between theory and research. Since the line between the two is frequently and insightfully crossed in this book, we would encourage classroom speculation in this area. Cognitive dissonance and the $1/$20 experiment are inextricably linked—to know one is to know the other. There are other theories featured in A First Look which also have a significant research component (i.e., expectancy violations, functional perspective, cultivation theory, agenda-setting, face-negotiation, and speech codes), and in anticipation of those discussions, you may want to highlight how the two academic activities are related. For students who have already taken a class in research methods, this conversation will also serve as a bridge between the courses. In terms of experimental ethics, for example, we find it intriguing that--as Griffin mentions parenthetically—Festinger and Carlsmith never paid their subjects (233). What does your class have to say about this choice? Connection to communication and the other influence theories An additional difficulty with this chapter is that the connection between cognitive dissonance and communication may seem tenuous to many students. Essay question #29, below, seeks to encourage students to integrate the theory with their discipline. Does social influence by evoking cognitive dissonance constitute persuasion or are you putting the person in an uncomfortable position and then self-persuasion takes over? You might ask your class to speculate on which of the three influence theories requires the most activity on the part of the persuader? Which is most ethical?

Sample Application Log Laura I usually like most people and I feel uncomfortable when I do not like someone or when someone does not like me. A couple of years ago I was a lifeguard and swim instructor. My manager was this woman named “Laura.” Laura was rather bossy and very aloof to me. I worked with her for eight hours a day so I did not know how to respond to how she treated me. I wanted to tell her a couple of ungodly words sometimes and tell her what a jerk she was. Instead I responded with kindness. I complimented her and talked with her often. At first I was uncomfortable because I was faking, but in the end I began to like her and I believe I liked her for the same reasons people thought they liked the experiment after they told the woman how fun it was for a dollar. I didn’t want to feel like I was faking when I was being nice to Laura, so I changed my attitude so I could feel like I was being sincere to Laura. 203

Exercises and Activities Interviewing people who hold beliefs contrary to popular opinion One way to think about cognitive dissonance is the mental stress that comes when new information is introduced that seems to contradict a previously held belief. Although some people are known for their ability to reassess continually their beliefs in light of new data, many individuals will consistently resolve the conflict by discounting the new information. The latter group follows the rationalizing pattern central to the theory featured in this chapter. An interesting take-home exercise is to ask your students to interview individuals who strongly endorse beliefs that have been pummeled by damaging or discrediting information. In many cases, these beliefs concern the innocence or goodness of public figures whose reputations have been tainted by strong evidence of misconduct. On the national scene, such people include Richard Nixon (Watergate), Oliver North (Iran-Contra), Ted Kennedy (Chappaquidick), Marion Berry (drug usage), Bill Clinton (sexual infidelity and dishonesty), O.J. Simpson or Scott Peterson (murdering their wives) or Michael Jackson (child molestation). Some individuals your students may interview are so convinced of the baseness of certain national figures that they quickly discount any possibility of the person’s potential goodness or value. In this case, the subject will explain away any facts that shed positive light on the villains. Popular scapegoats include Yasser Arafat and the PLO, Ariel Sharon and his conservative supporters, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and--not surprisingly--the tainted figures listed above. Local celebrities may also be appropriate subjects for the exercise. In terms of overall belief systems, individuals who adhere to strict creeds such as creationism, Marxism, libertarianism, and Freudianism quickly exhibit cognitive dissonance when one attempts to confuse their beliefs with mere facts. Conspiracy theorists and UFO fanatics are also intriguing subjects for this exercise. The dissonance in us all If you really want to push this issue, it can be useful to show that virtually all of us reduce tension through rationalization in some aspects of our lives. For example, ask students to explain how they can have plenty to eat, while around the world millions of people are starving? How they can enjoy good medical care when millions suffer from curable diseases? How they can consume vast amounts of energy for recreational purposes when most people of the world toil to survive? How they can eat food and wear clothes produced by underpaid workers? Students’--and our own--answers to these questions will be ostensibly rational, but eventually this difficult moral territory defies logical analysis. We cannot explain, so we simply explain away the selfishness and guilt inherent that comes with living the good life in a wealthy nation in a world that contains unbearable suffering, neglect, cruelty, and unkindness. We grimace at Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake,” but ultimately we do little better. Re-creating the $1/ $20 experiment When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he employs volunteers for the purpose of reenacting the famous $1/$20 experiment. Usually, he plays the director and enlists three students to play the roles of the $1 subject, the $20 subject, and the female confederate. The ensuing skit provides a good way to discuss both the original theorizing and the three alternative explanations suggested by Aronson, Cooper, and Steele.

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Feature film illustrations Casablanca, it seems to us, exemplifies aspects of cognitive dissonance theory. Victor Laszlo, who is truly heroic at every stage in the movie, requires no external justification to do the right thing because he is inherently noble. Rick and Ilsa, however, are not inherently so heroic. Because their natural tendency is to put their selfish love affair before the Resistance, they must act themselves into adopting heroic, self-sacrificing attitudes. Rick gives up his seat on the plane out of Casablanca to Victor—spurning the opportunity to flee with Ilsa—and joins the Resistance. Ilsa boards the plane with her husband instead of staying with Rick. Rick’s final speech to Ilsa—in which he exhorts her to leave with her husband, not because it will make her feel good in the short term, but because it will give her long-term satisfaction--depends upon the idea that righteous behavior will cause righteous belief. They become hero and heroine by behaving heroically. For students who find Bogart and Bergman obsolete or hopelessly square, the bad boy turned romantic hero in Ten Things I Hate about You experiences a significant change in attitude toward Kate that demonstrates the same principle exemplified half a century earlier by Rick and Ilsa. Although his initial decision to court Kate is based entirely on financial gain, his fake romantic behavior causes him to fall in love with her. The same can be said of the relationship portrayed in She’s All That. A word about the film Norma Rae. The character of Norma Rae is initially attracted to the labor union not so much because she is a true believer in unionism, but because she is intrigued by the character of Reuben, whom she finds dynamic and attractive. It’s telling that when she first signs up with the union, she expresses her loyalty in personal rather than corporate terms--”I’m with you.” As her involvement in union organizing increases, however, she develops a firm understanding of and dedication to the inherent value of the union itself. Norma Rae’s initial contact with Reuben provides the minimal justification for her involvement, and her endless activity on behalf of the union brings about a decided change in belief. This film also provides a good illustration of symbolic interactionism. Norma Rae becomes the selfconfident, socially responsible person that Reuben consistently reflects back to her. Finally, the developing friendship between Norma Rae and Reuben exemplifies the principles of uncertainty reduction theory.

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For an intriguing application of cognitive dissonance theory to HIV/AIDS prevention, see Perloff, Persuading People to Have Safer Sex: Applications of Social Science to the AIDS Crisis (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000), 82-83. For other recent work on cognitive dissonance, see: o Matz, D.C. and Wood, W., “Cognitive Dissonance in Groups: The Consequences of Disagreement,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88, 1 (2005): 22-37. o Chyng Feng Sun, K. and Scharrer, E., “Staying True to Disney: College Students’ Resistance to Criticism of The Little Mermaid,” Communication Review 7, 1 (2004): 35-57. o Kaplar, M.E. and Gordon, A.K., “The Enigma of Altruistic Lying: Perspective Differences in What Motivates and Justifies Lie Telling within Romantic Relationships,” Personal Relationships 11, 4 (2004): 489-507. o Schumacher, J.A. and Slep, Amy M.S., “Attitudes and Dating Aggression: A Cognitive Dissonance Approach,” Prevention Science 5, 4 (2004): 231-43. o McKimmie, B.M., Terry, D.J., Hogg, M.A., Manstead, A.S.R., Spears, R., and Doosje, B., “I’m a Hypocrite, but So Is Everyone Else: Group Support and the Reduction of Cognitive Dissonance,” Group Dynamics 7, 3 (2003): 214-24. Shinobu Kitayama, Alana C. Snibbe, and Hazel R. Markus apply cognitive dissonance cross-culturally in their article, “Is There Any ‘Free’ Choice?: Self and Dissonance in Two Cultures,” Psychological Science 15, 8 (2004): 527-33.

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ETHICAL REFLECTIONS BUBER AND NILSEN Key Names and Terms Martin Buber A Russian Jewish philosopher whose ethical approach focuses on relationships between people rather than on moral codes of conduct. I-It Relationship An interpersonal relationship in which the other person is treated as a thing to be used, an object to be manipulated. I-Thou Relationship An interpersonal relationship in which we regard our partner as the very one we are, an end rather than a means to an end. Dialogue Mutuality in conversation that creates the between, the interhuman, the transaction through which we help each other to be more human. For Buber, dialogue is a synonym for ethical communication. Narrow-Ridge Philosophy Buber’s notion that the path of dialogic living is distinguished by the tension between subjectivism and absolutism. Ronald Arnett A communication ethicist from Duquesne University who notes that living Buber’s narrow-ridge philosophy requires a life of personal and interpersonal concern. Thomas Nilsen A professor emeritus from the University of Washington who proposes that persuasive speech is ethical to the extent that it maximizes people’s ability to exercise free choice. John Milton A seventeenth-century British poet and political figure whose Aeropagitica argues against prior restraint of any ideas, no matter how heretical. John Stuart Mill A nineteenth-century British philosopher whose On Liberty advocates a free marketplace of ideas. Soren Kierkegaard A Danish philosopher who described the ethical religious persuader as a lover.


Although Buber was not a communication scholar per se, his philosophy has been extremely influential in communication circles. In his interpersonal communication textbook, Bridges Not Walls, for example, John Stewart presents Buber as his foundation for meaningful human communication (36-42, 663-81). Julia T. Wood follows a similar strategy in Everyday Encounters: An Introduction to Interpersonal 211

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§ § § §

Communication, 19-21. For more information on Buber, Richard L. Johannesen’s Ethics in Human Communication is a good general source, as is his entry, “Buber,” in the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition (86-87). For the Buber/Carl Rogers’s connection, see: o Maurice Friedman, The Confirmation of Otherness in Family, Community, and Society (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1983); o Kenneth N. Cissna and Rob Anderson, Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the Potential for Public Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); o Cissna and Anderson, The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogue: A New Transcript with Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); o Anderson and Cissna, “Theorizing about Dialogic Moments: The BuberRogers Position and Postmodern Themes,” Communication Theory 8 (February 1998): 63-104. For a good collection of essays on dialogue, see Rob Anderson, Kenneth Cissna, and Ronald C. Arnett, The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, Voice, and Community (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1994). For the classical source for the analogy between the lover and the persuader, see Plato’s Phaedrus. For a discussion that parallels Griffin’s “topology of false (unethical) lovers” (228), see Wayne Brockriede, “Arguers as Lovers,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 5 (1972): 111. For a distinctly feminine perspective on ethics that borrows from Buber, see Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

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GROUP DECISION MAKING Key Names and Terms Synergy A group product that is greater or better than all of its members could produce working on their own. Robert Bales A Harvard University researcher who developed a method of analyzing discussion. Interaction Process Analysis Bales’s method of analyzing discussion, which distinguishes twelve types of verbal behavior. His approach focuses on task requirements, social-emotional needs, and environmental factors; and it considers the process of communication as the chief method by which groups satisfy these requirements. Irving Janis A Harvard psychologist whose research focused on groupthink. Groupthink Inferior decision making that occurs when group members’ excessive desire for cohesiveness stifles critical comments.

Further Resources Moya Ann Ball’s Vietnam-on-the-Potomac presents from a communication perspective the group decision-making processes in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that escalated the Vietnam War. Ball questions the thoroughgoing rationalism of Hirokawa and Gouran’s functional perspective of group decision making. Her book is particularly significant for discussions of communication theory because it is built upon the work of three prominent theorists featured by Griffin: George Herbert Mead (Chapter 4), Clifford Geertz (Chapter 19), and (as mentioned in our treatment of Chapter 3) Ernest Bormann. Examples from Vietnamon-the-Potomac could be introduced to enrich discussions of any of these theorists. It is important to note that Griffin’s section on small group communication theory exclusively features decision making, a point that Griffin himself explicitly emphasizes at the close of his treatment of the functional perspective (259-60). You may wish to discuss other functions of groups such as support, work, sport, therapy, living, education—as well as speculate about the kinds of theories that might be required to study them. Lawrence Frey’s Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups features several group studies that are not focused primarily on decision making. See, for example: §

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Mara B. Adelman and Lawrence R. Frey, “The Pilgrim Must Embark: Creating and Sustaining Community in a Residential Facility for People with AIDS” (3-22). Frey and Adelman have also produced a full-length study of a residential facility for people with AIDS titled The Fragile Community: Living Together with AIDS (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997). Dwight Conquergood, “Homeboys and Hoods: Gang Communication and Cultural Space” (23-55). 213

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Christee Lucas Lesch, “Observing Theory in Practice: Sustaining Consciousness in a Coven” (57-82).

Recent articles of interest include: § Renee A. Meyers and Dale E. Brashers, “Argument in Group Decision Making: Explicating a Process Model and Investigating the Argument-Outcome Link,” Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 261-81. § John G. Oetzel, “Intercultural Small Groups: An Effective Decision Making Theory,” Intercultural Communication Theory, ed. Richard Wiseman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 247-70. § Dennis Gouran, Randy Hirokawa, Michael McGee, and Laurie Miller, “Communication in Groups: Research Trends and Theoretical Perspectives,” Building Communication Theories: A Socio-Cultural Approach, ed. Fred L. Casmir (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), 241-68. § For a special issue on “Revitalizing the Study of Small Group Communication,” see Communication Studies 45, 1 (1994). Nancy Wyatt provides a feminist perspective in “Organizing and Relating: Feminist Critique of Small Group Communication,” Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques in Communication Studies (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1993), 51-86.

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CHAPTER 17

FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON GROUP DECISION MAKING Outline I.

Introduction. A. Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran believe that group interaction has a positive effect on decision making. B. Hirokawa speaks of quality solutions; Gouran refers to appropriate decisions. C. The functional perspective illustrates the wisdom of joint interaction.

II.

Four functions for effective decision making. A. Hirokawa and Gouran draw on the analogy between biological systems and small groups. 1. Group decision making must fulfill four task requirements to reach a high-quality decision. 2. These tasks are requisite functions of effective decision making—hence the functional perspective label. B. Function #1: analysis of the problem. 1. Group members must take a realistic look at current conditions. 2. Misunderstandings of situations are compounded when group members make their final decision. 3. The clearest example of faulty analysis is a failure to recognize a potential threat. 4. Group members must determine the nature, extent, and probable cause(s) of the problem. C. Function #2: goal setting. 1. A group needs to establish criteria for judging proposed solutions. 2. Without such criteria, it is likely that the decision will be driven by politics rather than reason. D. Function #3: identification of alternatives. E. Function #4: evaluation of positive and negative characteristics. 1. Some group tasks have a positive bias—spotting the favorable characteristics of alternative choices is more important than identifying negative qualities. 2. Other group tasks have a negative bias—the unattractive characteristics of choice options carry more weight than the positive attributes.

III.

Prioritizing the functions. A. No single function is inherently more central than the others. B. As long as a group covers all four functions, the route taken is not the key issue. C. Nonetheless, groups that successfully resolve particularly tough problems often take a common decision-making path: problem analysis, goal setting, identifying alternatives, and evaluating the positive and negative characteristics.

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D. The salience of individual functions is task specific. IV.

The role of communication in fulfilling the functions. A. Traditional wisdom suggests that talk is the conduit through which information travels between participants. 1. Verbal interaction makes it possible for members to distribute and pool information, catch and remedy errors, and influence each other. 2. Ivan Steiner claimed that actual group productivity equals potential productivity minus losses due to processes. 3. Communication is best when it does not obstruct or distort the free flow of ideas. B. In contrast, Hirokawa believes that group discussion creates the social reality for decision making. C. Hirokawa and Gouran outline three types of communication in decision-making groups. 1. Promotive—interaction that calls attention to one of the four decision-making functions. 2. Disruptive—interaction that detracts from the group’s ability to achieve the four task functions. 3. Counteractive—interaction that refocuses the group. D. Since most communication disrupts, effective group decision making depends upon counteractive influence. E. Hirokawa’s function-oriented interaction coding system (FOICS) classifies each functional utterance for analysis. 1. Using FOICS, raters determine which of the four functions an utterance addresses. 2. They also consider whether the utterance facilitates or inhibits the group’s focus on the function. 3. Coding decisions is fraught with difficulty, and Hirokawa continues to refine the methodology.

V.

From the tiny pond to the big ocean. A. In the laboratory, Hirokawa finds that the functional perspective accounts for over 60 percent of the total variance in group performance. B. Hirokawa’s assistants used the FOICS to analyze the role of communication within the groups and judged how well each group met the requisite functions (except identifying alternatives). C. Yet the functional perspective will be unable to forge a stronger connection between communication and good group decisions until it can isolate specific comments that move a group along its path. 1. Raters could judge the quantity but not the quality of statements. 2. Hirokawa believes group decision-making performance is dependent more on quality than quantity of utterances. D. In 1995, Hirokawa studied a four-person medical team in rural Iowa. 1. Team members’ discussions aligned with the four requisite functions specified by the functional perspective. 2. He discovered that the medical services they offered were more satisfying to the patients and less expensive to the state than conventional health care.

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3. This experiment strengthened his faith in the vitality of the functional perspective in a real-world context. 4. Yet in some cases patients got worse, even when the requisite functions were addressed. E. The crucial challenge for group researchers is to discover precisely when a group’s performance of functional requisites yields effective group decisions and when it does not. VI.

Practical advice for amateurs and professionals. A. Be skeptical of personal opinions. 1. Groups often abandon the rational path due to the persuasive efforts of other self-assured group members. 2. Unsupported intuition is untrustworthy. B. Follow John Dewey’s six-step process of reflective thinking, which parallels a doctor’s treatment regimen. 1. Recognize symptoms of illness. 2. Diagnose the cause of the ailment. 3. Establish criteria for wellness. 4. Consider possible remedies. 5. Test to determine which solutions will work. 6. Implement or prescribe the best solution. C. Hirokawa and Gouran’s four requisite functions replicate steps two through five of Dewey’s reflective thinking. D. To counteract faulty logic, insist on a careful process.

VII. Critique: is rationality overrated? A. Although the functional perspective is one of the three leading theories in small group communication, its exclusive focus on rationality may cause mixed experimental results. B. The FOICS method all but ignores comments about relationships inside and outside the group. C. Cynthia Stohl and Michael Holmes emphasize that most real-life groups have a prior decision-making history and are embedded within a larger organization. 1. They advocate adding a historical function requiring the group to talk about how past decisions were made. 2. They also advocate an institutional function that is satisfied when members discuss relevant parties who are absent from the decision-making process. D. Recently, Gouran has raised doubts about the usefulness of functional perspective for all small groups. 1. It’s beneficial for members to fulfill the four requisite functions only when they are addressing questions of policy. 2. Groups addressing questions of fact, conjecture, or value may not find the requisite functions relevant.

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Key Names and Terms Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran Communication researchers at the University of Hawai‘i and Pennsylvania State University, respectively, who developed the functional perspective of group decision making. Functional Perspective A rationally based approach to small group communication that emphasizes requisite functions for reaching high-quality decisions. Requisite Functions The four specific task requirements for good decision making are problem analysis, goal setting, identification of alternatives, and evaluation of positive and negative consequences. Positive Bias The attribute of some group tasks in which spotting the favorable characteristics of alternative choices is more important than identifying the negative qualities. Negative Bias The attribute of some group tasks in which the unattractive characteristics of choice options outweigh positive attributes. Promotive Communication Interaction that moves a group along the goal path by redirecting attention to decisionmaking functions. Disruptive Communication Interaction that diverts, retards, or frustrates group members’ ability to achieve the task functions. Counteractive Communication Interaction that members use to get the group back on track. Function-Oriented Interaction Coding System (FOICS) Hirokawa’s coding system for a group discussion that classifies the function of specific statements. Functional Utterance An uninterrupted statement of a single member that appears to perform a specific function within the group interaction process. John Dewey Previously introduced in Chapter 5, this early twentieth-century American pragmatist philosopher developed the six-step process of reflective thinking. Reflective Thinking Paralleling a doctor’s treatment regimen, Dewey’s rationally based, systematic process of decision making is the prototype of the functional perspective. Aubrey Fisher Critiquing his own work, this late communication theorist identified the problem caused by neglecting the socioemotional dimension of groups, a problem replicated by the functional perspective. Cynthia Stohl and Michael Holmes Critiquing the functional perspective, these communication researchers from Purdue University advocate adding historical and institutional functions to the process.

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Principal Changes Previously Chapter 16, Griffin has updated the Critique and Second Look sections to reflect current scholarship in the area. In addition, the chapter has been lightly edited for clarity and precision.

Suggestions for Discussion The plusses and minuses of parsimony Hirokawa and Gouran’s tightly constructed, highly rational, theoretically elegant approach to small group decision making contrasts instructively with the expansive, epistemologically complex, theoretically amorphous approaches to communication presented by scholars such as Pearce and Cronen and Barthes. (The latter’s theory will be presented in Chapter 25.) The functional perspective—imbued with a faith in reason that is virtually platonic in nature, as well as a willingness to pare down the complex reality of a confusing social process to a few key variables and components—demonstrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of social-scientific theorizing and experimentation, and we recommend discussing these plusses and minuses with your class. Because the rigor and precision of the functional perspective make it an excellent exemplar, we would highly recommend bringing several of Gouran’s and Hirokawa’s articles to class to show your students exactly how this kind of work is done. Furthermore, we encourage you to invite students to test Hirokawa and Gouran’s approach with their own experience. Following Griffin’s lead in the chapter, bring in your own stories or solicit your students’ narratives in order to demonstrate instances when requisite functions were—or should have been—marshaled to help groups reach quality solutions and appropriate decisions. Just as important, ask students if they can recall instances when the socioemotional dimension seemed as or more important than purely rational elements of decision making. Have they experienced situations in which relational issues such as friendship and team cohesiveness, emotional factors such as joy or pride, member attributes such as commitment and experience, prior decision-making histories, or institutional frameworks were salient? Having just completed three weeks of emotionally taxing, but ultimately fulfilling jury duty, Glen found that within this particular group decision-making context, highly personal communication about character, trust, responsibility, fairness, and identification (a Burkeian concept covered in Chapter 23) enabled the group to successfully reach a unanimous verdict. Critiquing the theory As you critique this theory with your students, ask them to consider whether or not the functional perspective adequately treats the potential importance of complex developmental sequences and the emergent aspects of decision making. In some cases, what may be most important about a group’s deliberations is that its goals changed once it began examining solutions. In another case, careful attention to a group’s process might reveal that it began with alternatives before moving back to the problem, only to clarify its goal once it was faced with having to make a choice. Other times, a group may abandon the process after realizing the unfeasibility of every possible solution. In many cases, it does seem as though the

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developmental sequence of events may help us to understand what was most important in a given group’s work. An analogy to writing might help. When students embark upon research papers, we warn them that their theses or foci may change in the process of researching and writing. What they study affects how they view the overall problem. If they knew what they were going to say before they started, then most likely they wouldn’t produce very sophisticated results. Group decision making often resembles such research and composition. If—as students of communication—we focus on the functions atemporally or in terms of simple linear progressions, then we may achieve an elementary understanding of what happens, yet miss the revealing developmental process that takes place. Reduction clarifies, but it may also distort or neglect the most intriguing details of the picture. The functional perspective meets Candyland On several occasions, students have commented that Figure 17.1 (254) reminds them of the children’s board game “Candyland” or “Chutes and Ladders.” At times, we have exploited the connection by bringing in the board from the game and asking students to compare the familiar game with the theory. While there might be a most expedient way of getting to the end, in both cases, there are various possible routes to finishing. Likewise, there are obstacles that can temporary derail your forward progress. After exhausting the connections, ask students to articulate the discrepancies (i.e. there’s only one goal in the game) or to speculate on how the game might be tweaked to be even more reflective of Hirokawa’s theory. For example, how could evaluation of alternatives be incorporated into play? Comparisons with living organisms Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, question #1 asks students to explore intriguing parallels between functional requisites and the functions of living organisms. Does Hirokawa and Gouran’s approach account for reproduction, or is it necessary to bring in the institutional function to create the parallel? Theory of group communication or problem solving We’ve often wondered if the functional perspective is—at its core—more of a theory about problem solving itself than it is a theory about communication’s role in problem solving. Wouldn’t most of the concepts that Griffin discusses in this chapter apply equally well to a group’s deliberations or one person’s thought process? Certainly the quote from Ray and Tom Magliozzi—which has little if anything to do with communication (254)—supports this line of challenge.

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Sample Application Log Melodie I’d like to take the theorist’s opinion that prioritizing, or the developing of a logical progression of a group is essential if it is to function, and look at my summer’s experience. I was the assistant director for S.I.C.M, the children’s program at College Church this summer. Our group of interns struggled with accomplishing tasks, and a large part of that was due to our lack of prioritizing. In the leadership role, our director did point out positive qualities of the members but failed to acknowledge the negatives. In this case one intern was repeatedly late for all group functions, thus causing us an extra hour of time that was not originally scheduled. This soon caused tension in the group but nothing was done about it. We had many decisions to make regarding day camp, scheduling and clubs, but our failure to prioritize our choices and lack of goal setting made the summer an organizational nightmare.

Exercises and Activities Problem solving in rural Iowa Griffin features a discussion of Hirokawa’s experience with a four-person medical team serving rural Iowa communities that had no physician (257-58). Hirokawa claims that in making decisions, they satisfied the requirements that he and Gouran outline in their functional perspective. Ask your students to speculate about this process. More specifically, how do they suppose these budding health professionals came to decisions? What were their deliberations like? Could other factors have crept into the process that Hirokawa ignored or underestimated? Illustrating group decision-making and the FOICS When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he uses volunteers to constitute a decisionmaking body. He then gives them a problem to solve such as the familiar horse-trading problem (Farmer Glen buys a horse for ten dollars. A short while later, his neighbor convinces him to sell it for twenty. Glen soon decides he can’t live without the beast, so be buys it back for thirty. By now the horse is a local celebrity, and another neighbor persuades Glen to sell it for forty. How much has Glen made or lost over the course of the transactions? Answer: twenty dollars ahead, but usually 40-50% come up with a different answer) or a similar puzzle. The key is that the problem needs to have multiple answers. Once the problem-solving group is established, he gives a second group of volunteers the task of using FOICS checklist to chart the first group’s responses as they work toward a decision. This exercise illustrates how a group functions, as well as the difficulty of coding systems such as FOICS checklist. Feature film illustrations For a practical illustration of the functional perspective, Griffin recommends using a two-minute clip from Apollo 13 that begins when Ed Harris picks up chalk (1:28:30). Other films that also work well to illustrate the theory include Ocean’s 11, The Goonies, and School of Rock.

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For additional discussion of the functional perspective, see: o Gwen M. Wittenbaum, Andrea B. Hollingshed, and Paul Paulus, “The Functional Perspective as a Lens for Understanding Groups,” Small Group Research 35, 1 (2004): 17-43. o Lise VanderVoort. “Functional and Causal Explanations in Group Communication Research,” Communication Theory 12, 4 (2002): 469-86. o Elizabeth E. Graham, et al., “An Applied Test of the Functional Communication Perspective of Small Group Decision-Making,” Southern Communication Journal 62 (Summer 1997): 269-79. o Kathleen M. Propp and Daniel Nelson, “Problem-Solving Performance in Naturalistic Groups: A Test of the Ecological Validity of the Functional Perspective,” Communication Studies 47 (Spring 1996): 35-45.

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CHAPTER 18

ADAPTIVE STRUCTURATION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Scott Poole developed adaptive structuration theory to address issues of group stability vs. group change and free choice vs. determinism based on social structure. B. Poole wants group members to understand that they create groups as they act within them.

II.

Phasing out the phase model. A. Until recently, researchers thought that they identified a universal pattern for small group decision making. B. A single-sequence model was generally accepted. 1. Orientation—efforts are unfocused because goals are unclear. 2. Conflict—factions disagree on approach to problem. 3. Coalescence—tensions are reduced through peaceful negotiation. 4. Development—group concentrates on ways to implement a single solution. 5. Integration—group focuses on tension-free solidarity rather than task. C. Marshall Poole did not accept the single-sequence model. D. In his early research, Poole discovered that only a quarter of the groups followed the single-sequence model. E. He became convinced that group dynamics are far too complicated to be reduced to a few propositions or a predictable chain of events. F. He also believed that group members affect outcomes. G. Poole, Robert McPhee, and David Seibold studied the work of Anthony Giddens. 1. Giddens suggests that people in society are active agents. 2. Poole adapted Giddens’s macrotheory of societal structuration to the microlevel of small group activity.

III.

Structuration according to Giddens. A. Structuration refers to the production and reproduction of the social systems through members’ use of rules and resources in interaction. 1. Interaction reflects Giddens’s conviction about free will. 2. Rules and resources are used interchangeably with the term structures. a. Rules are implicit formulae for action. b. Resources are all personal traits, abilities, knowledge, and possessions people bring to interactions. 3. Production happens when people use rules and resources in interaction. 4. Reproduction occurs when actions reinforce features of the systems already in place. B. Giddens’s concept of structuration inspires Poole’s adaptive structuration theory. 1. Poole calls his theory adaptive because group members intentionally adapt rules and resources to accomplish goals.

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2. 3.

Structuration is more complex than the single-sequence model. Poole believes that the value of a theory of group decision making hinges on how well it addresses the complexities of interaction.

IV.

Interaction—concerns of morality, communication, and power. A. Poole assumes that group members are skilled and knowledgeable actors who reflexively monitor their activities. B. Morality, communication, and power are combined in every group action. C. Advocacy can sometimes hurt rather than help a reticent member of the group. D. Communication in small groups makes a difference. E. Adaptive structuration has a critical edge.

V.

The use and abuse of rules and resources. A. Rules are propositions that indicate how something ought to be done or what is good or bad. B. Resources are materials, possessions, or attributes that can be used to influence or control the actions of the group or its members. C. Rules and resources can constrain or empower group members D. Appropriation occurs when rules and resources are borrowed from parent organizations or from the larger culture.

VI.

Researching the uses and rules and resources. A. Poole’s research with Gerry DeSanctis explores how groups use computerized group decision support systems (GDSS) to improve decision making. B. The computer system is designed to support democratic decision making. 1. Equal opportunity to participate. 2. One vote per person. 3. Anonymous idea generation and balloting. C. Poole and DeSanctis call the values behind the system the spirit of the technology. 1. The spirit of the technology is the principle of coherence that holds a set of rules and resources together. 3. A faithful appropriation of technology is consistent with the spirit of the resource. 4. An abuse of rules and resources is described as ironic appropriation.

VII. Production of change, reproduction of stability. A. Poole emphasizes product—that which is produced and reproduced through interaction. B. Giddens’s concept of duality of structure means that rules and resources are both the medium and the outcome of interaction. 1. In terms of group decision making, the decision is affected by rules and resources, but it also affects those structures. 2. Duality of structure explains why some groups are stable and predictable and others are changing and unpredictable. C. Resources and rules can change gradually through interpenetration of structures.

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VIII. How then shall we live . . . in a group? A. Groups create themselves, yet members don’t always realize this. B. Poole wants to empower low-power members to become agents of change within their groups. C. He recommends small, nonthreatening changes. IX.

Critique: Tied to Giddens—for better or for worse. A. Adaptive structuration is one of the three leading theories of group communication. B. Adaptive structuration privileges human choice and accounts for both stability and change. C. Adaptive structuration gains credibility because of its connection to Giddens. D. Adaptive structuration’s critical edge seems tame for a theory rooted in the ideas of Giddens. E. Ken Chase argues that Giddens fails to provide a steady moral compass for ethical communication. F. Poole, as well, does not ground his theory on ethical assumptions. G. The tie to Giddens brings with it a level of complexity that can be confusing. H. Poole himself believes that group theories have failed to capture the imaginations of students and practitioners.

Key Names and Terms Marshall Scott Poole A professor of communication at Texas A&M University who developed adaptive structuration theory. Robert McPhee and David Seibold Communication scholars at Arizona State University and the University California, Santa Barbara, respectively, who share Poole’s interest in the work of Anthony Giddens. Anthony Giddens A British sociologist who developed the macrotheory of structuration. Structuration The production and reproduction of social systems through group members’ use of rules and resources in interaction. Interaction Action based on free will. Rules Propositions that make value judgments or indicate how something ought to be done. Resources Materials, possessions, and traits that can be used to influence or control the actions of the group or its members. Production The use of rules and resources in interaction. Reproduction The reinforcement of system features already in place, maintaining the status quo.

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Adaptive Structuration Theory Poole’s application of Giddens’s concept of structuration to small group decision making. Appropriation The process of borrowing rules and resources from parent organizations or the larger culture. Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) Media technology used to promote idea creation and democratic decision making in computer-assisted conferences. Gerry DeSanctis Poole’s colleague (University of Minnesota) in studying how groups adapt computer technologies. The Spirit of the Technology The principle of coherence that holds a set of rules and resources together. Faithful Appropriation of Technology An appropriation that is consistent with the spirit of the resource. Ironic Appropriation Thwarting the intended use of rules and resources. Duality of Structure Rules and resources that are both the medium and the outcome of interaction; they affect and are affected by what is done. Interpenetration of Structures Gradual change within a group due to the merging of discrepant rules and resources. Ken Chase A communication scholar from Wheaton College who questions the moral grounding of structuration.

Principal Changes The basic content of this chapter (formerly numbered 17) remains the same. Griffin has clarified the Critique section, updated the Second Look references, and edited for clarity and precision.

Suggestions for Discussion Challenging material As Scott Poole himself admits (273), this theory is slow going for undergraduates. Even in this highly accessible form, therefore, the material presented here may present a significant pedagogical challenge. We recommend emphasizing the element of empowerment. At its heart, the theory pushes individual agency, an awareness that “groups create themselves” (271), democratic decision making and power sharing. These are concrete concepts/values that should be important to students. In addition, it’s important to stress that although Poole’s research program is very high-tech, the basic tenets of the theory apply in low-tech environments as well. Ultimately, this is not a theory about advanced computer programs and electronic devices but about effective talk in a group setting.

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Focusing on the core concepts Just as interpersonal deception theory (Chapter 7) posed a difficulty in presenting a broad-ranging theory in a short amount of time, adaptive structuration encounters a similar obstacle. Here, the challenge is providing enough details of the expansive macrotheory (Giddens’s structuration) so as to provide an adequate departure point into the microtheory (Poole’s adaptive structuration). While clarifying the whole of structuration would require devoting significant amounts of time, it is very feasible to introduce students to a few key ideas. We focus on the definition of structuration as the “production and reproduction of the social systems through the members’ use of rules and resources in interaction” (265). Here, the key terms include interaction, production and reproduction, and rules and resources. Interaction focuses on the person’s ability to be an active participant in shaping the social structures within which they live and work. Part of that “activeness” is derived from the duality of structure—the ability to produce and reproduce structures through use (or disuse). Taking a course of action, such as a play for power against a domineering co-worker or reassuring a tentative colleague of their value, essentially serves two purposes. They institute that course of action and produce the structure, while also restating how things are done, thereby reproducing a structure. Finally, you might want to tackle the concept of rules and resources as something that the individual has and can pull on during an interaction. A rule implies a course of action as right or appropriate and a resource enables the person during an interaction. Challenge your students to define what resources they have as students and what rules direct their actions. In his theory, Poole adapts these concepts to the microcosm of group interaction, and with some basics under their belts about the macrotheory, your students might grow more comfortable with this adapted form as well. An important dose of levity Without a doubt, structuration is fairly heady stuff from which you and your students might welcome some relief. At this point, we recommend that you introduce your students to a terrific website: http://www.theory.org.uk. On this British website, its creator David Gauntlett takes a genuine yet irreverent approach to social theory. The centerpiece of the site is the “theory trading cards,” which provide a picture and basic facts about leading social theorists using baseball card styling. The cards, which are now commercially available through AltaMira Press, include figures such as Giddens, Erving Goffman (featured in Chapter 4), and Stuart Hall (whose cultural studies approach is the subject of Chapter 26). Also not to be missed is the Lego Ò set, “Giddens in his study.”

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Sample Application Log Chris As a piano teacher, my method of communication with all students in a lesson is fairly consistent. The “rules and resources” are fairly well established. The student comes with the assignment she’s been practicing and her musical knowledge and abilities, and I come with my musical knowledge from studies and experience as a teacher and performer. Our communication is largely patterned. We chat for a couple of minutes (non-music related). Then we begin with warm-ups (scales, etc.). Student plays, I listen, and then we discuss and work in musical concepts. The same with their repertory assignments. My student Michael and I tend to be more of an example of adaptive structuration theory than a fixed structure. One week, Michael met me at the door, excited about a musical piece and with multiple questions. We sat down and got right to work with hardly a greeting. This change, on his part, facilitated a change of outcome (no chit-chat, just work) and structure; we have adopted this right-to-work-and-talk-later approach in succeeding weeks. Additionally, at one lesson, Michael expressed an interest in learning to improvise. This was out of our typical structure of communication, but we took lesson time to talk about it. Since then, we began experimenting with improvisation in his lessons and now incorporate it into a few minutes of each lesson.

Exercises and Activities Student juries as an experiential learning tool Research on jurors’ deliberation conducted by Sunwolf and David Seibold (for reference, see listing in the textbook’s A Second Look) suggests a useful classroom exercise to help students understand the complexities of adaptive structuration theory. Divide students into groups and give them summaries of legal cases for which they will act as juries. Each jury should address five issues as follows: (1) (2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

How should the group pick a leader (foreperson)? How should jurors communicate their opinions on the appropriate verdict? (Consider the following specific situation: what is the best way to take a vote on what the verdict should be?) What should be done if a juror wishes to communicate with someone outside the group in order to get information that could affect the verdict? (Consider the following specific situation: what should the jury do if a juror is confused about the legal instructions and wants assistance from the judge?) What should jurors do if one member is “deviant”? (Consider the following specific situation: what should be done if one juror reveals that he or she was not truthful with the judge about past experiences that could affect his or her decision in the case?) How long should jurors discuss the verdict, and how should they handle disagreements about how long to talk?

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As they discuss the questions above, groups should also step back and consider how they are arriving at their answers. In other words, participants should consider, in terms of adaptive structuration theory, the rules that the group creates as well as the resources that group members bring to the decision-making process. This discussion can help students address particular issues from this chapter, such as the ways in which rules and resources can potentially both constrain and empower groups members and the influence that the larger culture has on rules and resources. In addition, the case of jury deliberations illustrates another principle of adaptive structuration theory—that rules and resources can have an effect upon decision-making structures themselves. For example, the fact that some resources people would bring to jury deliberations—such as racial prejudice—would bias their decisionmaking leads to the screening out of jurors with potentially problematic attributes. Adaptive structuration in your class When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he likes to apply the theory to his classroom. What rules are followed and what resources are present? Have certain students become leaders, and to what effect? What kind of appropriation is taking place? How do we judge whether an appropriation is faithful or ironic? How might democratic decision making be enhanced and quiet students be empowered? Griffin also likes to reflect with his students about the relationships between adaptive structuration theory and CMM. Griffin particularly wants them to see that Poole’s work puts much more emphasis on the greater environment that surrounds and helps shape persons-in-conversation. (Integrative Question #27, below, is designed to explore this ground.)


For additional discussion of adaptive structuration, see: o Noshir S. Contractor, “Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Structuring Processes in Group Decision Support Systems,” Human Communication Research 19 (June 1993): 528-68. o Marshall Scott Poole, Andrea Hollingshead, and Joseph E. McGrath, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Small Groups,” Small Group Research 35, 1 (2004): 3-16. This issue of Small Group Reseach is the first of two parts dedicated to theoretical perspectives in group research. o Michele H. Jackson and Marshall Scott Poole, “Idea-Generation in Naturally Occuring Contexts: Complex Appropriation of a Simple Group Procedure,” Human Communication Research 29, 4 (2003): 560-91.

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For additional information on structuration, we recommend: o David R. Seibold and Karen Kroman Myers’ chapter, “Communication as Structuring,” in Gregory J. Shepherd, Jeffrey St. John, and Ted Striphas, eds., Communication as . . . Perspectives on Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 143-52. o Shaun Best, A Beginner’s Guide to Social Theory, chapter 5, “Anthony Giddens: Theorising Agency and Structure” (London: Sage Publications, 2003). o Philip Cassell has assembled an extensive selection of Giddens’s writings in his 1993 edited work, The Giddens Reader (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

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ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION Key Names and Terms Classical Management Theory An approach to organizing that values productivity, the precision and efficiency that result from a division of labor, a hierarchical chain of command, and tight discipline. Mechanistic Approach Closely allied with classical management theory, a functional approach to organizational communication that sees organizations as machines designed to accomplish specific goals, with workers as interchangeable parts. Living Systems Approach An approach to organizational communication that views organizations as living organisms that must constantly adapt to a changing environment in order to stay alive. Cultural Approach An approach to organizational communication that looks for shared meanings that are unique to a given group of people. Critical Approach An approach to organizational communication that is built on the assumption that people who are affected by an organization’s policy are legitimate stakeholders and should be invited to participate in decisions that affect them.

Suggestions for Discussion First, we’d like to make a point that is relevant to the entire section on organizational communication—young adults tend to have difficulty relating to this material. Although most of them have had some experience in the working world, they compartmentalize their employment, categorizing it in a fashion that militates against speculative thought and theorizing. Work is something they do for money, but it’s not yet an important component of their lives. As you’ve no doubt discovered, this is not the case with issues such as romantic and familial relationships or gender differences, which they think about constantly and enjoy discussing in both concrete and abstract ways. The principal challenge in these three chapters, thus, may be getting your students motivated to focus on this material. (You’ll be relieved to know that older or returning students tend to respond more enthusiastically. Because they’ve experienced the working world and understand its importance and farreaching influence, they find such theorizing relevant and intriguing.) One way to get the younger set involved is to focus on organizations they belong to that are not work related—churches and religious groups, clubs, social fraternities, athletic teams, special interest groups, their high schools, and so forth. Another approach for soliciting discussion is to use the mechanistic approach of classical management that Griffin introduces in this section as a means of characterizing the communication present in many of the jobs students typically perform. Those who have worked in fast-food restaurants and other assembly-line industries will note that Taylor’s approach is still alive and well in American organizations at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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When we teach organizational communication, we like to share with our students a few passages from Frederick Taylor’s classic study, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and Row, 1947), which epitomizes the mechanistic approach. Consider, for example, the “motivational” discussion between the manager and the hypothetical worker named Schmidt on pages 44-46. The following pronouncement about productivity is also very revealing: It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and of enforcing this cooperation rests with the management alone. The management must supply continually one or more teachers to show each new man the new and simpler motions, and the slower men must be constantly helped until they have risen to the proper speed. All of those who, after proper teaching, either will not or cannot work in accordance with the new methods and at the higher speed must be discharged by the management. (83)

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David Grant, et al. provide a good collection of recent essays in Discourse and Organization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). Weick’s work is particularly well represented in this text.

Feature film illustrations § Anne Nicotera from Howard University recommends the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times, which silently, yet brilliantly portrays the mechanistic approach. § John Gribas from Idaho State University recommends the film The Efficiency Expert, which provides an opportunity for applying a variety of approaches to organizations. § Dutch Driver from McMurry College suggests the quirky Coen Brothers send-up of It’s a Wonderful Life, The Hudsucker Proxy. Basic organization texts § For more detailed discussion of the basic approaches to organizational communication quickly outlined by Griffin, we recommend: o Tom D. Daniels, Barry K. Spiker, and Michael J. Papa, Perspectives on Organizational Communication, 4th ed. (New York: Wm. C. Brown/McGraw-Hill, 1996). o Charles Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole, Strategic Organizational Communication, 5th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001). § For an interesting study of organizational communication that builds on many of the theories featured in A First Look at Communication Theory, see Robert L. Heath, Management of Corporate Communications: From Interpersonal Contacts to External Affairs (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994). Feminism in organizational communication literature § Feminist perspectives are presented by:

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o Marlene G. Fine, “New Voices in Organizational Communication: A Feminist Commentary and Critique,” in Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques in Communication Studies, 135-66. o Maryanne Wanca-Thibault and Phillip K. Thompkins, “Speaking Like a Man (and a Woman) About Organizational Communication: Feminization and Feminism as a Recognizable Voice,” Management Communication Quarterly 11 (May 1998): 60621. o Karen Lee Ashcroft, “‘I Wouldn’t Say I’m a Feminist, But . . .’: Organizational Micropractice and Gender Identity,” Management Communication Quarterly 11 (May 1998): 586-97. o Dennis K. Mumby, “Feminism, Postmodernism, and Organizational Communication Studies: A Critical Reading,” Management Communication Quarterly 9 (February 1996): 259-95. o Mumby and Cynthia Stohl, “Feminist Perspectives on Organizational Communication,” Management Communication Quarterly 11 (May 1998): 622-34. Organizational communication and cultural studies § David Carlone and Bryan Taylor examine the relationship between organizational communication and cultural studies in “Organizational Communication and Cultural Studies: A Review Essay,” Communication Theory 8 (August 1998): 337-67. Effective communication in organizations § Patrick O’Brian’s novels, which we introduced in our treatment of relational dialectics, provides—through copious examples of naval command—excellent case studies of topdown organizational communication that is hierarchical, rigidly structured, and highly formal. What is particularly interesting about these examples is even though the basic structure of organizational communication varies little from ship to ship, considerable variation in effectiveness of communication can be observed. Thus, the subtleties of communication that exist within the overall basic structure, such as a captain’s ability to tolerate some bottom-up communication—determine which crews perform well and which fail, which ships are “happy” and which are surly, and which sailors remain loyal to their captains and which turn their backs on their superiors. On the whole, O’Brian’s novels serve as rich case studies for all three theories presented in this section of A First Look.

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CHAPTER 19

INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Karl Weick focuses on the process of organizing rather than the structure of organizations. B. He equates organizing with information processing. C. His model of organizing describes how people make sense out of confusing verbal inputs.

II.

Organizing: making sense out of equivocal information. A. Uncertainty denotes a lack of information. B. Equivocality refers to situations where at least two interpretations are equally valid. C. When information is equivocal, people need a context or framework to help them sort through the data. D. Face-to-face interaction is crucial when an organization faces equivocal information.

III.

Sensemaking in a loosely coupled system. A. Universities are loosely coupled, which is to their advantage. B. Requisite variety is the degree of complexity and diversity an organization needs to match the level of equivocality of the data it processes. C. Since universities handle complex information they will fail at sensemaking unless they are loosely coupled. D. Weick prefers biological over mechanical models of organization. E. The basic unit of interconnectedness is the double interact. 1. It consists of three elements—act, response, and adjustment. 2. Its importance is why Weick focuses more on relationships within an organization than on an individual’s talent or performance. F. The university illustrates double interacts in a loosely coupled system. 1. Individual departments and units on campus are not closely connected. 2. Loose coupling allows the university to absorb shocks, scandals, and stupidity.

IV.

Organize to survive in a changing environment A. Weick applies Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest theory to organizations. B. The ultimate goal of an organization is survival. C. Some people organize in a way better adapted to survive than do others. D. Unlike animals, organizations can change when their members alter their behavior.

V.

The three-stage process of social-cultural evolution. A. Social-cultural evolution is a three-stage process: enactment, selection, retention. B. Enactment: don’t just sit there; do something.

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1. Organizations have open boundaries with the outside environment, which they partially create through their activity. 2. The failure to act is the cause of most organizational ineffectiveness. 3. Weick believes that action is a precondition for sensemaking. 4. Language is action, which is why organizations need to have many meetings. C. Selection: retrospective sensemaking. 1. Selection is aided by two tools—rules and cycles. 2. Rules—stock responses that have served well in the past and have become standard operating procedure—are effective when equivocality is low, but fail to clarify situations when many conflicting interpretations are possible. 3. The act-response-adjustment cycle of the double interact is more effective in situations of high equivocality. 4. As cycles increase to handle complex data, reliance on rules decreases. 5. Two studies confirm Weick’s hypotheses about rules and cycles. D. Retention: treat memory as a pest. 1. Retention is the way organizations remember. 2. Too much retention creates a network of rules that reduces the flexibility necessary to respond to complex information. 3. However, some degree of collective memory is necessary to provide stability for the organization. 4. Weick seeks an ongoing tension between stability and innovation—managers should not overemphasize past experience. 5. Organizations fail because they lose flexibility by relying too much on the past. VI.

Critique: the strengths and weaknesses of metaphor. A. Weick makes his theory interesting with provocative metaphors, vivid examples, and startling statements. B. His sociocultural application of Darwin’s theory shares the advantages and disadvantages of all metaphors. 1. The metaphor vivifies and explains a difficult concept. 2. Unfortunately, it becomes ideology if taken too far, justifying cutthroat capitalism or quashing all conflict. C. Some managers criticize Weick’s quick-draw managerial approach. D. Nonetheless, he defends the position that any strategic plan is better than inaction.

Key Names and Terms Karl Weick A professor of organizational behavior and psychology at the University of Michigan and champion of the information systems approach to organizations. Organizing A way to make sense out of equivocal information. Uncertainty A lack of information that requires one to seek more facts.

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Equivocality Situations where people face the choice of two or more alternative interpretations, each of which could reasonably account for what’s going on. Requisite Variety The degree of complexity and diversity an organization needs to match the level of ambiguity of the data it processes. Loose Coupling A characteristic of some systems in which causal inference is difficult because relations are mediated, intermittent, dampened, and delayed; typically, different parts of the system have a widespread yet marginal effect on each other. Tight Coupling An organizational system in which the feedback loops of the double interacts of one part of the system are tightly connected with those of other parts of the system. Double Interact A communication cycle that consists of act, response, and adjustment. Charles Darwin A nineteenth-century biologist whose theory of evolution serves as a metaphor for Weick’s systems approach to organizations. Enactment Proactive communication in which members of an organization invent their environment rather than merely discover it; action that is a precondition for sensemaking. Open-System Theory For organizations, the environment is as much an output as it is an input. Selection The interpretation of actions already taken; retrospective sensemaking. Rules Stock responses that have served well in the past and have become standard operating procedure. They are effective when equivocality is low. Cycles Double interacts best employed in situations of high equivocality. Retention The way organizations remember.

Principal Changes Previously Chapter 18, this chapter has been edited for clarity and precision. In addition, the Second Look section has been updated. Otherwise, it remains essentially the same.

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Suggestions for Discussion Weick’s theory as innovative and provocative When discussing Weick’s work with your class, it’s very important to emphasize the bold iconoclasm with which he writes about organizations. Weick’s unorthodox, revolutionary pronouncements and innovative, artful metaphors are as captivating as they are controversial. To reinforce this point, you may wish to read or summarize the delightful music analogy Weick marshals in his artful article, “Organizing Improvisation: 20 Years of Organizing,” which Griffin includes in his Second Look section. Share with your students his daring approach to improvising. Weick’s “Act, then think!” approach creates a wonderful counterpart to the methodic rationality of the functional perspective. If you teach these two chapters back to back, in fact, make the most of the differences. Integrative Essay Question #30, below, provides a vehicle for such comparisons. In an interview on Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Mike Meyers describes how important it is to keep writing despite feeling uninspired or experiencing writer’s block. He states that it is better to write poorly and revise it later than to not write at all. He tells a story of Bill Murray’s writing days for the comedian Gilda Radnor. When uninspired moments arose, Bill would write his stuff and then write, “and then Gilda does something funny.” It strikes us that Mike’s comments mirror Weick’s “Act, then think!” Interpretivism in contrast to scientific certainty Integrative Essay Question #29 below seeks to explore the connection Griffin establishes between Weick’s approach to sensemaking and the basic tenets of information and uncertainty reduction theories. Like Shannon and Weaver and Berger, Weick is concerned with the ways in which people gather and process information in order to reduce uncertainty/equivocality. Unlike these more empirical researchers, though, Weick is less concerned with scientific precision. He avoids both the simple elegance of Shannon and Weaver’s model and the axiomatic rigor of Berger’s theory. In fact, Weick’s view of organizational communication is intentionally amorphous; by focusing on the act of organizing rather than the structure of organization, he leaves behind the concrete for the abstract. Weick’s belief in the efficacy of action demonstrates a Jamesian faith that transcends scientific certainty. There is a humanist’s flair to his work—characterized by a fondness for paradox, an urge to challenge intuition, to doubt, and to exercise skepticism, a willingness to forego certainty, and an interpretive agility—that distinguishes him from his more scientifically minded colleagues. In addition, his interest in the ongoing tension between stability and innovation gives his work a dialectical feel reminiscent of Baxter and Montgomery’s approach to interpersonal relationships (see Integrative Essay Question #32 below). It should not come as a surprise, thus, that in the concluding chapter of A First Look at Communication Theory, Griffin places Weick in the fourth category of his theoretical continuum, far to the right of Shannon and Weaver and Berger, who are firmly located in the first category. In the privacy of our own study—with only you watching—we might position Weick in the middle position of the continuum, but we entirely agree with Griffin that significant theoretical distance exists between Weick and the strict empirical camp.

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Tightly and loosely coupled organizations In the textbook under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, question #3 features an element of the systems approach that Griffin is not able to discuss in detail during the chapter—the tightly coupled organization. Essay Question #22 below, which further probes the potential advantages of tight coupling, may serve as a useful follow-up question in this discussion. It is important, it seems to us, for students to see that tight coupling can— depending on the particular features of the organization in question—be an invaluable structuring principle. For example, many organizations that specialize in routinized, yet intricately interrelated and highly time-sensitive transactions and procedures require the coordination created by tight coupling. Essay Question #21 below takes up the potential disadvantages of loose coupling. What happens, for example, when a university is criticized or threatened financially by an outside source such as a legislative body or governing board? Although the president of the institution will offer his or her official response, the school as a whole lacks the organizational coherence to respond with one voice and action. Thus, it may appear weak and ineffectual in the eyes of outsiders. This may be one reason many universities receive so much flak these days. A tightly coupled corporation, however, may be able to respond more decisively and uniformly to criticism from beyond its walls, thus giving the appearance of control, discipline, and direction. Connections to adaptive structuration Based on the layout of the textbook, it is likely that you will teach Poole’s adaptive structuration and Weick’s information systems theories back to back. We suggest you capitalize on the opportunity as the theories bear a considerable resemblance to each other. For both theorists, reality, whether in a small group or an organization, is a dynamic occurrence—people create reality as they experience it. To do so, people sometimes fall back into existing patterns and at other times they seem to “make it up as they go along.” Poole and Weick incorporate this changeability into their theories, and in doing so can explain either when things remain status quo or go in a new direction, a strength of each theory. You might want to discuss with your students other areas of overlap such as the enactment-selectionretention cycle’s link to the duality of structures. Finally, ask your students to speculate on what rules and resources help us to organize. Integrative essay question #33 below picks up on this theme. Weick in small businesses On occasion, we have encountered students who are frustrated with Weick’s counterintuitive claims based on either their own or their parents’ experience as a small business owner. We have found it very interesting to engage students in a discussion about what effects Weick’s suggestions would have on the local, family business. Does it make good, responsible business sense to do something and figure it out later? With the encroachment of big business and corporate establishment on Main Street America, would a failing businessperson do better by identifying options and weighing them carefully before acting or by making a bold, yet uncertain step forward? For Weick, these actions may not be contradictory as the assembling of new information and developing a plan of action serves to reduce uncertainty and equivocality. Taking no action and ignoring one’s eroding business is a

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fatal flaw in organizations according to Weick, but is it fair to say that a business owner’s act may be to gather information upon which to get a response and to adjust? Continuing with the theme of small or local businesses, you may want to discuss with your students the comfort of familiarity. Weick argues that organizations would do better to shed the known in favor of the innovative (286), but for some businesses sameness may be its greatest asset. Like going into an old five-and-dime store that has everything or a restaurant that hasn’t updated the interior in 20 years, people are drawn to places that are “just like I remember it.” If there is a local establishment near your school that falls into this category, you might consider asking your students how Weick’s ideas about retention might alter this local institution. A trick question Essay Question #28 below may be a bit of a trick. The best answer to this either/or query is that it constitutes a false dilemma. As Griffin tells us, “Symbolic interaction is action. Whenever managers say something, they are actually creating a new environment rather than merely describing a situation” (284). Thus, the most successful response should begin by setting the questioner straight.

Sample Application Log Brian Each person employed by media production services, myself included, is carefully trained on how to run sound in Edman Chapel. Often, we are given specific instructions about what microphones to set up where so that everything is set long before the client shows up. Sometimes when the client arrives they have changed their mind about how they want things set up. When the scenario is cut and dried as to what we can and cannot do, we tend to rely on past rules. More often than not, the situation requires a judgment call; in this case we look to the cycle of act-response-adjustment. As we talk further with a client about what they want, we reduce equivocality and are better able to adjust. However, I am often tempted to remember how I’ve seen my boss act in similar situations and construct a network of rules about how I should act. According to this theory, this means that I’ve lost some flexibility in dealing with problems and will not be able to adjust as quickly as I should.

Exercises and Activities Retention and collective memory Weick suggests that managers should “treat memory as a pest” (286). To discuss this issue within the context of your university or college, ask students to come up with rules that your institution has adopted or tacitly practices for which no good reason can be found—either because none ever existed or because no one can remember the original rationale. On some campuses students might wonder why classroom desks are set (sometimes bolted to the floor) in rows when discussion is the major form of interaction; why people wear black robes, hoods, and funny hats to graduation and convocation; why first-year students are not allowed many of the freedoms given other students; why the regular school year lasts only nine months; why athletes are granted special privileges; why English composition is required, yet courses in

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public speaking and listening are not; why many coaches are paid more than renowned professors; and why grades are so important. To be balanced, of course, it’s important to emphasize the counterpoint that some degree of collective memory is necessary to provide stability for the organization. Students should be able to provide examples of instances in which your institution calls upon retained knowledge to help itself respond intelligently to problems. The same line of inquiry can be conducted with respect to smaller organizations to which students belong such as sororities, fraternities, churches, and families. (Essay Question #27 below addresses the issue of retention.) The organizing of families It may be revealing, in fact, to ask your students to imagine parenting in terms of managing. How do double interacts function within the family structure? Is “Act, then think!” an appropriate guideline for parental decision making? Encourage them to draw on their own family experiences as they respond to such questions. Double interaction and connections to interactional view When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he uses Weick’s approach to analyze his own college. He asks students to discuss how buildings are named, how professors’ names are listed in the catalog, and so forth. He also makes a particular point of emphasizing—and exemplifying—the assumption that survival is a more important goal than the stated aims of an organization (282). He stresses that you absolutely must demonstrate the concept of the double interact for them, using an example of your own to reinforce the book’s treatment. Finally, he likes to use the interactional view as a way of characterizing the systematic approach championed by Weick. Just as family systems are comprised of intricately related individuals, so organizations are built of a network of relationships. In both contexts, one cannot understand a problem in isolation, but must look at the complex web of relations inherent in any situation. Pictionaryâ, the Weick way Here’s an exercise from Carey H. Adams of Southwest Missouri State University that you may wish to try: How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What You Draw? An Experiential Game for Teaching Karl Weick’s Model of Organizational Sensemaking Learning Objective: To illustrate Karl Weick’s concepts of equivocality and the enactmentselection-retention process of equivocality reduction. Materials Needed:

25-30 drawing tasks, as in the game Pictionaryâ Large drawing surface and writing utensils (e.g., whiteboard, flip chart) Paper and writing utensils for participants

Group Size:

10-25

Time Required:

45-60 minutes

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Instructions Choose four people to serve as artists. These four artists will rotate drawing clues. Place remaining participants in groups of 3-4. Explain that participants will be playing a game similar to the popular Pictionaryâ but with several modifications. The rules of the game are as follows: 1. Each artist will be given a list of 8-10 drawing tasks. They will rotate drawing one picture at a time. Artists may choose to draw their tasks in any order, and artists may consult with one another. 2. Artists will draw each picture in its entirety before players are allowed to guess aloud. When the artist is done, he or she sits down. 3. After the artist sits down, participants may discuss the drawing and generate guesses. Note: Although participants are seated in groups of 3-4, no instructions are given regarding whether they are to play as teams or as an entire group. Participants may discuss the drawing any way they choose, but they may not communicate directly with the artist. 4. Participants can generate as many guesses as they like, but final guesses are to be held until the end of the game (i.e., when time is called, participants will be asked to list all of their guesses at one time). 5. Participants will indicate when they are finished discussing the drawing. At this point, the artist may choose to modify his or her drawing based upon the group’s discussion. The artist also may choose to leave the drawing as is. 6. After the artist passes or makes modifications, participants may discuss the drawing one more time. At no time may the artist indicate in any way whether players have guessed correctly. 7. Drawing rules: a. No talking by the artist. b. No nonverbal indicators by the artist (e.g., head nods, pointing, etc.). c. No letters or numbers allowed in drawings. d. The facilitator may disallow pictures for any rule violation. 8. Announce a time limit for the game (typically 30-40 minutes). Note: It may take the group a few minutes to get into a rhythm, and enthusiasm will build as the game progresses. In this case, you may want to extend the time limit as the round nears completion. 9. Announce that players will be rewarded according to the following formula: # answers x .5 x % correct answers = points Points may be extra credit, participation points, or some other reward. Ex:

24 answers x .5 x 75% correct = 8 points

10. Players and artists can develop any strategy they choose within the rules of the game. Applications § Drawings represent equivocality, i.e., inputs with multiple plausible meanings. § Guessing is enactment, i.e., bringing inputs into the field of perception and interpretation; perceptions of drawings are shaped by initial and subsequent guesses. § Processing of inputs leads to selection of relevant information.

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§ § § §

§

§

Useful information is stored in retention for future guesses, e.g., players begin to recognize elements of artists’ drawing strategies; artists develop strategies they perceive as effective and use them repeatedly. Easy pictures are solved quickly using assembly rules, e.g., some pictures are easily recognizable; a familiar format is quickly recognized and used by players. Players engage in communication cycles when sufficient assembly rules are not available and/or inputs are highly equivocal, e.g., discussion is more extensive, more guesses are generated, or more disagreement over guesses is expressed. The entire game demonstrates the reduction of equivocality. o Players enact their environment by choosing strategies and establishing game procedures. o Players must find a way of retaining rules and information for use in making final guesses. Artists also are reducing equivocality. o Drawing is enactment. o Recognizing what clues are understood is enactment. o Retaining what has worked and using it again or building on it is retention. Some words and pictures are more equivocal than others, i.e., they present a greater number of equally acceptable interpretations or meanings.

Discussion Questions for Debriefing § How did the absence of feedback affect you? § Did you choose speed or accuracy as a strategy to gain the most points? How did you arrive at that choice? How did that choice affect the way you approached the game? § Did artists’ second attempts tend to increase or decrease equivocality? Why? § What system did players devise to deal with equivocality? § (If the facilitator told players the categories for drawings, e.g., place, person, action) Did telling you the drawing category always help reduce equivocality? Why or why not? § What strategies were retained? Why? § If you could play the game again, what would you do differently? § Did the group ever talk itself out of right answers? How did that happen? Did more talk create more equivocality? § Did assembly rules always work? Did they sometimes cause more confusion than they relieved because they didn’t seem to fit the drawing? For example, artists often will use the “sounds like” symbol of an ear, but a difficult “sounds like” clue may distract players from a more straightforward visual clue. § Was there enough participation among players? § Did artists’ adding to their drawings sometimes create more equivocality than it reduced? § What kinds of feedback did players and artists use? § What effect did being seated in groups have on players? Did they assume they were in competitive teams? Did they ignore the fact that they were in “groups”? Did players discuss why they were in groups? § What was the most equivocal drawing? What made it equivocal? § How did artists choose clues to draw? Did they change their strategies as the game progressed? § To what extent did players rely on assembly rules vs. communication cycles? Why?

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For recent writings by Weick, see: o Weick discusses idea generation in his article, “Mundane Poetics: Searching for Wisdom in Organizational Studies,” Organizational Studies 25, 4 (2004): 65368. o In his article for the special issue of British Journal of Managament on new directions in organizational learning, Weick discusses the imagination and its role in learning, “Puzzles in Organizational Learning: An Exercise in Disciplined Imagination,” British Journal of Management 13 (2002): S7-S15. o In their 2001 book, Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass), Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe examine how high reliability organizations such as aircraft carriers and firefighting crews organize themselves in such a way as to manage the unexpected. o Weick offers a characteristically innovative, articulate critique of current organizational studies in “Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (1996): 301-13.

§

Fredric M. Jablin and Michael W. Kramer offer a recent application of sensemaking in “Communication-Related Sense-Making and Adjustment during Job Transfers,” Management Communication Quarterly 12 (November 1998): 155-82.

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CHAPTER 20

CULTURAL APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz views cultures as webs of shared meaning, shared understanding, and shared sensemaking. B. Geertz’s work has focused on Third World cultures, but his ethnographic approach has been applied by others to organizations. C. In the field of speech communication, Michael Pacanowsky has applied Geertz’s approach in his research of organizations. D. Pacanowsky asserts that communication creates and constitutes the taken-forgranted reality of the world.

II.

Culture as a metaphor of organizational life. A. Interest in culture as a metaphor for organizations stems from our recent interest in Japanese corporations. B. Corporate culture has several meanings. 1. The surrounding environment that constrains a company’s freedom of action. 2. An image, character, or climate controlled by a corporation. 3. Pacanowsky argues that culture is not something an organization has, but is something an organization is.

III.

What culture is; what culture is not. A. Geertz and his colleagues do not distinguish between high and low culture. B. Culture is not whole or undivided. C. Pacanowsky argues that the web of organizational culture is the residue of employees’ performances. D. The elusive nature of culture prompts Geertz to label its study a “soft science.”

IV.

Thick description—what ethnographers do. A. Participant observation, the research methodology of ethnographers, is a timeconsuming process. B. Pacanowsky researched Gore & Associates. C. Although Pacanowsky now works with Gore, the company he researched, he earlier cautioned against “going native.” D. Thick description refers to the intertwined layers of common meaning that underlie what people say and do. 1. Thick description involves tracing the many strands of a cultural web and tracking evolving meaning. 2. Thick description begins with a state of bewilderment. 3. The puzzlement is reduced by observing as a stranger in a foreign land.

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E. Ethnographers approach their research very differently from behaviorists. 1. They are more interested in the significance of behavior than in statistical analysis. 2. Pacanowsky warns that statistical analysis and classification across organizations yield superficial results. F. As an ethnographer, Pacanowsky is particularly interested in imaginative language, stories, and nonverbal rites and rituals. V.

Metaphors: taking language seriously. A. Widely used metaphors offer a starting place for assessing the shared meaning of a corporate culture. B. Metaphors are valuable tools for both the discovery and communication of organizational culture.

VI.

The symbolic interpretation of story. A. Stories provide windows into organizational culture. B. Pacanowsky focuses on the script-like qualities of narratives that line out roles in the company play. C. Pacanowsky posits three types of organizational narratives. 1. Corporate stories reinforce management ideology and policies. 2. Personal stories define how individuals would like to be seen within an organization. 3. Collegial stories—usually unsanctioned by management—are positive or negative anecdotes about others within the organization that pass on how the organization “really works.” D. Both Geertz and Pacanowsky caution against simplistic interpretation of stories. E. Pacanowsky has demonstrated that scholars can use fiction to convey the results of their research.

VII. Ritual: this is the way it’s always been, and always will be. A. Rituals articulate multiple aspects of cultural life. B. Some rituals are nearly sacred and difficult to change. VIII. Can the manager be an agent of cultural change? A. The cultural approach is popular with executives who want to use it as a tool, yet culture is extremely difficult to manipulate. B. Even if such manipulation is possible, it may be unethical. C. Linda Smircich notes that communication consultants may violate the ethnographer’s rule of nonintervention and may even extend management’s control within an organization. IX.

Critique: is the cultural approach useful? A. The cultural approach is criticized by corporate consultants, who believe that knowledge should be used to influence organizational culture. B. Critical theorists attack the cultural approach because it does not evaluate the customs it portrays.

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C. The goal of symbolic analysis is to create a better understanding of what it takes to function effectively within the culture. D. The cultural approach may fall short on one of the criteria for good interpretive theory, aesthetic appeal.

Key Names and Terms Clifford Geertz Princeton University anthropologist who pioneered the ethnographic study of culture. Culture A socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, interpretations, premises, and rules; complex webs of shared meaning. Organizational Culture A web of shared meanings; the residue of employee performances by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others. Michael Pacanowsky A communication researcher, formerly at the University of Colorado and now a consultant at W.L. Gore & Associates, who has applied Geertz’s methodology to organizational communication. Thick Description The process of tracing the many strands of a cultural web and tracking evolving meaning. Corporate Stories Stories that reinforce management ideology and company policy. Personal Stories Stories that company personnel tell about themselves, often to define how they would like to be seen within the organization. Collegial Stories Unsanctioned anecdotes about other people in the organization. Rituals Repeated performances that articulate significant aspects of cultural life. Linda Smircich A University of Massachusetts management professor who draws on parallels to anthropological ethnography to raise ethical qualms about communication consulting.

Principal Changes This chapter was previously Chapter 19. In this edition, Griffin has revised the Critique section (particularly in terms of critical theory), and updated the Second Look section.

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Suggestions for Discussion The value of thick description Unlike theories such as social judgment, elaboration likelihood, and uncertainty reduction, the cultural approach to organizations is comprised of minimal theoretical apparatus. There are no flowcharts, continua, or complex equations here, and it is telling that only a half dozen or so terms qualify as “key,” above. The art of ethnography, of course, is in its application, which is why Griffin’s treatment contains so many rich examples. The premises behind the work of Geertz and Pacanowsky are not difficult to master; their achievement is based on their ability to produce thick descriptions of the cultures in question. Be sure your students understand this point as you discuss this chapter. For purposes of continuity, we suggest that you follow Griffin’s prompt (291) and refer students back to the brief discussion of ethnography and Geertz located in Chapter 1 (19). By doing so, you will ground your discussion firmly in the theoretical distinctions with which A First Look at Communication Theory begins. In Search of Excellence In the 1980s, Tom Peters wrote on organizational culture in his books, In Search of Excellence (with Bob Waterman), A Passion for Excellence (with Nancy Austin), and The Pursuit of Wow. More recently, organizational scholars have moved away from Peters’s prescriptive method of identifying excellent organizational traits and his suggestion that organizations should alter their cultures in order to achieve certain virtues. His work is still valuable when discussing organizations’ rituals, stories, and unique ethos and it may serve as a good launching point into a discussion about the critics of Geertz and Pacanowsky who charge that they lack a critical objection to injustices. You might ask students to speculate on where the middle ground lies between being overtly prescriptive and intentionally nonjudgmental. The book In Search of Excellence also spawned a video series available through Enterprise Media and, at the onset of your discussion of organizational culture, a segment from the series might serve useful. Though many of the segments are now outmoded, the segment on 3M’s “invention” of the Post-itÒ note is still extremely engaging. William Butler Yeats poem Incidentally, the effect of Pacanowsky’s narrative critique of the profession is more powerful if students have some knowledge of William Butler Yeats’s magnificent (and concise) poem, “The Second Coming,” which concludes, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

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Sample Application Log Brian The Men’s Glee Club is an organization which has its own culture. The substance of our culture is found in our motto: fraternitas, integritas, veritas (that is, brotherhood, integrity, and truth). This substance is played out in our rehearsals, weekly devotional times, planned social events, and informal gatherings. As suggested by the theory, many stories are told to help define the Club. Every year the director talks about how we should have our Spring Banquet somewhere closer to Wheaton instead of having it in downtown Chicago. This is a corporate story since it comes from the “management.” Of course, each year we vote to have it in Chicago, since the cabinet would rather follow tradition than the director’s advice. This is a collegial story because it is “the real story” of the Club. The Spring Banquet is a rite for the Glee Club—a rite of enhancement (celebration of the past year), a rite of passage (the time when next year’s cabinet officially takes over), and a rite of integration (our last chance to grow closer as a group before the end of the school year).

Exercises and Activities The culture of your school Because it concerns an organizational culture familiar to all your students, question #1 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook is particularly useful for class discussion. As written, the question encourages readers to identify elements of the actual organizational culture an ethnographer would uncover. In fact, though, prospective students are more likely to be exposed to elements of the organization’s official culture that officers of the admission office have constructed for the purpose of promoting the school. After students have described the culture as they see it, therefore, ask them to compare their construct with the official version contained in the institution’s brochures, catalogs, videotapes, and website. (It would be a good idea to bring specific texts to class.) Ask them if the institution’s effort to mold its culture through publications and public pronouncements is effective. Be sure you touch upon metaphors, stories, and rituals. To enrich the discussion further, ask students to compare the official and actual cultures of your institution to those of other colleges or universities with which they have some familiarity. What are the effects of organizational culture on the lives of students? What happens when official and actual cultures diverge dramatically? We’ve known schools in which serious differences between the two organizational cultures were the source of considerable friction. How are cultural values—both official and actual—successfully communicated? How do institutional cultures change? Intriguing answers to these important questions may arise from your discussion. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he, too, uses question #1 as a jumping off point for discussion of his college’s culture. He particularly solicits the input of transfer students, who have experienced both his college’s culture and another’s and thus often articulate components of the local culture that have been naturalized by and therefore hidden from native students.

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An example of a workplace metaphor Items #3 and #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook encourage readers to analyze family rituals and workplace stories. To enrich these discussions, you can broaden their scope. What stories—corporate, personal, or collegial—characterize their families? What rituals help to capture important cultural components of their places of employment? What metaphors vivify or symbolize both organizational contexts? You may wish to share with your students one of our favorite examples of workplace metaphors. A friend of ours was a manager at a high-tech firm. He was bothered by the metaphorical title given to the space in which employees meet to plan for the future and strategize: the “war room.” Believing that the martial connotations of the appellation were odious and counterproductive, he crafted a memo to his superior suggesting a change. Arguing that the term “war room” suggested a win-lose outlook when the company should be striving for win-win situations with its customers, he proposed several less militaristic alternatives such as Mission Control, the Bridge, the Strategy Room, or the Nerve Center. Initially, he persuaded his boss to go with the first suggestion. What he noticed, though, was that even though the name of the room had officially changed, employees continued to refer to it with the traditional title, the “war room.” And that’s the way things remained. Members of the organizational culture thought of their strategy sessions in terms of battle. Apparently, their identities were at least partially formed in terms of warrior imagery. Thus, my friend’s altruistic attempt to alter his organization’s culture failed. Students in our classes who are familiar with corporate war rooms find such discussion particularly stimulating. When we question the inevitability of the name of the room, they often respond, “But that’s what it is!” Getting them to see that the term is indeed a metaphor and that many corporate cultures conceive of their business—and capitalism in general—as warfare is most enlightening. To prove to the skeptic that corporate planning does not have to be conceived of as preparation for battle, we mention that the executive planning rooms at many institutions of higher education such as San Diego State University are simply called the president’s conference room. (What’s it called at your campus?) “Slouching towards Chicago” One of the most intriguing sections of this chapter, it seems to us, is Griffin’s discussion of Pacanowsky’s effort to employ fiction to communicate his results (294-95). Due to space constraints, Griffin presents the passage from “Slouching towards Chicago” with little explanatory analysis. We recommend that you take up this matter with your students. Challenge them to produce some of the values and issues that are communicated about Jack and Radner’s subculture, as Griffin suggests in question #2 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook. Griffin has not included this article in the Second Look section, but you— or the right student—will find the entire piece worthy of careful investigation.

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Exercises in culture Ed McDaniel employs the following exercises when he teaches this chapter: To increase the relevancy of this chapter, I bring in a variety of literature that focuses on organizational culture. These include management books, articles from business magazines, and clippings from the business section of the local newspapers. To explain culture I use a “rules of the game” approach. This can be accomplished by displaying a picture of a soccer ball, an American football, and an Australian football, and point out how each has a different set of rules. Then I explain how different cultures provide different rules for living life. Feature film and television examples The Firm, a popular film based on the novel by John Grisham, provides an excellent example of a distinct corporate culture that has gone over the edge. This culture’s obsession with control also makes it a good example of Deetz’s critical approach, which is discussed in the following chapter. Brubaker and The Shawshank Redemption provide interesting looks at the organizational cultures of two prisons. The films A Few Good Men and An Officer and a Gentleman provide intriguing looks at organizational cultures within the military. Wall Street presents one perspective on the organizational culture of the financial world. Almost Famous, which we featured in our treatment of social penetration theory, provides an amusing view of the culture of seventies rock bands. Particularly revealing is the metaphor the band and its groupies use to describe the young reporter—“the enemy.” The British television show The Office and the U.S. version of the same title provide rich examples of tensions at the workplace and of organizational culture. Although some of the English humor may be lost on students, we recommend the British original for its wry wit and candid portrayal of the working world.

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If you enjoy Pacanowsky’s work, we recommend “Postscript: A Small-Town Cop: Communication In, Out, and About a Crisis,” Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach, ed. Linda Putnam and Michael Pacanowsky (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983), 261-82.

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Edgar Schein emphasizes the importance of the cultural approach to organizations in “Culture: The Missing Concept in Organizational Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (1996): 229-40.

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Paul Schrodt provides an empirical examination of the relationship between group and individual identity in “The Relationship between Organizational Identification and Organizational Culture: Employee Perceptions of Culture and Identification in a Retail Sales Organization,” Communication Studies 53 (Summer 2002): 189-202.

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As Linda Smircich’s comments suggest, the tension between pragmatically based research and ethnography free of management constraints and agendas is a significant issue in the field of organizational communication. Nick Trujillo’s “Corporate Philosophy and Professional Baseball: (Re)defining the Texas Rangers,” Case Studies in Organizational Communication, ed. Beverly Davenport Sypher (New York: Guilford, 1990), 87-110, exemplifies the tension. Although the article is presented as a scholarly case study of the team, it also functions as a public-relations piece for its management, celebrating the efforts of top officers to alter the corporation’s culture. Trujillo, who coauthored several pieces with Pacanowsky, demonstrates the difficulty of serving two masters. We particularly recommend this piece for those interested in athletic organizations.

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For further discussion of Japanese corporate culture, see Lea P. Stewart, “Organizational Communication in Japan and the United States,” Communication in Japan and the United States, ed. William B. Gudykunst (Albany: State University of New York, 1993), 215-48.

Organizational stories § For discussion of organizational stories, see: o Barbara Czarniawska, Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). o John C. Meyer, “Tell Me a Story: Eliciting Organizational Values from Narratives,” Communication Quarterly 43 (1995): 210-24. o Linda S. Myrsiades, “Corporate Stories as Cultural Communications in the Organizational Setting,” Management Communication Quarterly 1 (1987): 84120. Metaphors and symbols § For discussion of organizational metaphors and symbols, see: o Paul M. Hirsch and John A.Y. Andrews, “Ambushes, Shootouts, and Knights of the Roundtable: The Language of Corporate Takeovers,” Organizational Symbolism, ed. Louis Pondy, Peter Frost, Gareth Morgan, and Thomas Dandridge (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1983), 145-55.

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o Stanley Deetz, “Metaphor and the Discursive Production and Reproduction of Organization,” Organization–Communication: Emerging Perspectives, ed. L. Thayer (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985), 168-82. o Mina A. Vaughn, “Organizational Symbols: An Analysis of Their Types and Functions in a Reborn Organization,” Management Communication Quarterly 9 (1995): 219-50. o John Gribas and Cal Downs, “Metaphoric Manifestations of Talking ‘Team’ with Teams and Novices,” Communication Studies 53 (Summer 2002): 112-28. Clifford Geertz § For recent articles by Geertz, see: o “Shifting Aims, Moving Targets: On the Anthropology of Religion,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11, 1 (2005): 1-15. o “What Was the Third World Revolution?” Dissent 52, 1 (2005): 35-46. o “What Is a state if It Is Not a Sovereign?” Current Anthropology 45, 5 (2004): 577-94. § Keith Windschuttle presents a critique of Geertz’s work in “The Ethnocentrism of Clifford Geertz,” New Criterion 21, 2 (2002): 5-13. § Geertz’s autobiographical piece, “An Inconstant Profession: The Anthropological Life in Interesting Times,” provides a summary both of his career and the field of cultural anthropology in general. Annual Review of Anthropology 31, 1 (2002): 1-19. § Similar to Geertz’s landmark piece on Balinese cockfighting, H.L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr. writes about a “poker rally” and the culture of Ferrari owners in his article, “Deep Play in a Poker Rally: A Sunday among the Ferraristi of Long Island,” Qualitative Inquiry 10, 5 (2004): 731-67. In addition to the analysis, Goodall discusses the difficulties associated with narrative ethnography.

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CHAPTER 21

CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION APPROACH TO ORGANIZATIONS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Stanley Deetz’s critical communication theory seeks to balance corporate and human interests. B. His work is based on the premise that corporations are political as well as economic institutions. C. Communication theory can be used to diagnose distorted corporate decision making. D. Workplaces can be made more productive and democratic through communication reforms.

II.

Corporate colonization of everyday life. A. Deetz views multinational corporations as the dominant force in society. B. Corporate control has sharply diminished the quality of life for most citizens. C. Deetz scrutinizes the structure of the corporate world. D. His theory of communication is “critical” because he questions the primacy of corporate prosperity.

III.

Information vs. communication: a difference that makes a difference. A. Deetz challenges Shannon and Weaver’s theory that communication is the transmission of information, a view that perpetuates corporate dominance. B. All corporate communication is an outcome of political processes that are usually undemocratic and usually hurts democracy. C. Deetz’s communication model emphasizes language’s role in shaping social reality. 1. Language does not represent things that already exist; it produces what we believe to be “self-evident” or “natural.” 2. Corporations subtly produce meanings and values. D. Like Pearce and Cronen, Deetz considers communication to be the ongoing social construction of meaning, but he emphasizes that the issue of power runs through all language and communication. E. Managerial control often takes precedence over representation of conflicting interests or long-term company health. F. Codetermination, on the other hand, epitomizes participatory democracy. G. Public decisions can be formed through strategy, consent, involvement, and participation.

IV.

Strategy: overt managerial moves to extend control. A. Managerialism is a discourse that values control above all else. B. Forms of control based in communication systems impede any real worker voice in structuring their work.

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C. The desire for control can even exceed the desire for corporate performance. D. The quest for control is evident in the corporate aversion to public conflict. E. Strategic control does not benefit the corporation, and it alienates employees and causes rebellion. F. Because of these drawbacks, most managers prefer to maintain control through voluntary consent. V.

Consent: willing allegiance to covert control. A. Consent describes a variety of situations and processes in which someone actively, though unknowingly, accomplishes the interests of others in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own interests. B. Consent is developed through managerial control of elements of corporate culture: workplace language, information, forms, symbols, rituals, and stories. C. Systematically distorted communication operates without employees’ overt awareness. 1. What can be openly discussed or thought is restricted. 2. Only certain options are available. D. Discursive closure suppresses potential conflict. 1. Certain groups of people may be classified as disqualified to speak on certain issues. 2. Arbitrary definitions may be labeled “natural.” 3. Values behind decisions may be kept hidden to appear objective.

VI.

Involvement: free expression of ideas, but no voice. A. Meaningful democracy requires that people affected by decisions have forums for discussion and a voice in the final result. 1. Forums provide the opportunity for the free expression of ideas. 2. Voice means expressing interests that are freely and openly informed and having those interests represented in joint decisions. B. Through open discussion, employees air their grievances, state their desires, and recommend improvements. C. But free expression is not the same as having a “voice” in corporate decisions, and knowledge of this difference creates worker cynicism.

VII. Participation: stakeholder democracy in action. A. Meaningful democratic participation creates better citizens and social choices while providing economic benefits. B. Deetz advocates open negotiations of power. C. There are six classes of stakeholders, each with unique needs. 1. Investors. 2. Workers. 3. Consumers. 4. Suppliers. 5. Host communities. 6. Greater society and the world community.

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D. Some stakeholders have taken greater risks and made longer-term investments than have stockholders and top-level managers; Deetz believes these stakeholders should have a say in corporate decisions. E. Managers should mediate, rather than persuade, coordinating the conflicting interests of all parties. VIII. Models of Stakeholder Participation. A. Wall Street analyst and changes in management have created an environment, at corporations such as Saturn Corp. and AES Corp., that is less friendly than it used to be for workers to have a voice in decisions that affect them. B. George Cheney suggests that “evidence weighs heavily against the long-term maintenance of the integrity of highly democratic organizations.” C. Cheney and Deetz believe small highly adaptive process-oriented companies can lead the way in sustaining participating democracy. D. As demonstrated by Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation (SRC), stakeholder participation can be a long-term success if employees, armed with knowledge, are active players rather than passive spectators in determining the company’s future. IX.

Critique: is workplace democracy just a dream? A. Deetz’s approach to corporate decision making is inherently attractive, yet there are some difficulties as well. B. Deetz’s constructivist view of communication does not necessarily support his reform agenda. C. Deetz’s campaign for stakeholder negotiation may not be realistic. D. Is it asking too much of one theory to reform both commonsense conceptions of communication and private business simultaneously? E. Deetz suggests critical scholars should be “filled with care, thought, and good humor.”

Key Names and Terms Stanley Deetz University of Colorado communication professor and proponent of a critical theory of organizational communication. Communication Model A critical approach to communication that regards language as the principal medium through which social reality is produced and reproduced. Managerial Control Corporate decision processes that systematically exclude the voices of people who are affected by the decision. Codetermination Corporate decision processes that invite open dialogue among all stakeholders. Managerialism A discourse practice based on a systematic logic, a set of routine practices, and an ideology that privileges top-down control.

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Strategy The overt practice of managerial control. Consent The process by which an employee actively, though unknowingly, accomplishes the interests of management in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own interests. Systematically Distorted Communication Operating without employees’ overt awareness, this form of discourse restricts what can be openly expressed or even thought. Discursive Closure Systematically distorted communication in which those with power suppress potential dissent. Involvement Organizational stakeholders’ free expression of ideas that may or may not affect managerial decisions. Participation The process by which all stakeholders in an organization negotiate power and openly reach collaborative decisions.

Principal Changes Previously Chapter 20, this material has been reorganized and edited. Careful readers will notice the revision to Figure 21.1 with information/communication models now along the horizontal axis and managerial control/co-determination along the vertical axis. In addition, Griffin has introduced a new example of a successful corporation that encourages democratic participation of workers, and in the Critique section, he has incorporated Deetz’s view regarding the role of humor for critical theorists.

Suggestions for Discussion Contrasting Pacanowsky and Deetz One good way to begin your discussion of Deetz’s critical theory of organizational communication is through comparisons to Pacanowsky’s approach as featured in the previous chapter. Both theorists are intrigued by corporate culture; and, as Griffin notes, both study workplace language, information, forms, rituals, and stories. It’s significant, however, that although the tradition from which Pacanowsky stems is wary of influencing the culture one studies, Deetz demonstrates a strong desire to apply codetermination to reform corporate culture. Pacanowsky is certainly mindful of economic issues, but Deetz keys on aspects of power and domination and highlights ways to increase authentic participation. (Integrative Essay Question #29 seeks to address these differing emphases.) Deetz: at the intersection of Marx and Habermas At the heart of Deetz’s theory, it seems to us, is a paradox or tension that is important to communicate to your students. On the one hand, Deetz is a skeptic who attacks conventional manifestations of corporate power and “business as usual” in American business. On the other hand, he is an eternal optimist when it comes to the power of communication to bring about positive change in organizations and to enhance the roles of all

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stakeholders. This dichotomous stance can be traced directly to two significant influences on Deetz’s work: Karl Marx, who is featured in Griffin’s analysis of Hall in Chapter 26; and Jurgen Habermas, whom Griffin features in the Ethical Reflections following the mass communication unit. Marx’s economic views are manifested in Deetz’s pessimism about unrestrained capitalism, and Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” (ISS) shapes Deetz’s idealistic goal of codetermination. Although each thinker is presented a bit later in the book, you might find it useful to present a selection on each at this time. We have found that a bit of knowledge regarding Marx (particularly his focus on class struggle and economic determinism) and Habermas (especially the ISS’s requirement of open access and emphasis on the freedom to make an unrestricted decision) gives students a leg-up in a their comprehension of Deetz’s ideas. The power of communication to bring about change Students may have interesting reactions to Deetz’s position. Those who see themselves as future captains of corporate America and who imagine experiencing all the benefits—but none of the sacrifices and shortcomings—of the lifestyle of Lynn’s father may resist Deetz’s message by denying the unsavory aspects of worker consent. Those students whose parents may represent the organizational elite may resent Deetz’s critical stance and his highly negative portrayal of managerialism. They may question his claim that “most corporate successes (or failures) are the results of factors beyond managerial control” (305). In addition, several of your students may echo Griffin’s criticism that Deetz’s faith in participation may be overly optimistic (313). Communication majors want to believe in the power of their discipline, yet nonetheless those with some experience in the corporate world may suggest that even the best intended communicative strategies may fail to bring together diverse parties with widely disparate interests. These issues should stimulate lively discussion. (Essay Question #22 may be a way of addressing some of these concerns.) Stakeholders If your department has a well-integrated public relations component, your students might be very familiar with the concept of a stakeholder. If not, you may want to pause for a moment to discuss this critical idea regarding a corporation’s various constituencies. While a stockholder has an obvious—and literal—interest in the business, other groups with a vested interest may include employees, consumers, raw materials suppliers, host communities, and local, state, and federal governmental agencies. To engage students in a dialogue, ask your class to speculate on who might be affected by changes in a local business establishment. Then, to move into Deetz’s territory, continue the discussion by asking who they think has a say in those business matters at present and finally, if Deetz went into the establishment, what reforms would he suggest? Students who have completed internships might also be able to draw upon their experiences to compliment the discussion. Frederick Taylor’s strategy and consent If you are in search of additional examples of the corporate practices of strategy and consent, we recommend investigating Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management. (See our treatment of the introduction to the Organizational Communication section, above.)

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Contradicting the postmodern core In the Critique section of this chapter, Griffin makes the provocative and controversial argument that Deetz’s “advocacy of stakeholder rights and participatory democracy isn’t necessarily furthered by his constructionist view of communication” (311), an argument that Deetz and others do not accept. This assertion, which is based on Deetz’s antifoundationalist, postmodern approach to knowledge and discursive practice (“the grand narratives are dead” [313]) may require unpacking for your students. Be sure they understand the apparent contradiction that comes when one claims that all truths are relative and that reality is socially constructed, then seeks to promote a particular truth about workers’ rights. It’s possible that one could raise a similar concern about a potential clash between CMM’s overt social agenda and its postmodern, antifoundationalist foundation.

Sample Application Log Laura This theory was a bit difficult to apply to my life; I’ve never worked for a corporation (and I’ve made it somewhat of a goal never to either. But perhaps this is because I’ve come to view corporations as Deetz has, and also view them as needing change.) My aunt has worked for AT&T most of her working life (she’s 45). She moved rather high up the ladder and had a pretty good, high-ranking job. She was laid off a couple of months ago. As I understand it, AT&T has been gradually downsizing for a while now. For over a year, she has had no job security; she would go into work every day not knowing if this was to be the day she would “find out” that her job was no longer essential. In the meantime, much younger, inexperienced people have been promoted to new positions within her department, right before her very eyes. This just seems like a medieval king, or an evil dictatorship to me—not knowing whether the king is going to summon you in and call for your head on a platter. But you know he’s a hungry king, so your end is probably coming pretty soon. How does one plan one’s life with outlooks like that? I know it’s made my aunt a less happy person. (Although she’s more happy now that she has the prospect of teaching at a university instead. It’s more her style anyway.) So, how do these authoritarian companies command such loyalty? Corporate colonization of everyday life. They offer goodies. My aunt obviously got good telephone rates, as well as all the latest technologies AT&T had to offer. My grandpa worked for them all his life and has a nice pension or retirement account (whichever) now. I’m sure my aunt was looking forward to that (but those were the good old days). Everything having to do with phones in my life has always been AT&T, and since my uncle works for Sony, the same is the case—anything technological or mechanical (down to my audio tapes even), if Sony makes it, we have a Sony. It went without saying in my family. This is not the case anymore, now that my family’s eyes have been opened to what these corporations are capable of doing with one fell swoop. Maybe this disillusionment will be the case with greater society eventually, if corporate atrocities keep happening.

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Exercises and Activities When corporate practices fly below the conscious radar One of Deetz’s most thoughtful, provocative claims is that the force of organizational practice is strongest when it is unrecognized or associated with common sense (308). Encourage your students to test the veracity of this assertion with examples from their own lives. Aspects of your college or university’s culture such as the importance placed on letter grades, the manner in which admission standards are determined, the use of graduate student TAs or teachers, the emphasis on winning athletic teams, the presence of Greek organizations, the hierarchy built into the professorate, guidelines for tenure, rules about parking, and the role of students in decision making may provide useful illustrations. Have them consider also whether or not forms of discursive closure lead to systematically distorted communication at your college or university. (Essay Questions #24 and #25, below, may address some of these concerns.) The interactive cereal box We are quite taken by the cereal box discussion (Figure 21.2) and its potential for generating new exercises. Have students create their own alternative texts for the product boxes containing other foods, toys, cosmetics, birth control, and alcoholic beverages. Real estate fliers, college admission brochures, and automobile ads are also fair game. Roger and Me When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he shows the last fifteen minutes of so of Roger and Me. Although Deetz argues vehemently that the film unfairly stacks the deck against corporate America, it is a tour de force, nonetheless, that vividly drives home—if by hyperbole— the potential harm a corporation can do to less-powerful stakeholders. Griffin also makes a specific point of reiterating in class the key distinctions between information and communication (see Integrative Essay Question #30, below), as well as the relationships between CMM and this critical approach (see Integrative Essay Question #31, below). Office Space This very amusing film is a tribute to all workers unhappy with their jobs. The protagonist Peter Gibbons (portrayed by Ron Livingston), dissatisfied with his job and his employer, decides not to go to work despite widespread organizational lay-offs. In an ironic twist, his carefree attitude makes him more valuable to his employers and the comedy progresses until his situation is eventually rectified. Based on this movie’s cult status, many students may be very familiar with it and as such, may become engaged in a lively discussion about Peter’s move through Deetz’s model of organizational decision-making. A strong argument could be made that the film illustrates each of the four styles—strategy, consent, participation, and ultimately a form of involvement. Contemporary corporate America If students have little to say about the material presented in this chapter, Em Griffin suggests that an instructor may be able to open discussion of the issues by asking them to talk about their parents’ experiences in the working world. This practical suggestion may be just what they need to get their theoretical wheels turning. Ed McDaniel asserts that contemporary events in the corporate world (e.g., Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, etc.) have provided a rich medium 273

to help illustrate the negative aspect of Deetz’s theory. He finds that the comic strip “Dilbert” also offers a source of comic illustration of corporate excesses, but, unfortunately, positive examples to support Deetz’s theory are rarer. McDaniel introduces his class to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001). McDaniel writes, I have enjoyed a degree of success by employing examples of common corporate practices, which support the basic assumptions of Deetz’s critical theory of communication approach to organizations. To begin the class, I ask everyone who is or has worked in a fast food restaurant, or has a friend who is or has, to raise their hand. This will normally involve a significant number of the class. Then I produce a copy of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. Schlosser’s recent work does for the contemporary fast food industry what Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle did for the Chicago meat packing industry at the beginning of the twentieth century. He features material from pages 70-72. Here is a taste, so to speak: The strict regimentation at fast food restaurants creates standardized products. It increases the throughput. And it gives fast food companies an enormous amount of power over their employees. “When management determines exactly how every task is to be done… and can impose its own rules about pace, output, quality, and technique,” the sociologist Robin Leidner has noted, “[it] makes workers increasingly interchangeable.” The management no longer depends upon the talents or skills of its workers—those things are built into the operating system and machines. Jobs that have been “de-skilled” can be filed cheaply. The need to retain any individual worker is greatly reduced by the ease with which he or she can be replaced. (70) He concludes this activity by asking students to provide examples of what lasting skills they think were gained from employment at a fast food enterprise. To vivify the “Corporate Colonization” section of the chapter, McDaniel employs the following strategy: I show a graphic that depicts the salaries of CEOs of several companies (these figures are normally available in corporate annual reports, business magazines, the Wall Street Journal, etc.). This is followed by a graphic illustrating the disparity in annual growth of executive-worker compensation. These illustrations are a very effective way of maintaining students’ attention, especially when you use companies (e.g., airlines) that are in some way associated with the student’s lives (i.e., airfare for that spring break jaunt to Cancun). Firing Shannon and Weaver A final challenge for your students. Relatively early in the chapter, Griffin states that “a majority of human communication scholars now dismiss Shannon and Weaver’s information theory” (302). Ask students why, if this is true, did Griffin include a discussion of this theory in Chapter 2? This ought to set their wheels turning.

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Further Resources § To give yourself a better sense of the source of Deetz’s optimism about group deliberation, skip ahead to the Ethical Reflection featuring Habermas. § On his website (http://comm.colorado.edu/deetz), Deetz provides an autobiographical sketch of his journey as a critical theorist. Recent writings by Deetz § Deetz, S. and McPherson, J., “The Role of Communication Scholars in Facilitating Organizational Change,” in P. Shockley and J. Simpson, eds., Engaging Communication: Informing Work and Transforming Organizations (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005). § Deetz, S., “Critical Theory,” in S. May and D. Mumby, eds., Engaging Organizational Communication Theory: Multiple Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), 85112. § Deetz, S. and Simpson. J., “Critical Organizational Dialogue: Open Formation and the Demand of ‘Otherness,’” in R. Anderson, L. Baxter, and K. Cissna, eds., Dialogic Approaches to Communication (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 141-58. § Deetz, S. and Brown, D., “Conceptualising Involvement, Participation and Workplace Decision Processes: A Communication Theory Perspective,” in D. Tourish and O. Hargie, eds., Key Issues in Organizational Communication (London: Routledge, 2004), 172-87. § Haas, T. and Deetz, S., “The Politics and Ethics of Knowledge Construction in Corporations: Dialogic Interaction and Self-Other Relations,” in P. Jeffcutt, ed., The Foundations of Management Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2004), 208-30. § Deetz, S., “Corporate Governance, Communication, and Getting Social Values into the Decisional Chain,” Management Communication Quarterly 16 (2003): 606-11. § Deetz, S., “Taking the ‘Linguistic Turn’ Seriously,” Organization: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 10 (2003): 421-29. § Deetz, S., “Disciplinary Power, Conflict Suppression and Human Resource Management,” in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott, eds., Studying Management Critically (London: Sage, 2003), 23-45. § Deetz, S., Tracy, S., and Simpson, J. Leading Organizations through Transitions: Communication and Cultural Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000). § Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S., Doing Critical Management Research (London: Sage, 2000).

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PUBLIC RHETORIC Key Names and Terms Rhetoric Defined by Aristotle as the art of seeing, in each particular case, all the available means of persuasion. Public Rhetoric A speaking context in which the speaker has an opportunity to monitor and adjust to the response of his or her immediate audience. Invention The aspect of rhetoric concerned with discovering convincing arguments. Arrangement The aspect of rhetoric concerned with organizing material for best impact. Style The aspect of rhetoric concerned with selecting appropriate language. Delivery The aspect of rhetoric concerned with coordinating voice and gesture. Memory The aspect of rhetoric concerned with mastering and rehearsing content. Plato An ancient Greek philosopher who favored a philosophic mode of discourse known as dialectic over the public rhetoric of his day. Paul An apostle who characterizes both Plato’s and Aristotle’s view of discourse, thus exemplifying the paradox with which religious rhetors live. Augustine Previously introduced in an Ethical Reflection, this Catholic bishop justified the conscious use of rhetoric in the service of saving souls. Francis Bacon A British philosopher who sought to integrate the logic of a message and the appeal it has for an audience by suggesting that the duty of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will. Peter Ramus A French scholar who relegated the canons of invention, arrangement, and memory to the province of logic, leaving rhetoricians only style and delivery to consider.


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Wayne Booth, one of the leading figures in American rhetorical scholarship in the last fifty years, has just published a highly readable manifesto on the importance of rhetorical education entitled The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004). A great new source for public rhetoric is the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, edited by Thomas O. Sloane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition (New York: Garland, 1996), see Barbara A. Biesecker, et al., “Oratory,” 484-88. Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992) demonstrates both the power of public rhetoric and the relevance of its ancient Greek roots to American culture. George Kennedy explores rhetoric across cultures in Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Barry Brummett’s book, Rhetoric in Popular Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), is an excellent introduction for students with rhetorical anxieties. For a rhetorical reading of the discipline of economics, see Deidre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), which demonstrates that rhetoric can be a model for understanding a wide variety of discursive practices.

Classical rhetoric § For historical issues, we recommend The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, 2nd ed., edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000). § For the classical tradition, two good first sources are o Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), and o John Poulakos and Takis Poulakos’s Classical Rhetorical Theory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Women’s rhetoric and feminist approaches to rhetoric § In recent times, many communication scholars have criticized the male bias in the study of public rhetoric and have called for increased study of women’s rhetoric. For more discussion of women’s rhetoric and feminist approaches to rhetoric, see: o Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, ed., Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2 vols. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989). o Campbell, ed., Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1925-1993: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994). o Andrea A. Lunsford, ed., Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995). o Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998). o Molly Meijer Wertheimer, Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997). o Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin, Feminist Rhetorical Theories (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999). o Barbara Biesecker, “Coming to Terms with Recent Attempts to Write Women into the History of Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 25 (1992): 140-61.

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o A.T. Nuyen, “The Rhetoric of Feminist Writings,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 28 (1995): 69-82. o Sonja K. Foss and Karen A. Foss, “The Construction of Feminine Spectatorship in Garrison Keillor’s Radio Monologues,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 410-26. o Celeste Condit, “Opposites in an Oppositional Practice: Rhetorical Criticism and Feminism,” in Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques in Communication Studies, 205-30; Richard Fulkerson, “Transcending Our Conception of Argumentation in Light of Feminist Critiques,” Argumentation and Advocacy 32 (1996): 199-217. o Shirley Logan, “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of NineteenthCentury Black Women (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). o In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Patricia Bizzell, “Women Rhetoricians,” 770-72, and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Feminist Rhetoric,” 26265. These texts may also be relevant to the chapter on muted group theory.

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CHAPTER 22

THE RHETORIC Outline I.

Introduction. A. Aristotle was a student of Plato’s who disagreed with his mentor over the place of public speaking in Athenian life. B. Plato’s negative view of public speaking was based on his assessment of the Sophists. C. Aristotle saw rhetoric as a neutral tool with which one could accomplish either noble or fraudulent ends. 1. Truth is inherently more acceptable than falsehood. 2. Nonetheless, unscrupulous persuaders may fool an audience unless an ethical speaker uses all possible means of persuasion to counter the error. 3. Speakers who neglect the art of rhetoric have only themselves to blame for failure. D. Although Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics are polished, well-organized texts, the Rhetoric is a collection of lecture notes. E. Aristotle raised rhetoric to a science by systematically exploring the effects of the speaker, the speech, and the audience.

II.

Rhetoric: making persuasion possible. A. For Aristotle, rhetoric was the discovery in each case of the available means of persuasion. B. In terms of speech situations, he focused on civic affairs. 1. Forensic speaking considers guilt or innocence. 2. Deliberative speaking considers future policy. 3. Epideictic speaking considers praise and blame. C. Aristotle classified rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic. 1. Dialectic is one-on-one conversation; rhetoric is one person addressing the many. 2. Dialectic searches for truth; rhetoric demonstrates existing truth. 3. Dialectic answers general philosophical questions; rhetoric addresses specific, practical ones. 4. Dialectic deals with certainty; rhetoric considers probability.

III.

Rhetorical proof: logos, ethos, and pathos. A. The available means of persuasion are based on three kinds of proof. 1. Logical proof (logos) comes from the line of argument in the speech. 2. Ethical proof (ethos) is the way the speaker’s character is revealed through the message. 3. Emotional proof (pathos) is the feeling the speech draws from the hearers. B. Aristotle focused on two forms of logical proof—enthymeme and example. 1. Enthymeme is the strongest of the proofs.

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a. An enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism. b. Typical enthymemes leave out the premise that is already accepted by the audience. c. Lloyd Bitzer notes that the audience helps construct the proof by supplying the missing premise. d. The enthymeme uses deductive logic—moving from global principle to specific truth. 2. The example uses inductive reasoning—drawing a final conclusion from specific examples. C. Ethos emphasizes the speaker’s credibility, which is manifested in intelligence, character, and goodwill. 1. Aristotle was primarily interested in how the speaker’s ethos is created in a speech. 2. The assessment of intelligence is based on practical wisdom and shared values. 3. Virtuous character has to do with the speaker’s image as a good and honest person. 4. Goodwill is a positive judgment of the speaker’s intention toward the audience. 5. Aristotle’s explication of ethos has held up well under scientific scrutiny. D. Although skeptical of the emotion-laden public oratory typical of his era, Aristotle attempted to help speakers use pathos ethically. E. Aristotle catalogued a series of opposite feelings, then explained the conditions under which each mood is experienced. 1. Anger vs. mildness. 2. Love or friendship vs. hatred. 3. Fear vs. confidence. 4. Shame vs. shamelessness. 5. Indignation vs. pity. 6. Admiration vs. envy. IV.

The five canons of rhetoric. A. Invention—in order to generate effective enthymemes and examples, speakers draw upon both specialized and general knowledge known as topics or topoi. B. Arrangement—Aristotle recommended a basic structure. C. Style—Aristotle emphasized the pedagogical effectiveness of metaphor. D. Memory—this component was emphasized by Roman teachers. E. Delivery—naturalness is persuasive.

V.

Critique: standing the test of time. A. The Rhetoric is revered by many public-speaking teachers. B. Nonetheless, clarity is often a problem with Aristotle’s theory. 1. The enthymeme is not defined precisely. 2. The classification of metaphor is confusing. 3. The distinctions between deliberative and epideictic oratory are blurred. 4. The promised organizational structure is abandoned. C. Some critics are bothered by Aristotle’s characterization of the audience as passive. D. Others desire more discussion of the rhetorical situation.

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Key Names and Terms Aristotle An ancient Greek teacher and scholar whose Rhetoric represents the first systematic study of public speaking. Sophists Early Greek speakers and teachers of public speaking whose training was practically useful yet underdeveloped theoretically. Forensic Rhetoric Judicial speech centering on accusation and defense. Deliberative Rhetoric Political speech centering on future policy. Epideictic Rhetoric Ceremonial speech centering on praise and blame. Logos Logical proof, which comes from the line of argument in the speech. Ethos Ethical proof, which comes from the speaker’s intelligence, character, and goodwill toward the audience as these personal characteristics are revealed through the message. Topoi The general and specific stock arguments marshaled by speakers to persuade an audience. Enthymeme An incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism that is created by leaving out a premise that is already accepted by the audience or omitting an obvious conclusion. Pathos Emotional proof, which comes from the feeling the speech draws from the hearers. Lloyd Bitzer A retired rhetorician from the University of Wisconsin who argued that the audience helps construct an enthymematic proof by supplying the missing premise. Canons of Rhetoric Previously defined in the public rhetoric introduction, they are the principal divisions of the art of persuasion established by ancient rhetoricians: invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory. Invention The speaker’s “hunt” for arguments that will be effective in a particular speech.

Principal Changes This chapter was previously Chapter 21. In this edition, Griffin has updated the Second Look section. Otherwise, with the exception of minor changes, this chapter remains the same.

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Suggestions for Discussion This chapter is crucial to students’ understanding of public discourse, and—through retrospective sensemaking, as it were—it may shed additional light on theories of influence such as the elaboration likelihood model. In discussion, we believe is it important to emphasize the stunning comprehensiveness of Aristotle’s treatise. Of course Aristotle does not cover it all. Emphasizing production, he tells us little about prediction, and his passive construction of the audience is theoretically limited. Nonetheless, he integrates state-of-the-art knowledge of logic, psychology, politics, law, literature, and (arguably) ethics to create his theory of persuasive communication. Who else—in his era or any other—can say the same? Examples of discrimination Griffin’s discussion of “I Have a Dream” effectively illustrates most of the Aristotelian principles he sets forth in the chapter. We respectfully disagree, though, with his suggestion that King mentioned few examples of discrimination” (322). When King declares, “We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one,” he is inductively supporting his claim that further protest is necessary by providing specific examples of discriminatory practices currently endured by African Americans. Similarly, he refers to “for whites only” signs and the lack of voting rights. King’s dream features examples illustrating the ideal toward which we should strive, such as the image of children holding hands. Aristotle’s style Because of space considerations, Griffin was compelled to limit his discussion of style to an explication of metaphor. Nonetheless, Aristotle’s advice on other stylistic matters is noteworthy, particularly with respect to the upcoming Ethical Reflections. In general, Aristotle recommends clarity achieved through a middle style: “let the virtue of style be defined as ‘to be clear’ . . . neither flat nor above the dignity of the subject, but appropriate” (221). This middle stylistic path clearly corresponds with his ethical “golden mean,” thus demonstrating broad coherence in Aristotle’s thought. Ethos and pathos For upper-level undergraduate students, this chapter on Aristotle may be a refresher that draws on material studied in public speaking, analysis of argument, or rhetorical criticism classes. For students less schooled in the rhetorical tradition, you may need to spend some time clarifying ethos and pathos as well as debunking some popularly held beliefs. One common misconception is that ethos simply implies an ethical communicator. In Aristotelian parlance, being ethical or virtuous is only one component of a speaker’s ethos, which spans to also include perceptions of intelligence and charity towards the audience. Another point to discuss is that Aristotle’s discussion of ethos does not fully account for the power of speakers who rely on shock, charisma, or dynamism. We return to this point in the “Exercises and Activities” section of the next chapter, but it may be useful to discuss this issue with students when considering Aristotle. Have them supply examples of speakers whose ethe (plural for

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ethos) are powerful, yet non-Aristotelian (various politicians, preachers, military figures, and so forth). For Aristotle, responsible pathos did not include strategies such as pulling at an audience’s heartstrings with tear-jerking monologues or inciting fear through menacing speech. Instead, he advocated an ethical use of affect induction upon which reason could be drawn. You might want to spend some time with your students discussing how speakers might use this means of persuasion appropriately and effectively without going overboard. Aristotle as anti-democratic It may be worth discussing the implications of Aristotle’s ambivalence about pathos, which suggests his concerns about the emotions of the crowd, the demos. (See also Essay Question #27 below.) The potential “bad” news here is that our great Greek predecessor may have been less democratically inclined than we’ve liked to imagine him. His advice about deliberation may have been aimed more at the ancient equivalent of the boardroom or advisory council than the mass of rank-and-file voters. Not entirely unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle may have had considerable disdain for the kind of decision-making that included average people, as well as the discourse that is designed for them. Rhetoric’s first webmaster One historian of ancient rhetoric has suggested that a good way to conceptualize Aristotle’s Rhetoric is as the first rhetoric website, an elaborate, eclectic site designed to describe public discourse with hundreds of links to other works written by Aristotle, other treatises on rhetoric, contemporary oratory, drama, poetry, and other subjects. By logging on to the Rhetoric, a student of rhetoric becomes connected to a multitude of cultural artifacts related the art of oratory in ancient Greece. In this sense, Aristotle can be seen not only as a great thinker, but as rhetoric’s first webmaster. The enthymeme You’ll note that Griffin’s treatment of the enthymeme characterizes the ancient form as reason-based, “an incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism” (321). On the other hand, recent work by Jeffrey Walker (whose article is featured in “Further Resources,” below) and others suggests that the enthymeme was in the eyes of the ancient Greeks a looser, more expansive construct that could draw its power from emotional and stylistic sources as well as syllogistic logic. This discovery reminds us that the reason/emotion split central to Western culture and our ways of conceptualizing rhetoric is often overemphasized. This point was also raised in our discussion of ELM.

Sample Application Log Jill In my Fundamentals of Oral Communication class we were taught these exact methods in giving speeches. To fully relate this to Aristotle’s tactics, I will tell of my persuasion speech. I gave a speech on eating disorders and how the media encourages eating disorders in women. In my invention or construction of my argument, I showed how statistics of eating disorders had risen from the past to now. I also showed examples of advertisements with skinny models 287

which the youth of our day and women of our day expect themselves to look like. With these examples, I failed to show a contrast of advertisements of the past or possible advertisements of the future. I did show that through using perfect bodies in advertisements, we had glorified this part of our nature over other more important things. In my arrangement, I gave an interesting story to catch the audience’s attention, then I shared that I had credibility because I had struggled with an eating disorder and so had my sister and best friend. I stated my purpose to make my audience aware of the effect of the media and to stop the glorification of perfect bodies. I did not reveal my main point at the end, rather I ended with examples of what we could do. My style contained vivid examples with the actual advertisements and stories of those who had suffered. I spoke in everyday language, but failed to create fresh metaphors. I spoke candidly, which was easier by not memorizing my speech—this contrasts with Aristotle’s encouragement of memory. It’s amazing that Aristotle’s speech techniques are still being taught in classrooms today.

Exercises and Activities Beyond King’s “I Have a Dream” Griffin ably condenses this theory, but we recommend vivifying his account with additional modern examples similar to “I Have a Dream,” thus demonstrating the enduring value of Aristotelian concepts. A wonderful illustrative example is Nixon’s “Checkers Speech,” one of the most successful political orations of the twentieth century. Nixon, then a candidate for the vice presidency, marshals explicit appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos as he defends his reputation and blasts the Democratic ticket. The speech, originally published in Vital Speeches of the Day (October 15, 1952), 11-15, is readily available on video and in print. (For an Aristotelian analysis of Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet,” see our treatment in Chapter 23.) For written and audio versions of King and Nixon’s speeches along with many others, we recommend the American Rhetoric website, http://www.americanrhetoric.com. In addition to an extensive speech bank of historical and contemporary, real and literary addresses, the site contains Stephen Lucas and Martin Medhurst’s top 100 American speeches that Griffin references in the textbook (320). In our experience, students have less exposure to the great speeches of the past and we welcome the opportunity to have our discussion serve the dual purposes of examining Aristotle’s rhetoric and presenting vital pieces of history. Other speeches that work well include (numbers indicate the speech’s ranking on the top 100 list): § § § § §

John F. Kennedy: “Inaugural Address.” Delivered January 20, 1961 (2). Barbara Jordan: “Who Then Will Speak for the Common Good?” 1976 Democratic National Convention keynote address (5). Hillary Rodham Clinton: “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.” Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session (35). Sen. Edward Kennedy: “Chappaquiddick.” Delivered from Joseph Kennedy’s home, July 25, 1969 (62). Elie Wiesel: “The Perils of Indifference.” Delivered in Washington, DC, April 12 1999 (95).

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The rhetoric of military leaders Some of the most famous examples of public rhetoric have been produced by military leaders preparing troops for battle. These speeches—both real and fictitious—usually demonstrate the great motivating power of pathos. The opening scene of the movie Patton provides such a speech, and two stirring orations are featured in Shakespeare’s Henry V, which is readily available on video. Courtroom oratory is also rich—some particularly good cinematic sources are Amistad, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Inherit the Wind. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice mixes legal rhetoric with themes of social justice, romance, and friendship. Julius Caesar and Malcolm X feature issues of politics and political power. Aristotelian rhetoric is all around In addition to supplying further examples of speeches for analysis yourself, you can encourage or require your students to bring their own. Challenge them to find elements of Aristotelian rhetoric in a wide variety of genres of discourse, from rock lyrics to poetry to art. Students are particularly pleased when they rediscover popular culture through an Aristotelian lens. Other questions to stimulate discussion To supplement the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus provided in the textbook, you may wish to consider posing the following queries to develop class discussion: 1. What are some modern examples of sophists and sophistical practice? 2. In what ways does the textbook your department assigns for public speaking follow or diverge from Aristotle’s Rhetoric? 3. Is the average college lecture rhetoric or dialectic? How about the average textbook? How about A First Look at Communication Theory? 4. How does religious oratory fit into Aristotle’s tripartite classification of speeches? Enthymemes and syllogisms When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he makes a point of working through specific enthymemes and syllogisms with his class. He maintains—and we agree—that students cannot adequately comprehend these structures by simply reading the chapter; they must be parties in the construction of specific examples. His advice—and again we agree—is to use an example or examples beyond those provided in the chapter. To vivify the global example he employs in the chapter, Griffin shows the video of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to his class. We cannot but approve.


Three general resources on Aristotle’s rhetoric and its context are: o George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 82-114. o Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 13-17. o Janet M. Atwill, “Aristotle,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 26-30.

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§ § §

§

Sonja Foss discusses and exemplifies “Neo-Aristotelian criticism” in the third chapter of Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. For a recent critique of Aristotle, see Jasper Neel, Aristotle’s Voice: Rhetoric, Theory, and Writing in America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994). Thomas Farrell’s study The Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) demonstrates the relevance of Aristotelian principles to contemporary culture. Also in the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see: o Nan Johnson, “Ethos,” 243-45; o Joseph Colavito, “Pathos,” 492-94; o George E. Yoos, “Logos,” 410-14; o John T. Kirby, “Greek Rhetoric,” 299-306.

Enthymeme § T. Gage, “Enthymeme,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 223-25, and “The Reasoned Thesis: The E-word and Argumentative Writing as a Process of Inquiry,” Argument Revisited; Argument Redefined: Negotiating Meaning in the Composition Classroom, eds. Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch, and Deborah Tenney (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 3-18. § Jeffrey Walker, “The Body of Persuasion,” College English 56 (1994): 46-65. Walker’s essay is particularly relevant because it pulls examples from Barthes’s essay “The World of Wrestling,” which is featured by Griffin in Chapter 25. Martin Luther King, Jr. § Keith D. Miller, Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Its Sources (New York: The Free Press, 1992); § Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Words that Moved America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); and § Richard Fulkerson, “The Public Letter as a Rhetorical Form: Structure, Logic, and Style in King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’” Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979): 12136. § In his thorough anthology, American Rhetorical Discourse, 2nd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1995), Ronald F. Reid provides an authoritative text of and useful commentary on King’s speech, “I Have a Dream” (777-83). § If you’re looking for other arguments by King for analysis, we heartily recommend two pieces written for white audiences representing formidable rhetorical challenges: “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”; and “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” a speech delivered to the Fellowship of the Concerned in 1961, which is anthologized in Contemporary American Speeches: A Sourcebook of Speech Forms and Principles, 2nd ed., eds. Wil A. Linkugel, R.R. Allen, and Richard L. Johannesen (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1969), 63-75.

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Sophistic rhetoric § Edward Schiappa, “Sophistic Rhetoric,” and J. Clarke Roundtree, “Sophist,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 682-86. § Edward Schiappa, “Gorgias’s Helen Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (August 1995): 310-24. § Edward Schiappa, The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Susan Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991).

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CHAPTER 23

DRAMATISM Outline I.

Introduction. A. Kenneth Burke believes that language is a strategic human response to a specific situation. B. The task of the critic is to assess motives. C. For Burke, life is not like a drama; life is drama. D. In 1952, Marie Hochmuth Nichols brought Burke to the speech communication field.

II.

Identification: without it, there is no persuasion. A. Identification is the common ground that exists between speaker and audience. 1. Substance encompasses a person’s physical characteristics, talents, occupation, background, personality, beliefs, and values. 2. The more overlap between the substance of the speaker and the substance of the audience, the greater the identification. 3. Although social scientists use the term homophily to describe perceived similarity between speaker and listener, Burke preferred religious allusions— identification is consubstantiation. B. Identification is established through style and content. C. Identification flows both ways between speaker and audience. D. Identification is never complete; division is a part of human existence. But without some kind of division, there’s no need for identification and, consequently, for persuasion.

III.

The dramatistic pentad. A. The dramatistic pentad is a tool to analyze how a speaker tries to persuade an audience to accept his or her view of reality as true. 1. The act names what took place in thought or deed. 2. The scene is the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred. 3. The agent is the person or kind of person who performed the act. 4. The agency is the means or instruments used to perform the act. 5. The purpose is the implied or stated goal of the act. B. Content analysis identifies key terms on the basis of frequency and use. 1. The “god term” is the word to which all other positive words are subservient. 2. The “devil term” sums up all that the speaker regards as evil. 3. Words are terministic screens that dictate interpretations of life’s drama. C. Burke contrasts the dramatistic pentad of intentional action with scientific terms that describe motion without purpose. D. The ratio of importance between individual pairs of terms in the dramatistic pentad indicates which element provides the best clue to the speaker’s motivation.

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E. The speaker’s worldview is revealed when one element is stressed over the other four. 1. An emphasis on act demonstrates a commitment to realism. 2. An emphasis on scene downplays free will and reflects an attitude of situational determinism. 3. An emphasis on agent is consistent with idealism. 4. An emphasis on agency springs from the mind-set of pragmatism. 5. An emphasis on purpose suggests the concerns of mysticism. F. Burke’s use of purpose and motivation is somewhat confusing. IV.

Guilt-redemption cycle: the root of all rhetoric. A. The ultimate motivation of all public speaking is to purge ourselves of guilt. 1. Guilt is created through symbolic interaction. 2. Our problems are exacerbated by technology. 3. Hierarchies and bureaucracies induce guilt. 4. Perspective by incongruity calls attention to truth by linking two incongruous words. 5. Our drive for perfection hurts ourselves and others. 6. At its root, rhetoric is the public search for a perfect scapegoat. B. Redemption through victimage. 1. Rhetoric is a continual pattern of redemption through victimage. 2. Since self-blame (or mortification) is difficult to admit publicly, it’s easier to blame someone else. 3. Victimage is the process of designating an external enemy as the source of all our ills. 4. Burke was not an advocate of redemption through victimage, but he recognized its prevalence.

V.

Critique: evaluating the critic’s analysis. A. Burke may have been the foremost twentieth-century rhetorician. B. His presentation is often confusing and obscure. 1. He employed multiple vocabularies and copious literary allusions. 2. Burke enthusiasts enjoy the challenge of reading his work because he celebrates the life-giving quality of language. C. The dramatistic pentad is the most popular feature of Burke’s approach. D. The concept of rhetoric as identification is a major advance. E. Of Burke’s motivational principles, his strategies of redemption are the most controversial. 1. Many find his religious imagery problematic. 2. His assumption that guilt underlies all public address is questionable. F. Burke’s commitment to an ethical stance is commendable.

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Key Names and Terms Kenneth Burke Perhaps the most important twentieth-century rhetorician, this critic is the founder of dramatism. Marie Hochmuth Nichols A University of Illinois rhetorician who popularized Burke’s dramatistic methodology within the speech communication field. Identification The common ground between speaker and audience, such as physical characteristics, talents, occupation, experiences, personality, beliefs, and values. Substance A term that encompasses a person’s physical characteristics, talents, occupation, background, personality, beliefs, and values. Homophily The behavioral scientists’ term for perceived similarity between speaker and listener. God Term The word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are subservient. Devil Term The word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as bad, wrong, or evil. Terministic Screen The framework for interpretation that develops from one’s use of language. Dramatistic Pentad An analytical tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept his or her view of reality as true by using five crucial elements of the human drama—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Act The dramatistic term for what was done. Texts that emphasize act suggest realism. Scene The dramatistic term for the context for the act. Texts that emphasize scene downplay free will and reflect an attitude of situational determinism. Agent The dramatistic term for the person or kind of person who performs the act. Texts that emphasize agent feature idealism. Agency The dramatistic term for the means the agent used to do the deed. Texts that emphasize agency demonstrate pragmatism. Purpose The dramatistic term for the stated or implied goal of an act. Texts that emphasize purpose suggest the concerns of mysticism. Guilt-Redemption Cycle The way we ultimately purge ourselves of an omnipresent, all-inclusive sense of guilt in public discourse. Perspective by Incongruity A paradox or oxymoron that calls attention to truth by linking two incongruous words.

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Mortification The process of purging guilt through self-blame, requiring confession of sin and a request for forgiveness. Victimage Scapegoating; the process of designating an external enemy as the source of personal ills. Scapegoat The target of victimage.

Principal Changes This chapter was previously Chapter 22. Griffin has updated the Second Look section and edited the chapter for clarity and precision.

Suggestions for Discussion Burke’s influence To help your students understand what a towering figure Burke has been in the twentieth century, call attention to Griffin’s remark that there is an entire scholarly organization, the Kenneth Burke Society, dedicated to researching and applying his ideas (336). In 2005, they held their sixth triennial conference. There is also an Internet Kenneth Burke discussion list dedicated to his ideas. Teaching the pentad The board game “Clue” â may provide a useful comparison for students new to Burke’s pentad. The object of the game is to collect clues about a murder (act) including who committed the crime (agent), where it was done (scene), and with what instrument (agency). You may need to point out, however, that the game does not speak to purpose or motive. Even when it is revealed that Ms. Scarlett killed Col. Mustard in the observatory with the candlestick, we don’t know why or what her dominant ideology might be. While morose, you might follow up the analogy of the game with a newspaper or magazine account of a murder or crime and discuss how a Burkeian critic would read the motive based on two-term comparisons. Burke’s goal of liberation One of the most exciting—and frustrating—aspects about teaching Burke is that he did not really see his work as theory per se, but as a method of motivating people to shake the scales of intellectual lethargy and complacency from the mind’s eye. Ultimately, Burke’s goal was not to systematize discourse with neat and tidy theoretical distinctions, but to liberate us from limiting mind-sets and categories. All his life, Burke fought against orthodoxies—anyone who claims that guilt motivates all public speaking can hardly be said to embrace the status quo. Thus, it would be a disservice to his memory to teach his pentad as a static, establishment device. Thus, as students struggle with the dramatistic pentad, they need to understand that ultimately the concepts are simply tools for understanding, a way to begin textual analyses that makes a difference in the world. When you discuss the Malcolm X example with them, challenge them to grasp the consequences of the understanding Burke’s apparatus brings them. If your students take only one lesson from this chapter, let it be that

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Burke’s career exemplified the title of one of his early books, Counter-Statement. Consistently, he showed us other ways to think. It is also useful to emphasize that Burke’s main thrust was not to help us design rhetoric, but to debunk it and to resist its pernicious appeals. As a critic, Burke was not primarily concerned with teaching rhetorical practice—he wanted to enhance an understanding of it. The concept of victimage, for example, was not developed to assist rhetors in creating scapegoats for future audiences to condemn—a mistake that one of our former students made in a Burkeian analysis of a contemporary speech. “Rotten with perfection” Burke’s notion that human beings are “rotten with perfection” (featured in his definition of man) is a particularly perplexing component of a particularly perplexing body of theoretical material. In glossing the phrase, Griffin emphasizes that as we strive for perfection, we are destructive (333). In a sense, Burke is arguing that our rottenness comes precisely because we attain perfection—or completion—of the linguistic and conceptual forms we have created. Intellectually, industrially, bureaucratically, and spiritually, we have a tendency to sow the seeds of our own destruction. We are, in effect, prisoners of our own devices. For example, our culture is particularly fond of characterizing complex ethnic, social, and psychological phenomena with simple binary oppositions such as Black/white, masculine/feminine, and gay/straight. These binary pairs have ostensible clarity, balance, and explanatory power. They give us ways to conceptualize reality quickly and efficiently. They are complete, perfect. Unfortunately, they also deny us the richness that comprises reality. Ethnicity, after all, is seldom as simple as this or that. Gender is multifaceted, and sexual orientation varies in many ways. Furthermore, with such binary oppositions comes the inevitable tendency to devalue (perhaps victimize) one element of each pair, a tendency that surely contributes heavily to our rottenness. For example, historically to be called Black or Negro (rather than white) in the United States was to be deemed second class. Those in power used the neat-and-tidy Black/white binary opposition to categorize anyone with African ancestry as less than fully human and therefore exploitable. Whether a person was entirely of African ancestry or had one African grandparent and three European grandparents, he or she was labeled Black or Negro and, correspondingly, discriminated against. Such categorization allowed our society to perpetuate slavery (even in the case of the children of male slave owners and female slaves), Jim Crow laws, and so forth. In contemporary America, which has eliminated officially sanctioned racial discrimination, we persist in using Black or African American as a category for all people with discernible African ancestry, a practice that inaccurately characterizes the complexity of ethnicity and that perpetuates subtle inequities. Even our efforts to establish middle terms such as mulatto, androgynous, or bisexual can pigeon-hole people in ways that are demeaning or limiting. Such discussion may be slow going for your students, but nonetheless such connections between linguistic perfection and unsavory social realities are provocative.

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Sample Application Log Jill Burke would say that the persuasion speech on eating disorders (which I gave as an example for Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric), was an attempt for me to purge my guilt, and that I gave that speech because I felt guilty about my past actions in being involved in an eating disorder and for having a sister who was also involved in one. Since I concentrated on the media and its obsession with beauty and thinness, Burke would say I was concentrating on the scene or situation and was therefore one who believed I was a victim of outside forces. He would say I blamed society for the flaws in my behavior. He would probably label the word “obsession” as my devil term and the word “refocus” or the word “inner beauty” as my god-term. He would say that I felt guilty for not having done better, and that I needed to give this speech in order to relieve myself or at least to express my negative emotions. He would say I chose the second choice of victimization rather than self-blame.

Exercises and Activities Aristotle and Burke If you have already covered Chapter 21, then comparisons between Aristotle’s and Burke’s approaches to public rhetoric may serve to strengthen your students’ grasp of these vital theories. One way to facilitate the comparison is to reverse Griffin’s featured examples: ask students to speculate about how Aristotle would characterize “The Ballot or the Bullet” and how Burke might read “I Have a Dream.” If you want to make this a substantial assignment, be sure to make the texts available to your students. An Aristotelian analysis of Malcolm X’s speech would feature the emotional components of the argument. By emphasizing anger and fear, this dynamic speaker employs appeals to pathos to inspire his audience to action. In addition, Malcolm X’s effort to align himself with other civil rights leaders such as King and Powell demonstrates an effort to develop the “goodwill” feature of his ethos emphasized by Aristotle. (Goodwill, your students may notice, has some theoretical affinity with Burke’s concept of “identification.”) Students may identify this African-American leader’s pragmatism with Aristotle’s notion of “practical wisdom.” Aristotelian analysis, though, may only take us so far with this speech. Analyzing the logos of Malcolm X’s speech will provide an intriguing challenge, particularly since his response to 1960s race relations is no doubt less enthymematic than other arguments students have studied. Ultimately, Malcolm X’s ethos—which emphasizes shock, charisma, and irony more than goodwill, virtue, and practical wisdom—fits less snugly into the Aristotelian mold than the characters of most speakers our students have studied. Students may sense that the persona Malcolm X projects is more closely aligned with a prophet or fiery preacher than with Aristotle’s concept of the model Greek rhetor. This jeremiadic tradition of speaking—which has been marshaled by public figures from the ancient Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament to AfricanAmerican feminists such as Audre Lorde and Alice Walker—falls largely outside Aristotle’s theory.

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A Burkeian analysis of King’s speech is similarly instructive. One could argue that King’s emphasis on personal responsibility, right action, and willpower indicates that the agent is his key concern. The high character of the agent (members of the civil rights movement) dictates nonviolent protest, the agency (or proper means) for achieving the goal of racial equality. Unlike Malcolm X, thus, whose primary interest in agency dictates a pragmatic orientation, King’s spotlight on the agent suggests that idealism is central to his message. Although King labors to create a strong sense of identification, continually using “we” to connect with the audience of demonstrators, he de-emphasizes the strategy of victimage. Unlike Malcolm X, he avoids vilifying Anglo-Americans as a whole, many of whom, he declares, “have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.” He borders on establishing scapegoats and guilt when referring to Alabama’s “vicious racists” and “its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification,” but ultimately it is agape, rather than vengeance and retribution, that dominate this speech. His admonition “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred” works directly against the them-versus-us mentality that Burke describes. It should be no surprise that, in contrast with Malcolm X’s, King’s “god terms” and “devil terms”—”justice” and “freedom” on the one hand and “injustice,” “segregation,” and “discrimination” on the other—are inanimate concepts and policies, rather than racial groups. For a Burkeian analysis of King’s public communication, see Edward C. Appel, “The Rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Comedy and Context in Tragic Collision,” Western Journal of Communication 61 (Fall 1997): 376-402. An alternate reading of “The Ballot or the Bullet” Incidentally, if you want to shake up your students’ reading of the Burkeian analysis of “The Ballot or the Bullet” featured in the text, suggest that perhaps an emphasis on scene-— rather than on agency—best characterizes the central drama of the speech. Then ask them how this could be true. If this were the case, of course, Malcolm X’s rhetoric would place greatest emphasis on the social context of the African-American experience. Furthermore, the speech would need to create a sense of situational determinism. There would be little or no choice about agency; African Americans would simply be compelled by the circumstances to wield the ballot or the bullet. In effect, the speech would be more of an explanation or prediction of the imminence of increased voting and armed struggle than a call to action. Challenge your students to consider both readings and decide which is more compelling. Suggestions of other texts If you wish to move beyond the examples featured in the text, consider representative speeches of Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, Edward Kennedy’s Address to the People of Massachusetts, Ronald Reagan’s speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (the “Evil Empire” speech), Ann Richards’s Keynote Address to the 1988 Democratic Convention, George W. Bush’s Iraq War speeches and his “axis of evil” declaration, or Bill Clinton’s public apologies for the affair with Monica Lewinsky. Also, we encourage you to consider using less discrete texts for analysis in the classroom. Texts, such as Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” Gone with the Wind (book or movie), the Star Wars series and Halle Berry’s Academy Awards acceptance speech (available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com), may vary in form, but each are fertile ground for a Burkeian reading.

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Burke’s “god” and “devil” terms Because he was a self-conscious writer who was very aware of the consequences of prose, Burke would be particularly fond of Exercise #2 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook. This exercise provides a good opportunity to feature Burke’s anti-orthodox mentality, which we emphasize above. Burke’s fondness for dramatic and religious metaphors is also particularly relevant here. If students have difficulty knowing where to begin with this question, point them to Burke’s “Definition of Man.” If you wish to broaden the scope of Exercise #3 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus from the text, consider both verbal and nonverbal rhetoric. You may also wish to expand the discussion by substituting “an important public event” for “a Friday night party.” Writing Aristotelian or Burkeian analyses When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he breaks his class into small groups and has them write Aristotelian or Burkeian analyses of the same text. He finds the group environment very fertile for these kinds of textual responses. He also gives students an argument designed not so much to persuade but to create victimage, then asks them to rewrite the text—using principles such as identification—as a genuine effort to change minds. Griffin has used George H.W. Bush’s January 5, 1991 letter to Saddam Hussein for this assignment, but many other texts would also be appropriate.

Further Resources There seems to be an entire industry of Burke scholarship, and comprehensive bibliographies are daunting. Here, we’ll offer a “short list” of selections. § For a little inspiration and sensible advice about the “overwhelming” nature of Burke’s theory, we offer Arthur Quinn’s brief piece, “Teaching Burke: Kenneth Burke and the Rhetoric of Assent,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 25 (1995): 231-36. Those with an interest in intellectual history will appreciate Quinn’s effort to place Burke within the larger tradition of Western thought. § Joseph R. Gusfield’s “Introduction” to his collection of essays entitled Kenneth Burke on Symbols and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1-49, is a solid reference. § Thomas M. Conley provides an insightful survey of Burke’s work in Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 268-77. § Sonja Foss presents examples of pentadic criticism in the eleventh chapter of Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2004). § A classic book-length study of Burke’s theory is William Rueckert, Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). § Other treatments include Wendell Harris, “The Critics Who Made Us: Kenneth Burke,” Sewanee Review 96 (1988): 452-63. § Paul Jay, “Kenneth Burke,” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 63: Modern American Critics, 1920-1955, ed. Gregory S. Jay (Detroit: Gale, 1988), 67-86.

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John F. Cragan and Donald C. Shields apply dramatism in Symbolic Theories in Applied Communication Research: Bormann, Burke, and Fisher (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995), 61-89, 199-233. For discussion of the pedagogical implications of Burke’s dark side, see Ellen Quandahl’s “‘It’s Essentially as Though This Were Killing Us’: Kenneth Burke on Mortification and Pedagogy,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 27 (Winter 1999): 5-22. For Burke’s legendary analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric, see “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,’” The Philosophy of Literary Form (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1941), 191-220. For a good analysis of Burke’s comic mode that sheds additional light on the issues raised in his enigmatic definition of man, see James L. Kasterly, “Kenneth Burke’s Comic Rejoinder to the Cult of Empire,” College English 58 (March 1996): 307-26.

Edited Collections § Bernard L. Brock has edited a recent collection of essays on Burke entitled Kenneth Burke and the 21st Century (Albany: Statue University of New York Press, 1999) that considers topics such as feminism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism. § In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Tilly Warnock, “Burke,” 90-92; Bill Bridges, “Terministic Screens,” 722-23, and “Pentad,” 499-501; James W. Chesebro, “Dramatism,” 200-01; Pat Youngdahl and Tilly Warnock, “Identification,” 337-40; H.L. Ewbank, “Symbolic Action,” 710-11. § For a special issue on Burke, see Southern Communication Journal 61, 1 (1995). § James W. Chesebro has edited a recent collection of essays entitled Extensions of the Burkeian System (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993). Applications of Burke’s theory § For intriguing applications of Burke’s theory, see: o David Ling, “A Pentadic Analysis of Senator Edward Kennedy’s Address to the People of Massachusetts,” Central States Speech Journal 21 (1970): 81-86. o Dean Scheibel, “‘Making Waves’ with Burke: Surf Nazi Culture and the Rhetoric of Localism,” Western Journal of Communication 59 (1995): 253-69. o Richard Bello, “A Burkeian Analysis of the ‘Political Correctness’ Confrontation in Higher Education,” Southern Communication Journal 61 (1996): 243-52. o For a recent study that applies the Burkeian concept of “identification” to American tourism, see Gregory Clark’s Rhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth Burke (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004). Malcolm X and prophetic rhetoric § For additional analysis of Malcolm X’s rhetorical practice, see Michael Eric Dyson, Making Malcolm: The Myth and the Meaning of Malcolm X (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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For a general discussion of prophetic rhetoric and the jeremiadic persona, see: o James Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997). o Margaret Zulick, “The Agon of Jeremiah: On the Dialogic Invention of Prophetic Ethos,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 125-48. o On the importance of the jeremiadic persona to American rhetoric, see Sacvan Berkcovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978). o Building on Berkcovitch’s work, David Howard-Pitney’s The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) demonstrates specific cultural features of African-American rhetoric. Notably, Howard-Pitney examines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s use of radical jeremiadic rhetoric, which can help emphasize elements of King’s ethos that challenge a strictly Aristotelian reading of his discourse.

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CHAPTER 24

NARRATIVE PARADIGM Error Alert! Before a textbook arrives in your hands or those of your students, the text has been reviewed by many eyes. In the case of A First Look, Em, Glen, Emily, and Robin (the copy editor at McGraw-Hill) have all reviewed the words many times. But, as evidence of our fallibility, the text contains a small, but very significant error in this chapter on page 343. Under the five assumptions of the rational-world paradigm, the second item currently states: 2. We make decisions on the basis of good reasons, which vary depending on the communication situation, media, and genre (philosophical, technical, rhetorical or artistic). While this is true of the narrative paradigm (the second set of 5 assumptions), it does not hold for the rational-world, but instead it should read: 2. We make decisions on the basis of arguments. This typographical error will be corrected in future printings, but if you are using a book from the initial batch, you’ll want to inform your students of the amended material.

Outline I.

Introduction. A. For Walter Fisher, storytelling epitomizes human nature. B. All forms of human communication that appeal to our reason are stories. C. Offering good reasons has more to do with telling a compelling story than it does with piling up evidence or constructing a tight argument. D. Fisher’s narrative paradigm emphasizes that no communication is purely descriptive or didactic.

II.

Narration and paradigm: defining the terms. A. Fisher defines narration as symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them. B. Fisher’s definition is broad. 1. Narration is rooted in time and space. 2. It covers every aspect of life with regard to character, motive, and action. 3. It refers to verbal and nonverbal messages. 4. Even abstract communication is included. C. A paradigm is a conceptual framework. D. Fisher’s narrative paradigm is offered as the foundation on which a complete rhetoric needs to be built.

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III.

Paradigm shift: from a rational-world paradigm to a narrative one. A. The mind-set of the reigning technical experts is the rational-world paradigm. 1. People are essentially rational. 2. We make decisions on the basis of arguments. 3. The type of speaking situation (legal, scientific, legislative) determines the course of our argument. 4. Rationality is determined by how much we know and how well we argue. 5. The world is a set of logical puzzles that we can solve through rational analysis. B. The narrative paradigm is built on parallel, yet contrasting, premises. 1. People are essentially storytellers. 2. We make decisions on the basis of good reason, which vary depending on the communication situation, media, and genre (philosophical, technical, rhetorical, or artistic). 3. History, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons. 4. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories. 5. The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly recreate, our lives. C. Unlike the rational-world paradigm, the narrative paradigm privileges values, aesthetic criteria, and commonsense interpretation. D. We judge stories based on narrative rationality.

IV.

Narrative rationality: coherence and fidelity. A. Fisher believes that everyone applies the same standards of narrative rationality to stories. B. The twin tests of a story are narrative coherence and narrative fidelity. C. Narrative coherence: does the story hang together? 1. How probable is the story to the hearer? 2. Narrative consistency parallels lines of argument in the rational-world paradigm. 3. The test of reason, however, is only one factor affecting narrative coherence. 4. Coherence can be assessed by comparing a story to others with a similar theme. 5. The ultimate test of narrative coherence is whether or not we can count on the characters to act in a reliable manner. D. Narrative fidelity: does the story ring true and humane? 1. Does the story square with the hearer’s experiences? 2. A story has fidelity when it provides good reasons to guide our future actions. 3. Values set the narrative paradigm’s logic of good reasons apart from the rational-world paradigm’s logic of reasons. 4. The logic of good reasons centers on five value-related issues. a. The values embedded in the message. b. The relevance of those values to decisions made. c. The consequence of adhering to those values. d. The overlap with the worldview of the audience. e. Conformity with what audience members believe is an ideal basis of conduct. 5. People tend to prefer accounts that fit with what they view as truthful and humane.

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6. There is an ideal audience that identifies the humane values that a good story embodies. 7. These stories include the timeless values of truth, the good, beauty, health, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion, friendship, and oneness with the Cosmos. 8. Communities not based on humane virtues are possible, but Fisher believes these less idealistic value systems lack true coherence. 9. Judging a story to have fidelity means we believe shared values can influence belief and action. V.

Critique: does Fisher’s story have coherence and fidelity? A. Fisher’s narrative paradigm offers a fresh reworking to Aristotelian analysis. B. Fisher’s principles of narrative coherence and fidelity can be used to analyze various types of communication, which provides strong evidence of their validity. C. Critics charge that Fisher is overly optimistic. D. Stories promoting the status quo may have undue influence and oppressive power.

Key Names and Terms Walter Fisher A professor in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California who developed the narrative paradigm of communication. Narration Story; symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them. Mythos Ideas that cannot be verified or proved in an absolute way; story consists of both logos and mythos. Paradigm A conceptual framework or worldview. Rational-World Paradigm A scientific approach to knowledge that assumes people are logical, making decisions on the basis of evidence and lines of argument. Narrative Paradigm A theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication. Narrative Rationality A mode of evaluating the worth of stories based on the twin standards of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity. Narrative Coherence Internal consistency with characters acting in a reliable fashion. Narrative Fidelity Congruency between values embedded in a message and what listeners regard as truthful and humane. Ideal Audience A permanent public that identifies the humane values a good story embodies. Barbara Warnick

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A rhetorical critic at the University of Washington who argues that, contrary to Fisher’s assumptions, evil or wrongheaded stories can have great power.

Principal Changes This chapter was previously Chapter 23. Griffin has placed a new emphasis on humane values and clarifies the discussion of the paradigm’s democratic strength and Fisher’s position on good discourse. In addition, he has revised the Critique section and updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion What is a paradigm? Before jumping headlong into Fisher’s theory, you might want to spend some time shoring up the concept of a paradigm. Without understanding this philosophical notion, the idea of a paradigm shift (away from rationalism) loses its strength. If a paradigm is one’s view of the world, a shift in paradigm means seeing the world an entirely different way and it may be of some value to your students to discuss other historic paradigm shifts (i.e., from a Ptolemaic view of the Earth as the center of the university to a Copernican system with the sun as central; the metamorphosis from an agrarian to industrialized society) in order to grasp the radical change Fisher is advocating. The elegance of Fisher’s narrative paradigm The broad scope and theoretical elegance of Fisher’s narrative paradigm render it particularly exciting. Although Human Communication as Narration is a sophisticated, complex book that engages a wide range of philosophical positions and communication theories, Fisher’s essential theoretical concepts are refreshingly simple. There are no intricate Aristotelian syllogisms or Burkeian ratios to untangle; only basic criteria by which all narratives can be evaluated. Of course any effort to reduce all of human communication to a few key concepts will contain certain weaknesses and limitations. What is a story? As Griffin points out, Fisher defines narration very broadly as “symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them” (341). A good place to begin discussion is to ask students to scrutinize this definition of narration or story and to compare it to their own perceptions. Is there a difference between a story and a simple sequence or chain of events? Does a story require a specific beginning, middle, and end, and what is meant by each of these terms? Does a story require a storyteller, or do mere actions and interpretation qualify? Can there be a story if there is no audience? Must a story mean anything? Who assigns meaning to a story, the storyteller or the audience? Answers to these questions may affect the way students come to understand and evaluate Fisher’s approach. (Essay Questions #22 and #26 address some of these issues, below.) A story’s coherence Be sure that your students are clear about Fisher’s and Griffin’s use of the word “probable” to describe narrative coherence (344). It seems that they are not referring to a

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technical sense of statistical likelihood, but a general freedom from inconsistency or contradiction. For coherence to be established, we must determine that, given the nature of the plot and the characters, the action develops in a manner that is internally consistent. Strictly speaking, the improbable can be coherent, so long as it fits organically within the world of the story. Most stories, in fact, include improbable yet coherent events. Remember that, for Fisher, the essence of “probability” is “whether a story ‘hangs together’” (Human Communication as Narration 47). It is probably worth noting that, technically speaking, Fisher uses three separate terms to discuss coherence: “argumentative” or “structural coherence,” “material coherence,” and “characterological coherence” (Human Communication as Narration 47). For purposes of concision, Griffin collapses these three terms into one—“coherence.” Since he includes the specific elements of all three within the general term of coherence, however, he has not significantly impoverished or confused Fisher’s theory. Narrative fidelity To clarify the concept of “fidelity,” be sure your students understand that the term refers directly to “the truthfulness of the story” (Human Communication as Narration 47) or “the ‘truth qualities’ of the story, the degree to which it accords with the logic of good reasons: the soundness of its reasoning and the value of its values” (Human Communication as Narration 88). In short, fidelity seems synonymous with veracity. The ideal audience The concept of the ideal audience deserves discussion. You may wish to discuss with students how Warnick’s critique complicates this notion. In addition, it is important to consider culture. Fisher’s optimistic position that people, when confronted by “the better part of themselves,” find humane values more persuasive may not be entirely convincing to your students. How do we factor culture into the ideal audience—in other words, are seemingly universal humane values relative and dependent on time and place? As Fisher suggests, his notion of an ideal audience or permanent public resembles the construct of the “universal audience” that Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca develop in The New Rhetoric, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969). As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca argue, however, the universal audience is not really so universal after all: “Each individual, each culture, has thus its own concept of the universal audience. The study of these variations would be very instructive, as we would learn from it what men [and women], at different times in history, have regarded as real, true, and objectively valid” (33). It may be that the ways in which our criteria differ are more interesting— and revealing—than the ways in which they are similar. (Essay Question #27 below addresses this issue.) Comparison with other theorists When scrutinizing the purported universality of Fisher’s humane values, students may wish to draw on their knowledge of other communication theorists. In the fifth version of the textbook, in fact, Griffin asked his reader to consider the following controversial statement from Fisher’s Human Communication and Narrative through the lenses provided by Geertz and Pacanowksy: “The logic I have outlined and critically applied in interpreting and assessing political, aesthetic, and philosophical discourse is, I believe, a universal logic” (194). As Griffin

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notes in the fifth edition, the work of Geertz and Pacanowsky—and, a bit later in A First Look at Communication Theory, Philipsen—“strongly suggests that stories are culturally specific” (331), and perhaps the standards by which we judge narratives also vary from culture to culture. Fisher’s list of eternal values—truth, the good, beauty, health, and so forth—may not be so universal as he suggests. Is it presumptuous of Fisher to proclaim that his logic is universal? Is he privileging contemporary Western values? What would Geertz say about Fisher’s claim that The Epic of Gilgamesh “exhibits narrative probability and fidelity across time and culture” (Human Communication as Narration 78)? (Essay Question #25 and Integrative Essay Question #33 below address this issue.) Does a story need to reinforce comfortable values? Also in the Fifth Edition of his textbook, Griffin raises the criticism—which he attributes to William Kirkwood—that Fisher’s standard of narrative fidelity “implies that good stories cannot and perhaps should not go beyond what people already believe and value” (331). If, in fact, the process of “ringing true” tends to reinforce or depend upon comfortable values and perspectives held by audiences rather than challenging audiences to stretch beyond themselves to adopt new beliefs and viewpoints, then in fact Kirkwood’s complaint is significant. The old line that successful authors know how to give readers what they want or are looking for certainly feeds this concern. Seen in the light of this criticism, the storyteller’s concluding monologue in Ian McEwan’s recent narrative Atonement: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2001; largeprint edition Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press, 2002) assumes extra meaning. In a frank, private reflection at the end of her life, Briony Tallis, the character who serves as the narrator, confesses that the “real-life” love story on which she has based her tale—the experiences of her older sister and her soldier lover—actually ended anticlimactically when both characters suffered tragic, random deaths in the beginning battles of World War II. Since her readers would be uncomfortable with the truthful story, which would do nothing to reinforce their conventional beliefs about romance, heroism, and human endurance, the narrator admits to altering the account so that the two lovers are reunited in the end: What sense or hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? . . . I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened? The answer is simple: lovers survive and flourish. (2002: 609-10) In effect, the narrator’s argument seems to be that since the truth of the matter is too bleak to conform to readers’ conventional notions of a good story, she must alter it to fit their expectations. Implicitly, Briony’s perception of the necessity of this revision (she must conform to readers’ expectations of a good story) resonates with the critique launched by Kirkwood— that a narrative theory emphasizing what rings true for audiences works against—or at least does not account for—stories that dramatically alter readers’ perspectives. On the other hand, one could argue that McEwan’s artistic decision to feature the narrator’s private confession demonstrates the opposite point—that readers are willing to be challenged by a last-minute revelation that undermines the familiar, “feel-good” plot components they have just read and no doubt appreciated. The fact that Atonement was short-listed for the prestigious Booker

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Prize suggests that in this case, at least, many readers admired McEwan’s tough-minded revision of the “lovers survive and flourish” theme. Whether or not the popularity of Atonement, with its unexpected ending, ultimately reinforces or undermines Fisher’s twin theoretical concepts of coherence and fidelity, however, is a judgment we’ll leave up to you or students looking for a provocative novel to investigate. Evil or misguided stories Students can also come up with additional examples of evil or misguided stories such as David Duke’s racist political propaganda, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s account of the Communist infiltration of American politics. Fisher would likely say that these must be considered “bad” stories because they lack fidelity—as he does of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (Human Communication as Narration 76)—but such an approach ducks the issue of what they have. Surely we cannot/should not deny their power. Why is such discourse so persuasive to various audiences? Why, in fact, are arguments based on scapegoats so compelling? What sort of powerful reasons do these storytellers marshal in the process of winning adherents to vicious causes? (Integrative Essay Question #29 presents a way into these issues, as well as a way to tie the discussion back to Burke.) Another genre of stories that may challenge Fisher’s concept of fidelity is film noir. How would Fisher explain the enduring popularity of films such as Les Diaboliques, The Last Seduction, Heathers, Body Heat, Collateral and—arguably—Pulp Fiction, which do not explicitly advocate that the viewer perform evil in the “real world,” yet reward the deeds of evil characters within the context of the story? What sort of narrative rationality guides the audiences of such narratives? Could it be that we need to develop a narrative rationality of “bad reasons”? The value of the narrative paradigm Despite our reservations about Fisher’s narrative paradigm, it is clear that concepts such as good reasons and narrative rationality elucidate many—if not all—important communicative acts. In this sense, we believe that the partial applicability of the narrative paradigm renders the theory valuable and worthy of careful study. If Fisher’s theory helps us understand the great success of The Lion King or The Man Who Would Be King, then its failure to explain a text of another sort is hardly a fatal flaw. It may not be the only piece of diagnostic equipment a rhetorician needs, but it is a useful tool, nonetheless. Old ideas, new theory? We like to speculate on the idea that Fisher’s concepts have been kicked around by literary critics and writers (such as our old friend Aristotle) for a long time. The ancient notions of verisimilitude and mimesis, for example, may be very close to coherence. Is he simply recycling some very old ideas, or does he have something new to say? Narratives and powers It is worth elaborating on the implications of the relationship between narratives and power that Griffin mentions in the Critique section (331). Susan Miller begins Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), her critique of the teaching of composition in America, with the observation that storytellers occupy a privileged position because power is, at its roots, telling our own stories (1). Shouldn’t

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any theory of narrative emphasize the potential inequalities between teller and listener? What is lost in Fisher’s theory as a result of his neglect of this concern? Griffin’s point that Fisher’s approach may not adequately consider issues of power and dominance in storytelling is poignantly illustrated in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. As the firstperson narrator reflects on the death of Tod Clifton, a young African-American male who is pointlessly gunned down by a police officer, he realizes that the record—the story—of the victim’s death will perpetuate, rather than alter, the power relations of the status quo: All things, it is said, are duly recorded—all things of importance, that is. But not quite, or actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are put down, those lies his keepers keep their power by. But the cop would be Clifton’s historian, his judge, his witness, and his executioner, and I was the only brother in the watching crowd. And I, the only witness for the defense, knew neither the extent of his guilt nor the nature of his crime. Where were the historians today? And how would they put it down? (429) The narrator continues, in poetic tones, to lament the fate of those who fall outside history, whose stories, when told, are manipulated to reaffirm the basic inequalities that characterize American culture.

Sample Application Log Brian Over fall break, I saw the movie Quiz Show, which is about a television game show which is tailored to keep the public’s interest by a scam in which certain contestants know all the answers before they get asked the questions on the air. The plot of the movie revolves around two conflicting stories: that of the game show producers, who claim that everyone’s making money and no one’s getting hurt; and that of the federal investigator, who says that television is presenting the public with a false sense of reality. Ultimately, the court has to decide whose story has more narrative coherence and narrative fidelity. It is a lack of coherence on the part of the game show’s producers and contestants that sparks the investigation in the first place. The federal investigator recognizes there is something that doesn’t quite fit in their story. Although the investigator’s story does not seem quite believable to people at first, he manages to convince people that his story has coherence and just as important, his story has fidelity. That is, the TV viewing public can identify with it because they are the ones being abused.

Exercises and Activities Testing the coherence and fidelity of well-known texts Help students to explore and evaluate Fisher’s twin criteria of coherence and fidelity through application. Do these concepts adequately explain the power of many of the most enduring stories of our culture? A provocative test case is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a play most students will have read or seen. In terms of coherence, Hamlet’s behavior seems anything but. His mood is persistently melancholy, but his actions are consistently

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unpredictable. With respect to fidelity, not many of us are able to forge a direct connection with Hamlet, whose uncle has murdered his father and married his mother, and who learns of this treachery from an encounter with his father’s ghost. The general theme of revenge that enervates the play will strike a chord with many, but is Hamlet’s bloody solution truly relevant to our lives? How, in effect, might Fisher account for these apparent problems with his theoretical categories? Other test cases could be Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice or King Lear (mentioned in Griffin’s introduction to the chapter [340]) and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex or Antigone. Contradictions in the story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz Griffin’s global example—the story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz—is extremely rich and provocative. Ruth’s high-minded idealism (manifested in her steadfast loyalty to her mother-inlaw) and Naomi’s earthy self-help (demonstrated in the assertive courtship strategy she concocts for Ruth) may seem contradictory or at least paradoxical to you and students, particularly since they are both women’s responses. How can these contrasting elements of the story, these divergent feminine ways of being in the world, “hang together”? What does this ostensibly disparate conjunction of values tell us about the larger worldview of the storyteller and the culture in which the story is told? In these terms, does the story “ring true”? Can we, situated in twenty-first-century America, relate? Should we be able to? Do we have stories that are similarly incongruous? Why? Just between you and us, we believe that the story, in spite of—most likely because of—these apparent inconsistencies, reveals a compelling coherence and fidelity (think dialogical tension here), but you and your students may disagree. Competing narratives The cartoon on page 345 humorously raises the very important—and often deadly serious—point that humans often wage arguments through competing narratives. In doing so, disputants may marshal alternative narrative rationalities in order to produce the strongest story. A good way to explore how narrative rationalities may compete is to examine the practice of forensic rhetoric. For example, have your class consider the conflicting stories presented in the O.J. Simpson trial. Whereas the prosecution told the story of a madly jealous, violent exhusband who killed the one he loved, the defense constructed a narrative about a racist police department that would do whatever was necessary to frame an African-American suspect. Both sides worked diligently to undermine the coherence and fidelity of the competing story. After the trial, polls demonstrated that whereas European Americans tended to favor the good reasons presented in the prosecution’s story, African Americans tended to believe those developed by the defense. Which was a better story? Does Fisher’s narrative paradigm give us a way to answer such questions? If not, how might such theoretical speculation begin? (The recent Michael Jackson trial may also be a useful vehicle for getting at these provocative issues.) Incidentally, if we’re willing to give up claims of universality, the concept of the “discourse community” or “interpretative community” offers one way out of the dilemma. Feature film illustrations The popular film Forrest Gump is a good vehicle for discussing the narrative paradigm. Have your students attempt to explain the film’s great popularity in terms of coherence and fidelity. How does the narrative establish internal consistency? In what ways does the story resonate with the lives of the viewers? A more provocative possibility is the tale of the life of Christ, also known as “the greatest story ever told.” Does Fisher’s narrative rationality help us

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to understand its enduring power? Now nearly 2,000 years old, the story shows no sign of fading. Why is this? The documentary The Farmer’s Wife, which we mentioned in our treatment of Chapter 1, is an excellent nonfiction narrative for analysis. How is “real life” molded by creator Donald Sutherland to establish coherence and fidelity? Or one might consider using more controversial examples of documentary narrative such as the highly polarizing film Fahrenheit 9-11 or the thriller Memento, a story that is told out of time sequence. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he likes to use the film Smoke, particularly Augie’s story, the 19-minute clip that constitutes its conclusion (1:28-1:47). The story can be analyzed for coherence and fidelity. Why does it or does it not hang together? Encourage students to explore the values to which the story appeals.

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Other significant works written by Fisher not mentioned by Griffin include: o “The Narrative Paradigm and the Interpretation and the Assessment of Historical Texts,” Argumentation and Advocacy 25 (1988): 50-53. o “Narration, Knowledge, and the Possibility of Wisdom,” in Rethinking Knowledge: Reflections Across the Disciplines, eds. Robert F. Goodman and Walter Fisher (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 169-92. Sonja Foss’s coverage of “narrative criticism” in Chapter 10 of Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice moves beyond Fisher, broadening the scope and complexity of the theory. In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see Elizabeth Patnoe and James Phelan, “Narrative Theory,” 454-57; John Stewart, “Fisher,” 272. For an additional critique of Fisher’s paradigm, see Dennis D. Cali, “Chiari Lubich’s 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech: Case Study in the Mystical Narrative,” Communication Studies 44 (1993): 132-43. John Cragan and Donald Shields apply Fisher’s narrative paradigm in Symbolic Theories in Applied Communication Research: Bormann, Burke, and Fisher (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1995), 91-122, 235-67. For an intriguing application of narrative theory to the field of economics, see Deidre McCloskey, If You’re So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Alan J. Bush and Victoria Davies Bush apply the narrative paradigm to advertising in “The Narrative Paradigm as a Prescriptive for Improving Ethical Evaluations of Advertisements,” Journal of Advertising 23 (September 1994): 31-41. For a thoughtful study that also places great stock in the power of “good reasons,” see Wayne Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). For further information on the concept of the discourse community, see M. Jimmie Killingsworth, “Discourse Community,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 19496. The consistently refreshing Arthur Asa Burger applies narrative theory to contemporary contexts in Narrative in Popular Culture, Media, and Everyday Life (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). Finally, a wonderful book on narrative theory is Wayne Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

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ETHICAL REFLECTIONS ARISTOTLE AND WEST Key Names and Terms Aristotle Previously introduced in Chapter 21, this ancient Greek scholar advocated the “golden mean” in ethical matters. Golden Mean The virtue of moderation; the virtuous person develops habits that avoids extremes. Cornel West A professor of African-American studies at Princeton University (formerly at Harvard University) who advocates pragmatism. Pragmatism An applied approach to knowledge; the philosophy that true understanding of an idea or situation has practical implications for action.

Further Resources For a succinct summary of pragmatism, see Steven Mailloux, “Pragmatism,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 552. For those interested in West’s position on racial issues, we recommend Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

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MEDIA AND CULTURE McLuhan’s Media Ecology Griffin’s treatment of Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology theory is available online on Griffin’s website, http://www.afirstlook.com. We strongly encourage you to see Griffin’s description in the textbook and to incorporate online material into your course. The revised chapter includes both classical McLuhan concepts such as technological determinism and hot/cold media, but also moves into the contemporary research in the area of media ecology.

Key Names and Terms Postmodernism An epistemological stance that is suspicious of any truth claim; according to JeanFrancois Lyotard, an incredulity toward grand narratives such as Marxism, Freudian psychology, and Christianity. Jean Baudrillard A leading French postmodernist who describes an absence of meaning in contemporary society. Marshall McLuhan The former director of the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto who championed technological determinism as the key to understanding media. Jean-Francois Lyotard A French philosopher who popularized the use of the term postmodern to describe our culture. He asserts that postmodernism constitutes an incredulity toward metanarratives; knowledge is relative. Hyperreality The phenomenon whereby something seems more real than reality. Frederic Jameson A Duke University literature professor who, operating from a neo-Marxist perspective, argues that we are living in a late stage of capitalism in which boundaries between high and popular culture are blurred, art is measured by profits, and media conglomerates buttress the power of those currently in control. Tribal Age The epoch in which orality characterized human communication and the senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell dominated visualization. Age of Literacy The epoch in which writing produced by the phonetic alphabet characterized human communication and visualization rose to prominence. Print Age The epoch in which the printing press promoted literacy and created widespread dependence on visualization.

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Electronic Age The epoch in which electronic mass media have created a new orality in which all humanity can participate. Global Village Worldwide, electronic community where there are no remote places and where all people have equal access.


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A good general collection is David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society, 2nd ed. (White Plains: Longman, 1995). For discussions of media and postmodernism, see: o David Morley, “Postmodernism: The Rough Guide,” in Cultural Studies in Communications, eds. James Curran, David Morley, and Valerie Walkerdine (London: Arnold, 1996), 50-65. o Jonathan Bignell, Postmodern Media Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). For studies of advertising in a postmodern vein, see Mary Cross, ed., Advertising and Culture: Theoretical Perspectives (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996); and Anthony J. Cortese, Provocateur: Images of Woman and Minorities in Advertising (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). For general interest, we recommend Ben H. Bagdikian, Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). In Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously (New York: Continuum, 1992), David Bianculli offers a spirited apologia for the medium. In doing so, he specifically engages arguments raised by McLuhan and Gerbner (Chapter 27). For a feminist critique of the field, see Cynthia M. Lont, “Feminist Critique of Mass Communication Research,” in Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques in Communication Studies, 231-48.

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CHAPTER 25

SEMIOTICS Outline I.

Introduction. A. Roland Barthes held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France. B. In Mythologies, he sought to decipher the cultural meaning of visual signs, particularly those perpetuating dominant social values. C. Semiology is concerned with anything that can stand for something else. D. Barthes is interested in signs that are seemingly straightforward, but subtly communicate ideological or connotative meaning. E. Barthes had an unusual style for an academic and was extremely influential.

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Wrestling with signs. A. Barthes’s true concern was with connotation—the ideological baggage that signs carry wherever they go. B. The structure of signs is key to Barthes’s theory. C. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiology to refer to the study of signs. D. A sign is the combination of its signifier and signified. 1. The signifier is the image; the signified is the concept. 2. In Barthes’s terms, the signifier isn’t the sign of the signified—rather the sign is the combination of signifier and signified, which are united in an inseparable bond. 3. These distinctions come from Saussure. 4. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a verbal sign is arbitrary. 5. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a nonverbal sign is based on affinity and is therefore quasi-arbitrary. E. A sign does not stand on its own: it is part of a system. 1. A structural analysis of features common to all semiotic systems is called taxonomy. 2. Barthes believed semiotic systems function the same way despite their apparent diversity. 3. Significant semiotic systems create myths that affirm the status quo as natural, inevitable, and eternal.

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The yellow ribbon transformation: from forgiveness to pride. A. Not all semiological systems are mythic. B. Mythic or connotative systems are second-order semiological systems built off of preexisting sign systems. C. Within mythic systems, the sign of the first system becomes the signifier of the second.

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The making of myth: stripping the sign of its history. A. Every ideological sign is the result of two interconnected sign systems. B. The first system is strictly descriptive as the signifier image and the signified concept combine to produce the denotative sign. C. The second system appropriates the sign of the denotative system and makes it the signifier of the connotative system. D. This lateral shift transforms a neutral sign into an ideological tool. E. The original denotative sign is not lost, but it is impoverished. 1. The mythic sign carries the crust of falsity. 2. The mythic communication is unable to imagine anything alien, novel, or other.

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Unmasking the myth of a homogeneous society. A. Only those who understand semiotics can detect the hollowness of connotative signs. B. Mythic signs don’t explain, defend, or raise questions. C. Mythic signs always reinforce dominant cultural values. D. They naturalize the current order of things.

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The semiotics of mass communication: “I’d like to be like Mike.” A. Because signs are integral to mass communication, Barthes’s semiotic analysis has become an essential media theory. B. Kyong Kim argues that the mass signification arising in a response to signs is an artificial effect calculated to achieve something else. C. Advertisements on television create layers of connotation that reaffirm the status quo.

VII. Critique: do mythic signs always reaffirm the status quo? A. Some students of signification disagree with Barthes’s view that all connotative systems uphold the values of the dominant class. B. Scholars such as Anne Norton and Douglass Kellner expand Barthes’s semiotic approach to argue that signs can subvert the status quo or exemplify a countercultural connotative system. C. Dick Hebdige suggests that although countercultural semiotic activity is eventually co-opted by mainstream society, it enjoys a brief time of subversive signification. D. Barthes’s semiotic approach to imagery remains a core theoretical perspective for communication scholars, particularly those who emphasize media and culture.

Key Names and Terms Roland Barthes A French semiologist who held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France and whose theorizing focused on the cultural meaning of signs. Ferdinand de Saussure A Swiss linguist who coined the term semiology. Semiology/Semiotics The study of signs and their impact on society.

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Connotation Barthes’s label for the ideological baggage that signs carry with them. Sign The combination of a signifier and a signified. Signifier The actual image of a sign. Signified The meaning ascribed to a sign. Taxonomy A form of structural analysis that seeks to define and classify the features of all semiotic systems. Mythologies Written by Barthes, this book contains semiotic analyses of a wide variety of visual signs, particularly those perpetuating dominant societal values. Mythic or Connotative System A second-order semiological system built off of a preexisting sign system. Within mythic systems, the sign of the first system becomes the signifier of the second. Kyong Kim A communication scholar from Mt. Vernon Nazarene College and author of a recent book that applies semiotics to media theory. Anne Norton and Douglas Kellner University of Pennsylvania political scientist and UCLA media scholar (formerly from the University of Texas at Austin), respectively, who expand Barthes’s semiotic approach to account for how signs may subvert the status quo. Dick Hebdige The director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who argues that countercultural semiotic activity at first subverts but is eventually co-opted by mainstream society.

Principal Changes In this edition, Griffin has expanded his discussion of the yellow ribbons displayed in support of US troops fighting in Iraq as well as edited the chapter for clarity, and updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Clarifying Barthes’s analysis Like Griffin’s treatment of CMM, this chapter epitomizes the inherent limitations of concise summaries of the complex, constantly evolving theories of wide-ranging thinkers. In order to fill in key gaps in your students’ understanding, you may need to bring additional material to class. In particular, we would recommend providing a bit more of the text of Barthes’s analysis of wrestling. To vivify Barthes’s claim that mythic signs reinforce the dominant values of their culture, quote at length from pages 21-23 of “The World of Wrestling,” where Barthes explains the way in which the spectacle of wrestling communicates the concept of “justice” to the audience. Be sure your students understand how justice is

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naturalized as the honorable wrestler eventually triumphs over the villainous rule breaker, the “bastard.” Then they will better comprehend how people who accept this mythology within the spectacle of the ring are less likely to question its application to the overall order of things. The concluding paragraphs of the essay brilliantly summarize the ideological power of this semiotic display (24-25). We also recommend “Wine and Milk” (58-61) and “Steak and Chips” (62-64), which concisely present the connection between everyday images of the French table and ideology. In the former essay, for example, Barthes writes, “For it is true that wine is a good and fine substance, but it is no less true that its production is deeply involved in French capitalism, whether it is that of the private distillers or that of the big settlers in Algeria who impose on the Muslims, on the very land of which they have been dispossessed, a crop of which they have no need, while they lack even bread” (61). The first-order to second-order transition The relationship between a first-order, denotative system and a second-order, connotative system is often difficult to understand. Students have a tendency to view semiotics as a kind of simpleminded symbolism akin to the literary criticism they picked up in high-school English classes, so you may have to push them to see beyond the obvious “standing for” relationships. In addition to walking students through Griffin’s yellow-ribbon example, we recommend Griffin’s practice of working through the fourth exercise in Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook. Since many of your students will be unfamiliar with opera, the original context of the saying will be mysterious to them, a fact that renders the exercise all the more valuable. In the denotative system, the signifier is the full-figured diva herself, belting out her final aria before her death—and the end of a long evening of musical drama. The signified would be something like “one last voice for love and passion before death and closure.” Overall, the sign suggests a universe that is tragic but aesthetically pleasing. The diva dies, but not until she makes her long-awaited grand statement. When the sign from the denotative system becomes the signifier of the connotative system, a new signified emerges, the more generic notion of waiting it (often an athletic contest) out, of not accepting victory or defeat until the episode or event is entirely completed. The overall sign of the connotative system evokes dogged patience and American skepticism— never say never. After all, in the connotative system the details of the conclusion are not yet known. The new meaning is very similar to the famous line attributed to Yogi Berra: “The game isn’t over until it’s over.” In the connotative shift from the original sign to the second-order semiotic system, the operatic aesthetic elements of dramatic closure and high tragedy are not entirely eliminated, but impoverished. Ask students to appraise the potential ideological components of the connotative sign. Over the course of the connotative shift, has the new sign assumed the “crust of falsity”? Another excellent example that was researched by one of our former students is the transformation of the swastika from a symbol representing the sun, life, and good luck into the symbol of Nazi Germany. As a symbol, the swastika has a long lineage, with evidence it adored pottery as early as 1000 BC. For centuries, it had widespread application, including appeared on the shoulder patches of the American 45th Division during the First World War. In Germany, the symbol started to appear at the end of the nineteenth century and was chosen to denote German nationalism and pride in Aryan history based on the symbol’s own Aryan / Indian origins. What had stood for life now came to symbolize hate, intolerance, murder, and death.

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The symbol, imported by the Nazis, has been transformed into a second-order system that departs dramatically from its origins. Moving to its symbolization of the neo-Nazi movement, you might want to discuss with your students how the changes in the signified have altered the sign over the years. Based on the change in the symbol’s meaning, ask students what they might suggest to Alvernia College, a Catholic school in Reading, PA, where on the tile floor of a pre-WW2 building is a swastika mosaic. If the example seems obvious or outmoded, you may want to remind students of the flap that Britain’s Prince Harry caused when he wore a swastika-adorned armband to a costume party in 2005. Similarities between Barthes and Richards For the purpose of fine-tuning theoretical distinctions, it’s useful to compare Barthes’s approach to the sign with Richards’s semantic triangle (see Integrative Essay Question #29). At first glance the two schemes have several similarities. Both try to conceptualize and systematize the essential “standing for” relationship basic to human communication. Both are concerned with the connection between symbols and concepts. Further study, however, demonstrates vital differences based on the contrasting interests of the two theorists. Richards’s triangle focuses on the complex relationship between symbols and specific, real things, and he introduces the difficult concept of the “reference” as a way of bridging the gap between the two. Barthes’s primary concerns, however, seem to be the relationship between symbols and ideological principles and the complex process of connotation; thus the signifier’s connection to the signified takes the reader in an increasingly abstract direction. Richards’s triangle includes the notion of the real thing—in this case, a four-legged, barking creature. In contrast, Barthes’s sign is entirely symbolic. The flesh-and-blood wrestlers are never merely wrestlers; they are interesting only because they enact a symbolic drama that evokes complex ideological meanings. Fantasizing themes To discuss Barthes’s contributions to media theory, ask students to reflect on the “fantasized themes” (to use Kyong Kim’s phrase) that advertising tries to sell us in addition to their products. In an era in which commercials seem to be ever more loosely linked to the advertised product itself, students should be able to develop a sense of Kim’s Barthian analysis, particularly his point that the mass media create an “artificial effect” that does not merely deliver information but aims “to achieve something else.” Such analysis need not be limited to advertising. What “fantasized themes” and “artificial effects” are created by network news, prime-time television news magazines, sports commentaries, or soap operas? The destabilization of signs We would recommend discussing the twists to semiotics offered by Barthes by Norton, Kellner, and Hebdige. What do your students think of Norton’s and Kellner’s arguments about Madonna’s subversive signification? Can they come up with other media figures that might produce destabilizing signs? Have them contemplate examples that illustrate Hebdige’s thesis as well. Other notable works by Barthes In order to avoid inaccurate pigeonholing, students need to understand that Barthes was an eclectic, innovative theorist whose perspective on signs was constantly shifting. The theoretical material presented in this chapter represents only a few of his many intellectual

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phases. In this light, it’s important to note that much of his most famous work concerned literary signs and codes. In order to vivify this point, you may wish to show students samples of some of his later work. In particular, I would recommend giving them a look at S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), a book-length analysis of the complex semiotic verbal codes present in Honore de Balzac’s short story, “Sarrasine.” Another option is Barthes’s brilliant essay, “Textual Analysis of a Tale of Poe,” which is available in the following anthologies: On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 84-97; Untying the Text, ed. Robert Young (London: Routledge, 1981), 133-61; and Roland Barthes, The Semiotic Challenge, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988), 261-93. It’s also important to note that although Barthes’s interest in exposing dominant cultural ideologies continued throughout his career, intriguing—and controversial—issues of gender and sexual orientation become increasingly important in later work. Saving Private Ryan It might be instructive to question Griffin’s claim that Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan constitutes antiwar signification (367). In contrast, it could be argued that although the film begins with the horrors of war, its conclusion, which amounts to a traditionally heroic last stand orchestrated by admirable underdogs, glorifies—or at least unquestionably accepts—the larger context in which the battle is fought. Spielberg’s focus on Tom Hanks’s exemplary bravery in the face of death helps to convert this otherwise unorthodox and critical study of war into a rather conventional vehicle for status quo attitudes. For all his talent, this director cannot resist the classic Hollywood war sign, complete with all it connotes. Finding Barthes in the strangest places Some students who appreciate random trivia items may appreciate a rather obscure discovery of Barthes in popular culture. In the feature film, The Truth about Cats and Dogs, the two main characters, Abby and Brian, get to know each other very intimately after spending an evening talking on the phone. During this phone call, Brian reads Abby a portion of Barthes’s Camera Lucida, his treatise on photography.

Sample Application Log Katherine Michael Jordan plays most of his game (especially his slam dunks) with his mouth hanging wide and his tongue wagging. This has come to signify talent, expectation of greatness, and pride. Jordan wanna-bees across the country have picked up this little quirk. For them, keeping their mouth open signifies Michael Jordan and, therefore, being cool, talented, and better than everyone else. The image of superiority, however, is not derived from any talent of their own; it’s based on myth.

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Exercises and Activities The WWF in the classroom To test Barthes’s analysis of wrestling in a contemporary context, consider showing video segments of American wrestling to your class. Ask your students to predict from the introduction of the wrestlers the style and outcome of the match. Challenge them to identify the perpetuation of dominant cultural values in these grotesque dramas. Many of your students will enjoy grappling with the theoretical jump from signifier to signified. The brief political career of former wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura—and all that it connotes—serves as an intriguing case study for such analysis. After a quirky election won him the governorship of Minnesota, Ventura attempted to translate the moral drama he acted so successfully in the ring into political virtues such as the triumph over special interests and the ability of one man to fight the system. The fact that Ventura was neither a particularly popular nor successful governor (he chose not to seek a second term) suggests the difficulty in translating simplistic ideology based in a rather crude semiotic system into complex political reality. It’s one thing to feed a rather misleading ideological fantasy to unwary patrons of wrestling—who seek escapism, rather than solutions to weighty problems of government—but it’s quite another to successfully apply the same myth—day after day—to the running of a state. In some ways, the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current governor of California, is not dissimilar. Seemingly becoming the muscular, independent-minded, heroic persona he popularized in blockbuster films such as The Terminator, candidate Schwarzenegger (the denotative sign) swept into office (via a recall election) with tough-guy pledges to run the crooks and incompetents out of Sacramento, restore a positive business climate by eliminating sinister disincentives to do business in California, and rescue government from the dark forces of evil such as tax-and-spend liberals and greedy special-interest groups (who turned out to be teachers, firefighters, nurses, and other relatively modest public servants). At the level of the connotative system, Schwarzenegger the action figure communicated the more general ideological position (very much tied up in the myth of the traditional American dream) that rugged, decisive, uncompromising individualism works outside the system to overcome corporate malevolence and fecklessness wherever it manifests itself. Although Schwarzenegger began very well by actually effecting compromises and bargains in a manner utterly unlike the big screen hero with whom he so closely associates, his continued reliance on macho, uncompromising talk and the clichéd moral code that forms the backbone of his fantastic adventure movies is wearing thin, as is his popularity. It is not particularly surprising, thus, that to date he has been unable to accomplish major economic reforms and stabilize the complex budgeting process. Ironically, it may be the case that the very ideological core of the connotative semiotic system that helped elect Schwarzenegger is also what most limits his effectiveness in office. In summer 2005, it is not entirely certain that he will run for a second term. The Rocky films also provide good material for such analysis, particularly those that pit the all-American slugger from Philadelphia against foreigners. In raising the examples of Ventura, Schwarzenegger, and Rocky Balboa in class, encourage your students to identify the denotative and connotative semiotic systems that characterize these provocative signs. For remarkable examples of Schwarzenegger’s semiotic presence, see the following website: http://www.amendus.org/?referrer=yahoo

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For students who balk at Barthes’s class-based, ideological reading of wrestling, ask them to provide another explanation for the spectacle’s enduring attraction. Why, if it does not function as Barthes claims, does it remain popular? One counter explanation, of course, would be Aristotelian catharsis, but students may propose other interesting candidates. Other texts for analysis Not everyone enjoys watching and then discussing the theoretical implications of oversized men beating on one another, of course, so you may consider discussing other sorts of semiotic systems, particularly those from the mass media. Automobile ads capture the imagination of most college students and make excellent texts for Barthian analysis. Bring in magazine ads featuring both contemporary cars and those from previous decades and discuss how they, too, can be viewed as complex signs. What do differences in size, power, performance, styling, gas efficiency, and country of origin signify? To advance the discussion, refer to the ideas of Kyong Kim, who suggests that advertisers play on the assumption that we want to be sold a lifestyle or an ideology rather than merely a means of transportation. What does that say about the symbolic character of our vehicles and the mass manipulation of the American public? Other advertisements—for athletic shoes, beer, and soft drinks—can also be productive texts to use in class, as the analysis of the “I’d like to be like Mike” commercial suggests. Recent example in the media An example from recent media history that may provoke an interesting discussion amongst your students is the recent legal fight and eventual death of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Her husband, who wanted to allow her to die by removing her feeding tube, fought his in-laws as her parents mounted a legal challenge citing a desire to follow her wishes and a disbelief that her condition was irreversible. On several occasions, her story became front-page news as the two camps waged a symbolic war, and it reached national significance when President George W. Bush and congress attempted to pass legislation that would mandate the continuation of her lifepreserving measures. When a previous court ruling was not overturned, her feeding tube was removed, and death followed 13 days later. Afterwards, the two sides continued their battle over the interpretation Terri’s death as either the just course of action (“a person’s right to die) or a savage act of cruelty (“death by starvation”). The drama’s last (or at least, latest) turn was the words by her husband on the grave stone: “I kept my promise.” You might ask students to debate the various semiotic readings of the Terri Schiavo case, paying attention to multiple constructions of the sign, signifier, and signified. Having worked through signs that Barthes claims reinforce dominant values of culture, you and your students may wish to attempt to find media figures, text, or images that might not fit the ideological mold. Anne Norton and Douglas Kellner’s example of Madonna is a good place to start the discussion, but ask students to provide their own examples of signs from popular music (rap is a good place to look), film or television shows. These examples may also lead to productive discussion about Dick Hebdige’s theoretical approach. Were some of these signs subversive at one time, and have since been co-opted by mainstream society? An excellent resource to use when considering this issue is the Frontline documentary, The Merchants of Cool, which explicitly addresses how what is “on the edge” of youth culture is

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turned into what is “cool.” The film also illustrates how “cool” functions as a signified that is marketed to youth. Gatorade’s “I’d like to be like Mike” When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he shows the Gatorade ad analyzed on 366-67. He also makes a point of systematically working through the semiotic shift that occurs in the yellow ribbon example featured in the chapter (he even plays the song for his class). Griffin encourages the ambitious instructor to assign students reading from later in Barthes’s career. Barthes’s more postmodern phase can add complexity and richness to class discussion.

Further Resources § § §

§ §

§

An excellent supplementary text for this chapter is Jonathan Bignell’s Media Semiotics: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). A good source for articles on semiotics is the American Journal of Semiotics. Beyond the works cited by Griffin in the Second Look section of the text, see the Encyclopedia of Semiotics, ed. Paul Bouissac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Terence Hawkes’s eminently readable Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) has a useful section on Barthes (106-22). In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see James S. Baumlin, “Barthes,” 6667; Catherine Lappas, “Signified/Signifier/Signifying,” 673; Sue Hum, “Semiotics,” 666-67. Although Michael Eric Dyson’s chapter “Be Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire” in Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) does not specifically refer to Barthes, his analysis of Jordan’s media image as a marketable product connects to the ideas presented in this chapter.

General discussion of semiotics § “Semiotics, Poetry,” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, eds. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1138-43. § Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). Applications of Barthes § For an intriguing political application of Barthes’s theory, see Anne Norton’s chapterlength study, “The President as Sign,” in her book Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 87-121. § Mark P. Orbe uses semiotics to analyze how African-American cast members are signified on the television show The Real World in “Constructions of Reality on MTV’s The Real World: An Analysis of the Restrictive Coding of Black Masculinity,” Southern Communication Journal 64 (Fall 1998): 32-47.

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CHAPTER 26

CULTURAL STUDIES Outline I.

Introduction. A. Critical theorists such as Stuart Hall question the scientific focus of mainstream communication research on media influence. B. Influenced by a Marxist interpretation of society, Hall’s central concern is how the mass media create support for hegemonic ideological positions. C. Hall and most critical theorists want to change the world to empower people on the margins of society.

II.

The media as powerful ideological tools. A. Hall believes that the media function to maintain the dominance of the powerful and to exploit the poor and powerless. B. Ideology is defined as “those images, concepts and premises which provide the framework through which we represent, interpret, understand and ‘make sense’ of some aspect of social existence.” C. Mainstream U.S. mass communication research serves the myth of democratic pluralism and ignores the power struggle that the media mask. D. To avoid academic compartmentalization, Hall prefers cultural studies over media studies. E. Articulate means both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation with the communication media. F. Hall’s mission reflects his Marxist interpretation of history. G. Cultural studies is closely related to critical theory but places more emphasis on resistance than rationality.

III.

Early cultural critics. A. In order to grasp Hall’s theory, we must first understand its roots. B. Cultural critics by the end of World War II were concerned with the question of why oppression persisted and dominant capitalist economies continued to thrive. C. Frankfurt School theorists argued that the corporate-owned media were effective in tailoring messages that supported the capitalist system. 1. The media present capitalism as natural, eternal, and unalterable. 2. To describe the cultural role of the media, Hall adopts the term hegemony, meaning preponderant influence or domination of one nation over another. 3. In Hall’s terms, hegemony refers to already accepted interpretations of reality that keep society’s haves in power over its have-nots. D. Roland Barthes provided a way to start with concrete media images and systematically deconstruct their shift in meaning. 1. Semiotics tangibly illustrates how societal power is preserved and communicated through everyday objects and symbols.

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2.

Yet semiotics does not adequately explain why certain meanings get attached to certain symbols at certain times. E. Michel Foucault believed signs and symbols cannot be separated from mass media images. 1. They are unified by their common discursive nature and require frameworks of interpretation in order to make sense. 2. The framework people use is provided through the dominant discourse of the day. IV.

Making meaning. A. Hall contends that the primary function of discourse is to make meaning. 1. Words and signs have no intrinsic meaning. 2. We learn what signs mean through discourse—through communication and culture. B. Hall believes we must examine the sources of discourse. 1. People with power create “discursive formations” that become naturalized. 2. Those ways of interpreting the world are perpetuated through further discourse and keep the dominant in power.

V.

Corporate control of mass communication. A. Hall believes the focus of the study of communication should be on how human culture influences the media and on power relations and social structures. B. Hall and other advocates of cultural studies believe that media representations of culture reproduce social inequalities and keep the average person powerless. C. At least in the U.S., corporations produce and distribute the vast majority of information we receive. D. Corporate control of information prevents many stories from being told. E. The ultimate issue for cultural studies is not what information is presented, but whose information it is.

VI.

The media role in the Gulf War. A. A variety of cultural products can be deployed to generate popular support for the dominant ideology. B. The media practice hegemonic encoding—the regulation of discourse so that some messages are encoded by the mass media then decoded, internalized, and acted upon by the audience. 1. Other ideas remain unvoiced. 2. Complex ethical questions are not engaged. C. Hall uses the term “ideological discourses of constraint” to refer to the media’s limitation of alternatives and presentation of restricted choices as the only options.

VII. Post-9/11 media coverage. A. Hall believes the mass media provide the guiding myths that shape our perception of the world and serve as important instruments of social control. B. He believes hegemonic encoding occurs all the time, yet it’s not a conscious plot.

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VIII. An obstinate audience. A. Audiences may not accept the source’s ideology. B. There are three ways to decode a message. 1. Operate inside the dominant code. 2. Apply a negotiable code. 3. Substitute an oppositional code. C. Although Hall has trouble believing the powerless can change the system, he respects the ability of people to resist the dominant code. D. He is unable to predict, though, when and where resistance will spring up. IX.

Critique: Your judgment will depend on your ideology. A. The strong ideological component inherent in cultural studies limits its credibility. B. Hall’s work is relatively silent in regards to women as equal victims of hegemony with ethnic minorities and the poor. C. Hall doesn’t offer specific remedies for the problems he identifies. D. Hall’s great contribution is his insistence that one cannot talk about meaning without considering power. E. Samuel Becker notes that although Hall knocks the dominant ideology of communication studies, he has become the most dominant figure in the field.

Key Names and Terms Stuart Hall Professor emeritus of sociology at the Open University, Milton Keynes, England, and leading proponent of cultural studies. Cultural Studies A neo-Marxist critique that sets forth the position that mass media manufacture consent for dominant ideologies. Ideology Those images, concepts and premises which provide the framework through which we represent, interpret, understand and “make sense” of some aspect of social existence. Articulate The process of both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation with the communication media. Hegemony The preponderant influence or domination of one nation over another or, by extension, of the powerful over the weak. Frankfurt School Theorists First introduced in Chapter 2, these rather orthodox Marxist theorists argued that the working classes remained oppressed because the corporate-owned media effectively tailor messages supporting the capitalistic system. Michel Foucault A leading twentieth-century French philosopher who believed signs and symbols are inextricably linked to mass media messages and that the frameworks people use to interpret them are provided through the dominant discourse of the day.

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Discourse According to Foucault, a group of statements that provide a way of representing knowledge about a particular topic at a historical moment; it produces and frames knowledge. Discursive Formation The process by which unquestioned and seemingly natural ways of interpreting the world becomes ideologies. Ideology Mental frameworks that different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out, and render intelligible the way society works. Douglas Kellner First introduced in Chapter 25, this media scholar from UCLA has provided many specific examples of hegemonic encoding by the media. Hegemonic Encoding The regulation of discourse so that some messages are encoded by the mass media then decoded, internalized, and acted upon by the audience, while other ideas remain unvoiced. Ideological Discourses of Constraint The media’s limitation of alternatives and presentation of restricted choices as the only options. Samuel Becker A communication scholar from the University of Iowa who notes that although Hall attacks the dominant ideology of communication studies, he has become the most dominant figure in the field.

Principal Changes For this edition, Griffin has retooled the Critique section, which now includes a discussion of Hall’s relative silence on feminist issues and the lack of solutions offered by the theorist for the problems he identifies. In addition, he has clarified Hall’s use of the term hegemony and has updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Social constructionism with an ideological twist In his introduction to Cognitive Processing, Griffin tells the story of the three umpires discussing their profession before a ball game. Proponents of cultural studies might posit a fourth umpire, who, as a servant of the power elite, declares, “Some’s balls, some’s strikes, but my calls tend to benefit the team that’s ahead.” For Hall, the struggle to determine the meaning of key societal events and trends is currently dominated by those in power, whose interests are supported by our umpires, the purveyors of the mass media. They may not command the understanding of their bias exhibited by our imaginary fourth umpire, but nonetheless their judgments maintain the prevailing ideologies of those in control. Cultural studies is social constructionism with an ideological twist—meaning is created through communicative acts, but it is done so with the effect of control and domination.

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Hall and McLuhan To help your students locate Hall’s work within the larger field of mass communication studies, encourage the comparison to McLuhan (to whom your students were introduced in the Media and Culture section), whose approach is based on the powerful—perhaps irresistible— impact of media technology itself. Although not a strict economic determinist, Hall finds economic and class-based variables salient and moves away from the kind of technological explanations of cultural phenomena that so fascinated McLuhan. (Integrative Essay Question #32 below addresses this issue.) Connecting Hall, Barthes, Foucault, Poole, and Deetz Connections to theorists in other areas of communication studies are also worth exploring with your students. As the chapter notes, Hall’s neo-Marxism, his focus on hegemonic ideology, and his concern over the potentially pernicious power of connotation link him to Barthes’s semiotic analysis. No doubt Hall’s approach to the wrestlers and the yellow ribbons would closely resemble Barthes’s. However, as the chapter explains, semiotics is limited by its inability to explain why certain meanings get attached to certain symbols at certain historical times. Here is where Foucault comes in, of course—and where students may get lost. To help them understand Foucault’s contribution to cultural studies, go back to the wrestlers and the ribbons and bring in the focus on economics, power, and corporate control that are essential to Foucault’s argument. Poole’s adaptive structuration theory has not entirely integrated its “ethical responsibility” with its “theory construction” (272), perhaps, but its focus on democratic decision making and power sharing may at least partially align it with Hall’s approach. Although Hall demonstrates more interest in resistance than rationality, his effort to liberate the common worker from the dominant ideology of the culture is very similar to Deetz’s desire to empower all stakeholders affected by corporate decisions. (Integrative Essay Question #33 below addresses these potential connections.) The hegemonic encoding of welfare reform The notions of “hegemonic encoding” and “ideological discourses of constraint” may be particularly difficult for students to understand. A full treatment of Griffin’s analysis of the Gulf War and post-9/11 media coverage will help, as will discussion of the media’s portrayal of other contemporary issues. How do the media engage in “hegemonic encoding” with respect to welfare, for example? The media have tended to portray welfare as a problem of people of color (although the majority of people on public assistance are white) and as a “lifestyle” people adopt permanently (although even prior to welfare reform most welfare recipients used the system for less than two consecutive years). Audiences have acted on these perceptions when they have elected politicians to reform welfare. Raise the ideas about welfare that are seldom discussed and the “ideological discourses of constraint” that make it seem there is only a limited range of alternatives (various proposals for “welfare reform,” for example). The media’s coverage of “welfare reform” may also generate discussion about what is voiced and what is omitted—we hear about the benefits of putting people to work, for example, without a discussion of the problems of child care, transportation, or the inability of families to survive on the minimum wage. Cultural studies: Un-American? Many students who have been raised on the language of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence find analyses with even the slightest tint of Marxism irrelevant to

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the American experience. Some even consider it downright distasteful or threatening. Since America is the land of freedom and economic opportunity, we don’t have economic domination and ideological hegemony here. One way to respond to this position is to have them reread the opening pages of Chapter 20, in which Griffin aptly presents some of the economic inequities present in the American economy (301-02). It is also worth noting that Hall’s academic career is based primarily in Britain, a country with a more rigid economic structure than the United States. The British still recognize a hereditary monarchy and extensive aristocracy, and the British class system is more entrenched than its American counterpart. Cultural studies has found a home in this country, but it was conceived in and for another empire. The distinction between pluralism and polysemy Hall’s distinction between pluralism and polysemy may be useful. He asserts that our national communication is polysemic—a variety of voices compete for the audience’s attention, but not on an equal footing. Hall does not suggest that there are no alternative voices to hegemonic discourse. Oppositional meanings exist alongside the preferred meanings of the dominant ideology. But although he does not believe in an entirely monolithic media, he does not believe that an open, healthy sort of pluralism exists either, in which every position receives a fair hearing. Oppositional reading In an earlier edition of A First Look, Griffin featured discussion of John Fiske’s resistant reader. It may be useful to introduce Fiske’s controversial belief that media consumers often read against the grain, thus recreating the message of the text for their own purposes. If, in effect, the consumer is able to undermine or defeat the hegemonic ideology through such oppositional readings, then the media’s control of the have-nots is severely eroded. In a sense, Fiske does to Hall what Norton and Kellner do to Barthes. We’ll revisit Fiske’s critique in our treatment of cultivation theory.

Sample Application Log Sharon “The ideological fight is a struggle to capture language.” We see this battle in the abortion debate. The media seems to favor those with “pro-choice” beliefs. How I wish we could even the debate by having news announcers use “pro-life” instead of anti-abortion. This would be a sign that at least pro-life groups are being seen as reasonable, positive people. Yet, this group doesn’t seem to be successful in capturing positive language. The media does give an ideological spin to the abortion demand by its very use of language and its connotations.

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Exercises and Activities Applying cultural studies Perhaps the best way to handle skepticism toward cultural studies is to put the theory to the test. Choose a relevant local, national, or international issue that is currently experiencing heavy coverage in the mainstream media and have your students analyze the way it is pitched to the audience. How are connotative meanings shaped and controlled? How are key players (workers and management, minorities, and women, for example) characterized? How are the economic components of the matter presented? What ideologies seem to surface, however subtly? To clarify the messages of mainstream coverage, contrast them with the perspectives presented by sources such as Rush Limbaugh, The National Review, Air America, and The Nation. Television shows are also good subjects for such analysis. Have your students analyze ideological stances concerning gender, race, class, and age in a popular program such as CSI, Will & Grace, Law & Order, Everybody Loves Raymond, The West Wing, or The Sopranos. If your students enjoy them (many of ours do!), soap operas are incredibly rich texts for such analysis. As John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (see under “Further Resources,” below) illustrates particularly powerfully, print and video advertisements succinctly reveal important ideologies at work. The Hilliard article mentioned below proves that even sports broadcasting can demonstrate the value of Hall’s thesis. The recent trend toward “reality” television could lead to interesting analysis, for—in fact—what is “real” on these shows is highly scripted and edited. We see beautiful, upwardly mobile people participating in staged events; we aren’t shown poverty or day-to-day challenges. (Essay Question #30 engages this issue.) Hollywood films can be particularly rich texts for critical analysis, particularly those that present ostensibly class-conscious messages. A useful example is Titanic, the Academy Awardwinning blockbuster that features a star-crossed romance between an upper-class maiden and a working-class adventurer. What’s particularly intriguing about the film is that although it emphasizes a relationship that crosses class lines and although it draws attention to the unfair treatment of passengers in steerage, who are denied seats in the lifeboats, its most powerful theme is naïve romanticism. It’s no surprise that the film’s most devoted audience—junior-high girls—revisited theatres for multiple viewings not to further ponder the social inequities of early twentieth-century travel or class boundaries, but to celebrate the simplistic sentimentality of a teenage crush writ large. It’s also no surprise that the film’s most celebrated image, which features the two lovers sensuously decorating the bow of the ship, appeals to giddily romantic, rather than critical, eyes. (This image, incidentally, would be an excellent artifact for semiotic analysis.) Under the guise of class consciousness, the film actually glorifies “love at first sight,” as well as the very beautiful-people imagery and opulence that sink with—and help sink—the ship. Ideologically, thus, Titanic provides just enough social commentary to lull the viewer into political complacency. A controversial reading of Back to the Future Interestingly enough, a class of communication theory students readily accepted the preceding analysis, but were rather indignant when presented with a similar reading of one of their sacred cows, Back to the Future. They couldn’t believe that Robert Zemeckis’s story of suburban heroism reinforced status quo values about American capitalism. Try it out on your 348

own students! Ask them to ponder the parallel lives that are possible for the “hero”: the loser and success tracks. Note that many of the elements of the success track constitute or suggest wealth and status—the materialistic side of the American Dream. Indirectly, the film supposes that success in life is connected to (or perhaps caused by) what you have, by financial achievement. Happiness stems from an expensive house in a wealthy suburban neighborhood, country-club membership, straight teeth, and so forth. Rather than interrogating this premise or suggesting the limits of such thinking (after all, there are many harsh economic realities that the suburbs hide and in some cases even cause), the film wants you to celebrate emotionally the hero’s act of winning “the good life” for himself by buying into the film’s conclusion. In fact, it seems as if the hero’s ultimate material success is the result of his moral goodness. Persistent economic inequality is not only inevitable, but the direct result of differences— strengths and weaknesses—in character. This message, thus, encourages the viewer to continue to implicitly embrace the capitalist system that cultural studies so diligently seeks to expose. The Internet’s influence To pull the discussion in a different direction, ask your students to name mass media products that appear to critique capitalism, class structure, or American racial problems. Is the critique genuine, or is it simply another clever method of co-opting the left for the purpose of selling the right? You may also wish to discuss whether the increasing use of the Internet challenges or validates Hall’s claims about hegemony and control. Some argue that the increasing number of voices provided by the Internet allows it the potential to challenge the status quo; others see it as yet another tool of corporate control. (Essay Question #31 below engages this issue.) “Helping” those who least want it To those left-of-center students who may have the tendency to endorse the message of cultural studies unthinkingly, it may be useful to mention that the individuals Hall most wants to help remain least responsive to his message. Many poor immigrants and working-class Americans have bought into the ideological system characterized by the American Dream— that’s why they work so hard. They aren’t interested in overcoming hegemonic ideologies; they want to participate in them. Hall’s biggest fans are professors and graduate students—welleducated, privileged individuals closely tied to the very power elite he claims to attack. This paradox is difficult to explain away without appearing at least somewhat hypocritical or patronizing. Cultural studies, the quiz show When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he transforms the class into a quiz show. Volunteers are divided into two teams and each side chooses a “batting order” for its players. Griffin—as game show host—alternates between the teams, asking the player “up” a question from the chapter about cultural studies. Correct answers earn the team two points; incorrect answers earn no points and provide the other team the opportunity to answer the missed question for a point. Griffin arranges the questions so that they move through the chapter sequentially. This way, the students are exposed to a logical—if somewhat sensationalized— presentation of the material. He rotates through the batting orders as many times as is appropriate for the time allotted. If he finds that the pressure to answer questions falls too heavily on the student “up,” he instigates a consulting option so that the student at the plate

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can talk the question over with fellow teammates. In this case, a correct answer would be worth one point. At the end of the game, Griffin awards the winning team a small amount of extra credit (an intriguing application of cognitive dissonance’s minimal justification hypothesis). If the game is close, he usually finds a way for both teams to “win” (consider this strategy when you get to the chapter on face negotiation). Here are a few sample questions Griffin uses: Why does the chapter cite Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”? Answer: To show that Hall believes resistance to authorial intent is possible. What kind of music and drink do you have reason to believe Stuart Hall would like? Answer: Reggae and Rum (considering his Jamaican origin). What two theories in the course so far are the closest to Hall’s cultural perspective? Answer: Deetz’s critical approach and Barthes’s semiotics.


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Cultural studies is extremely popular and influential these days, and there is much of interest to read. Two extremely accessible introductory texts are: o Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage, 1997). o Paul Du Gay, et al., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (London: Sage, 1997). Douglas Kellner provides an excellent supplement to Griffin’s chapter in “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture,” in Gender, Race and Class Media: A TextReader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 5-17. Kellner’s full-length text Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1995) is packed with provocative examples. For a critical approach to the relationship between ideology and communication that includes analyses of the positions of Hall, Geertz, and Habermas, see Dennis K. Mumby, “Ideology and the Social Construction of Meaning: A Communication Perspective,” Communication Quarterly 37 (Fall 1989): 291-304. In the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, see James Berlin, “Cultural Studies,” 154-56; and Carl G. Herndl and Robert L. Brown, “Marxist Rhetoric,” 422-24. John Fiske develops his ideas about resistant consumers of media in Television Culture (London: Methuen, 1987); Reading the Popular (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); and Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Mary Ellen Brown takes a position similar to Fiske’s in Soap Operas and Women’s Talk: The Pleasure of Resistance (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994). See also Tony Dowmunt, ed., Channels of Resistance: Global Television and Local Empowerment (London: British Film Institute, 1993).

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Television Studies: Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2002), by Bernadette Casey, et al., introduces many media concepts from a cultural studies perspective. Cultural Politics in Contemporary America (New York: Routledge, 1989), a collection of essays edited by Ian H. Angus and Sut Jhally, is filled with provocative pieces that relate to the subjects raised in this chapter. Other useful sources include: o Lawrence Grossberg, “Strategies of Marxist Cultural Interpretation,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1 (1984): 392-421. o James. W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). o Hanno Hardt, Critical Communication Studies: Communication, History, and Theory in America (New York: Routledge, 1992). o Robert K. Avery and David Eason, eds., Critical Perspectives on Media and Society (New York: Guilford, 1991). Michael Parenti develops arguments similar to Hall’s in Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993); and Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992). A brief but insightful comparison of cultural studies and rhetoric is offered by Walter H. Beale in “Rhetoric in the Vortex of Cultural Studies,” in Rhetoric in the Vortex of Cultural Studies: Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference, ed. Arthur Walzer (St. Paul: Rhetoric Society of America, 1992), 1-22. A more cautious, yet nonetheless sinister critique of the economic realities behind the media is Ben Bagdikian’s masterful The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), which links the intellectual decline of the American newspaper industry to inevitable economic pressures. Bagdikian does not fit neatly into Hall’s camp, but his effort to demonstrate the ways in which the business decisions of the economic elite limit the diversity of news coverage falls into the larger category of economic determinism. Bagdikian has produced a new study that updates his position on these issues entitled The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).

Additional sources from Hall § The Media Education Foundation distributes a video production of an accessible lecture by Stuart Hall entitled Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media. § Hall glosses the concepts of polysemy and pluralism in his frequently anthologized and referenced essay, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Culture, Media, Language, eds. Stuart Hall, et al. (London: Unwin Hyman, 1980), 128-38. This essay is dense, but very useful and appropriate for undergraduates. § Two sources listed in an earlier edition of A First Look but eventually removed to make room for more recent studies are Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis on the Left (London: Verso, 1988), and “Ferment in the Field,” a themed issue of the Journal of Communication (33, 3 [1983]).

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Cultural studies analyses § In the area of sports coverage and capitalist ideology, we recommend sociologist Dan Hilliard’s illuminating article, “Televised Sport and the (Anti) Sociological Imagination,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 18 (1994): 88-99. § For an intriguing critical analysis of country music, see Charles Conrad, “Work Songs, Hegemony, and Illusions of Self,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988): 179-201. § Laurie Ouellette performs a cultural studies analysis of Cosmopolitan in “Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams,” Media, Culture & Society 21 (1999): 359-83. § John Berger’s legendary Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), which innovatively mixes art criticism, Marxism, and media advertising, paints the capitalist hegemony of Western culture most provocatively. § Richard Campbell’s 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991) argues that even television programming that purports to reveal the truth about the American power structure does little to unmask dominant mythologies and ideologies. § For a fascinating study of the ways romance novels are read by American women, see Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). § Naomi Rockler argues that despite optimism over oppositional readings, audiences of Beverly Hills, 90210 actually receive hegemonic messages in “From Magic Bullets to Shooting Blanks: Reality, Criticism, and Beverly Hills, 90210,” Western Journal of Communication 63 (Winter 1999): 72-94. This article also offers insightful commentary on—and some support for—the “hypodermic needle” model, discussed in the upcoming media effects introduction (383). § Dana Cloud offers a cultural studies critique of the rhetoric of the Clinton administration in “The Rhetoric of Family Values: Scapegoating, Utopia, and the Privatization of Social Responsibility,” Western Journal of Communication 62 (Fall 1998): 387-419. § Tamar Liebes presents a full-length case study of how hegemony is manifest in the everyday workings of the media in Reporting the Arab-Israeli Conflict: How Hegemony Works (London: Routledge, 1997). Cultural hegemony § For further discussion of cultural hegemony, see: o Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World (New York: Random, 1995). o Arthur Asa Berger, Manufacturing Desire: Media, Popular Culture, and Everyday Life (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996).

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MEDIA EFFECTS Key Names and Terms Erie County Study A study headed by Paul Lazarsfeld in Erie County, Ohio, before the era of television, that determined that the link between voting behaviors and media usage is best described by the principle of selective exposure. Selective Exposure This principle--that people only pay attention to ideas they already believe--was applied in the Erie County Study to explain why the media tended to reinforce, rather than to change, public opinion. Two-Step Flow of Communication The first stage is the direct transmission of information to a small group of people who stay well informed. In the second stage, these opinion leaders pass on and interpret the messages to others in face-to-face interaction. The theory has been revised to account for saturation television. Dolf Zillmann A media researcher from the University of Alabama who created excitation transfer theory. Excitation Transfer Theory An effect of television viewing whereby the process of media-induced arousal carries over to unrelated emotions in real-life situations immediately following the program. Albert Bandura A Stanford University psychologist who developed social learning theory. Social Learning Theory Viewers imitate novel behavior they see on television; vicariously learned aggression can erupt in future antisocial behavior. Tony Schwartz Previously introduced in Chapters 1 and 24, this leader in political advertising theorizes that commercials are effective when they strike a responsive chord within the viewer.


For a recent political study, see Michael Pfau, et al., “Influence of Communication Modalities on Voters’ Preferences of Candidates during Presidential Primary Campaigns,” Journal of Communication 45 (1995): 122-33. For a survey of research on media effects from the 1970s to the 1990s, see Tara M. Emmers-Sommer and Mike Allen, “Surveying the Effect of Media Effects: A MetaAnalytic Summary of the Media Effects Research in Human Communication Research,” Human Communication Research 25 (June 1999): 478-97.

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CHAPTER 27

CULTIVATION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. George Gerbner argues that heavy television viewing creates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. B. Gerbner emphasizes the symbolic content of television drama. C. Television has surpassed religion as the key storyteller in our culture. D. Violence is television’s principal message, and particularly for devoted viewers. E. Although other media have violent content, television is the most significant.

II.

An index of violence. A. Gerbner developed an objective measure for evaluating television violence. B. He defined dramatic violence as the overt expression of physical force (with or without a weapon, against self or others) compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt and/or killed or threatened to be so victimized as part of the plot. C. Gerbner and his associates monitored incidences of violence on television for over twenty years.

III.

Equal violence, unequal risk. A. Gerbner found that the portrayal of violence varies little from year to year. B. Over half of prime-time programs contain violence or the threat of violence. C. Two-thirds of the major characters are caught up in violence; heroes are just as involved as villains. D. Old people, children, Hispanics, African Americans, women, and blue-collar workers are more often victimized. E. Television places marginalized people in symbolic double jeopardy by simultaneously underrepresenting and overvictimizing them. F. Not surprisingly, marginalized people then exhibit the most fear of violence as a result of television programming.

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Establishing a viewer profile. A. Gerbner used survey research to measure viewer behavior and attitudes because the nature of the cultivation hypothesis rules out experimental testing. B. He distinguishes between light viewers (up to two hours per day) and heavy viewers (four or more hours per day), whom he calls “the television type.” C. Light viewers watch particular shows, but television types aren’t selective. D. Cultivation theory suggests heavy viewers will regard the world as more dangerous than light viewers.

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Minds plowed by television grow fearful thoughts. A. Gerbner seeks the “cultivation differential,” which compares the attitudes of light and heavy viewers.

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B. He focuses on four attitudes. 1. Chances of involvement with violence—light viewers predict their weekly odds of being victimized at 1/100, whereas heavy viewers predict 1/10. 2. Fear of walking alone at night—heavy viewers overestimate the danger by a factor of ten. 3. Perceived activity of police—heavy viewers overestimate the size of law enforcement by a factor of five. 4. General mistrust of people—heavy viewers are suspicious of others’ motives (the mean world syndrome). VI.

Mainstreaming. A. Mainstreaming is the process by which heavy viewers develop a commonality of outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels. B. Gerbner illustrates the mainstream effect by showing how television types blur economic and political distinctions. 1. They assume that they are middle class. 2. They believe they are political moderates. 3. In fact, heavy viewers tend to be conservative. C. Gerbner labels the general “mainstream” political outlook of heavy viewers the “new populism,” a position that aligns itself with the policies of former President Reagan.

VII. Resonance. A. Resonance occurs when repeated symbolic portrayals of violence cause viewers to replay their real-life experiences with violence over and over. B. Resonance amplifies cultivation patterns. C. Rather than focus on the few people who imitate television violence, Gerbner wants to look at the large majority of people who are terrified by the world. VIII. Critique: Is the cultivation differential real, large, crucial? A. Although Gerbner’s basic claim makes intuitive sense, his theory and research methodology are controversial. B. Cultivation theory advocates Michael Morgan and James Shanahan argue that attacks on Gerbner’s cultivation theory focus on “methodological minutia” and are politically motivated. C. Yet how do we interpret the consistent yet small relationship between heavy television viewing and the belief in a mean and scary world? D. Performing a meta-analysis of cultivation studies that examines the link between hours watched and the tendency to give “television answers,” Morgan and Shanahan discovered a consistent positive relationship +.091. 1. Given the large sample sizes used, this correlation is statistically significant. 2. However, it is only one factor among many, a small portion of the total picture. 3. But, it points out the criticalness of the issue at hand and fear’s paralyzing effects. E. Demonstrating continued commitment to the issues addressed by cultivation theory, Gerbner founded the Cultural Environment Movement, a coalition of organizations and social activists.

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Key Names and Terms George Gerbner Dean Emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, and champion of cultivation theory. Cultivation Theory A theory that suggests heavy television viewing creates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. Dramatic Violence Depicting overt physical force against the self or others, or compelling others to do something against their will through threats of pain, injury, or death. Light Viewer A person who watches up to two hours of television per day. Heavy Viewer A person who watches four or more hours of television per day. Television Type A synonym for the heavy viewer. Cultivation Differential The difference in the percent giving the “television answer” within comparable groups of light and heavy viewers. The Mean World Syndrome The cynical mind-set of general mistrust of others subscribed to by heavy television viewers. Mainstreaming The process by which heavy viewers develop a common socially conservative outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels. New Populism The product of mainstreaming, a conservative political outlook common among heavy viewers. Resonance The process by which congruence of symbolic violence on television and real-life experiences of violence amplifies the fear of a mean and scary world. Michael Morgan and James Shanahan Communication researchers and cultivation theory advocates from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Cornell University, respectively, who have catalogued and systematically responded to the various criticisms of cultivation theory. Meta-Analysis A statistical procedure that blends the results of independent, empirical research studies exploring the same relationship between two variables, such as the correlation between the amount of television viewing and fear of violence.

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Principal Changes This chapter has been edited for clarity and precision, and Griffin has updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Contrasting Gerbner with Barthes and McLuhan Methodologically speaking, cultivation theory forms an excellent contrast with the theories featured in the Media and Culture section, and we recommend calling attention to the clear differences between Gerbner’s empirically based work and McLuhan’s, Barthes’s, and Hall’s rather impressionistic theorizing. Both approaches are valuable, and the contrast is most illuminating. It’s important for students to see that a subject such as television can be approached fruitfully from extremely different perspectives. Gerbner and Hall To explore the relationship between cultivation theory and cultural studies, ask your students how Hall might interpret the findings of Gerbner and his associates. Although Hall has officially denounced the survey research of empiricists, your students will notice that Gerbner’s data support a reformist agenda that is deeply concerned about the media’s ability to affect public opinion by manipulating heavy viewers. On the other hand, Gerbner’s primary interest is the role of the portrayal of violence, rather than the potential economic ramifications of media control. Thus, although there exists a loose alliance between the two approaches, their means and goals are quite different. (Integrative Essay Question #33 below addresses this issue.) Defining violence Some students fervently object to Gerbner’s definition of dramatic violence (386). As a pre-emptive measure, you may want to ask students, as Em Griffin does, how they would define violence if they were in charge of this research program. Both conceptual definitions, which define an abstract term and provide parameters of study, and operational definitions that define a variable using specific, measurable, and observable conditions are essential within the social scientific tradition. To bridge theory with classes in research methods, you may want to explain these differences and probe students for conceptual and operational frames for violence. Based on Griffin’s chapter, what do they see as Gerber’s definitions? For students who object to his elimination of all but physical violence, consider asking why he might have made these choices and what was gained or lost by this decision. Furthermore, you may want to speculate with your students why Gerbner includes cartoon violence, but not slapstick. Put another way, why is the Coyote’s flattening by the Road Runner considered violent while Moe’s continual pokes in the eyes of the Stooges is not? What makes a heavy television viewer? You may also wish to discuss why four hours was chosen as the low end for heavy viewing. What would you discover if you raised the minimum to five or six, or lowered it to three? Is the effect of television viewing steadily cumulative, or do viewers “max out” at a certain level? How could you find out? Would a continuum be usefully employed in this type of research? You might want to point out to students that the light vs. heavy television viewer

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distinction is based on an average amount. In other words, the sports fanatic who watches very little else during the week, but spends all day Saturday and Sunday surfing from game to game may still be considered a heavy viewer. Does the way we watch moderate the amount we watch? Is it possible that the way people watch television is just as important as—if not more important than—the number of hours they watch per day? The work of John Fiske, which we introduced in our treatment of cultural studies, suggests that many consumers of television and other forms of mass media deconstruct or recontextualize the images they perceive. If critics such as Fiske are correct, then viewing technique would be much more important than hours of exposure. Ask students to describe their own approaches to viewing. Do they talk about shows with fellow viewers? Do they critique the action as it unfolds? Do they, as we constantly do, find themselves making fun of what we see? If so, then this model may need complicating. Cable television and the watering down of the heavy viewer Much of the foundational research for the cultivation theory was done before the explosion of digital and cable television and you may also wish to discuss with students whether the proliferation of cable channels affects Gerbner’s notion of mainstreaming. Griffin mentions that radio stations “narrowcast” while television “broadcasts,” yet the hundreds of highly specialized cable channels, from Lifetime to golf channels, may challenge this distinction. Is the notion of the “television type” altered by these developments in programming? Might a heavy viewer of these more specialized channels be more selective than the heavy viewers of earlier eras? (Essay Question #29 below addresses these issues.) As a humorous side note, one of Emily’s students raised the argument in class that she didn’t think watching an all-day marathon of Lifetime’s made-for-television movies would do much to add to a person’s mean and scary world syndrome. A quick retort by one of her classmates made everyone laugh: “Are you kidding me? As a guy, those movies are the scariest thing on TV!” That probably wasn’t what Gerbner intended! Another issue to consider involves watching as shopping with the popularity of QVC and the Home Shopping Network. What effect might these shows have when viewed for hours without end? While they are almost entirely devoid of violence and would not likely be of concern to Gerbner, consider asking your students to speculate on what effects akin to mainstreaming and resonance might be at work with this type of programming. An interesting conversation might arise when discussing the link between heavy television viewing of shopping shows and the influence theories covered earlier in A First Look. Methodological considerations Since Griffin does an excellent job of demonstrating the link between theory building and research methodology in this chapter, you have the opportunity to discuss with your students some of the data used to support Gerbner’s conclusions. One aspect of the process that is worth special consideration is Gerbner’s decision to focus his primary attention on the relationship between heavy television viewing and viewers’ fear of violence. You might ask your students questions such as the following: Why this particular causal relationship? Why not emphasize the relationship between heavy viewing and viewers’ attitudes about poverty, or the American dream, or education? How about the connection between viewing patterns and

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specific voting patterns, or violent behavior, or racism, or ageism, or sexism, or xenophobia, or homophobia? In fact, cultivation theory could be a useful framework for examining the following behaviors and norms: 1. The posh world syndrome, implied by economist Juliet Schor, in which people exaggerate the average person’s standard of living because of exposure to television reality, where no one is poor and most people are wealthy. 2. The cultivation of consumerism. Michael Schudson and others have written about the social effects of advertising, which paints consumption as the dominant activity of daily living. 3. The skinny world syndrome. Feminist authors have produced compelling work on body image problems among young girls and their correlated exposure to fashion magazines and heavy television viewing. Fear of violence is by no means an insignificant component of contemporary American life, but it seems less obviously connected to behavior than other attitudes we might measure. Given the fact that Gerbner was able to amass so much information about viewers’ attitudes, it might be productive to have students thoughtfully analyze his decision to center his investigation in one place and not others. Understanding the meta-analysis results In the Critique section of the chapter, Griffin reports that Morgan and Shanahan found a +.091 average correlation between viewing behavior and the subsequent tendency to give “television answers” to key questions (392). As you discuss this “statistically significant,” yet “very weak” connection with your students, be sure they understand the difference between correlation and causation. Can they imagine variables more salient than the number of hours one watches television? The possible long-term social and political effects of the cultivation process Gerbner’s original theory included a discussion of the possible long-term social and political effects of the cultivation process. As a native of Hungary, Gerbner witnessed the harsh, inhumane martial law imposed by Communist leaders. A tactic they used to justify their regime was to instill fear of rampant lawlessness in the minds of the people. He relates that many Hungarians were convinced that without strict, constant police supervision, the entire society would be torn apart by mass criminality and violence. Gerbner sees the mean world syndrome as a necessary precondition for the installation of martial law and the restriction of many kinds of personal freedoms, all with the ready consent of the people. To what extent could this be true for the American context?

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Sample Application Log Beth My freshman year roommate and I differ on opinions. She thinks that it is all right for her to drive to Midway alone at night, whereas I believe that it is dangerous for a woman to drive there alone at night. Every time she goes to the airport to pick up a friend I ask her to bring a boy along with her because “it is much safer to have a boy with you.” After reading Gerbner’s cultivation theory, I understand why we differ so much on opinion. Growing up, I loved to watch television. In high school, my favorite shows were ER and Chicago Hope, both of which are set in Chicago and are shows that are violent. Tiffany, my roommate, on the other hand, hated watching television when she was growing up. Even now, she rarely turns on the TV. According to Gerbner’s theory, I have become more cautious about driving to Midway alone at night because of the amount of television that I watched that depicts women getting attacked in their cars at night. Whereas Tiffany sees nothing wrong with it and that could be due to the fact that she watched fewer images of crime on television.

Exercises and Activities Is crime on the rise… or do we just think it is? To test the prevalence of the mean world syndrome, ask your students if American crime levels are increasing, decreasing, or remaining about the same. Your students—and perhaps you—may be surprised to learn that despite the popular notion that “it’s a jungle out there,” rates of most categories of crime in America decreased steadily in the 1990s. Students’ viewing habits Gerbner’s provocative analysis of viewers’ habits and mind-sets invites students to ponder their own relationships with television, and it may be useful to spend some class time discussing the range of viewing behaviors exhibited by your students. (Essay Question #25 below addresses this issue.) Devise an in-class oral or written poll that distinguishes among light, moderate, and heavy viewers and discuss the results with your students. If you want more precise data, have your students formally chart the viewing patterns of their households for one week. They should indicate how many hours each member of their household watches each day. You may also wish to have them keep track of the kinds of shows selected. Were most of the shows watched drawn from the supposed two-thirds majority of violent programming, or did viewers tend to select from the one-third that is nonviolent? When you discuss their viewing habits, students may suggest that the context of the portrayal of violence is more important than the presence of the act itself. A murder that is thoughtfully presented on one television show, for example, might have a very different effect from an act of gratuitous violence on another show. Students who watch an embarrassing amount of television may dispute Gerbner’s conclusions about the consequences of such activity, asserting—as we suggest above—that the kind of viewing one practices might be more important than the actual number of hours one engages in it. Four hours of critical viewing, in which one actively processes the images on the screen and challenges the worldview presented there, may have less of a mainstreaming effect than one hour of passive, unreflective watching. You can also encourage productive discussion about the potential

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relationship (or similarities and differences) between mainstreaming’s perceived effect on worldview as theorized by Gerbner and his associates and the pernicious influence of the media on the general public’s perception of reality as identified by cultural studies. Solutions to the problems of violence Discussion of the problem of violence may lead to a classroom consideration of possible solutions. For example, you may wish to debate the value of the ratings, which give parents information about certain kinds of programming. Will this system help solve some of the problems that Gerbner’s theory exposes? Clarifying a question from the text In the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus section of the textbook, you may notice that question #3 assumes a difference that may not exist for some of your students, particularly if you teach at a more conservative institution. You may wish to rephrase the exercise in more tentative terms: “Do your political and social values differ from the mainstream attitudes of Gerbner’s television type? If so, how?” Is there something worse than watching TV violence? As noted above, it can be useful to expand and challenge Gerbner’s focus. Particularly after events such as the Littleton, Colorado shootings, might it be more important to examine the impact of media on the potential for violent behavior? If so, we might ask, “Why is television the primary culprit?” Some have speculated, for example, about the effects of violent rock music and hate rhetoric on the Internet. A case has been made that the involvement of the consumer in video game violence is in fact more damaging than passive consumption of television violence. Correlation does not equal causation When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he emphasizes the difference between correlation and cause-and-effect. To make his point, he asks his class to explain (for example) the significance of the strong correlation between the sale of ice cream and swimsuits. What does this correlation actually mean about the relationship between these two variables? A similar example concerns the historic correlation between Europe’s declining stork population and its slowing human birthrate.


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Ellen Wartella takes up the issue of television violence in her 1996 Carroll Arnold Distinguished Lecture, “The Context of Television Violence” (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), as does James T. Hamilton in his book-length study Channeling Violence: The Economic Market for Violent Television Programming (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Ed McDaniel encourages you to consult Jeffrey Johnson’s 17-year longitudinal study of TV and violence in children, published in the March 29, 2002 edition of Nature. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research dedicated its September 2004 special issue to current developments in cultivation research (ed. Jan Van Den Bulck [29, 3]).

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Cultivation theory research and application § For further discussion of cultivation research, see Nancy Signorielli and Michael Morgan, eds., Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990). § Jon Hammermeister, Barbara Brock, David Winterstein, and Randy Page explore the health benefits of light television viewing in their article, “Life without TV? Cultivation Theory and Psychosocial Health Characteristics of Television-Free Individuals and Their Television-Viewing Counterparts,” Health Communication 17, 3 (2005): 253-65. § Meridith Diane Lett, Andrea Lynn DiPietro, and Danetter Ifert Johnson explore the effects of watching varied amounts of news coverage after 9/11 in their article “Examining Effects of Television News Violence on College Students through Cultivation Theory,” Communication Research Reports 21, 1 (2004): 39-47. § For a look at the effects of watching local news, see Daniel Romer, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Sean Aday, “Television News and the Cultivation of Fear of Crime,” Journal of Communication 53, 1 (2003): 88-105. § For an intriguing application of Gerbner’s cultivation theory, see Beth Olson, “Soaps, Sex, and Cultivation,” Mass Communication Review 21 (1994): 106-13. § Amy I. Nathanson introduces additional variables into the cultivation equation in “Identifying and Explaining the Relationship between Parental Mediation and Children’s Aggression,” Communication Research 26 (April 1999): 124-43. § In “Cultivation Revisited: Some Genres Have Some Effects on Some Viewers,” Communication Reports 13 (Summer 2000): 99-114, Jonathan Cohen and Gabriel Weiman present a study designed “both to limit and strengthen the notion of TV cultivation by increasing the specificity of cultivation theory” (113). Critiques and contrasting opinions of cultivation theory § W. James Potter offers additional critique of cultivation theory in “The Linearity Assumption in Cultivation Research,” Communication Research 17 (1991): 562-83, and “Cultivation Theory and Research: A Conceptual Critique,” Human Communication Research 19 (1993): 564-601. § For a view that contrasts sharply with Gerbner’s, see David Link, “Facts about Fiction: In Defense of TV Violence,” Reason 25 (March 1994): 22-26. Film resources § The Media Education Foundation distributes three videos featuring Gerbner: The Electronic Storyteller: Television and the Cultivation of Values (which Em Griffin uses when he teaches this chapter); The Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence (which Ed McDaniel particularly recommends); and The Crisis of the Cultural Environment. The Media Education Foundation can be reached at 800-897-0089 or www.igc.org/mef. § We also recommend the Frontline documentary Does TV Kill? (distributed by PBS Video), which takes up Gerbner’s mean world syndrome and features the media research program at the Annenberg School for Communication.

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CHAPTER 28

AGENDA-SETTING THEORY Outline I.

The original agenda: not what to think, but what to think about. A. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw regard Watergate as a perfect example of the agenda-setting function of the mass media. B. They believe that the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to the public agenda. C. The basic theoretical issue had been addressed earlier by Walter Lippman, Bernard Cohen, and Theodore White.

II.

A theory whose time had come. A. Agenda-setting theory contrasted with the prevailing selective exposure hypothesis, reaffirming the power of the press while maintaining individual freedom. B. It represented a back-to-the-basics approach to mass communication research, with a focus on election campaigns. C. The hypothesis predicts a cause-and-effect relationship between media content and voter perception, particularly a match between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda later on.

III.

Media agenda and public agenda: a close match. A. In their groundbreaking study, McCombs and Shaw first measured the media agenda. B. They established the position and length of story as the primary criteria of prominence. C. They disregarded articles about matters extrinsic to the issues. D. The remaining stories were divided into five major issues and ranked in order of importance. E. Rankings provided by uncommitted voters aligned closely with the media’s agenda.

IV.

What causes what? A. McCombs and Shaw believe that the hypothesized agenda-setting function of the media causes the correlation between the media and public ordering of priorities. B. However, correlation does not prove causation. 1. A true test of the agenda-setting function must show that public priorities lag behind the media agenda. 2. McCombs and three other researchers demonstrated a correlational time-lag between media coverage and the public agenda during the 1976 presidential campaign. C. To examine whether the media agenda and the public agenda might just reflect current events, Ray Funkhouser documented a situation in which there was a strong relationship between media and public agendas. The twin agendas did not merely

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mirror reality, but Funkhouser failed to establish a chain of influence from the media to the public. D. Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder’s experimental study confirmed a cause-and-effect relationship between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda. V.

Who sets the agenda for the agenda setters? A. Some scholars target major news editors or “gatekeepers.” B. Others point to politicians and their spin doctors. C. Current thinking focuses on public relations professionals. D. “Interest aggregations” are becoming extremely important.

VI.

Who is most affected by the media agenda? A. Those susceptible have a high need for orientation or index of curiosity. B. Need for orientation arises from high relevance and uncertainty.

VII. Framing: transferring the salience of attributes. A. Throughout the last decade, McCombs has emphasized that the media influence the way we think. B. This process is called framing. 1. A media frame is the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. 2. This definition suggests that media not only set an agenda but also transfer the salience of specific attributes to issues, events, or candidates. C. There are two levels of agenda setting. 1. The transfer of salience of an attitude object in the mass media’s pictures of the world to a prominent place among the pictures in our heads. 2. The transfer of salience of a bundle of attributes the media associate with an attitude object to the specific features of the image in our minds. VIII. Not just what to think about, but how to think about it. A. Two national election studies suggest that framing works by altering pictures in the minds of people and, through the construction of an agenda with a cluster of related attributes, creating a coherent image. B. Salma Ghanem’s study of Texans tracked the second level of agenda setting and suggested that attribute frames have a compelling effect on the public. C. Framing is inevitable. D. McCombs and Shaw now contend that the media may not only tell us what to think about, they also may tell us who and what to think about it, and perhaps even what to do about it. IX.

Beyond opinion: the behavioral effect of the media’s agenda. A. Some findings suggest that media priorities affect people’s behavior. B. Nowhere is the behavioral effect of the media agenda more apparent than in the business of professional sports. C. McCombs claims that “Agenda setting the theory can also be agenda setting the business plan.”

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D. Will new media continue to guide focus, opinions, and behavior? 1. The power of agenda setting that McCombs and Shaw describe may be on the wane. 2. The media may not have as much power to transfer the salience of issues or attributes as it does now as a result of users’ expanded content choices and control over exposure. X.

Critique: are the effects too limited, the scope too wide? A. McCombs has considered agenda setting a theory of limited media effects. B. Framing reopens the possibility of a powerful effects model. C. Gerald Kosicki questions whether framing is relevant to agenda-setting research. 1. McCombs’s restricted definition of framing doesn’t address the mood of emotional connotations of a media story or presentational factors. 2. Although it has a straightforward definition within agenda-setting theory, the popularity of framing as a construct in media studies has led to diverse and perhaps contradictory uses of the term. D. Agenda-setting research shows that print and broadcast news prioritize issues. E. Agenda-setting theory reminds us that the news is stories that require interpretation.

Key Names and Terms Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw Theorists from the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, respectively, who have pioneered research on the agenda-setting theory of the mass media. Agenda-Setting Theory The ability of the mass media to transfer the salience of items on their agendas to the public agenda. Walter Lippman A Pulitzer Prize-winning author who claimed that the media acted as a mediator between the world outside and the pictures in our heads. Bernard Cohen A University of Wisconsin political scientist who observed that the media told readers what to think about. Theodore White A political analyst who wrote the definitive account of four presidential elections and concluded that the media shape election campaigns. Ray Funkhouser A communication researcher from the Pennsylvania State University who documented a situation in which the twin agendas of the media and the public did not mirror reality. Shanto Iyengar, Marl Peters, and Donald Kinder Political scientists at Yale University whose experimental study confirmed a cause-andeffect relationship between the media agenda and the public agenda.

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Gatekeepers Key news editors who determine the content of the major news publications and outlets. Robert Merton A Columbia University sociologist who coined the term interest aggregations. Interest Aggregations Interest groups or clusters of people who demand center stage for their one overriding concern; single-issue advocates. Need for Orientation A willingness to let the media shape one’s thinking arising from high relevance and uncertainty. Index of Curiosity A synonym for need for orientation. Framing The process of calling attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring others, which might lead to different reactions; the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion in the media agenda when a particular object is discussed. James Tankard A leading writer on mass communication theory from the University of Texas at Austin who created the definition of a media frame. Media Frame The central organizing idea for news context that supplies a content and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. Agenda Setting of Attributes The second level of agenda setting, this process involves the transfer of salience of a bundle of attributes that the media associate with an attitude object to the features of the image the media projects to the audience. Salma Ghanem A researcher at the University of Texas–Pan American whose study of Texans tracked the second level of agenda setting and suggested that attribute frames have a compelling effect on the public. Deborah Blood and Peter Phillips University of Connecticut communication scholar and Yale University economist who examined newspaper headlines from 1980 to 1993 and found little relationship between the media agenda and the prevailing economic conditions, but they did find a strong media malady effect. Media Malady Effect Negative economic headlines have been found to have a significant and negative impact on subsequent consumer sentiment and leading economic indicators. Scott Althaus and David Tewksbury University of Illinois researchers who studied the effect of media type on setting the reader’s agenda, contrasting traditional print media with new electronic media. Gerald Kosicki A journalism professor from Ohio State University who questions whether framing is really relevant to agenda-setting research.

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Principal Changes The section on the agenda-melding function of the media has been cut and replaced by a discussion of the effects of media in the business of professional sports, in particular the NBA. An entirely new section on the strength of the media’s agenda-setting capacity in an electronic age has been added. Other changes have been made to update the chapter, including revising the questions under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, editing for clarity, and new citations in the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion The importance of research in McCombs and Shaw’s theory One of the most interesting features of this chapter is that it is as much about research methodology as it is about theory building. This fact illustrates to students the interconnectedness of the two endeavors, implicitly demonstrating that attempts to separate theory and research into two neat categories are unrealistic and unproductive. It also shows students that some concepts such as agenda setting (and cultivation) are relatively simple to formulate in the abstract but difficult to prove in the concrete realm of fact. Unlike Hall, for example, who requires an elaborate specialized vocabulary and some knowledge of Marxism, McCombs and Shaw focus on an aspect of media influence that is quite basic and—at its essence—easy to understand. The proof itself, though, constitutes the principal challenge, and thus the chapter reflects a strong research emphasis. (Hall’s thesis, as well, would be very difficult to prove, but since he pays minimal attention to systematic analysis of evidence, Griffin prudently focuses most of Chapter 26 on unpacking the vocabulary and outlining the conceptual framework of cultural studies. Integrative Essay Question #32 below invites discussion of these general issues.) A second issue related to research methods that you may want to further articulate in class is the importance of establishing a delayed effect to support McCombs and Shaw’s claims of agenda setting. A mantra that cannot be said enough: “Correlation does not equal causation.” In their theory, McCombs and Shaw are making claims of causation and as such, must back up the relationship as cause-and-effect. You may want to underscore the point with students that if media coverage and public opinion converge, but one is not shown to precede the other, then agenda setting has not occurred. A recent example that might be of significance to students is U2 frontman Bono’s campaign for debt forgiveness in Africa. If Bono is considered an agenda setter, which might be an interesting debate in itself, was he successful at getting world leaders as well as common folks to care about the issue? Or was it important to people before his prominent “One” campaign? The two levels of agenda setting You may wish to feature an example or two to help students understand the two levels of agenda setting. Events related to the tragedy of 9/11, as Griffin mentions, constitute a rare example of the media having no choice but to feature a story prominently. Thus, it does not illustrate the first level of agenda setting. Other examples will better allow you to explore both levels. Consider, for instance, the media coverage of the Enron scandal. At the first level, the media tell us the issue is important. At the second level, the media suggest how to view the

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issue and what aspects of it are salient. Should we feel outraged about the plight of Enron workers who lost jobs and pension funds? Be concerned about the power of corporations? Worry about the effect on the economy and possibly our utility bills? What attributes are framed as important—the greed of CEOs, the exploitation of workers, the failure of deregulation, Enron’s ties to political leaders? Or you could consider an event that created a particularly significant media feeding frenzy in 2005: the Michael Jackson trial. Clearly the first level of agenda setting was painfully present, but how would your class characterize the media’s attempt to shape the public’s view of the court case? Which aspects were consumers of news pushed to consider most closely? Which elements were subtly pushed aside? Framing It is also productive to focus on how the concept of framing compares with a cultural studies approach. In Douglas Kellner’s analysis of media coverage of the Gulf War (featured in Chapter 26), the way the media framed the war is a central concern. Yet it should be emphasized to students that cultural studies goes further, suggesting that media frames systematically serve to reinforce hegemony, to allow the powerful to control discourse, and to keep the marginalized on the periphery of power and privilege. Agenda-setting theory offers no basis for why the media choose specific frames and is for the most part ideologically neutral. You and your students may want to explore this crucial difference between the approaches. (Integrative Essay Question #31 below addresses this issue.)

Sample Application Log Glenda I think the media’s agenda setting works all too well on children (at least it did on me). Except it wasn’t news I was watching; it was the Saturday morning line-up. After all, as a child I had a very high need for orientation. For some inexplicable reason, anything that the TV displayed from 6am to noon on Saturday had high relevance to me (including the color bars from 6-7). And as a child, anything dealing with growing up, being an adult or understanding the world around me touched a point of high uncertainty within my semi-hardened skull. As a result, Saturday morning TV had the power to tell me what to think about. I spent my play time acting out the characters from my favorite shows. I pleaded with my parents to provide me with whatever the commercials were peddling—sugar cereal, dolls with combable hair, sports cars. I wasn’t picky. I dreamt Smurfs. I breathed Wonder Woman. I made wedding plans revolving around George of the Jungle. I thought about what the powers behind the television, based on their agenda, wanted me to think about. And, to be perfectly honest, I’m still a huge fan of Wonder Woman and dolls with combable hair.

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Exercises and Activities The social construction of gatekeeping Discussing the concept of gatekeeping (399), ask your students about the prevailing perception of these media elites (that they are liberal, for example). What do students think of this view? In order to complete the picture, ask your students how Hall and his ilk would characterize the same handful of news guardians. No doubt Hall would consider the gatekeepers’ perspective to be a pernicious orthodoxy, but it would be the ruling principles of capitalistic hegemony, rather than a left-leaning liberalism, that constitutes their ideological power base. Both conservatives and liberals attack the media’s purported ability to control the issues, but their perceptions of that control are radically different. In other words, the precise nature of the media’s gatekeeping function is socially constructed through communicative practice of individual discourse communities. Recreating one’s self Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, Exercise #3 could easily be expanded to include other political figures or celebrities. Madonna, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Dr. Phil, Shaquille O’Neal, Marilyn Manson, Mother Teresa, and the late Pope John Paul II are just a few of the subjects that could inspire interesting analyses. During your discussion, you may discover certain figures who have the uncanny ability to frame themselves, thus resisting or overriding frames that reporters attempt to place around them. This was certainly the reputation of President Ronald Reagan, whose nickname, “The Teflon President,” alluded to his ability to wash away—in our terms, reframe—negative images and issues. His ability to control the public’s perception of himself and his policies provided additional evidence for the thesis that politicians and their spin doctors can be powerful agenda setters. What’s not getting talked about? Question #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook encourages students to ponder the media’s ability to bring specific issues into the public’s agenda, whether they originally care about them or not. An interesting way to follow up the question is to ask, “Conversely, is there a national or local issue that concerns you that has not been emphasized by the media? How does their neglect make you feel?” After all—as so many media critics remind us—agenda setting is as much about what isn’t selected as what is. You may also wish to ask if, with respect to stories students care about, the second level of agenda setting frames issues in ways that overlook or diminish attributes they feel are important. For example, we’re struck that Nancy Grace’s national news show about legal issues (on CNN) provides scant coverage of general legal issues. Focusing almost entirely on the lurid specifics of sensational cases, the show has little to say about legal trends or broad concerns pertaining to this nation’s system of justice. At the time this manual was being completed, key changes in the Supreme Court were in the air, changes that may effect decades of legal decisions, yet this extremely significant subject was hardly dominating the air time commanded by Nancy Grace.

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What effect does the media have on your behavior? You may want to have your students discuss and debate the potential behavioral effect of the media on them. Has media coverage of crime, for example, made them more careful about locking doors or securing their cars? How has the media coverage of the 9/11 tragedy and the subsequent emphasis on terrorism altered their behavior? Teaching media literacy Griffin concludes the chapter by emphasizing a point that Walter Fisher would no doubt appreciate—news stories are just another kind of story, and they require careful interpretation (406). If this is true, and if framing is as influential as recent scholarship suggests, then what should our school system be doing to develop media literacy in our children? Challenge your students to come up with proposals for teaching this slippery subject. You can begin by asking them how media literacy relates to its old-fashioned predecessors: the ability to read and write. To enrich and complicate the discussion of teaching media literacy, invite students to bring in ideas from McLuhan, Gerbner, and Hall. Recreating Chapel Hill, NC When Em Griffin teaches this theory, he recreates the North Carolina study for the present time. First, he has his class give their agenda. Then, he breaks the class up into working groups. Providing each group with a current newspaper or tape of a television news show, he asks them to apply criteria outlined on page 397 to analyze the media agenda. Then the students’ agenda is compared to that manifested by the media artifacts they have analyzed. A further step in the exercise is to examine media artifacts from the beginning of the school term to see if they more closely resemble the class’s current agenda than do the current artifacts. If this is the case, then you can discuss the possibility of a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

Further Resources § For additional discussion of agenda setting, see: o Marcus Brewster and Maxwell McCombs, “Setting the Community Agenda,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (1996): 7-16. o Jian-Hua Zhu and Deborah Blood, “Media Agenda-Setting Theory: Telling the Public What to Think About,” Emerging Theories of Human Communication, ed. Branislav Kovacic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 88-114. § James Fallows’s Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996) is an intriguing treatment of the drawbacks of the media’s current “agenda.” Fallows speaks as a practitioner, rather than a theorist, but his analysis intelligently complements the work of McCombs and Shaw. Agenda setting and politics § John C. Tedesco, “Issue and Strategy Agenda Setting in the 2004 Presidential Election: Exploring the Candidate–Journalist Relationship,” Journalism Studies 6, 2 (2005): 187202. § William L. Benoit, Glenn J. Hansen, and Rebecca M. Verser, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Viewing U.S. Presidential Debates,” Communication Monographs 70, 4 (2003): 335-51. 379

§ Frederick Fico and Eric Freedman, “Setting the Agenda: Candidates and Commentators in News Coverage of the Governor’s Race,” Journal and Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (Autumn 2001): 437-49. § Guy Golan and Wayne Wanta, “Second-Level Agenda Setting in the New Hampshire Primary: A Comparison of Coverage in Three Newspapers and Public Perceptions of Candidates,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (Summer 2001): 24759. § Thomas P. Boyle, “Intermediate Agenda Setting in the 1996 Presidential Election,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (Spring 2001): 26-44. § Marilyn Roberts, Ronald Anderson, and Maxwell McCombs, “1990 Texas Gubernatorial Campaign: Influence of Issues and Images,” Mass Communication Review 21 (1994): 20-35. § Richard M. Perloff, Political Communication: Politics, Press, and Public in America (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998). § Catherine Cassara demonstrates how politicians can influence the news media’s agendas in “U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Human Rights in Latin America, 1975-1982: Exploring President Carter’s Agenda-Building Influence,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (Autumn 1998): 478-86. § William L. Benoit and Glenn J. Hanson argue that the questions asked by journalists in political debates do not reflect the public interest in “Presidential Debate Questions and the Public Agenda,” Communication Quarterly 49 (Spring 2001): 130-41. § One of the most famous political statements about the agenda-setting function of the media is Spiro Agnew’s “Television News Coverage,” published in Vital Speeches of the Day (December 1, 1969), 98-101. Focusing on recent news coverage of Nixon’s handling of the war in Indochina, the Vice President argued that the liberal media elite unfairly influence both what Americans think about (agenda setting) and how they think about it (framing). Somewhat ironically, Agnew’s successful attack on the press’s power demonstrated a very different point—the ability of politicians and their spin doctors to use media outlets to shape public opinion. Issues of race and culture § Susan Weill and Laura Castañeda, “‘Emphathetic Rejectionism’ and Inter-ethnic Agenda Setting: Coverage of Latinos by the Black Press in the American South,” Journalism Studies 5, 4 (2004): 537-51. § Randy E. Miller and Wayne Wanta, “Race as a Variable in Agenda Setting,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (Winter 1996): 913-25. § Wayne Wanta, Guy Golan, and Clseolhan, Lee, “Agenda Setting and International News: Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81, 2 (2004): 364-78. § For further discussion of agenda setting in cross-cultural settings, see Hans-Bernd Brosius and Gabriel Weimann, “Who Sets the Agenda? Agenda Setting as a Two-Step Flow,” Communication Research 23 (October 1996): 561-80.

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Framing § Julie Yioutas and Ivana Segvic, “Revisiting the Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal: The Convergence of Agenda Setting and Framing,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80, 3 (2003): 567-83. § Dietram Scheufele, “Agenda Setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication,” Mass Communication and Society 3 (2000): 297-316. § Dietram A. Scheufele, “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects,” Journal of Communication 49 (Winter 1999): 102-22. § Vincent Price, et al., “Switching Trains of Thought: The Impact of News Frames on Readers’ Cognitive Responses,” Communication Research 24 (October 1997): 481-506. § Lynn M. Zoch and Judy VanSlyke Turk, “Women Making News: Gender as a Variable in Source Selection and Use,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (Winter 1998): 762-75. § Betty Houchin Winfield, “The First Lady, Political Power, and the Media: Who Elected Her Anyway?” Women, Media, and Politics, ed. Pippa Norris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 166-79. More scholarship from Shanto Iyengar § For further work from Shanto Iyengar, see Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). § Together with Stephen Ansolabehere and Roy Behr, Iyengar wrote The Media Game: American Politics in the Television Age (New York: Macmillan, 1993). The media’s gatekeeping function § Bruce H. Westley and M.S. MacLean, “A Conceptual Model for Mass Communication Research,” Journalism Quarterly 34 (1957): 310-38. § Pamela J. Shoemaker, Gatekeeping (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991). § David Croteau and William Hoynes, By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1994).

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CHAPTER 29

SPIRAL OF SILENCE Outline I.

Introduction. A. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann claims that people’s assessment of the political climate and forecast of future trends are early, reliable indicators of what will happen in an election. B. Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence explains the growth and spread of public opinion, which is a powerful force. C. She defines public opinion as “attitudes one can express in public without isolating oneself.” D. The spiral of silence refers to the increasing pressure people feel to conceal their views when they think they are in the minority.

II.

A quasi-statistical organ sensing the climate of opinion. A. Noelle-Neumann emphasizes the human ability to discern the climate of public opinion accurately. B. When swings in opinion occur, they are sensed everywhere at the same time. C. She believes that assessing the present or future public mood is a natural human activity. D. Judging public opinion is exhausting, but the information allows one to avoid the greater strain of becoming isolated with an unpopular opinion.

III.

Fear of isolation: the engine that drives the spiral of silence A. Fear of isolation is the centrifugal force that accelerates the spiral of silence. 1. Noelle-Neumann draws heavily on Solomon Asch’s work. 2. Asch found that most people would conform to a group opinion to avoid isolation. 3. Stanley Milgram demonstrated cross-cultural support for Asch’s work. B. Noelle-Neumann rejects the hypothesis that people conform out of a desire to identify with a winner. C. Only criminals or moral heroes disregard what society thinks.

IV.

The powerful role of the mass media. A. Noelle-Neumann believes that the media accelerate the muting of the minority in the spiral of silence. B. She argues that pluralistic ignorance, a condition when people have a mistaken idea of what the public’s opinion really is, results from the media giving a disproportionate mix of viewpoints relative to their actual strength in society. C. Television is particularly influential because of its omni-presence, its single point of view, and the constant repetition of its message. D. Noelle-Neumann has never found a spiral of silence that went against the tenor of the media.

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E. She shares Stuart Hall’s negative assessment of the media’s intrusive role in democratic decision making. F. The media do more than set the agenda; they provide the sanctioned view of what everyone else is thinking. G. The media’s primary influence renders media access crucial for those who desire to shape public opinion. V.

A time to speak and a time to keep silent. A. Once people realize that they hold the minority opinion, they don’t necessarily change their minds, but they keep quiet. B. The train/plane test has been developed to determine whether people are willing to speak out in support of their viewpoint. 1. Those who favor the majority position will be more willing to express their views than those who belong to the minority faction. 2. Future trends are more salient than the present climate. 3. People are more willing to speak to those who agree with them. 4. Low self-esteem will cause a person to remain mute. 5. Males, young adults, and people of the middle and upper classes are more likely to speak out. 6. Existing laws encourage people to express minority opinions.

VI.

The accelerating spiral of silence. A. Fear of isolation catches those in the minority in a spiral of silence. 1. People sense a slight discrepancy between their position and prevailing public opinion. 2. Minority opinion holders begin to withdraw from sharing their opinion. 3. They sense a widening gap and draw back from public scrutiny. B. The spiral becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

VII. The hard core and avant-garde: holdouts who can change the world. A. Early critics pointed out that there are people who will never be silenced. B. Noelle-Neumann now describes two types of individuals who form a vocal minority that remains at the top of the spiral in defiance of threats of isolation: the hard core and the avant-garde. 1. Hard core nonconformists are those who have been overpowered and relegated to a completely defensive position in public. a. They have nothing to lose by speaking out. b. They cling to the past and regard isolation as the price to pay. 2. The avant-garde form the vanguard of new ideas. a. They seek public response, even though it may be negative. b. Their conviction is ahead of the times. 3. The reality of the hard core and avant-garde minorities are acknowledged by Noelle-Neumann, but not predicted by her spiral of silence. C. Serge Moscovici does not believe she adequately considers the pervasive impact of committed deviants on public opinion.

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VIII. Critique. A. Although he does not entirely accept it, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi regards the spiral of silence as “the most original, comprehensive, and useful” theory of public opinion ever proposed. B. Critics question the assumption that fear of isolation is the cause of people’s silence. C. The theory relies on the hypothetical train test to measure willingness to speak rather than use the observation of actual behavior. D. While the spiral of silence focuses on national climate of public opinion, other studies have indicated that the opinion of one’s own reference group or microclimate of family and friends is most closely linked to one’s willingness to speak out. E. A recent study by Dietram Scheufele suggests that the spiral of silence is alive and well in the twenty-first century.

Key Names and Terms Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann Founder and director of the Public Opinion Research Center in Allensbach, Germany, and creator of the spiral of silence theory. Public Opinion Attitudes one can express in public without isolating oneself. Spiral of Silence The increasing pressure that people feel to conceal their views when they believe they are in the minority. Quasi-Statistical Organ A sixth sense that provides trustworthy information about what society in general is thinking and feeling. Solomon Asch A Swarthmore College psychologist who demonstrated that most people will conform to group opinion to avoid isolation. Stanley Milgram A Yale University psychologist who demonstrated cross-cultural support for Asch’s work. Pluralistic Ignorance People’s mistaken assumption that everyone thinks like they do as a result of a disproportionate mix of viewpoints presented by the media compared to their relative strength in society. Train/Plane Test A test devised by Noelle-Neumann to determine whether people are willing to speak out in support of their viewpoint. Hard-Core Nonconformists Noelle-Neumann’s term for those who resist the pressure to be silent, but because they have been overpowered and have nothing to lose.

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Avant-Garde Intellectuals, artists, and reformers who hold minority ideas that are ahead of the times, but are not subject to the spiral of silence. They seek public approval and are convinced they will get it in the future. Serge Moscovici A French social psychologist who does not believe that Noelle-Neumann adequately considers the pervasive impact of committed deviants on public opinion. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi A University of Chicago sociologist who regards the spiral of silence as the most original, comprehensive, and useful theory of public opinion ever proposed. Dietram Scheufele Cornell University communication professor who has tested the spiral of silence in relation to people’s opinions toward biotechnology and their willingness to speak out on the topic in a real focus group. Correcting for some previous criticisms of the spiral of silence, Scheufele’s team found contemporary support for the theory.

Principal Changes Readers of the sixth edition of A First Look who are unfamiliar with earlier versions will find this chapter entirely new. Veterans of the text who have read earlier editions will find that the first part of this chapter has changed very little. In addition to a slight reordering of the chapter, Griffin has added a new section entitled “The hard core and avant-garde: Holdouts who can change the world” that addresses those who defy the spiral of silence’s effect on minority-opinion holders. He features new research developments and has also updated the Critique and Second Look sections.

Suggestions for Discussion The pessimistic core of the spiral of silence At its core, we find the spiral of silence theory (particularly as Griffin has presented it in earlier editions of A First Look) to be one of the most pessimistic assessments of human behavior presented in this book. Individuals who hold minority opinions tend to knuckle under for fear of isolation or become hard-core nonconformists, who continue to disagree not because they are secure people with especially deep-seated beliefs, but because they have “nothing to lose” (416). In a nation whose Constitution is purportedly designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, this theory would reduce dissenters to the roles of dutiful sheep or stubbornly vocal deviants. (Furthermore, the alternative phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance—defined by Griffin as “a mistaken idea of what the public’s opinion really is” (411)—is hardly flattering.) Because of its less-than-savory assessment of human behavior and decision-making, the spiral of silence theory reminds us a little of cognitive dissonance. Both approaches to communication seem to downplay the power of rationality and free will. A question of free will This point leads inevitably to Integrative Essay Question #28, which asks students to consider the place of the individual in each of the five mass communication theories featured

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in this book. Although opinion will no doubt differ on a broad-based question such as this, we will hazard to guess that most students will not find a great deal of interest in or room for free will and individual agency in the work of Barthes, Gerbner, Hall, McCombs and Shaw, and Noelle-Neumann. Barthes focuses on the power of signs (including those produced by the media) to manufacture an acceptance of the status quo; Gerbner studies the way in which television manipulates the beliefs of heavy viewers; Hall discusses the media’s ideological control over the working class, McCombs and Shaw present the way in which the media’s agendas become the public’s agenda, and Noelle-Neumann—as mentioned above—portrays most people as acting primarily out of a fear of nonconformity. There is some wiggle room in each theoretical position (Hall, for example, would like to teach the have-nots to think for themselves and question the power structure), but for the most part these theorists are interested in the power of the media, not the individual. Fiske’s critique of Hall’s theory, which states that people empower themselves through their own interpretations of television, is definitely a minority opinion. Griffin provides the beginning of an answer when he suggests, “Noelle-Neumann agrees with Stuart Hall’s pessimistic assessment concerning the media’s intrusive role in democratic decision making. She ascribes a function to the media that goes one step beyond agenda setting” (411). The avant-garde’s ability to reform the world In this most recent rendition of the spiral of silence theory, Griffin includes NoelleNeumann’s new idea of the avant-garde (416). With this addition to his treatment of the theory, he places more emphasis on the theorist’s interest in the positive force of individual agency. The idea that intellectuals, artists, and reformers can play an important role in changing public opinion moves this theory significantly in the direction of free will and perhaps even rationality. We are reminded of Margaret Mead’s quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The possibility that “a moral hero,” who “doesn’t care what society thinks” (410), can significantly alter the public’s opinion warms even the heart of a committed humanist rhetorician. That Noelle-Neumann mentions the moral hero and the criminal in the same breath is another matter. Despite our overall concern about the pessimism of the spiral of silence theory, we do not deny the trenchancy of its central insights about human behavior and public communication. We have watched highly educated, principled, committed individuals who hold minority opinions quickly grow silent at too many faculty meetings to discredit NoelleNeumann’s approach. When new information compels us to change As presented in the chapter, the spiral of silence theory does not seem to be particularly concerned about the potential impact of shifts in the issues and controversies about which public opinion is formed. It is interesting to suggest that in many cases, people abandon their positions—whether majority or minority—simply because new information compels them to do so. The decline in Nixon’s political support through 1973 and 1974 could be seen as an example of the spiral of silence at work, but it could also be argued that continuing revelations about the administration’s misconduct in the Watergate scandal compelled the majority of Americans to turn against the president. Of course one could also

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view both factors at work. (Essay Question #27, below, may serve as a vehicle for such discussion.) Does the theory have a feminine edge? Consider asking your students if they believe it is significant that the spiral of silence theory was created by a woman. As the only theory in the mass communication section of the book that was not developed by men, does the spiral of silence grow out of particular female concerns? Does it display a woman’s sensitivity to certain elements of public opinion or media influence?

Sample Application Logs Eric As I read this theory, I kept saying to myself “That would never be me. I’d never keep silent, even when I think I’m the minority view.” I’ve always seen myself as opinionated, outspoken, and direct. I’ve seen the conformity line test (~2) and known in my heart of hearts that I wouldn’t bow down to the pressure. But then I got to the section that lists the factors that determine the likelihood that other people will voice their opinions. Number 5 says “males, young adults, and people of middle or upper class” will voice their opinion more easily. Is this because in society it’s more comfortable for people like me to voice our opinions? I wonder if the fact that I’m male, young adult, middle class and white has anything to do with it. Thinking back to Stuart Hall, I’m convicted to help promote the minority view and help give a voice to the voiceless.

Exercises and Activities Based on your own experience No doubt your students can come up with examples from campus or other social contexts that may confirm (or perhaps undermine) the spiral of silence theory. In order to help students recall instances of the spiral of silence working in their own lives, you may wish to introduce the term “peer pressure” into the discussion. (Item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook and Essay Question #5, below, encourage students to analyze their own experiences.) Accuracy in predictions To test your students’ quasi-statistical organ or sixth sense, provide them with a short list of controversial statements about local and/or national issues. Ask them to respond to the statements with numbers from a five-point scale ranging from “1” (strongly agree) to “5” (strongly disagree). After they have completed the survey, give them a second copy listing the same statements and ask them to supply the rankings they believe characterize the average class member. Collect both surveys and average the two sets of responses. It will be interesting to share with your students the accuracy of their predictions. This exercise may be more valuable if you conduct it before your students read the chapter. That way, they’ll respond to the questions more naturally and you’ll have the results for the day you discuss the theory in class.

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For the effects of the spiral of silence in computer-mediated environments, see Michael McDevitt, Spiro Kiousis, and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen’s article, “Spiral of Moderation: Opinion Expression in Computer-Mediated Discussion,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 15, 4 (2003): 454-71. For more on the importance of observing actual behavior, see: o Dietram Scheufele, James Shanahan, and Eunjung Lee, “Real Talk: Manipulating the Dependent Variable in Spiral of Silence Research,” Communication Research 28, 3 (2001): 304-25. o Andrew F. Hayes, James Shanahan, and Carroll J. Glynn, “Willingness to Express One’s Opinion in a Realistic Situation as a Function of Perceived Support for that Opinion,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 13, 1 (2001): 45-59.

Cross-cultural studies § Lee Waipeng, Benjamin Detenber, Lars Willnat, Sean Aday, and Joseph Graf, “A CrossCultural Test of the Spiral of Silence Theory in Singapore and the United States,” Asian Journal of Communication 14, 2 (2004): 205-27. § Sei-Hill Kim, Miejeong Han, James Shanahan, and Vicente Berdayes, “Talking on ‘Sunshine in North Korea’: A Test of the Spiral of Silence as a Theory of Powerful Mass Media,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16, 1 (2004): 39-63. § Kurt Neuwirth, “Testing the Spiral of Silence Model: The Case of Mexico,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 12, 2 (2000): 138-60. Recent applications of the spiral of silence § James Shanahan, Dietram Scheufele, Yang Fang, and Sonia Hizi, “Cultivation and Spiral of Silence Effects: The Case of Smoking,” Mass Communication & Society 7, 4 (2004): 413-29. § Nancy J. Eckstein and Paul D. Turman, “‘Children Are to Be Seen and Not Heard”: Silencing Students’ Religious Voices in the University Classroom,” Journal of Communication & Religion 25, 2 (2002): 166-94. § William J. Gonzenbach, Cynthia King, and Patrick Jablonski, “Homosexuals and the Military: An Analysis of the Spiral of Silence,” Howard Journal of Communications 10, 4 (1999): 281-97.

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ETHICAL REFLECTIONS HABERMAS AND CHRISTIANS Key Names and Terms Jürgen Habermas A German philosopher and social theorist who suggests a rational process through which people can determine right from wrong. Ideal Speech Situation Habermas’s optimal setting for determining right from wrong, where participants are free to listen to reason and speak their minds without fear of constraint or control. Theodore Glasser The director of the graduate program in journalism at Stanford University who has used Habermas’s discourse ethic to critique today’s news practitioners. Discourse Ethics Habermas’s vision of the ideal speech situation in which participants could reach a consensus on universal ethical standards. Discursive Test Habermas’s claim that people who perform an act must be willing to publicly discuss what they did and why they did it. Clifford Christians The director of the doctoral program in communications at the University of Illinois, the lead author of Good News: Social Ethics and the Press, and a proponent of communitarian ethics. Communitarian Ethics An ethical standard that regards civic transformation rather than objective information as the primary goal of journalism.

Further Resources § For further discussion of Habermas, see Karen A. Foss, “Habermas,” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 309-11. § Walter Fisher offers a brief critique of Habermas in Human Communication as Narration (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 91-92. § William Rehg’s “Reason and Rhetoric in Habermas’s Theory of Argumentation,” in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time, ed. Walter Jost and Michael Hyde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 358-77, comes recommended, as do Craig Calhoun’s collection of essays, Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Hanns Hohmann’s “Rhetoric in the Public Sphere and the Discourse of Law and Democracy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 358-70; and James M. Chriss’s “Habermas, Goffman, and Communicative Action: Implications for Professional Practice,” American Sociological Review 60 (1997): 351-70.

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§ Looking ahead a bit, you’ll find an important critique of Habermas’s position in the final Ethical Reflection in A First Look at Communication Theory, featuring Seyla Benhabib (508-09). § William Fusfield explores Habermas’s relationship to critical theory in “Communication without Constellation? Habermas’s Argumentative Turn in (and Away from) Critical Theory,” Communication Theory 7 (November 1997): 301-20. § For application of Habermas’s ethical theory of communication, see Patricia Roberts-Miller, Voices in the Wilderness: Public Discourse and the Paradox of Puritan Rhetoric (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999). § For additional coverage of media ethics, see Clifford Christians, Kim B. Rotzoll, and Mark Fackler, Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1991).

Integrative Essay Questions 1. How does Petty and Cacioppo’s concept of elaboration compare to Habermas’s ideal speech situation? 2. How do the values and goals that stand behind Poole’s adaptive structuration theory compare to Habermas’s basic principles? 3. How would critical theorists such as Deetz and Hall respond to Habermas’s ideal speech situation?

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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Key Names and Terms Culture A socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, meanings, premises, and rules; complex webs of shared meanings. Geert Hofstede A Dutch researcher who compares cultures by examining the variables of power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism. Power Distance A dimension of cultural variability; the extent to which the less powerful members of society willingly accept the unequal distribution of power. Masculinity A dimension of cultural variability; clearly defined sex roles with male values of success, money, and material possessions dominant in society. Uncertainty Avoidance A dimension of cultural variability; the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguity and create beliefs and institutions to try to avoid it. Individualism The extent to which people look out for themselves and their immediate family as opposed to identifying with a larger group that is responsible for taking care of them in exchange for group loyalty. Edward Hall Initially introduced in Chapter 6, he was the first to label the communication style of collectivistic cultures high-context and the style of individualistic cultures low-context. High-Context Culture A culture in which most of the information communicated is located in the physical context or internalized in the person, but very little is in the coded, explicit part of the message; a collectivist culture. Low-Context Culture A culture in which most of the information communicated is located in the explicit code of the message rather than the physical context or internalized in the person. Cross-Cultural Communication The comparison of specific interpersonal variables such as conversational distance, self-disclosure, or styles of conflict resolution across two or more cultures, whereas intercultural communication refers to interaction between people of different cultures.


An insightful, highly readable study of the consequences of problematic intercultural communication is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997). Concepts fundamental to the theories presented in this section of A First Look such as mindfulness, face, and the speech code find clear application in

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Fadiman’s work (as do key concepts of theories such as symbolic interactionism and CMM). Drawing explicitly on the work of communication researcher Dwight Conquergood (whose ethnographic insights are featured in Chapter 32 of A First Look) and being careful to demonize neither the Hmong patient and her family nor the doctors who treat her, Fadiman painstakingly tracks the ways in which misperceptions on both sides of the cultural divide compromise the communicative process between them. In contrast, she praises Conquergood’s successful program to deliver health care to Hmong refugees: “Conquergood considered his relationship with the Hmong to be a form of barter, ‘a productive and mutually invigorating dialog, with neither side dominating or winning out.’” As long as Western health-care professionals fail to adopt a dialogic mode of communication, Conquergood states, their help will be rejected because the Hmong refugees “view it not as a gift but as a form of coercion” (37). Working diligently with these concepts, Fadiman argues near the end of the study, “Dwight Conquergood’s philosophy of health care as a form of barter, rather than a one-side relationship, ignores the fact that, for better or for worse, Western medicine is one-sided” (276). Declaring that changes in the “culture of medicine” will be required before approaches such as Conquergood’s can win widespread acceptance, she nonetheless asserts, “I don’t think it would be too much to ask [health-care professionals] to acknowledge their patients’ realities. . .” (276). In short, this is a powerful book, a rich source of material concerning communication and culture that brings a true sense of urgency to the theoretical issues discussed in this section of A First Look. Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama examine important metatheoretical assumptions of intercultural communication in “Thinking Dialectically about Culture and Communication,” Communication Theory 9 (February 1999): 1-25. An ambitious, wide-ranging theoretical discussion of intercultural communication is Thomas K. Fitzgerald, Metaphors of Identity: A Culture-Communication Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Fitzgerald draws on the work of many of the theorists featured in A First Look at Communication Theory, including Gudykunst, Ting-Toomey, Pacanowsky, and Geertz as he links intercultural study with analyses of metaphor, gender, mass media, and organization. A good general reader is Larry A. Samovar and Richard E. Porter, eds., Intercultural Communication: A Reader, 9th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999). Recent studies that address key concepts presented in this section include: o Theodore M. Singelis and William J. Brown, “Culture, Self, and Collectivist Communication: Linking Culture to Individual Behavior,” Human Communication Research 21 (1995): 354-89. o Min-Sun Kim, et al., “Individual- vs. Cultural-Level Dimensions of Individualism and Collectivism: Effects on Preferred Conversational Styles,” Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 29-49. o Dreama G. Moon, “Concepts of ‘Culture’: Implications for Intercultural Communication Research,” Communication Quarterly 44 (1996): 70-84. o William Gudykunst, et al., “The Influence of Cultural Individualism-Collectivism, Self Construals, and Individual Values on Communication Styles across Cultures,” Human Communication Research 22 (1996): 510-43.

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Ling Chen’s essay, “Cognitive Complexity, Situational Influence, and Topic Selection in Intracultural and Intercultural Dyadic Interactions,” Communication Reports 9 (1996): 1-22, creates an interesting link with theoretical material presented in Chapter 8. An intriguing cross-cultural study of metaphor is Michelle Emanatian, “Everyday Metaphors of Lust and Sex in Chagga,” Ethos 24 (1996): 195-236. Alberto Gonzalez and Tarla Rai Peterson provide a feminist analysis of intercultural communication in “Enlarging Conceptual Boundaries: A Critique of Research in Intercultural Communication,” Transforming Visions: Feminist Critiques in Communication Studies, 249-78. Charles P. Campbell combines intercultural communication theory and rhetoric in “Rhetorical Ethos: A Bridge between High-Context and Low-Context Cultures,” in The Context in Business Communication (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998). The following films feature a rich variety of intercultural interactions: A Great Wall, Mississippi Masala, Jungle Fever, Do the Right Thing, and In the Heat of the Night.

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CHAPTER 30

ANXIETY/UNCERTAINTY MANAGEMENT THEORY Outline I.

Enter the stranger. A. Bill Gudykunst’s anxiety/uncertainty management theory (AUM) focuses on crosscultural encounters between cultural in-groups and strangers. B. AUM also applies more generally to any situation where differences between people spawn doubts and fears. C. He assumed that at least one person in an intercultural encounter is a stranger. 1. Through a series of initial crises, strangers experience both anxiety and uncertainty. 2. They tend to overestimate the effect of cultural identity on the behavior of people in an alien society and blur individual distinctions. D. AUM is a theory under construction.

II.

Effective communication: thwarted by anxiety and uncertainty. A. Effective communication refers to the process of minimizing misunderstandings. 1. Effective communication means interpreting a message in a similar way as the person transmitting the message. 2. Parallel terms include accuracy, fidelity, and mutual understanding. B. AUM is designed to explain effective face-to-face communication. C. Gudykunst’s approach to uncertainty came from Berger. D. Anxiety is the feeling of being uneasy, tense, worried, or apprehensive about what might happen. E. Anxiety and uncertainty are linked to the degree of difference between the in-group’s and stranger’s cultures. F. Nine of the 47 axioms that Gudykunst presented in AUM drew upon Hofstede’s dimensions that stake out our cultural differences. G. Lower and upper thresholds for fears and doubts. 1. Anxiety and uncertainty aren’t always bad. Gudykunst insisted that a minimal level of both is necessary to motivate us to communicate better. 2. A minimal threshold of anxiety is the least amount we can feel but still prods to communicate effectively. 3. A minimal threshold of uncertainty is the lowest amount we can have and not feel bored or overconfident about our predictions. 4. Anxiety can reach a point where people become paralyzed with fear. 5. When uncertainty reaches an upper threshold, people lose all confidence in their predictions.

III.

Mindfulness: conscious choice rather than scripted behavior. A. Mindfulness is the way that in-group members and strangers can reduce their anxiety and uncertainty to optimum levels.

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B. Scripted behavior serves us well in familiar situations, but not in cross-cultural communication. C. William Howell suggests four levels of communication competence. 1. Unconscious incompetence: we are unaware that we’re misinterpreting others’ behavior. 2. Conscious incompetence: we know that we’re misinterpreting others’ behavior but don’t do anything about it. 3. Conscious competence: we think about our communication and continually work to become more effective. 4. Unconscious competence: our communication skills are automatic. D. Gudykunst defined mindfulness as stage three in Howell’s model, in which cognitive choice moderates the destructive force of doubt or fear. E. Stage four is less competent than stage 3 and can shift quickly into oblivious incompetence. F. Mindfulness involves the creation of new categories, a process, a kin, to Delia’s description of a cognitively complex person’s use of a rich number of interpersonal constructs. IV.

Cause of anxiety and uncertainty in intercultural encounters. A. Superficial causes are surface factors that contribute to the basic issues of anxiety and uncertainty in intergroup encounters. B. Gudykunst laid out 47 axioms that specify factors affecting levels of anxiety and uncertainty. C. All axioms contain boundary conditions that specify when the causal relationship holds true and when it doesn’t apply: This axiom holds only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and we are not mindful. 1. Self-concept (Axiom 3): An increase in our self-esteem (pride) when we interact with strangers will produce a decrease in anxiety and an increase in our ability to predict behavior accurately. 2. Motivation to interact (Axiom 9): An increase in our confidence in our ability to predict behavior will produce a decrease in anxiety. 3. Reactions to strangers. a. Axiom 10: An increase in our ability to complexly process information about strangers will produce a decrease in anxiety and an increase in our ability to predict their behavior accurately. b. Axiom 13: An increase in our tolerance for ambiguity will produce a decrease in anxiety. 4. Social categorization of strangers. a. Axiom 17: An increase in the personal similarity perceived between ourselves and strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and increase our ability to accurately predict their behavior. b. Axiom 20: An increase in perceiving that we share superordinate identities with strangers will decrease anxiety and increase ability to predict behavior. 5. Situational processes (Axiom 26): An increase in our perceived power over strangers will decrease our anxiety and decrease accuracy of prediction of their behavior.

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6. Connections with strangers. a. Axiom 27: An increase in our attraction to strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our confidence in predicting their behavior. b. Axiom 31: An increase in networks we share with strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and increase our ability to accurately predicting their behavior. 7. Ethical interactions (Axiom 34): An increase in our moral inclusiveness will produce a decrease in our anxiety. D. Gudykunst emphasized that intercultural communication is an extension of interpersonal communication. V.

Critique: Reflections on the choices that Gudykunst has made. A. Michael Sunnafrank acknowledges the importance of AUM. B. Gudykunst acknowledged a large number of axioms but didn’t regard them as excessive for theory that aims at clarity and usefulness. C. Although AUM is ambitious, it seems to violate the scientific standard of simplicity. D. Gudykunst embraced both free will and determinism as each axiom is conditional on mindfulness. But a weakness is there is no way to test for mindfulness. E. Stella Ting-Toomey suggests that AUM may reflect a Western bias, a charge Gudykunst rejects.

Key Names and Terms William Gudykunst A professor of communication at California State University, Fullerton, who created anxiety/uncertainty management theory (AUM). Stranger A person who is not a member of a cultural in-group. Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory (AUM) This approach to intercultural communication focuses on encounters between cultural in-groups and strangers. Effective Communication The process of minimizing misunderstandings. William Howell A communication researcher at the University of Minnesota who suggested four levels of communication competence. Unconscious Incompetence The state of being unaware that we are misinterpreting others’ behavior. Conscious Incompetence The state of being aware that we are misinterpreting others’ behavior but not doing anything about it. Conscious Competence The state of thinking about our communication and continually working at changing what we do in order to become more effective. Unconscious Competence The state of development at which we communicate effectively without thinking about it. 404

Mindfulness The process of thinking in new categories, being open to new information, and recognizing multiple perspectives. Uncertainty A cognitive variable based on Berger’s uncertainty reduction theory that includes the doubts we have about our ability to predict the outcome of our encounters with strangers as well as to explain past behaviors. Anxiety An affective variable that includes the feeling of being uneasy, tense, worried, or apprehensive about what might happen. Michael Sunnafrank Previously introduced in Chapter 10, this critic of uncertainty reduction theory acknowledges the impact and scope of Gudykunst’s work. Stella Ting-Toomey A communication researcher at California State University, Fullerton, who suggests that AUM may reflect a Western bias.

Principal Changes In keeping with the theory, this chapter has undergone significant revision. A main difference is that Griffin now features new axioms on the causes of anxiety and uncertainty. In addition, he has clarified Gudykunst’s definition of effective communication, incorporated a new ethical focus, presented mindfulness as a way to overcome the force of intercultural anxiety and uncertainty, and expanded his treatment of the upper and lower thresholds. Figure 30.1 has been updated to reflect changes in the theory and the Second Look section features new citations. Even for instructors with much experience teaching this theory, we recommend a very careful read of Griffin’s revised treatment as some of the featured axioms changed numbers, others contain new material but bear a previously incorporated number, and others are new all together.

Suggestions for Discussion Gudykunst’s scientific approach Gudykunst’s thoroughgoing empiricism should be quickly apparent from his definition of effective communication (“the process of minimizing misunderstandings”), his interest in managing uncertainty and anxiety, and his focus on the scientific goals of prediction and explanation. If you have covered the book in a relatively linear fashion, your students should be hip to the empiricist nomenclature at this point in the semester and should be able quickly to place Gudykunst in the scientific camp without reading a detailed explanation of his research methodology. Nonetheless, be sure that they understand his basic perspective on communication theory and grasp how it grows from the work of fellow empiricist Charles Berger. As we suggested in our treatment of uncertainty reduction theory, it may be useful to discuss with your students what it means to define communication in primarily informational terms. (You may wish to review our discussion of Chapter 9.) What other ways are there to define the process, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches? (Integrative Essay Question #30 below addresses this issue.)

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Tied to interpersonal theories Although Gudykunst owes an obvious debt to Berger, AUM—as Griffin notes—exhibits a “continual tie-in” with other communication theories and research traditions (436), a tie-in that demonstrates his belief that intercultural communication is an extension of interpersonal communication. Notice, for example, the similarities between Gudykunst’s definition of “effective communication” (427) and the perspective of Shannon and Weaver, or between mindfulness (431-32) and reframing, Watzlawick’s preferred method for dismantling destructive interpersonal systems (182-84). Be sure your students catalogue the rich series of connections between AUM and other theories presented in this book. (Integrative Essay Question #29 below addresses this issue.) In addition, be sure your students come to appreciate Gudykunst’s Herculean efforts to build theory. Even die-hard humanist rhetoricians respect such work. The loss of parsimony and the difficulty of teaching As we mentioned in our “Suggestions for Discussion” for Chapter 3, AUM epitomizes the “big hat, small rabbit” approach to theory building. Thus, AUM is ambitious, powerful, and precise, but it is also bulky and difficult to maneuver. One consequence of the big hat is that Gudykunst sacrifices—or at least compromises—the scientific criterion of simplicity, a point emphasized by Griffin on page 436. As we lamented in our treatment of interpersonal deception theory (Chapter 7), theories of such breadth and depth can be taxing to teach in the condensed timeframe of most college classes. Just as the challenge in IDT was seeing how the many threads weave together, so too with AUM the feat is to see how so many axioms, only some of which are discussed in the text, revolve around anxiety, uncertainty, and effective communication. With AUM, students have a bit of a leg-up based on a solid foundation of uncertainty reduction theory though they may not realize it—you may want to remind them of this fact. Start your discussion by asking students to recall Berger’s axioms, keeping in mind the causal nature of each statement. From there, you can move to discussing the contrast between anxiety as an affect or feeling and uncertainty as a cognitive matter. We like the analogy of uncertainty as being discomfort in the head and anxiety as in the pit of the stomach. The next major step in the theory is the introduction of the superficial causes. While working through this material, we persistently struggle with Gudykunst’s decision to label factors elemental to effective communication “superficial causes.” Discuss with your students alternative terms that better describe the key function of elements such as self and selfconcept or motivation to interact with strangers. Possible candidates are “secondary” (which complements “basic”) and “contributing.” Another approach worth considering is to think of the “superficial” causes as “independent” causes and the “basic” causes as “dependent” causes. Within the theory, Gudykunst arranges axioms under these causes and you may want to stress to students that Griffin only samples from each of the categories. Although many students may balk at the complexity of Figure 30.1, we find it extremely useful as a roadmap for the theory. You may want to display it throughout the conversation either via overhead projector or on a PowerPointã slide, perhaps simplifying it slightly by eliminating the individual axioms but retaining the labels for the superficial causes (i.e., keeping “self-concept” but removing “social identities,” “personal identities,” and “collective self-esteem”). Similar to the

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theorem machine that Em Griffin uses in his class to illustrate Berger’s theory (see our treatment of Chapter 9 for details), you may want to create one of your own for AUM by asking two students to volunteer with one standing for anxiety and one representing uncertainty. As you move through the superficial causes and sample axioms, ask the volunteers to raise or lower their arms if there is a relationship between the factor and anxiety or uncertainty. We have found that a few key components will take students a long way towards an understanding of AUM. A small step toward the interpretivist side Veterans of A First Look will notice that this latest version of AUM has taken a small, but discernible step toward the interpretivist camp. As Griffin notes, Gudykunst came to believe that although objectivist assumptions hold “when our behavior is strongly influenced by our culture, group memberships, environmental forces, and situational factors . . . interpretivist assumptions of human nature are correct when we are mindful,” when “we are free to think in new ways and can consciously choose to act uncharacteristically—to break out of scripted behavior” (432). In this vein, note the explicit inclusion of the boundary condition for the ten axioms selected: “[These] axiom[s] hold only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and when we are not mindful” (433, emphasis added). In his Critique, Griffin tout’s this new twist in Gudykunst’s work as “a potentially brilliant move,” since it enables AUM to be simultaneously objectivist and interpretivist and, in the process, to account for increased communicative phenomena. As we shall see, Griffin accounts for this theoretical shift by moving the theory from category 1 to 2 on page 518. This small, but very significant movement can be seen as demonstrating the potentially dynamic nature of theorizing. For many of us, Gudykunst epitomized the thoroughgoing empirical tradition, so his decision to reconceptualize his position should be emphasized. Is it going too far to say that one of the characteristics of good—or even great—theorizing is change? A natural pluralist, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Self-Reliance,” “A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” If he had lived today, would Emerson have included overly consistent communication theorists in his list of “little minds”? These are provocative questions for us as we near the end of A First Look. A taste of the other axioms To enhance your ethos as the expert instructor and to introduce a little variety into your discussion, you may wish to mention an axiom or two not featured in Griffin’s treatment of the theory. Below are a few to consider. Note the wide variety of concepts about which Gudykunst theorizes, including intriguing variables such as “moral inclusiveness”: Axiom 5: An increase in threats to our social identities when we interact with strangers will produce an increase in our anxiety and a decrease in our confidence to accurately predict their behavior. Axiom 16: An increase in our ability to empathize with strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability in predicting their behavior accurately.

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Axiom 18: An increase in our ability to categorize strangers in the same categories in which they categorize themselves will produce an increase in our ability to accurately predict their behavior. Axiom 25: An increase in the percentage of our in-group members present in a situation will produce a decrease in our anxiety. Axiom 34: An increase in our moral inclusiveness toward strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety. Axiom 36: An increase in our knowledge of strangers’ languages/dialects will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability to accurately predict their behavior.

Sample Application Log Laura Two summers ago in London, I developed a romantic relationship with a man I met over there. Axiom 31 explains that because we were attracted to each other, we were less anxious and more desirous to get to know each other, thereby reducing uncertainty. Because we found that we both passionately liked the same kind of music and were mutually interested in journalism, we had plenty to talk about and plenty of reason to be interested in each other. That’s axiom 20—an increase in perceived similarity will produce a decrease in our anxiety and in our ability to reduce uncertainty. But alas, axiom 37 states that an increase in shared networks will produce a decrease in anxiety. Well, we had no shared networks, so this worked in opposition to our relationship. After I left we began faithfully writing letters, but they dwindled to nothing over time. Now we have no way of reducing uncertainty about each other. And because my anxieties have been increasing and predictability has decreased between us, I’m less and less likely to write to him as time passes. Eric When practicing conscious competence, we think about our communication and continually work at changing what we do in order to become more effective. When I was in Spain for two months, I had many intercultural experiences, but one in particular stands out. In Salamanca, I went into a music store and bought a CD by the Spanish group Ketama. I brought the CD case up to the counter and the employee matched its number with the CD on file and sold it to me. When I returned to my host home, I quickly realized that the CD I had was actually an album by The Cure. The number on the CD I wanted was very similar to that of the CD I ended up with. Before returning to the store, I went over all the possible scenarios of what the employee’s reaction might be and rehearsed what I would say to him. When I arrived, I told him that the CD had gotten itself into the wrong case, thus placing the blame on the CD. He muttered that the

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numbers were very similar as he got the right CD and I agreed understandingly. It was a success in intercultural communication.

Exercises and Activities Questions to Sharpen Your Focus Under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, Exercise #2 gives your students the opportunity to work with some of the axioms and the superficial causes that comprise AUM. If you wish to expand the possibilities of this exercise, ask them to consider the potential importance of other superficial causes listed in Figure 30.1. In addition, you can augment the exercise by featuring other diverse communicative pairings such as professor and student, Southerner and Yankee, management and labor, Christian and atheist, and environmentalist and logger. Exercise #3 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook gives you a chance to discuss the situations in which mindfulness may be a communicative burden, rather than an asset. This may provide an opportunity to speculate about the Western bias that may limit the concept of mindfulness. After all, it seems to be built upon mind/body and reason/emotion splits or dichotomies that may not be operative in all cultures. Essay Question #22 below may serve as a useful bridge to the upcoming section on gender and communication. Does it resonate with your experiences? Like Essay Question #25 below, Exercise #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the text encourages students to test theory against their own experiences. Although both the essay question and the exercise focus on rather specific elements of AUM, any aspect of the theory can be checked against the encounters of your students, and you should feel free to modify the questions if you wish to focus on different aspects of Gudykunst’s work. One intercultural experience that is universal among your students was the experience of entering the college community. Ask them what it was like to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence or mindfulness, and finally to unconscious competence. What principal uncertainties and anxieties characterized their first days on campus? Do Hofstede’s dimensions of culture constitute a useful way to gauge cultural variation in this case? For those students who participate in fraternities and sororities, the same set of questions can be asked about entering the Greek experience. Anxiety and uncertainty: A simulation Many intercultural communication instructors—Gudykunst included—run simulations in class to illustrate the kind of anxieties and uncertainties that arise when strangers interact with members of an in-group. Here is a sample exercise if you want to give a mock intergroup interaction a try: Divide the class into two sections. The first comprises the cultural in-group and the second comprises the strangers. The in-group adopts the cultural conventions listed below, and the strangers—without prior knowledge of these conventions—attempt to interact with them. Luck: You are very superstitious and must always try to avoid bad luck. The only sure way is to touch the professor’s chair/desk after a possible bad-luck situation has 409

occurred. Good luck can be reinforced by touching your own desk. People who don’t understand the importance of luck are not worthy of being your friend. Talking with people who do not understand this is bad luck. Friends and Communication: You never answer a question from a stranger with a definite “yes” or “no” because that is impolite. You always equivocate unless you know the person very well. Correspondingly, you always answer a question from a friend with a definite “yes” or “no.” Violating this convention is bad luck for the asker and the answerer. How to Win Friends: People get to be friends by laughing with each other. If you wish to be friends with someone else, laugh with them. The initiator of laughter is the one who wants to be a friend. If you do not respond in kind with someone who first laughs, that means you do not wish to be a friend. It is not only polite to try to make friends with newcomers to your society, but also the more new friends you make, the more good luck you will have. You should try three times to make friends with someone new, but after three times it is time to move on and try to make friends with someone else. Otherwise, it could be bad luck. Nonverbal Communication: In your culture, people who do not know each other well stand very close together and maintain direct eye contact. As you get to know someone, you create a larger personal space. It is considered bad luck and bad manners to establish much physical distance between yourself and someone you do not know. After the strangers and the in-group interact for awhile, conclude the simulation and debrief the participants. Discuss in very specific terms how your students sought to cope with their anxieties and uncertainties. One problem with exercises such as this is that they encourage people to overestimate the effect of cultural identity on the behavior of people in an alien society and blur individual distinctions—a problem that Griffin mentions in the chapter section entitled “Enter the Stranger” (427). If you enjoy using simulations, you may wish to consider trying “Bafa, Bafa,” which is available commercially. Howell’s levels of communication competence When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he places particular emphasis on the levels of competence (431-32). He wants to make sure his students understand why unconscious competence—which may be a good quality in situations such as sports or music—may be harmful in the context of intercultural communication. Griffin also enjoys using the cartoon on 430 as a humorous, yet efficient and memorable way to unpack many elements of the theory, including the stranger, mindfulness, anxiety, uncertainty, and motivation to interact. Finally, Griffin makes a point of reviewing the idea that some anxiety and uncertainty are necessary to keep us on our communicative toes. It’s only when uncertainty or anxiety reaches “an upper threshold” that our communication suffers (431). Here, the notion of dialectics is helpful.

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Further Resources For a special forum on mindfulness, see Communication Monographs 59 (1992): 30127. C. Erik Timmerman applies the concept of mindfulness to organizational media research in “The Moderating Effect of Mindlessness/Mindfulness upon Media Richness and Social Influence Explanations of Organizational Media Use,” Communication Monographs (June 2002): 111-37.

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CHAPTER 31

FACE-NEGOTIATION THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Stella Ting-Toomey’s face-negotiation theory helps to explain cultural differences in response to conflict. B. A basic assumption is that all people negotiate “face.” 1. Face is a metaphor for our public self-image. 2. Facework refers to specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help to maintain and restore face loss, and to uphold and honor face gain. C. Our identity can always be called into question, which inevitably leads to conflict and vulnerability. D. Facework and corresponding styles of handling conflict vary from culture to culture. E. Ting-Toomey suggests that face maintenance is the crucial intervening variable that ties culture to people’s ways of handling conflict.

II.

Collectivistic and individualistic cultures. A. Harry Triandis says that there are three important distinctions between collectivistic and individualistic cultures—the different ways members perceive self, goals, and duty. B. Japan and the U.S. represent collectivistic and individualistic cultures, respectively. C. Whereas Japanese value collective needs and goals (a we-identity), Americans value individualistic needs and goals (an I-identity). D. Whereas Japanese perceive others in us-them categories and attach little importance to pursuing outsiders’ attitudes or feelings, Americans assume that every person is unique and reduce uncertainty by asking questions.

III.

Self-construal: Varied self-images within a culture A. Ting-Toomey recognizes that people within a culture differ on the relative emphasis they place on individual self-sufficiency or group solidarity. B. She discusses the dimension of self-construal (or self-image) in terms of the independent and interdependent self, or the degree to which people conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from, or connected to, others. Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama call this dimension self construal, otherwise known as selfimage. C. The independent self is more self-face oriented and so this view of self is more prevalent within individualistic cultures, while the interdependent self is more concerned with other-face and is thus closely aligned with collectivistic cultures. D. However, individuals within a culture—particularly one that is ethnically diverse— differ in these images of self as well as varied views on the degree to which they give others face or restore their own face in conflict situations.

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E. Ting-Toomey built her theory around the foundational idea that people from collectivistic/high-context cultures are different in the way they manage face and conflict situations than individualistic/low-context cultures. F. Ting-Toomey now believes self-construal is a better predictor of face-concerns and conflict styles than ethnic/cultural background. IV.

The multiple faces of face. A. Face is a universal concern because it is an extension of self-concept. 1. Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson define face as the public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself/herself. 2. Ting-Toomey defines face as the projected image of one’s self in a relational situation. B. The meaning of face differs depending on differences in cultural and individual identities. C. Face concern focuses on whose face a person wants to save. 1. One can save one’s own face or the face of others. 2. Those in individualistic cultures tend to be more concerned with preserving their own face, whereas people in collectivistic cultures value maintaining the face of the other party. D. Mutual face is where there’s an equal concern for both parties’ image, as well as the public image or their relationship. E. Face-restoration is the facework strategy used to stake out a unique place in life, preserve autonomy, and defend against loss of personal freedom. 1. It is the typical face strategy across individualistic cultures. 2. It often involves justifying one’s actions or blaming the situation. F. Face-giving is the facework strategy used to defend and support another’s need for inclusion. 1. It means taking care not to embarrass or humiliate the other in public. 2. It is the characteristic face strategy across collectivist cultures. 3. It often involves self-effacement. G. Although cultural difference is not absolute, people from collectivisitic and individualistic cultures tend to privilege other-face and self-face, respectively.

V.

Predictable styles of conflict management. A. Based on the work of M. Afzalur Rahim, Ting-Toomey identified five distinct responses to situations in which there is an incompatibility of needs, interests, or goals. 1. Avoiding (withdrawal) 2. Obliging (giving in) 3. Compromising (negotiation) 4. Integrating (problem solving) 5. Dominating (competing) B. Ting-Toomey and John Oetzel identified three additional styles based on more ethnically diverse samples. 1. Emotional expression 2. Passive aggression 3. Third-party help

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C. The styles vary according to their culture-related face concern. D. They predicted that different cultures would favor different conflict management styles. 1. Collectivistic cultures would favor avoiding, obliging, compromising, third-party help and integrating. 2. Individualistic cultures would favor emotional expression, passive aggression, and dominating. E. Avoiding is now rated almost as high as obliging on concern for other person face. F. Third-party help is used differently by collectivistic cultures than by individualistic cultures. 1. In collectivistic cultures, parties voluntarily go to an admired person with whom they already have a relationship. 2. In individualistic cultures, parties go to an independent mediator. G. The model assumes that people from a given culture construe their self-image consistent with the collectivistic or individualistic nature of their society. H. Integrating, when adopted by collectivists, focuses on relational-level collaboration whereas individualists concentrate on solving the task and bringing closure. VI.

Application: competent intercultural facework. A. Ting-Toomey believes there are three requirements for effectively communicating across cultures. 1. Knowledge—one must be culturally sensitive. 2. Mindfulness—one must choose to seek multiple perspectives on the same event. 3. Interaction skill—one must be able to communicate appropriately, effectively, and adaptively in a given situation.

VII. Critique: passing the test with a good grade. A. Ting-Toomey and Oetzel are committed to objective social science research agenda that looks for measurable commonalities across cultures. B. Oetzel and Ting-Toomey tested the core of the theory in four nations using only the three primary conflict styles—dominating, integrating, and avoiding—with largely positive results. C. Results suggest that culture- self-construal- face-concern- conflict style was a better predictor path than culture- conflict style directly. D. Their results should be interpreted with caution, as they are based on self-reports that are often self-serving. E. Specific survey items may not tap into corresponding concepts as described in the theory.

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Key Names and Terms Stella Ting-Toomey First introduced in Chapter 30, this California State University, Fullerton researcher created face-negotiation theory. Face A metaphor for our public self-image. Facework The enactment of specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help maintain and restore face loss, and to uphold and hold face gain. Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson Cambridge University linguists who define face as the public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself/herself. Harry Triandis University of Illinois psychologist who distinguishes between collectivism and individualism. Collectivistic Culture A core dimension of cultural variability; people identify with a larger group that is responsible for providing care in exchange for group loyalty, thus acting from a weidentity rather than the I-identity found in individualistic cultures. Individualistic Culture A core dimension of cultural variability, people look out for themselves and their immediate families, thus acting from an I-identity rather than the we-identify found in collectivistic cultures. Independent Self The self-construal of individuals who conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from others; I-identity. Interdependent Self The self-construal of individuals who conceive of themselves as interconnected with many others; we-identity. Self-Construal Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama’s term for the degree to which people conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from, or connected to, others. Lin Yutang Taiwanese scholar who calls face a psychological image that can be granted and lost, and fought for and presented as a gift. Face-Restoration The self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against personal loss of freedom. Face-Giving The other-concerned facework strategy used to defend and support another person’s need for inclusion. Avoiding A method of conflict management whereby an individual withdraws from open discussion. Obliging

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A method of conflict management whereby an individual accommodates the wishes of the other. Compromising A method of conflict management whereby an individual bargains to establish a middle way. Dominating A method of conflict management whereby an individual competes to win. Integrating A method of conflict management whereby an individual seeks to integrate information to find a solution. Emotional Expression A method of conflict management whereby an individual lets his or her feelings show. Passive Aggression A method of conflict management whereby an individual tries to indirectly elicit a particular solution. Third-Party Help A method of conflict management whereby disputing parties seek the aid of a third party. Knowledge The most important dimension of facework competence, it involves being informed about individualistic and collectivistic cultures, self-construals, face-concerns, and conflict styles. Mindfulness A component of facework competence, it’s a recognition that things are not always what they seem, and the need to make a conscious choice to seek multiple perspectives on the same event. Interaction Skill A component of facework competence, interaction skill concerns one’s ability to communicate appropriately, effectively and adaptively in a given situation. John Oetzel A researcher from the University of New Mexico who has worked with Ting-Toomey to test, critique, and expand face-negotiation theory.

Principal Changes The chapter has been reorganized with added emphasis on self-construal and its important mediating role between one’s culture and the types of face maintenance and conflict management a person is likely to use. Discussion of Ting-Toomey and Oetzel’s compelling research concerning the three additional styles of conflict management has been expanded, further clarifying the third-party help and avoiding styles. Figure 31.4 has also been added to illustrate their research findings related to the independent and interdependent selves. The chapter has been extensively edited for clarity and precision and Griffin has updated the Second Look section.

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Suggestions for Discussion Confucianism To enrich this material, you may find it useful to introduce your class to the Confucianism that undergirds the collectivistic cultures of Japan, China, Korea, and other East Asian countries. The article by June Ock Yum cited below under “Further Resources” will be very helpful in this respect. The basic tenets of Confucianism will give students a way to ground several of Ting-Toomey’s concepts in broader cultural practices and beliefs. Students may also be interested in speculating about the ways in which Christianity—the formative religion of Western culture—or other key influences may have shaped America’s individualistic orientation. Max Weber’s work on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism may be particularly relevant here. Three additional conflict styles The three new conflict styles identified by Ting-Toomey and Oetzel (page 446) may stimulate productive discussion with your students. However, you may need to provide some additional context about the research on these three styles. Students may be confused, for example, about why passive aggression and emotional expression tend to rank high on selfface concern, yet are still missed by scholarship focused on individualism. The key is that these styles surfaced in research with Americans from various ethnic groups (Griffin mentions an “ethnically diverse sample,” but he does not specify that the sample consists of Americans rather than of participants in different countries)—African Americans, Latina(o) Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans. In this richer context, the three additional conflict management styles emerge. Thus the styles can still be consistent with high self-face concern and an individualistic perspective, but surface more often in samples that do not only use European-American participants (as has much communication research). The source by TingToomey, Oetzel, and Yee-Jung listed in “Further Resources” may be helpful to you and your students. Once your students have grasped the three styles, you may want to discuss their reactions to them. Emotional expression and passive aggression generally have a negative connotation for Americans; third-party help may also (although to a lesser extent) be considered problematic. Ask your students why we often have these perspectives—in particular, try to elicit from them the Western individualistic assumptions that support these judgments. You may also wish to try to reframe these views by asking them if these strategies might actually have positive outcomes in certain conflict situations. (See also Essay Question #25.) Self-construal You may also wish to discuss the notion of self-construal. Because it is an individual variable, intriguing questions may arise. Self-construal has broad connections to culture, but— as Ting-Toomey notes—it also varies among individuals within a culture (442). She connects this to our ethnic diversity, but might other factors also play a role? As a way into this issue, ask students to reflect on their own self-construal. Where do they think it originates—in the socialization of their families, from genetics?

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Individualistic vs. collectivistic cultures Griffin’s point that the ultimate usefulness of the mediation techniques catalogued in Figure 31.1 depends to a large extent upon the cultural assumptions of the participants cannot be overstated. Furthermore, the disclaimer applies to most of the models and strategies featured in undergraduate courses in interpersonal communication, group interaction, persuasion, and so forth. (For example, Ting-Toomey’s claims, as reported by Griffin on page 448, that “collectivists . . . focus on relational-level collaboration, whereas individualists concentrate on solving the task problem in a way that brings closure” and that the term “problem-solving” “has a distinctly impersonal tone” clearly exemplify how the “win/win” style of conflict resolution that many American communication textbooks present as revealed Truth is thoroughly problematized when one considers the consequences of cultural differences.) So often in such courses, the variable of culture is seen as an add-on or afterthought, usually brought in toward the end of the textbook, when in fact it should be seen as foundational, since virtually every assumption we make about effective communication depends upon it. It might be useful to bring in introductory textbooks from communication courses taught on your campus in order to discuss with your students the extent to which assumptions native to individualistic cultures become assumptions about communication in general. It would be particularly useful to focus the investigation on assumptions about conflict and negotiation.

Sample Application Log Robyn Although I’m sure I have a very high need for affiliation, I am a classic American who looks out for myself when the chips are down. As much as I hate to admit that, I’ve noticed as of late that it’s really true. I have a really close relationship with my best friend, and I put a lot of time and energy into him. But, try as I might to truly look out for his best interests first, I always end up getting in the way. He sees that I do give a lot, but only where it’s convenient for me to do so. When it really starts infringing on me, my tendency is to do what’s best for me and separate myself from the situation a little bit. Ting-Toomey would say that my face concern is for myself: in conflict I become much more aggressive than cooperative. My face need is negative as I strive for autonomy when I just can’t be bothered anymore. So, putting the two together, I spend time working on face-restoration by trying to give myself freedom and space.

Exercises and Activities Facework in hypothetical situations In order to put your students in the proper frame of mind for reading about this theory, we recommend asking them to begin by writing a brief response to the first part of item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, which refers to the group assignment situation outlined in the chapter. During class discussion, ask students if their initial responses to the problem exemplify aspects of Ting-Toomey’s theory. Did their approaches to the conflict conform to her predictions? Turning next to the latter part of item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus, you can bring in the variables of gender, family background, and personal history, which may demonstrate that culture is not the only issue to consider when evaluating

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the nature of facework and its relationship with conflict negotiation. Your discussion of gender may form an intriguing bridge to the next section of the textbook. (See also Essay Question #27, below.) Facework in actual situations Another exercise for priming your students for this theory is to ask them to begin by writing about a real-life conflict that they have experienced or are currently experiencing. (Essay Question #24 below addresses this issue.) In class, then, have students discuss the facework and modes of conflict management employed in their actual experiences. Here, as with the contrived problem above, the latter part of item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus may prove valuable to augment your discussion. International business Depending on your students’ interests and experiences, international business may be a productive application of Ting-Toomey’s theory. Emphasizing specific elements of facework, speculate with your students about potential problems that could arise when representatives of American corporations seek to negotiate business deals with their counterparts in Japan or China. To focus the discussion, ask your students to imagine they are consultants hired by American business executives who know nothing about the negotiations into which they are about to enter. Scenes from the film The Rising Sun demonstrate relevant face needs and face concerns. Doing culturally sensitive research Item #1 in the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus section, which brings up the cultural characteristics of Afghanistan, provides students with an excellent opportunity to play both theorist and researcher. After speculating about the cultural structure of Saudi Arabia (and/or other countries if you wish to choose another country with which your students might be familiar), they need to come up with research strategies to test their assumptions. Strategies chosen should be sensitive to the particulars of the culture in question. If, for example, most of the population of the country in question is comprised of minimally educated laborers, then running tests on university students may not be particularly appropriate. Feature film illustrations For exploring face negotiation in interpersonal relationships, we highly recommend the Japanese film Shall We Dance, the sensitive story of a Japanese businessman’s initiation into the world of ballroom dancing. The film emphasizes the point that in Japan, ballroom dancing itself is an intercultural activity. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he uses the scene from the Joy Luck Club we discuss in our treatment of speech codes theory, below, to demonstrate how one gives face and how foreign and unintuitive this concept may be to Westerners. Rich, the Anglo-American boyfriend, simply doesn’t understand the subtleties of Waverly’s mother’s messages, and his efforts to quell her ostensible anxieties about her cooking have the opposite effect of what is intended. The harder he tries, the worse it gets.

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For further discussion of Ting-Toomey’s face-negotiation theory, see: o William B. Gudykunst and Tsukasa Nishida, “Interpersonal and Intergroup Communication in Japan and the United States,” Communication in Japan and the United States, ed. William B. Gudykunst (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 149214. o Stella Ting-Toomey, John G. Oetzel, and Kimberlie Yee-Jung, “Self-Construal Types and Conflict Management Styles,” Communication Reports 14 (Summer 2001): 87-104. Ruth M. Guzley, et al. analyze the connection of self-construal with individualism and collectivism in “Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Commitment: Individualism and Collectivism as a Framework for Conceptualization,” Southern Communication Journal 64 (Fall 1998): 1-19. Deborah A. Cai and Edward L. Fink challenge the work of Ting-Toomey, Oetzel, and others on conflict styles in “Conflict Style Differences between Individualists and Collectivists,” Communication Monographs 69 (March 2002): 67-87. On communication in East Asia, see Jun Ock Yum’s frequently referenced and anthologized article, “The Impact of Confucianism on Interpersonal Relationships and Communication Patterns in East Asia,” Communication Monographs 55 (1988): 37488. Ge Gao and Stella Ting-Toomey apply face and related concepts in Communicating Effectively with the Chinese (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). Although unevenly written in places, Chin-ning Chu’s The Chinese Mind Game: The Best Kept Trade Secret of the East (Beaverton: AMC, 1988) includes a revealing discussion of Chinese facework. For an application of facework in an American employment setting, see Ruth Wagoner and Vincent R. Waldron, “How Supervisors Convey Routine Bad News: Facework at UPS,” Southern Communication Journal 64 (Spring 1999): 193-209.

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CHAPTER 32

SPEECH CODES THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. Gerry Philipsen was influenced by linguist and anthropologist Dell Hymes. B. He spent three years analyzing the speech code of “Teamsterville.” C. A speech code is a system of socially constructed symbols and meanings, premises, and rules, pertaining to communicative conduct. D. He conducted a second multi-year study while teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Washington. 1. This study focused on the “Nacirema,” whose speech code is intelligible to, and practiced by, a majority of Americans. 2. The Nacirema speech code is epitomized by the speech of the Donahue show. 3. Its characteristic feature is a preoccupation with metacommunication. E. Philipsen’s ultimate goal was to develop a general theory that would capture the relationship between communication and culture. 1. To indicate that his theory has moved from description to explanation and prediction, he labels his work speech codes theory. 2. He has developed six general propositions.

II.

The distinctiveness of speech codes. A. Proposition 1: Wherever there is a distinctive culture, there is to be found a distinctive speech code. B. For those within the culture, speech codes have a taken-for-granted quality.

III.

The multiplicity of speech codes. A. Proposition 2: In any given speech community, multiple speech codes are deployed. B. People may be affected by other codes or employ more than one code.

IV.

The substance of speech codes. A. Proposition 3: A speech code involves a culturally distinct psychology, sociology, and rhetoric. B. Whatever the culture, the speech code reveals structures of self, society, and strategic action. 1. Psychology: Every speech code thematizes the nature of individuals in a particular way. 2. Sociology: Every speech code provides a system of answers about what linkages between self and others can properly be sought, and what symbolic resources can properly and efficaciously be employed in seeking those linkages. 3. Rhetoric: Every speech code involves ways to discover truth and create persuasive appeals.

V.

The interpretation of speech codes.

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A. Proposition 4: The significance of speaking depends on the speech codes used by speakers and listeners to create and interpret their communication. B. People in a culture decide what their prominent speech practices mean. VI.

The site of speech codes. A. Proposition 5: The terms, rules, and premises of a speech code are inextricably woven into speaking itself. B. Highly structured cultural forms often display the cultural significance of symbols and meanings, premises, and rules that might not be accessible through normal conversation. 1. Social dramas are public confrontations in which one party invokes a moral rule to challenge the conduct of another. 2. Totemizing rituals involve careful performances of structured sequences of actions that pay homage to sacred objects.

VII. The force of speech codes in discussions. A. Proposition 6: The artful use of a shared speech code is a sufficient condition for predicting, explaining, and controlling the form of discourse about the intelligibility, prudence, and morality of communication conduct. B. Proposition 6 suggests that by a thoughtful use of shared speech codes, participants can guide metacommunication. VIII. Performative ethnography. A. Some researchers favor the concept of performing ethnography over doing ethnography. B. Performative ethnography is grounded in several theoretical principles. 1. Performance is both the subject and method of performance ethnography. a. All social interactions are performance because speech not only reflects but also alters the world. b. Metaperformance—actions participants recognize as symbolic—serve as reminders that performance defines and permeates life. 2. Researchers consider their work performative; they do not just observe performance but are co-performers. 3. Performance ethnographers are also concerned about performance when they report their fieldwork. a. They wish to create actable ethnographies. b. Through performances, ethnographers can recognize the limitations of, and uncover the cultural bias in his or her written work. C. Performance ethnography almost always takes place among marginalized groups. IX.

Critique: different speech codes in communication theory. A. Most interpretive scholars applaud Philipsen’s commitment to long-term participant observation. B. However, they criticize his efforts to generalize across cultures and his scientific goals of explanation, prediction, and control. C. Theorists from feminist, critical, or cultural studies perspectives charge that he is silent—even naïve—about power relationships.

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D. Empiricists wish that Philipsen backed his generalizations with more scientific rigor. 1. The Nacirema study raises a number of important methodological questions. 2. Philipsen needs more than two data sets—otherwise, his work suggests that there are only two cultural clusters.

Key Names and Terms Gerry Philipsen A researcher at the University of Washington who developed the speech codes approach to intercultural communication. Dell Hymes A University of Virginia anthropologist and linguist whose call for a “close to the ground” study of the great variety of communication practices around the world inspired Philipsen. Teamsterville A working-class community in Chicago in which Philipsen studied speech codes. Speech Code A system of socially constructed symbols, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct. Nacirema The culture whose speech code is intelligible to, and practiced by, a majority of Americans. Tamar Katriel A communication researcher at the University of Haifa who worked with Philipsen on the Nacirema project and who later studied dugri, a distinctive style of speaking in Israel. Social Dramas Public confrontations in which one party invokes a moral rule to challenge the conduct of another. Totemizing Rituals Careful performances of structured sequences of actions that pay homage to sacred objects. Performance Ethnography Ethnographic research method grounded in the notions that performance is both the subject and method of research, that researchers’ work is performance, and that reports of fieldwork should be actable. Dwight Conquergood A Northwestern University performance ethnographer who performed participant observation among local street gangs in the “Little Beirut” section of Chicago. Metaperformance Ritual actions that group members recognize as symbolic.

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Principal Changes Griffin has updated this chapter to include Philipsen’s additional proposition concerning multiple speech codes present within a given community. He has also added Philipsen rejoinder to the suggestion that he is naïve about power differences. In addition, the chapter was edited for clarity and precision, and new references are included in the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion What is a “culture”? In your discussions of the three intercultural theories, you will likely encounter questions about how each theorist defines culture or what marks a culture’s “boundaries.” Gudykunst’s theory (Chapter 30) concentrates on the tensions between that which we know (in-group) and the unfamiliar other (stranger) regardless of the other’s place of origin. TingToomey (Chapter 31) comes closest to defining culture in geographical terms, but she is still more concerned with ethnicity and cultural identity as individualistic or collectivistic than with place of birth or residency. With Philipsen, queries about the definition of culture are intriguing though difficult to answer. Clearly, there are some geographic dimensions (i.e., Teamsterville represents a distinct Chicago neighborhood), but it is also more diffused as in the case of Nacirema, which represents a transcontinental American way of speaking. On the other hand, Philipsen argues that members of a distinctive culture share a common speech code. Is it, therefore, fair to say that the parameter of a culture is such so as to include anyone who shares that code? You may want to remind students that Philipsen believes a speech code is much more than dialect differences, vocabulary, or regional slang. As Philipsen uses it, the term speech codes seems to have a very broad application. Gender roles, myths, rituals, dramas, as well as beliefs about children, individualism, honor, and integrity, become inextricably bound up with the concept of a speech code. One might suggest, in fact, that speech code is simply a synonym for culture. If this is the case, then the principal virtue of Philipsen’s work, it seems to us, is not so much the establishment of universal principles as the demonstration of the vital link between communication and culture. In short, the structure of the former structures the latter. (Essay Question #27 below addresses this issue.) Strengths and weaknesses Like Geertz, Philipsen is a brilliant ethnographer whose thick descriptions reveal much about a culture’s intricate production of meaning. As captured by Griffin, Philipsen’s accounts of the communicative practices of Teamsterville and Nacirema and his six propositions should give your students much to ponder. Griffin’s Critique covers some important problems with speech codes theory, and it’s prudent to spend some time discussing the potential weaknesses of Philipsen’s work. In Chapter 30, Griffin emphasizes Gudykunst’s warning that strangers “tend to overestimate the effect of cultural identity on the behavior of people in an alien society, while blurring individual distinctions” (427). Does Philipsen seem to heed Gudykunst’s warning, or is he guilty of this

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common error? Although, as Griffin notes, Philipsen’s use of the term code is meant to imply that speech codes are not absolute laws (462), he puts considerable emphasis on the power these codes have in shaping communicative practice. Certainly the lines he draws between Teamsterville and Nacirema are bold. Is he an empiricist or a humanist? Philipsen stresses the scientific goals of prediction, control, and explanation (thus sounding a good deal like empiricists such as Berger or Gudykunst), yet his participant observation methodology places him firmly in the camp of humanists such as Pacanowsky and Geertz. You may want to take some time to examine Philipsen’s theory for evidence of his paradigmatic assumptions and ask students which set of criteria as presented in Chapter 3 seem to best evaluate speech codes. This discussion can serve as a well-timed review of previous theories as you talk about how he aligns and diverges from other theorists. How should we process this apparent theoretical schizophrenia? (Essay Question #30 below addresses this issue.) Distinct propositions or one large axiom? As you and your students study the six propositions presented in this chapter, they may have a tendency to blend one into the other. You may remember vividly the specific differences between the two speech codes featured, but have more trouble recalling the general issues or universal points that Philipsen via Griffin attempts to establish with the examples. At times, in fact, it might seem that the propositions could be collapsed into one basic proposition or axiom—Communicative patterns and strategies are specific to culture and produce and reinforce culturally specific values. If this is the case, then Philipsen’s work is not so much a general theory of communication as an extension of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and an articulate and convincing pitch for ethnographic research—such as that produced by Geertz, Pacanowsky, Conquergood, and Katriel—that features specific communicative patterns and strategies. Gender issues related to speech codes Reading Integrative Question #35, below, you might wonder why the gender of the adventurer is specifically stated. We have done so because Philipsen emphasizes qualities and communicative patterns of the Teamsterville male that members of Nacirema may consider sexist, and we are particularly interested in seeing how students would address the man’s reactions to his new environment. How would he cope with different approaches to gender and power relations? To enrich the question, you may also wish to consider the intercultural experiences of a Teamsterville female. As you discuss the Critique section, you may want to address the concerns of feminists and others that Philipsen is silent about power and sexism. Is it the ethnographer’s job to critique the culture he or she observes and participates in? Wouldn’t he or she risk being elitist and judgmental—and, as a result, lose the trust of those in the culture? On the other hand, without making such evaluations, isn’t the ethnographic approach limited?

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Sample Application Log Bradden I grew up in England where speech is a vital indication of status in life. There are many common accents, such as the famous “Cockney” dialect where words are rhymed and don’t seem to make any sense (Rosie Lee=cup of tea). If you are born within the sound of the bells of St. Mary’s you are a true Cockney and will grow up learning this language. Each area of Britain has its common accents, but only for the working-class people. The aristocracy speak a unanimous English which is “The Queen’s English.” Everyone who attends boarding school speaks the Queen’s English, but the richer you are the more pronounced this accent becomes. So, speech in England not only defines the area where you come from, but it also can show the wealth of the family.

Exercises and Activities Speech codes on TV and film One useful activity for vivifying Philipsen’s ideas is to present video from a talk show or other program. What will your students discover about speech codes from a portion of an episode of Oprah, Dr. Phil, Friends, Will & Grace, or Jerry Springer? Although Philipsen claims that Donahue epitomized the speech code of Nacirema, many of the characters featured on a talk show such as Jerry Springer may be operating under rather different sets of communicative norms and expectations. If you want to stray further afield, consider the speech codes operating in musicals such as West Side Story or Fiddler on the Roof. The Joy Luck Club, particularly the scene in which Waverly takes her boyfriend Rich to her parents’ house for dinner (0:44-46), does a fine job of demonstrating the differences between the speech code of Nacirema and the Asian-American speech code. For the African-American speech code, consider the documentary Hoop Dreams or the film noir detective story Devil in a Blue Dress. The Farmer’s Wife, which we’ve pitched earlier, provides wonderful examples of the speech code of the rural American heartland. Billy Elliot, a charming British film about a working-class boy’s entrance into the world of ballet, vividly demonstrates the painful clash between the working- and upper-class speech codes. Billy is the product of a coal-mining community with a speech code that is in many ways a British counterpart of the language of Teamsterville. Particularly revealing—and comically agonizing—is Billy’s interview for admission to an elite ballet school. It may be interesting to compare the speech patterns—or at least those characterized by Hollywood—of Baby Boomers with representatives from Generation X by showing segments from films such as The Big Chill and Reality Bites back to back. Make the comparison more dramatic by working in clips from Casablanca and A Rebel without a Cause. Are there different speech codes operating in the different generations, or simply slight variations of the same? Lyrics from punk, grunge, or rap music may reveal intriguing glimpses into speech codes not mentioned in this chapter.

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McNamara’s In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam In his discussion of “the multiplicity of speech codes,” Griffin references Lisa Coutu’s analysis of Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. We would also like to call your attention to this provocative memoir, which may itself reveal the presence of at least two speech codes, including the “code of spirituality” Couto claims reviewers of the book favored. One could argue, in fact, that McNamara employs the code of rationality to support or provide evidence for an overriding argument about his conduct (that he was a good, patriotic man acting morally in what he thought were the best interests of his country) best expressed in something more closely resembling the code of spirituality. Regardless of the position one takes on this interpretive issue, this book is an intriguing exemplar of speech codes theory, as well as face negotiation theory, the narrative paradigm, and the five theories Griffin includes in the group decision making and organizational communication sections of A First Look. Is Philipsen an “unbiased” researcher? It is notable to us that in presenting the speech codes of Teamsterville and Nacirema, Philipsen via Griffin makes the latter culture sound more attractive and humane. It’s no coincidence, of course, that Philipsen hales from the latter culture. Of course you and your students may disagree with this assessment, but perhaps implicit judgment is inherent in the work of speech codes theorists. On the other hand, as Griffin mentions (and we discuss above), some fault Philipsen for not being judgmental enough. Is it possible to compare two different codes without subtly evaluating their relative values? Is it desirable to do so? How can one keep from privileging one’s own culture? It might be interesting to speculate with your students about how one might rewrite the comparison between the two cultures to make Teamsterville appear more attractive. One might say, for example, that in Teamsterville talk is centered around family and friends. In conversation and action, loyalty remains a primary virtue, and defending the honor of one’s home and neighborhood is paramount. Tradition still matters here, and parents do their best to pass on the wisdom of elder generations to their children. Members of this culture know who their friends are and practice a form of Rogerian congruence in daily interaction. You know who you are—folks don’t put on airs or try to talk as though they’re someone else. Teamsterville is a genuine community in which—to steal a line from a popular show—“everybody knows your name.” You and your students can imagine how an ethnographer with these views might describe the communicative practices of Nacirema. (Essay Question #29 below addresses this issue.) Doing performance ethnography You may wish to ask your students to develop—and possibly carry out, depending on time constraints—a performance ethnography of a particular culture to which they have access, such as a fraternity or sorority, a religious organization, a sports team, a family, a class at your college or university, or a service organization. Preferably, they should choose a culture to which they do not currently belong in order for them to fully consider the process of becoming a participant observer. How would they report their conclusions—in other words, how would they make their ethnographies actable? Also, ask them how they feel—excited? uncomfortable? skeptical?—about such an approach to research. How might they perform rather than merely conduct research?

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Placing theorists on the continuum When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he makes sure his students understand the significance of Philipsen’s claims about prediction and control with respect to proposition six (461-62). He wants them to see that within the context of this particular theory, which is in most ways highly interpretative, these goals seem ostensibly out of place. Referring back to Chapter 3, notions of prediction and control fall squarely in the camp of objective scholars. Thus, speech codes theory teaches a good lesson in complexity---not every theorist fits into neat boxes. Thank goodness!

Further Resources § For more discussion of the discourse of Donahue, see Donal Carbaugh, Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989). We also recommend Carbaugh’s Situating Selves: The Communication of Social Identities in American Scenes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). § Katherine L. Fitch examines speech codes of Columbia in Speaking Relationally: Culture, Communication, and Interpersonal Connection (New York: Guilford Press, 1998). § Two other ethnographic studies that invite a speech codes analysis are Chase Hensel’s Telling Our Selves: Ethnicity and Discourse in Southwestern Alaska (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Andrew Arno’s The World of Talk on a Fijian Island: An Ethnography of Law and Communicative Causation (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1993). Literary examples § A superb illustration of speech codes in conflict is found in a work of recent American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (New York: Vintage International-Random, 1989). Particularly relevant is the final chapter, entitled “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” in which the protagonist-narrator, a Chinese-American girl caught between her old-world ancestry and her new-world home, challenges the traditional Chinese values and linguistic practices to which her parents cling. § For further discussion of this novel, see Victoria Chen, “(De)hyphenated Identity: The Double Voice in The Woman Warrior,” in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication, ed. Alberto Gonzalez, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1994), 3-11. § Amy Tan’s popular novels, The Joy Luck Club (New York: Ivy-Ballantine, 1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (New York: Putnam, 1991), and The Hundred Secret Senses (New York: Putnam, 1995), are also useful in this respect. § An illuminating account of conflicting speech codes is Yuan-Tsung Chen’s The Dragon’s Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China (New York: Penguin, 1981), which chronicles the tumultuous communication among urban reformers and rural peasants in post-revolutionary China. The central protagonist, a young woman who moves from cosmopolitan Shanghai to a distant province to help enact socialist land reform, functions as both ethnographer and advocate as she struggles to communicate with people very different from herself. The richness of the young woman’s intercultural

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experience also makes this text a good source for study of uncertainty/anxiety management and face-negotiation theories. For an interesting study of the speech code of the Mississippi Chinese, see Gwendolyn Gong, “When Mississippi Chinese Talk,” in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication, 92-99. Although dated in some ways, Elliot Liebow’s Tally’s Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967) provides a vivid look at the life and language of urban African-American men in the 1960s. A more recent book, Ernest J. Gaines’s novel A Lesson Before Dying (which we recommend in the introduction to this manual), poignantly presents the speech codes of African Americans of the deep South in the 1940s. Melanie Thernstrom chronicles a deadly story of clashing speech codes and cultural difference in Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder (New York: Plume, 1998). Thernstrom’s treatment of Ethiopian and Vietnamese conventions about communication is particularly revealing.

Performance studies § Performance ethnography relates to a large territory of communication theory called performance studies. Recent work in performance studies is diverse and often controversial. § Carol Simpson Stern and Bruce Henderson’s textbook, Performance: Text and Context (New York: Longman, 1993), is a very good basic resource. § Articles of interest include: o Elizabeth Bell’s “Weddings and Pornography: The Cultural Performance of Sex,” Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (1999): 173-95. o Stephen P. Banks, “Performing Flight Announcements: The Case of Flight Attendants’ Work Discourse,” Text and Performance Quarterly 14 (July 1994): 253-67. o Dean Scheibel, “Faking Identity in Clubland: The Communicative Performance of ‘Fake ID,’” Text and Performance Quarterly 12 (April 1992): 160-75. o The most controversial scholarship we’ve seen in this area is Fredrick Corey’s piece, “Sextext,” Text and Performance Quarterly 17 (January 1997): 58-68. This article ignited a stunning, entertaining, and disturbing exchange on CRTNET that was subsequently analyzed by Peter M. Kellett and H.L. Goodall in “The Death of Discourse in Our Own (Chat) Room: ‘Sextext,’ Skillful Discussion, and Virtual Communities,” in Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired World, 155-90. Whiteness studies § The new (and growing) field of whiteness studies—scholarship that explores how whites’ perspectives of race and ethnic identity are constructed socially and through language— is connected to speech codes theory. Scholars in this field challenge the perspective of most discussions of race in America that focus only on those who are not white, and

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they argue that social constructions of racial identity influence the perspectives and experiences of white people. Whiteness studies provides a critical edge that may sharpen the findings of much speech codes research. § General sources on whiteness include: o Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). o Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). o Michelle Fine, et al., Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society (New York: Routledge, 1997). The latter collection contains a section on whiteness, media, and cultural studies that may prove interesting in the context of previous chapters on the media. § For discussions of—and research about—whiteness by scholars in the communication field, see: o Judith N. Martin, et al., “Exploring Whiteness: A Study of Self Labels for White Americans,” Communication Quarterly 44 (Spring 1996): 125-44. o Carrie Crenshaw, “Resisting Whiteness’s Rhetorical Silence,” Western Journal of Communication 61 (Summer 1997): 253-78. o Jane H. Hill, “Langauge, Race, and White Public Space,” American Anthropologist 100 (1999): 680-89. o Ronald L. Jackson II, “White Space, White Privilege: Mapping Discursive Inquiry Into the Self,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (February 1999): 38-54. o Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (August 1995): 291-309.

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GENDER AND COMMUNICATION Key Names and Terms Robin Lakoff A linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was one of the first scholars to attempt to classify regularities of women’s speech that differentiate “women-talk” from “men-talk.” Kathryn Dindia University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee communication professor whose meta-analysis of research studies reporting gender differences in communication revealed that the differences were quite small. Sandra Lipsitz Bem A Stanford University psychologist who developed the sex-role inventory to differentiate among people on the basis of their masculine-feminine psychological orientations. Androgyny The quality of having a blend of both strong masculine and strong feminine characteristics. Gender A social construction of the characteristics of men and women that are often labeled as masculine and feminine; sex is a fact, while gender is an idea that has been learned from and reinforced by others.


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A good general essay is Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk, “Gender, Communication, and Community,” in Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research, eds. Turner and Sterk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 213-21. Ruth Wodak’s collection of essays, Gender and Discourse (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), contains many useful pieces. For updates of Lakoff’s initial work comparing women-talk and men-talk, see: o Lakoff, Talking Power: The Politics of Language (New York: Basic Books, 1990). o Diana K. Ivy and Phil Backlund, Exploring Genderspeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication, 2nd ed. (New York: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). o Judy Cornelia Pearson, Lynn H. Turner, and William Todd-Mancillas, Gender and Communication, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994). o Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron, eds., Women and Their Speech Communities (London: Longman, 1988). o Julia T. Wood, Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000).

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o Jane Blankenship and Deborah C. Robson, “A ‘Feminine Style’ in Women’s Political Discourse: An Exploratory Essay,” Communication Quarterly 43 (1995): 353-66. o Helen Mott and Helen Petrie, “Workplace Interactions: Women’s Linguistic Behavior,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 14 (1995): 324-36. In “Gender Differences in Management Communication: A Meta-Analysis,” Management Communication Quarterly 5 (1991): 6-35, Brenda M. Wilkins and Peter A. Andersen downplay the differences between men’s and women’s communication patterns. In fact, they argue, “It can be safely concluded that there is no meaningful difference in the communication behavior of male and female managers based on current quantitative findings” (27). Laura Stafford, Marrianne Dainton, and Stephen Haas argue that although sex is a weak predictor of strategic behaviors, gender predicts rather well in “Measuring Routine and Strategic Relational Maintenance: Scale Revision, Sex versus Gender Roles, and the Prediction of Relational Characteristics,” Communication Monographs 67 (September 2000): 306-23. Donald J. Ragsdale draws on a variety of theoretical concepts covered in A First Look in “Gender, Satisfaction Level, and the Use of Relational Maintenance Strategies in Marriage,” Communication Monographs 63 (December 1996): 354-69. For those interested in issues related to gender, childhood, and communication, we recommend a special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction entitled “Constituting Gender through Talk in Childhood: Conversations in Parent-Child, Peer and Sibling Relationships” 29 (1996). For those who wish to know more about the relationship between gender and communicating emotional support, see Communication Reports 15 (Winter 2002). Wendy Samter’s essay, “How Gender and Cognitive Complexity Influence the Provision of Emotional Support” (5-16), provides a good link back to constructivism. Samter argues that gender remains an important variable, even when one controls for cognitive complexity. For additional discussion of androgyny and related issues, see: o Sandra Lipsitz Bem, “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42 (1974): 155-62. o Bem, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). o Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish, “Androgyny and Identity in Gender Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (November 1994): 482-97. The classic literary work on androgyny is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, 1929), which has been sadly neglected by communication scholars. For further discussion, see Glen McClish, “Virginia Woolf, Androgyny, and the Discipline of Communication,” Furman Studies 37 (June 1995): 55-65. For discussion of gender and the Internet, see Susan B. Barnes, Online Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relationships (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001).

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For a distinctly conservative approach to gender and communication, see Kay E. Payne, Different but Equal: Communication between the Sexes (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001). For related work in the field of composition studies, see Mary Ann Cain, Revisioning Writers’ Talk: Gender and Culture in Acts of Composing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). The film He Said, She Said offers a humorous portrayal of differences between men’s and women’s perceptions and communication patterns.

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CHAPTER 33

GENDERLECT STYLES Outline I.

Introduction. A. Deborah Tannen argues that male-female communication is cross-cultural. B. Miscommunication between men and women is both common and insidious because the parties usually don’t realize that the encounters are cross-cultural. C. Tannen’s writing underscores the mutually alien nature of male and female conversation styles. D. Tannen’s approach departs from much feminist scholarship that claims that conversations between men and women reflect male domination. 1. She assumes that male and female conversational styles are equally valid. 2. The term genderlect suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior ways of speaking. E. At the risk of reinforcing a reductive biological determinism, Tannen insists that there are gender differences in the ways we speak.

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Women’s desire for connection versus men’s desire for status. A. More than anything else, women seek human connection. B. Men are concerned mainly with status. C. Tannen does not believe that men and women seek only status and connection, respectively, but these are their primary goals.

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Rapport talk versus report talk. A. Public speaking versus private speaking. 1. Women talk more than men in private conversations. 2. In the public arena, men vie for ascendancy and speak much more than women. 3. Men assume a lecture style to establish a “one-up” position, command attention, convey information, and insist on agreement. 4. Men’s monologue style is appropriate for report, but not for rapport. B. Telling a story. 1. Men tell more stories and jokes than do women. 2. Telling jokes is a masculine way to negotiate status. 3. Men are the heroes in their own stories. 4. When women tell stories, they downplay themselves. C. Listening. 1. Women show attentiveness through verbal and nonverbal cues. 2. Men may avoid these cues to keep from appearing “one-down.” 3. A woman interrupts to show agreement, to give support, or to supply what she thinks the speaker will say (a cooperative overlap). 4. Men regard any interruption as a power move.

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D. Asking questions. 1. Men don’t ask for help because it exposes their ignorance. 2. Women ask questions to establish a connection with others. 3. When women state their opinions, they often use tag questions to soften the sting of potential disagreement and to invite participation in open, friendly dialogue. E. Conflict. 1. Men usually initiate and are more comfortable with conflict. 2. To women, conflict is a threat to connection to be avoided at all costs. 3. Men are extremely wary about being told what to do. IV.

“Now you’re beginning to understand.” A. Tannen believes that both men and women need to learn how to adopt the other’s voice. B. However, she expresses only guarded hope that men and women will alter their linguistic styles. C. She has more confidence in the benefits of multicultural understanding between men and women.

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Critique: is Tannen soft on research and men? A. Tannen suggests we use the “aha factor”—a subjective standard of validity—to test her truth claims. B. Tannen’s analysis of common misunderstandings between men and women has struck a chord with millions of readers. C. Critics suggest that selective data may be the only way to support a reductionist claim that women are one way and men another. D. Tannen’s intimacy/independence dichotomy echoes one of Baxter and Montgomery’s tensions, but it suggests none of the ongoing complexity of human existence that relational dialectics describes. E. Tannen’s assertions about male and female styles run the risk of becoming selffulfilling prophecy. F. Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish suggest that although Tannen claims both female and male styles are equally valid, many of her comments and examples tend to disparage masculine values. G. Julia Wood and Christopher Inman observe that the prevailing ideology of intimacy discounts the ways that men draw close to each other. H. Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson challenge the different cultures perspective that is at the heart of Tannen’s genderlect theory, citing their work on comforting as equally valuable to both sexes. I. Senta Troemel-Ploetz accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male dominance, control, power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal insults. 1. You cannot omit issues of power from communication. 2. Men understand what women want but give it only when it suits them. 3. Tannen’s theory should be tested to see if men who read her book talk more empathetically with their wives.

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Key Names and Terms Deborah Tannen A linguist at Georgetown University who has pioneered research in genderlect styles. Genderlect A term that suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects and not inferior or superior ways of speaking. You Just Don’t Understand Tannen’s best-seller, which presents genderlects styles to a popular audience. Rapport Talk The conversational style Tannen associates with women, which seeks to establish connection. Report Talk The conversational style Tannen associates with men, which seeks to command attention, convey information, and insist on agreement. Cooperative Overlap When a woman interrupts to add words of agreement, to show support, or to finish a sentence with what she thinks the speaker will say. It is a sign of rapport rather than a competitive ploy. Tag Question A short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften the sting of potential disagreement and to invite participation in open, friendly dialogue. Aha Factor A subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one’s personal experience. Ken Burke, Nancy Burroughs-Denhart, and Glen McClish Communication scholars who suggest that although Tannen claims both female and male styles are equally valid, many of her comments and examples tend to disparage masculine values. Julia Wood and Christopher Inman Communication scholars from the University of North Carolina who observe that the prevailing ideology of intimacy discounts the ways that men draw close to each other. Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson Communication scholars from the University of Kansas and Purdue University, respectively, who challenge the different cultures perspective based on results from their research on comforting. Senta Troemel-Ploetz A German linguist and feminist who accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male dominance, control, power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal insults.

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Principal Changes Griffin has changed the section on conflict to better align it with Tannen’s thinking, added Kunkel and Burleson’s objection to the Critique section, and has updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Of all the theorists featured in A First Look at Communication Theory, Deborah Tannen is the only one who qualifies as a genuine celebrity in contemporary popular culture—a fact conclusively proven by the cartoon on page 477. She is quoted, praised, and criticized everywhere you turn. Indeed, the “aha factor” has been a reality for millions of Americans, and you’ll have no trouble interesting your students in this provocative, germane material. Sex and gender: a very important distinction Although they are often used synonymously, sex and gender are not the same and it’s a point worth making at the onset of the discussion of the gender theories. As Griffin points out in the introduction to this section (469), sex is an objective fact based on biological criteria while gender is a social, symbolic creation learned through cultural training. Put in the vernacular, sex is about the hardware and gender the software. To say that a true sex difference exists is to imply that a difference between men and women is somehow linked to biological or chromosomal differences. For example, there is a true sex difference between men and women in physical strength based on differing muscle potency. However, to say that something is a gender difference suggests that the discrepancy is not related to biology, but to a culturally learned, cognitive construction. Therefore, genderlects is an apt title for Tannen’s position, though the point becomes distorted because distinctions are drawn between males and females, biological-based terms, when it would be more appropriate to label the two camps by their gender-based titles—masculine and feminine. How much of a difference is this difference? As with any claim that any single factor makes an enormous difference, the conscientious student of communication theory must ask how much of the variability can be explained. In her theory, Tannen claims that gender differences make all the difference, a point you may want to discuss with your students. To use Julia Woods’s terminology, is Tannen “essentializing” or implying that all members of a sex are essentially the same? But, as Griffin points out in his section introduction (467-69), other researchers have suggested that great variability exists within the members of each sex and furthermore, much similarity exists between the two camps. You may want to discuss Kathryn Dindia and Mike Allen’s metaanalysis (“Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 112, 1 [1992], 106-124), which found a -.01 correlation between men and women on self-disclosure, a finding that clearly challenges Tannen’s claim of a vast divide.

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The merit in being attacked on all sides In the previous chapter on speech codes, Griffin gives Philipsen some profound praise when he suggests that important theories are widely attacked. Quoting his own professor, Griffin says, “You know you’re in the wrong place on an issue if you aren’t getting well roasted from all sides” (463). It’s important to show your students that this “golden mean” standard also applies to Tannen’s work. As Griffin’s Critique section succinctly demonstrates, she has been attacked both for being too tough on men and for being insufficiently tough on them. To some, she has unlocked the secrets of male-female communication, and to others she has locked us into the prison house of gender stereotypes. The point, it seems to us, is not to condemn her for this variety of responses, but to applaud her for stirring the thoughts and beliefs of so many people. Right, wrong, or somewhere in between, she has been a terrific catalyst for discussions of communication theory and methodology. The missing metamessage Tannen’s books are filled with many interesting ideas, and unfortunately Griffin had to cut much to keep this chapter an appropriate length. One of the most important excluded concepts is the “metamessage.” In both That’s Not What I Meant! and You Just Don’t Understand, Tannen suggests that women are more sensitive to the communicative power of context, whereas men tend to focus more narrowly on messages in isolation from situational factors. When misunderstandings arise over metamessages, women accuse men of being “insensitive” and men blame women for “reading things into” what they say. (One could argue, in fact, that interpretative differences concerning metamessages correspond to the different communicative styles of collectivistic and individualistic cultures as featured in Chapter 31. Tannen seems to be suggesting that whereas women’s culture is high context, men’s is low context.) The concept of the metamessage also relates closely to a key axiom of the interactional view (communication = content + relationship). You might consider adding differences in the interpretation of metamessages to the list of five major distinctions between male and female communication included in the section of the chapter titled “Rapport Talk versus Report Talk.” Unappreciated empathy At the beginning of the Critique section, Griffin covers the basic point that women are more likely to desire understanding than advice in conversation (478), but he is unable to include Tannen’s important counterpoint that men may not appreciate displays of empathy because they undermine their autonomy and the uniqueness of their particular problem (You Just Don’t Understand 51). Unlike women, men may not like their partners to say, “I know just how you feel.” It will be interesting to see how your class responds to this claim. Bateson’s “complementary schismogenesis”: A worsening spiral One of Tannen’s most useful concepts (featured in both That’s Not What I Meant! and You Just Don’t Understand) has been borrowed from Gregory Bateson—“complementary schismogenesis.” This notion aptly describes the worsening spiral of miscommunication that often frustrates men and women. Bateson’s electric-blanket analogy is priceless.

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High involvement conversational style Perhaps the most underrated and provocative section of You Just Don’t Understand is Tannen’s discussion of the “high considerateness”/”high involvement” dichotomy in conversation (196-202). She suggests that some people who interrupt and overlap frequently aren’t being rude; they’re simply operating under the conversational norms of high involvement. What’s particularly interesting here is that Tannen attributes differences in communicative style to culture and geographical region, rather than gender, thus complicating her approach to conversational styles considerably. Genderlects as a self-fulfilling prophecy? Be sure your students understand Griffin’s point that Tannen’s theory could function as self-fulfilling prophecy (479). If self and gender are socially constructed, then the work of celebrity theorists such as Tannen can have a terrific impact on actual human development. In this sense, books that claim to reveal the “truth” about male or female patterns have the potential to become normative. If influential writers such as Tannen and John Gray—author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) and several sequels—tell us that men and women invariably act in certain ways, then it is but a small step to believing that they should do so. How, then, should one view women professors who consistently put their careers ahead of relationships and friendships? More to the point, how should these women view themselves? Are they unfeminine or abnormal? Are husbands who put their wives ahead of their jobs effeminate? When does mere description become prescription? (An example of an explicit translation of description of gender differences into prescription is the popular and controversial book The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider [New York: Warner Books, 1995.]) (Essay Questions #23 and #27 below address this issue.) Is genderlect theory ethnocentric? The critique of Burke, Burroughs-Denhart, and McClish that You Just Don’t Understand contains an implicit bias against the male style raises an issue that was initially brought up in our treatment of speech codes theory: the difficulty of comparing your own culture to another without inherently favoring that with which you are more familiar. Just as Philipsen could be seen to paint a more favorable picture of the communicative practices of Nacirema than those of Teamsterville, so Tannen may give a better impression of female conversation than its male counterpart. It’s a point worth considering. Another way to approach the issue would be to ask the following question: “What would You Just Don’t Understand be like if it had been written by a man?” With regard to Kunkel and Burleson’s claim that the different cultures perspective “has lost its narrative force” (479), we are reminded of a like-minded bumper sticker: “Men are from Earth, women are from Earth—Get used to it!”

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Sample Application Log Nate The best example of a real difference between the need for connection and status is how my wife and I get into conflicts. I usually initiate arguments by bringing up things we need to work on, whereas my wife needs to know that everything is good right now. You see, I want to have the best relationship of anyone we know. My wife does want the same, but she thinks it should be that way to start off with—a difficult thing for a male communications student.

Exercises and Activities Is genderlects outdated? Many of our students have suggested that distinct behavioral and communicative differences between the genders are more relics of the past than conditions of the present. In this era of relative gender equality, they claim, the kinds of dichotomies Tannen describes are primarily matters of history, rather than contemporary life. Challenge students to provide evidence for this “Brave New World” claim. (Essay Question #24, below, addresses this issue.) You might also want students to discuss how cultural factors intersect with gender to complicate Tannen’s claims. (See Essay Question #27 below.) Bem’s sex role inventory (BSRI) Before covering genderlects theory in class, consider asking your students to complete Sharon Lipsitz Bem’s sex role inventory that Griffin discusses in the gender section’s introduction (468). The inventory is based on evaluating how aptly or characteristically 60 adjectives are of one’s self and the tallied score indicates a person’s degree of masculinity and femininity, or amount of identification with a particular sex role. While some students may find themselves a perfect match between sex and sex role identification (i.e. the very masculine man or the ultra feminine woman), others may find themselves in a more undefined place, by either straddling neutral ground or by being extremely high or low in both masculine and feminine traits. As with any pencil-and-paper personality indicator, it is good to remind students not to allow a number on a paper define who they are. Based on their BSRI scores, do students support or object to Tannen’s gender-based claims? It’s likely that those who are either highly masculine or feminine will be more likely to endorse her position than those in murky waters. A tricky test question You’ll notice that the second half of Essay Question #21 below is deliberately controversial and provocative. Students can choose the safe answer (Tannen’s official response)—that they are different, but equally valid. They can also opt for the integrative approach, arguing that since both styles are potentially useful it’s best to be as androgynous and flexible as possible. (Integrative Essay Question #30 below may be applicable here.) Or they can go out on a limb and explicate the inherent superiority of one approach or the other. To do so, they’ll have to establish appropriate criteria for judgment. Essay Question #25, which

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takes an instrumental approach to the issue of differing styles, may provide some help in creating such criteria. Media and literary portrayals of genderlects Gender differences are an extremely popular theme for contemporary television shows and movies, and you’ll have no trouble finding recent clips that illustrate ostensible differences between the ways males and females communicate. In some ways, though, it might be more revealing to go back at least a decade or two, when writers and producers were less deliberate about portraying the ways in which men and women converse. Tannen is extremely adept at drawing upon literature to support her theory, so it may be interesting to present a literary example or two that complicates the picture. One possible candidate is Thorton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. Consider, for example, the long encounter in Act II when George and Emily communicate their true feelings for one another. George listens diligently and nondefensively to Emily’s rather harshly worded complaint about his character and focuses his response on relational—rather than hierarchical—issues. Because their rapport is of central importance to him, he confirms her perceptions and willingly discloses his private feelings to her. George, a sensitive young man of the early twentieth century, seeks to establish supportive, egalitarian, open communication about their relationship—there is no complementary schismogenesis here. Whereas the passage does not overturn every stereotypical expectation we have developed about communication between males and females, it suggests to students that individual differences and matters of personality are often the most salient aspects of communicative patterns. Perhaps George would have eventually turned out like his father, who avoids important relational communication with his wife by refusing to discuss a romantic vacation in Paris, but at this moment, at least, he seems to be a male at home with intimate connections and webs of relationships. Another excellent text is PBS’s The Farmer’s Wife. The evolution of Juanita and Darrel’s communication over the course of the film provides a profound case study for genderlect theory. When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he shows his students the clip on male-female friendship from When Harry Met Sally (Cue Point: 0:08:50) featured in the chapter (471-72). He also recommends Tannen herself on video and encourages instructors to check out videos in which she is featured from their institutions’ libraries or media centers. He notes that the audiences for these video performances tend to be white and middle class, a point that could lead to some interesting discussion of the scope and range of her theoretical principles. In addition, Griffin likes to interrogate the “aha factor” Tannen claims validates her approach (478). To do this, he asks his students about their “aha” experiences, then discusses the extent to which these personal epiphanies are legitimately generalizable for the class. Is the “aha factor” really a valid way to conduct or test theory?

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A good general collection of essays on related issues is Linda A.M. Perry, Lynn H. Turner, and Helen M. Sterk, eds., Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links among Communication, Language, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). Particularly relevant is Nancy Hoar’s piece, “Genderlect, Powerlect, and Politeness,” 127-36. Annette Hannah and Tamar Murachver explore the genderlect hypothesis in “Gender and Conversational Style as Predictors of Conversational Behavior,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18 (June 1999): 153-74. Suzanne Braun Levine examines the importance of genderlects in the profession of journalism in “News-Speak and ‘Genderlect’—(It’s Only News if You Can Sell It),” Media Studies Journal 7 (Winter 1993): 114-23. William Rawlins’s Friendship Matters, which Griffin features in the Second Look section of Chapter 11, has much of interest to say about the ways males and females communicate with their friends and romantic partners. For a good example of the influence of Tannen’s work on the communication field, see Richard L. Weaver’s chapter, “Gender Communication: Understanding the Other Sex,” in Understanding Interpersonal Communication, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996), 245-70. Although Weaver includes the usual cautions about generalizations, his discussion—like Tannen’s—could be seen to perpetuate the very differences he seeks merely to describe, particularly his claim that “gender differences have as much to do with the biology of the brain as the way we are raised” (252). Heidi Reeder examines the assumptions, ideologies, and methodologies for studying gender differences in interpersonal communication in her article, “A Critical Look at Gender Difference in Communication Research,” Communication Studies 47, 4 (1996): 318-31. For a critical assessment of the male genderlect, see Peter F. Murphy, Studs, Tools, and the Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). For discussion of interruptions, see Sara Hayden, “Interruptions and the Construction of Reality,” in Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research, eds. Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 99-106. Shawn Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles analyze problems with the “feminine style” of discourse in the political realm in “Gendered Politics and Presidential Image Construction: A Reassessment of the ‘Feminine Style,’” Communication Monographs 63 (December 1996): 337-53.

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Other texts by Tannen § Framing and Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Gender and Conversational Interaction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). § You may wish to check out her work, The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). Although probably misnamed—Tannen is not really against argument when it is conducted rationally, fairly, and productively—it takes on the discourse of contentiousness that may be too prevalent in our society. Two-cultures hypothesis in groups § Renee A. Myers, et al. provide empirical support for the dual cultures approach to malefemale communication in “Sex Differences and Group Argument: A Theoretical Framework and Empirical Investigation,” Communication Studies 48 (Spring 1997): 1941. § Katherine Hawkins and Christopher B. Power explore the presence of genderlects in small groups in “Gender Differences in Questions Asked During Small Decision-Making Group Discussions,” Small Group Research 30 (April 1999): 235-56. Critiques of Tannen § In The Mismeasure of Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), Carol Tavris offers an interesting critique of Tannen’s genderlects theory (297-301). For example, she argues, “What Tannen’s approach overlooks is that people’s ways of speaking . . . often depend more on the gender of the person they are speaking with than on their own intrinsic ‘conversation style’” (298-99). § Other critiques of the two-cultures approach to gender and communication can be found in Mary Crawford’s Talking Difference: On Gender and Language (London: Sage, 1995); and Elizabeth Aries’s Men and Women in Interaction: Reconsidering the Differences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). § An attack on Tannen’s evidence for You Just Don’t Understand is launched by Daena J. Goldsmith and Patricia A. Fulfs in “‘You Just Don’t Have the Evidence’: An Analysis of Claims and Evidence in Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand,” Communication Yearbook 22 (1999): 1-49.

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CHAPTER 34

STANDPOINT THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. A standpoint is a place from which to view the world that determines what we focus on as well as what is obscured from us. B. Sandra Harding and Julia Wood claim that the social groups to which we belong shape what we know and how we communicate. C. Standpoint theorists suggest that societal inequalities generate distinctive accounts of nature and social relationships. D. According to Harding, the perspective from the lives of the less powerful can provide a more objective view than the perspective from the lives of the more powerful. E. Wood has applied standpoint logic to the field of communication.

II.

A feminist standpoint rooted in philosophy and literature. A. Georg Hegel revealed that what people “know” depends upon which group they are in and that the powerful control received knowledge. B. Early feminist standpoint theorists were influenced by Marx and Engels’s idea that the poor can be society’s “ideal knowers.” C. Standpoint theory is also influenced by symbolic interactionism, which suggests that gender is socially constructed, and by the postmodernism of theorists such as JeanFrancois Lyotard, which suggests a critique of male-centered epistemologies. D. However, standpoint theorists reject postmodernism’s absolute relativism. E. Although Harding and Wood draw from these somewhat conflicting influences, their theory is held together by the central tenet that all scholarly inquiry should start from the lives of women and others who are marginalized.

III.

Women as a marginalized group. A. Standpoint theorists see important differences between men and women that affect their communication. 1. These differences are a result of cultural expectations and the treatment that each group receives from the other. 2. Culture is not experienced identically by all members of society because of inequities. 3. Women are underadvantaged; men are overadvantaged. B. Harding and Wood point out that women are not a monolithic group, and thus they do not all share the same standpoint. 1. Economic condition, race, and sexual orientation also contribute to a woman’s position in society. 2. Yet Wood feels that a sense of solidarity is politically necessary if women are to effectively challenge male domination and gain full participation in public life. C. People at the top of the societal hierarchy have the power to define others.

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IV.

Knowledge from nowhere versus local knowledge. A. Standpoint theorists believe that those who define a field shape the picture of the world that emerges from that field. B. This view contrasts sharply with the claim that “truth” is value-free and accessible to any objective observer. C. Harding believes that each person can achieve only a partial view of reality from the perspective of his or her own position in the social hierarchy. D. She does not want to abandon the search for reality; she simply believes that the search should begin from the lives of those in the underclass. 1. Like all knowledge, the perspectives arising from the standpoint of women or any other minority are partial or situated knowledge. 2. However, standpoint theorists believe that the perspectives of subordinate groups are more complete and thus better than those of privileged groups in a society.

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Strong objectivity: less partial views from the standpoint of women. A. Harding emphasizes that it’s the perspective generalized from women’s lives that provides a preferred standpoint from which to begin research. 1. She calls this approach “strong objectivity.” 2. By contrast, knowledge generated from the standpoint of dominant groups offers only “weak objectivity.” B. Wood offers two reasons why the standpoints of women and other marginalized groups are less partial, distorted, and false than those of men in dominant positions. 1. Marginalized people have more motivation to understand the perspective of the powerful than vice versa. 2. Marginalized people have little reason to defend the status quo.

VI.

Theory to practice: communication research based on women’s lives. A. Wood’s study of caregiving in the United States exemplifies research that starts from the lives of women. B. Wood suggests that a standpoint approach is practical to the extent that it generates an effective critique of unjust practices.

VII. The standpoint of Black feminist thought. A. Patricia Collins claims that “intersecting oppressions” puts Black women in a different marginalized place in society than either white women or Black men. B. The different social location means that Black women’s way of knowing is different from Harding and Wood’s standpoint epistemology. C. Four ways that Black women validate knowledge. 1. Lived experience as a criterion of meaning. 2. The use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims. 3. The ethic of caring. 4. The ethic of personal accountability.

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VIII. Critique: do standpoints on the margins give a less false view? A. Wood states that the concept of women as a single social group is politically useful, but this may not be an actual reality. B. As proponents become more and more specific about the standpoints from which particular women communicate, the concept of group solidarity at the heart of standpoint theory becomes questionable. C. Some feminist scholars contend that Harding’s version of standpoint theory underestimates the role of language, which is influenced by society and culture and which cannot be separated from standpoint. D. Other critics see the concept of strong objectivity as inherently contradictory, since it seems to appeal to universal standards of judgment. E. Wood acknowledges that it may be difficult to determine which social groups are more marginalized than others.

Key Names and Terms Sandra Harding A philosopher of science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has most advanced standpoint theory among feminist scholars. Julia Wood A professor of communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has championed and applied standpoint theory within the field of communication. Standpoint Perspective; a place in time and space from which to view the world around us. Standpoint Theory An approach that suggests that inquiry and research grounded in the standpoints of women and other marginalized groups is more objective and more complete than research based on the perspectives of the privileged. Georg Hegel German philosopher whose 1807 analysis of the master-slave relationship revealed that what people “know” depends upon which group they are in and that the powerful control received knowledge. Jean-Francois Lyotard Previously introduced in the Media and Culture section, a postmodernist who favors a stance of “incredulity toward metanarratives,” including Enlightenment rationality and Western science. Situated Knowledge The inevitably partial knowledge that is based in the standpoint of the knower. According to standpoint theorists, all knowledge is situated knowledge. Strong Objectivity Harding’s term for the intentional practice of starting research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups whose perspectives are less partial than those of person’s with power. Weak Objectivity The characteristic of knowledge generated from the standpoint of dominant groups.

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Patricia Hill Collins African-American sociologist at Brandeis University who claims the patterns of “intersecting oppressions” means that Black women are in a different marginalized place in society than white women or Black men.

Principal Changes In this edition, Griffin has eliminated his discussion of Wood’s invitational rhetoric and replaced it with a new section, “The standpoint of black feminist thought” detailing the position of Patricia Hill Collins that challenges Harding and Wood’s idea of a unified women’s standpoint. He has also updated the Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion Standpoint’s critical side Having read about Tannen, your students should find standpoint theory an intriguing change. After Tannen’s perspective, which many perceive as nonjudgmental, some will be gratified and others will be frustrated by Harding’s and Wood’s strong statements about the superior nature of women’s standpoint and communication. We suspect there will be much discussion, most of which will probably not be neutral, about this aspect of standpoint theory. You may want to remind students of the first challenge of critical theorists, to bring to light language’s ability to perpetuate power imbalances and be an impetus to change society. Em Griffin asks his classes to consider the implications of Harding’s assertion that we should begin research with people on the margins. Would there, for example, be more studies of breast cancer and coronary disease in women, more attention paid to the importance of matriarchs in the African-American family, and so forth? What is a standpoint and why does it matter? A fairly germane entry point for standpoint theory is the fundamentality of a standpoint. We like to make the apt comparison of a seat at a concert. While all concertgoers attend the same event, every seat’s sightlines are different. By typical standards, the premiere seats are closest to the stage and in the heart of the action. But, if you wanted to view the concert more holistically, sitting in the front row is less than optimal as it limits one’s view to all but the stage act. In this case, the perspective from the nosebleed seats in the high, upper decks would be more informative. From there, you could see it all. Another analogy that we have used effectively is the Eiffel Tower. If I wanted to understand how the structure was built, I would likely understand more standing on the ground looking up than on the observations many stories in the air. Harding and Wood suggest that the “perspectives of subordinate groups are more complete and thus, better than those of privileged groups in a society.” Both examples clearly demonstrate this point, but you may want to argue the case with your students that this distance may cause some distortion of its own. Is there merit in arguing for Aristotle’s golden mean? From the middle, is it possible to understanding what is both above and below you? The rhetoric in standpoint theory You may also want to discuss the role of rhetoric in standpoint theory. (See Integrative Essay Question #34 below.) As scholars have noted, no articulation of standpoint can be an

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unproblematic reflection of experience; every standpoint is mediated by one’s language, motives, and ethos. On this topic, it may be useful to see Susan Hekman’s and Nancy Hirschmann’s articles referred to in Griffin’s Critique. In addition, you may want to discuss how standpoint theory can lead to more productive rhetorical analysis that takes seriously voices that are often ignored. The heterogeneity of women Griffin notes that “Harding and Wood are quick to warn against thinking of women as a monolithic group,” since “economic condition, race, and sexuality” are also factors that influence standpoint. Yet they also seek solidarity among women (486). Depending on your students’ interests (and perhaps their standpoints), this point could lead to productive discussion. Women of color (for example, prominent writers such as bell hooks and Audre Lorde) have long criticized the feminist movement for its focus on upper-middle-class white women, arguing that it privileges a viewpoint that excludes most women. They also reject any attempts to divide their racial identity from their gender identity. Thus, we are glad to see Griffin’s new section on “The Standpoint of Black Feminist Thought,” which introduces provocative intersections between African-American scholarship and standpoint theory. (Including this section is particularly important when one considers Griffin’s extensive use of Beloved throughout the chapter to illustrate the theory.) This fresh theorizing extends and complicates the original theory. An interesting project for you or your students, in fact, would be to search Beloved (or another narrative by Morrison, Alice Walker, or Terry McMillan) for the presence of the four ways African-American women validate knowledge claims that Griffin has excerpted from Collins (491). The standpoint of other marginalized groups How might standpoint theory shed light on the experience of other marginalized groups? Wood’s and Harding’s research focuses on women, but students may be interested in discussing the ways research could arise from the experiences of men. Griffin’s example of Sixo (480) certainly suggests that African-American men develop unique local knowledge worth careful study. In particular, Wood’s argument that marginalized groups have more motivation to understand the powerful than vice versa (488) can be seen as a reiteration of W.E.B. Du Bois’s famous notion of “double consciousness” from The Souls of Black Folk, which was originally published in 1903. Du Bois states, “It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” ([New York: Penguin, 1989], 5). Correspondingly, James Weldon Johnson states in his Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, originally published in 1912, “I believe it to be a fact that the coloured people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them” ([New York: Vintage-Random, 1989], 22). If you wish to expand your discussion beyond gender, these famous pronouncements may be a good place to start. The Invisible Man, which we’ve mentioned in our treatments of symbolic interactionism and the narrative paradigm, is a compelling exploration of an African-American man’s standpoint at the midpoint of the twentieth century. You may have noticed that Griffin marshals the same passage from Beloved (containing Sixo’s failed effort to convince schoolteacher that he was justified in appropriating a pig) to demonstrate standpoint theorists’ emphasis on social location (480) that we use in our

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treatment of CMM to illustrate how power imbalances limit the ability of persons in conversation to co-construct social realities. Perhaps, ultimately, we are making the same point. Strong objectivity To understand the implications of a research program based on “strong objectivity,” you might try having students go through some recent issues of a communication journal. Since there are many feminists working in the field, they will probably find many studies that already favor the strategy of “strong objectivity.” Ask them about how they might reframe other studies that exhibit what Harding would call a “weak objectivity” in order to give them a “strong objectivity.” Related questions can be explored. What is gained and lost through this reframing? If all knowledge is partial, what happens if all studies are based on “strong objectivity”? In other words, notwithstanding the implications of the negative term “weak,” might there be value in incorporating both kinds of research in the field? You may wish to discuss in some detail the critique of strong objectivity (492). Ask your students to consider if and how some knowledge can be “less partial” if one questions traditional definitions of objectivity. What standard might Harding and Wood be using to judge knowledge—and why are they contradicting themselves? Or is there some validity to their position because, as they posit, marginalized groups see power imbalances more fully? Standpoint in the Academy You may also wish to apply standpoint theory to the classroom setting. In this situation, is the viewpoint of the students more valid than that of the professors, who obviously have the power? If so, what should happen to the educational process? On a broader level, the educational establishment itself tends to be dominated by people of power and privilege, and, although they are women, Harding and Wood are no exceptions. The kind of research that scholars do requires education and other resources that are the result of societal power. Even if they publish on marginalized people, it is the voices of the privileged that we hear in journals and textbooks.

Sample Application Log Adrianna I applaud Harding’s “insistence on local knowledge.” The idea that a person can be a “transparent eyeball” (like Emerson claimed) is not realistic; each person sees through his or her own personal interpretive lens. No one can be completely objective. We have discussed this extensively in my Early American literature class, and I think that this realization is one important contribution of postmodern theory. At first I was hesitant to embrace the idea that marginalized people have a more objective or less distorted view. But then I thought about Frederick Douglass’s narrative and his analysis of slavery. Douglass saw not only how destructive slavery was to the slaves, but also to the slaveholders. The power owners had over their slaves was usually corrupting. Douglass also saw how hypocritical the slave owners were preaching love and grace on Sunday, while on Monday they were whipping their slaves for insignificant or imagined offenses. Douglass’s view 465

was much more objective, much more realistic than that of his white masters, because of his marginalized status. I think today we have much to learn from feminist writers as they offer a distinct perspective on a male-dominated world.

Exercises and Activities Perceptions of sexual harassment If the topic of sexual harassment resonates for your students, you can use this issue to illustrate how standpoint influences what we know and how we understand the world. In her article “Dialogue through Standpoint: Understanding Women’s and Men’s Standpoints of Sexual Harassment,” Debbie S. Dougherty discusses the gap between men’s and women’s understandings of sexual harassment (see “Further Resources,” below, for full citation). She explains that research demonstrates that men view fewer behaviors as harassing and that men perceive most harassing behavior as “normal.” To bring these findings into the classroom, ask students to identify behaviors that would be considered harassment. To allow students to give their opinions without being influenced by others, you may want to have them write down their lists and hand them in to you (if you have them do so anonymously, be sure they identify their gender on their list). Then explore whether or not female students have a different understanding of the behaviors that constitute harassment than male students do. If there are behaviors that both genders perceive to be harassment, ask about their severity. If your class replicates current research (i.e., men perceive fewer behaviors as harassment and perceive harassing behaviors as more “normal” than women), your results should allow you to talk about different standpoints. If not, you may wish to explore whether other experiences—like being part of a campus community—may override gender as a basis for students’ view of this issue (a finding that would to some extent challenge feminist standpoint theory). Incidentally, Dougherty believes that men and women need to engage in dialogue to avoid an oversimplified view of harassment; you may want to encourage such dialogue in your class and explore whether it helps foster understanding of this issue that goes beyond traditional gender-based responses. Feature film illustrations When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he shows the first few minutes of White Man’s Burden, in which a reversal of race vividly demonstrates strong objectivity. Other excellent films that illustrate standpoint theory principles include The Remains of the Day, Gosford Park, and the BBC series, Upstairs/Downstairs. In each case, the household staff of English manors is shown in contrast to the lords and ladies of the house. While the upper classes are largely unaware of the peculiarities of the staff members, the workers demonstrate a complex understanding not only of their own realm, but also that “upstairs.”

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Nancy C.M. Hartsock scrutinizes the future in “Standpoint Theories for the Next Century,” Women & Politics 19 (1997): 93-101. Kristin J. Anderson and Campbell Leaper question several of Wood’s assertions about emotional differences in “Emotion Talk between Same- and Mixed-Gender Friends: Form and Function,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 17 (December 1998): 419-48. M. Lane Bruner expands standpoint theory, suggesting how it can help us critique gender stereotypes and the limits they impose in “Producing Identities: Gender Problematization and Feminist Argumentation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 32 (1996): 185-98.

Standpoint theory applications § Debbie S. Dougherty, “Dialogue through Standpoint: Understanding Women’s and Men’s Standpoints of Sexual Harassment,” Management Communication Quarterly 12 (February 1999): 436-68. § Joey Sprague and Margaret Greer, “Standpoints and the Discourse on Abortion: The Reproductive Debate,” Women & Politics 19 (1998): 49-80. § Brenda J. Allen, “Feminist Standpoint Theory: A Black Woman’s (Re)View of Organizational Socialization,” Communication Studies 47 (Winter 1996): 257-71. § Aaronette M. White, “Talking Feminist, Talking Black: Micromobilization Processes in a Collective Protest against Rape,” Gender & Society 13 (February 1999): 77-100. African-American women scholarship For critiques of white feminists’ viewpoints by African-American women scholars and discussion of the ways in which racial and gender identities intersect in their lives, see: § bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981). § hooks’s essays “Reflections on Race and Sex” and “Representations: Feminism and Black Masculinity” in her collection Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990). § Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” in her collection Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984). Postmodernism § For general discussion of postmodernism and the contribution of Jean-Francois Lyotard, see Arthur Berger’s Postmortem for a Postmodernist, which we’ve referenced in the preface to this manual.

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D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein explores the postmodern connection in “A Postmodern Caring: Feminist Standpoint Theories, Revisioned Caring, and Communication Ethics,” Western Journal of Communication 63 (Winter 1999): 32-56.

Standpoint theory and rhetoric § For a general assessment of standpoint theory and a discussion and application of its relevance to rhetorical studies, see Glen McClish and Jacqueline Bacon’s article “‘Telling the Story Her Own Way’: The Role of Feminist Standpoint Theory in Rhetorical Studies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32 (Spring 2002): 27-55. § Kathleen Ryan and Elizabeth J. Natalle explore connections between standpoint theory and invitational rhetoric in “Fusing Horizons: Standpoint Hermeneutics and Invitational Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31 (Spring 2001): 69-90.

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CHAPTER 35

MUTED GROUP THEORY Outline I.

Introduction. A. To Cheris Kramarae, language is a man-made construction. B. Women’s words and thoughts are discounted in our society. C. When women try to overcome this inequity, the masculine control of communication places them at a disadvantage. D. Women are a muted group because man-made language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding them. E. Kramarae began her research studying gender bias in cartoons.

II.

Muted groups: black holes in someone else’s universe. A. Edwin Ardener first proposed that women are a muted group. B. He noted that many ethnographers claimed to have “cracked the code” of a culture without referencing female speech. C. He and Shirley Ardener discovered that mutedness is caused by the lack of power that besets any group of low status. D. He claimed that muted groups are “black holes” because they are overlooked, muffled, and rendered invisible. E. Shirley Ardener argues that the key issue is whether people can say what they want to say when and where they want to say it, or must they re-encode their thoughts to make them understood in the public domain? F. Kramarae’s extension of the Ardeners’ initial concept explores why women are muted and how to free them. G. She argues that the public-private distinction in language exaggerates gender differences, poses separate sexual spheres of activity, and devalues private communication.

III.

The masculine power to name experience. A. Kramarae’s basic assumption is that women perceive the world differently from men because of women’s and men’s different experiences and activities rooted in the division of labor. B. Kramarae argues that because of their political dominance, men’s system of perception is dominant, impeding the free expression of women’s alternative models of the world. C. Men’s control of the dominant mode of expression has produced a vast stock of derogatory, gender-specific terms to refer to women’s talking. D. There are also more words to describe sexually promiscuous women than men. E. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that muted women may come to doubt the validity of their experience and the legitimacy of their feelings.

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IV.

Men as the gatekeepers of communication. A. Kramarae believes that even if the public mode of expression contained a rich vocabulary to describe feminine experience, women would still be muted if their modes of expression were ignored or ridiculed. 1. The cultural establishment virtually excludes women’s art, poetry, plays, film, and so forth. 2. Mainstream communication is “malestream” expression. B. Authors such as Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Smith have argued that women have not been given their rightful place in history. C. Kramarae cites the politics surrounding her change of name as an example of male control.

V.

The unfulfilled promise of the Internet. A. The Internet demonstrates men’s gatekeeper role. B. Metaphors used to describe the Internet reveal why women are often unable to gain access to cyberspace or find the atmosphere of the Internet unappealing. C. The Internet offers the potential for women to find community, but there are limits. D. Kramarae feels that, because the technology is interactive, cyberspace has the potential to be a humane space for women.

VI.

Women’s truth into men’s talk: the problem of translation. A. Kramarae believes that in order to participate in society, women must transform their own models in terms of the received male system of expression. B. This translation process requires constant effort and leaves women wondering if they said it right.

VII. Speaking out in private: networking with women. A. Kramarae believes that females are likely to find ways to express themselves outside the dominant public modes of expression used by males. B. She labels women’s outlets the female “sub-version” that runs beneath the surface of male orthodoxy. C. She is convinced that males have more difficulty than females understanding what members of the other gender mean because they haven’t made the effort. D. Dale Spender hypothesizes that men realize that listening to women would involve a renunciation of their privileged position. VIII. Speaking out in public: a feminist dictionary. A. The ultimate goal of muted group theory is to change the man-made linguistic system that oppresses women. B. Such reform includes challenging sexist dictionaries. C. Kramarae and Paula Treichler compiled a feminist dictionary. IX.

Sexual harassment: coining a term to label experience. A. The popularization of the term sexual harassment represents a great victory for feminist communication scholarship—encoding women’s experience into the received language of society. B. Although unwanted sexual attention is not new, until recently it went unnamed.

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C. The battle over sexual harassment is as much a struggle over language as it is over sexual conduct. X.

Critique: is a good man hard to find (and change)? A. Kramarae’s central contention that questions of power are central to all human relationships is supported by Watzlawick’s interactional view and Baxter and Montgomery’s dialectical perspective. B. Her perspective on men’s motives is contested by scholars such as Tannen.

Key Names and Terms Cheris Kramarae A visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Women at the University of Oregon and leader in the study of muted group theory. Muted Group Theory An approach to communication that considers women a muted group because manmade language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding them. Edwin Ardener A social anthropologist at Oxford University who first proposed the idea that women are a muted group. Shirley Ardener An Oxford University researcher who collaborated with Edwin Ardener on the development of muted group theory. Virginia Woolf A British novelist who protested women’s absence in recorded history. Dorothy Smith A feminist writer who claims that women’s absence in history is a result of male control of scholarship. Dale Spender A British author who hypothesizes that men realize that listening to women would involve a renunciation of their privileged position. Paula Treichler Kramarae’s collaborator on a feminist dictionary. Sexual Harassment The unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal power.

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Principal Changes This chapter remains the same except for light editing and an updated Second Look section.

Suggestions for Discussion A note of caution In our experience, students’ opinions regarding the muted group theory tend to be rather fiery—and not always in predictable directions. One Dale Spender quote cited by Griffin in the chapter tends to elicit a mix of responses: “The crucial issue here is that if women cease to be muted, men cease to be so dominant and to some males this may seem unfair because it represents a loss of rights” (501). On some occasions, the male students will adamantly object to their portrayal as controlling (496), exclusionary (497), or ignorant (501), while in other situations, we have noted that men were reluctant to say anything for fear of attack or of being seen to promote the type of domination Kramarae describes. The responses of women are equally varied ranging from animated endorsement to perturbed disagreement. Some women fiercely protest the characterization of women as powerless, a point you may want to clarify. Kramarae does not assert that women have no power, but instead she argues that they do not have equal standing with their male counterparts. You may also want to revisit the concept of hegemony presented in Chapter 26 on Hall’s cultural studies, asking students if it may be a factor in mutedness, especially for women passionately against the muted group perspective. Gender-specific language The issue of gender-specific pronouns and terms is highly relevant to muted group theory. You may have some students who are perplexed by—or perhaps even resent—the implication that gender-specific language is sexist. They’ll protest, “Why do I have to say ‘he or she’ when everyone knows that I include both males and females when I say ‘he’?” The SapirWhorf hypothesis is a good vehicle for understanding the potential effect of non-inclusive language. To turn the tables, it may be helpful to ask students how, for example, a male flight attendant would feel if passengers referred to him by the supposedly generic term “stewardess.” Contrasting Kramarae and Tannen Integrative Essay Question #30 below is closely related to item #4 under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook, although the former concentrates more on the disagreement between the two scholars and the latter features the student’s opinion about the disagreement. In this sense, the latter will function as a good follow-up question for the former. Constructing a new language Along with sexual harassment, another legal issue that relates to muted group theory is the traditional standard of the “reasonable man.” In recent years, our judicial system is developing a “reasonable woman” concept that applies to situations such as sexual harassment having particular relevance to women. The point is that we are beginning to realize

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that men’s thinking is not necessarily an appropriate benchmark, and we are constructing language that reflects this growing awareness. Other muted groups In the quote from Kramarae with which Griffin opens the chapter, she notes that not only women but also “members of other subordinate groups” can be muted (494). Depending on the interests of your students, you may wish to probe this additional dimension of muted group theory. How are ethnic minorities, the poor, or gays and lesbians muted in our society? What alternative discursive modes—the equivalent of the female “sub-version” of discourse described by Kramarae (501)—do they create? (See Essay Question #25, below.) One example is from America’s hobo culture of the Great Depression. Unemployed people who traveled the rails left encrypted messages for other travelers on the side of fences or barns to denote such things as a home that was hospitable, place that might offered a warm meal, or location of safe shelter. These symbols might have served as a language system for a powerless, muted group. It is interesting to note that though culture was largely made up of white men, their lack of employment made them powerless and muted. Mutedness on the Internet You may also wish to ask students about the section of the chapter on the Internet (498-99). Griffin notes both Kramarae’s research on the Internet’s replication of the male control of discourse and her optimism about the potential for women in cyberspace. Ask students about their experiences with the Internet and about whether they agree with Kramarae’s assessment of current norms in cyberspace and/or her optimism about the future. (See also Essay Question #28.)

Sample Application Log Glenda It all started when I pointed out the serious lack of women in the Warner Bros. cartoon cast. I was at lunch with a mixed group of men and women. The women clammed up. The men formed an offensive line and prepared to tackle me with every 400-pound argument they had. It was a simple comment really. All I said was that, as far as I could see, there are only two female Warner Brothers characters—the clearly addlepated Granny and the hotly pursued cat who, in the end, really does mean “yes” when she says “no.” That was enough. The men came at me with both guns, but I was armed with Kramarae’s theory and the strength of my convictions. They started out by telling me that I was making a big deal out of nothing and called me “sweetie.” I said that cartoons raise most American children—they help define and reflect our value system. They said there are plenty of good female role models for kids and called me “hon.” I countered with a reference to grotesquely proportioned Barbie dolls . . . . It went on this way for approximately half an hour. I lost. And here’s where muted group theory comes in. None of the other women at the table joined into the conversation, and that’s understandable since by the end of it I was tagged as a “femiNazi” by everyone within hearing distance. The women seemed to understand that the things they could say in private would be discounted in the public forum of the lunchroom debate table—so they probably knew they’d get bulldozed. Also, a consequence of my getting heated in

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battle is that the pitch of my voice raises; since this made me sound less and less like a man, my arguments were completely plowed under by the men who thought I was getting myself upset and just being “silly.” On top of that, the men devalued me as an arguer by calling me diminutive names. Basically, although my arguments were well thought out and valid, I lost the battle because the men couldn’t hear them—with every intelligent defense of women’s issues I was losing credibility with the men. In the bowling ball game of life, I was knocking down all the pins, but the men were keeping score. So I lost.

Exercises and Activities Diagramming mutedness We have found it useful to show the diagram from Kramarae’s Women and Men Speaking (2) and to ask students how they would explain it to someone unfamiliar with the muted group theory. How does this process of mutedness occur so that the experiences of one group must be translated into the language of the other before they can be articulated? What happens in the “translation” process?

Muted Worldview

Dominant Worldview

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A = Articulations

Is it possible that there are some messages that lack an appropriate translation and as such are lost? Often, this question can promote an interesting discussion about what has been lost in translation over the ages and how women (and other muted groups) have found methods of getting their messages across. Is muted group theory outdated? Is it happening on your campus? To many of your students, muted group theory may have the ring of PC (wrongheaded political correctness) or, to be more blunt, male bashing. Some will suggest that the problems raised by Kramarae and her associates may have been the concerns of previous generations of women but no longer affect the modern generation. On the other hand, it is important for those students who may not feel muted to understand that many of their contemporaries do. To test the current applicability of muted group theory, have each student bring an issue of a magazine or newspaper that has a non-gender-specific readership to class. Have them count the number of published letters to the editor written by men and the number written by women. The totals should spark an interesting discussion.

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Even in colleges and universities, where equality and freedom of speech are supposed to give everyone a voice, many members of our communities feel stifled in certain contexts—as the sample application log above demonstrates. To help you generate meaningful discussion on this topic, we include the text of a letter written by a communication theory student. You may wish to read it to your students or distribute copies to them. (Note that you may find aspects of the letter applicable to the chapter on genderlects styles.) I think it is extremely important for a professor to consider just how close to home this chapter can hit students. The muted group theory was alive and well in my U.S. foreign policy class. The class was 70% male, and was led by a teacher who seemed to get a kick out of heated debate—whether logic was involved or not! The undeclared rule of the class went something like this: Those who make their opinions heard (whether thought-out or not) gained points with the professor. The topic of the class was policy strategies for dealing with other countries. Much of the class was spent discussing war negotiations, trade policies, and the like. The topic is very definitely a male-dominated territory historically and in my class. Most class discussions were dominated by outlandish assertions on the part of the males. They argued about policy, but mostly concentrated on the importance of nuclear buildup, aggressiveness, and “beating out the competitors.” For the men in the class, this topic was second nature. Whether liberal or conservative, they enjoyed each other’s jokes. Even the professor seemed to egg on comments such as “we should have bombed them sooner” or “we have a right—we’re Americans.” Under the pretense that we are all pretty sensitive people at this university, the assumption of the debates was that no one really thought these things. Rather, making such assertions was just keeping the discussion lively—which, the professor told me, he appreciated! But the women of the class rarely spoke. I believe most of them felt as I did: the joke wasn’t funny. And what’s more, we didn’t understand the fascination with dominating the world, even for discussion’s sake. This atmosphere really affected my motivation for this class. Since I never once felt confident enough to offer my opinion into this chaos, my grade suffered. In fact, it was my lowest grade of the semester. When I was writing my final essay for the course, all I could hear in my head were the voices of the men in my class. With each question, I knew more about how the men in my class would answer than how I would respond. Looking at muted group theory in terms of classroom experience might yield other stories like mine that can really bring this chapter home. Perhaps some stories could reveal a female dominance and male mutedness. The point is that everyone should have something to say about this issue. Hopefully in a communication theory class, everyone will be equally heard.

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The student’s comments relate to Essay Question #27 below, which considers campus practices that contribute to male linguistic and social dominance. On a campus where Glen once taught, for example, we used to call the course required of first-year students “freshman symposium.” Never mind that the majority of our students were women. (Later, the course was renamed “first-year colloquium.”) For many years, department heads were often called “chairmen,” regardless of their gender. Some members of the campus community became sensitive to the use of male pronouns to refer to God in worship services in the chapel and in prayers at public ceremonies such as convocation and graduation. They suggest that phrases such as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” be replaced with alternatives such as “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.” Another problem concerns the asymmetric terms many members of the campus community used for male and female students. Habitually, the former are referred to as “men” and the latter as “girls.” At Glen’s current institution, which has a prestigious women’s studies department, administration and faculty continue to refer to firstyear students as “freshmen,” and there seems to be no movement afoot to make a change. Despite their progressive professions, academic institutions can be very slow to innovate. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon One of the distinct pleasures of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (which we feature in the Preface as a possible supplementary text for the course) is its success in identifying, vivifying, and giving powerful voice to the traditionally marginalized and discredited, including those who are featured by muted group theory and standpoint theory. One such kind of individual is brought to life in the character of Ruth Dead, an African-American woman hemmed in both by white culture and the most prominent man in her life, her husband. Discussing the conflict between Ruth and her husband over their son, Morrison portrays the struggle in terms of competing notions of what Pearce might call coherence. As the following passage suggests, however, the novelist’s focus on the inherent inequality between the two combatants evokes more overtly critical theories of gender and race such as those developed by Kramarae and Wood (you’ll note that like Kenneth Burke, Morrison relies on masculinebased language that seems problematic to us now, particularly since it is embedded within a narrative so conscious of gender inequality): [Their son] became a plain on which, like the cowboys and Indians in the movies, she and her husband fought. Each one befuddled by the values of the other. Each one convinced of his own purity and outraged by the idiocy he saw in the other. She was the Indian, of course, and lost her land, her customs, her integrity to the cowboy and became a spread-eagled footstool resigned to her fate and holding fast to tiny irrelevant defiances. (133) Like the Native Americans, Ruth experiences the devaluation of her standpoint and her voice. A thoroughly marginalized character, she retreats into herself. Alternate word choice We find the second item under Questions to Sharpen Your Focus in the textbook particularly provocative. In the sample sentence, the verb “vaginated” gives the mode of thought referenced a uniquely female cast, which may be an advantage if one wants to call special attention to a feminine way of thinking. On the other hand, there are potential problems with the term. For one thing, suggesting that thinking is related to, influenced, or

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shaped by our genitalia could encourage a kind of physiological determinism that most scholars of communication mistrust. Do we really want to give biologically determined sex such authority? Second, the male equivalent of vaginating is a common insult in today’s parlance. When we want to call attention to a man’s obsession with sex (or perhaps his stubbornness, insensitivity, misguided machismo, or competitiveness), we accuse him of thinking with his penis. How do we handle gender-specific terms for thinking that immediately put men at a connotative disadvantage? Alternative verbs include “ruminated” (which derives from the notion of chewing the cud), “pondered” (which derives from the notion of weighing), “reflected” (which derives from the notion of bending back), and “thought,” which also reminds us of “contemplated” and “mediated.” Talking about experiences of muting and mutedness When Em Griffin teaches this chapter, he asks his students—who have just returned from their mid-class break—to divide into two groups, male and female, then sit on opposite sides of the room, facing one another. Next, he asks the women to discuss, without interruption from the men, their experiences with being muted or with muting others. After the women have spoken for fifteen minutes, the men are asked to take their turn discussing their experiences. In Griffin’s experience, his female students tend to emphasize moments when they have been muted, and his male students tend to discuss times when they have muted others, but sometimes they talk about being muted. He has also discovered that simply asking the class to discuss their experiences with being muted will not draw out women’s frank and full responses—a finding that reinforces the theory! It is only by drawing them together as a group and by temporarily silencing the men that the women speak their minds. After both sides have spoken, the class critiques the exercise as a whole. Heightening awareness When Ed McDaniel teaches this chapter, he uses the following exercises: To elicit and heighten class attention, I bring in copies of the school’s newspaper (Daily Aztec at San Diego State University) that contain reports of sexual assault and harassment. After reading four or five headlines, I ask the class if they can discern any recurring theme in these reports. Only rarely have I had any of the males point out that the assaults and harassments are all directed toward women. This provides a point of departure for discussing the social marginalization of women. To demonstrate how men control public space, ask the class males to indicate the last time they felt self-conscious when walking past a construction site during the noon hour or returning to the parking lot late at night. To illustrate how words often reflect the male perspective, I use a series of graphics with the word “foreplay.” The first graphic, showing the word written in capitals (e.g., FOREPLAY) is a guaranteed attention getter. Then, I (gingerly) talk about how the male perspective of the activity might be better displayed by writing forePLAY and the females’ by FOREplay.

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Feature film and literature illustrations Griffin also finds it fruitful to ask his students to discuss, in light of what they have learned in this chapter, whether or not a man can be a feminist. Finally, he often enjoys discussing an intriguing children’s film that may or not contribute to the muting of females, The Little Mermaid, in which the mermaid is compelled to win the heart of her beloved without speech—giving up her “voice.” The film’s “message” may spark a lively discussion among your students. A forward-leaning nineteenth-century novel that demonstrates that awareness of the limitations of man-made language is hardly new is Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (The Modern Library, 2001). When, for example, the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, is pressured by one of her suitors, Boldwood, to clarify her sentiments about him, the following exchange ensues (Boldwood begins): “You never liked me.” “I did; and respected you, too.” “Do you now?” “Yes.” “Which?” “How do you mean which?” “Do you like me, or do you respect me?” “I don’t know—at least, I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.” (376-77) It is also interesting to note that in 1920, Virginia Woolf wrote insightfully of the communicative quandary faced by Hardy’s heroine and the real-life women she represents. In an essay entitled “Men and Women” (Books and Portraits: Some Further Selections from the Literary and Biographical Writings of Virginia Woolf, ed. Mary Lyon [London: The Hogarth Press], 28-30), Woolf declared that from Bathsheba’s dilemma “arise infinite confusions and complications. Energy has been liberated, but into what forms is it to flow? To try the accepted forms, to discard the unfit, to create others which are more fitting, is a task that must be accomplished before there is freedom or achievement” (30). In her typically forward-thinking way, Woolf understood that the problem of women’s mutedness cannot be solved in isolation. To pour women’s energy “into new forms without wasting a drop,” Woolf concludes, “is the difficult problem which can be only solved by the simultaneous evolution and emancipation of man” (30). Thus, over half a century before Kramarae’s work, Woolf begins to chart much of the territory covered by muted group theory. Sharing this evolution of theory-building with your students will demonstrate to them how, truly, the theorists working today stand on the shoulders of those thinkers—whether they be novelists, essayists, poets, theologians, or conventional academics—who went before them.

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We’ll begin by specifically pitching a source that Griffin mentions in the Second Look section of the chapter: Foss, Foss, and Griffin’s essay in Feminist Rhetorical Theories. Because Foss, Foss, and Griffin present Kramarae’s work as a rhetorical theory, they establish useful connections between gender and communication and public rhetoric. Sonja Foss discusses and exemplifies “feminist criticism” in the sixth chapter of Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Much of the analysis featured by Foss relates directly to the work of Kramarae and her associates. For a recent analysis of the “centrist” feminist position, see Julia T. Wood, “Dominant and Muted Discourses in Popular Representations of Feminism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 (1996): 171-85. Mark P. Orbe combines muted group and standpoint theories to explore the communication of traditionally marginalized group members in mainstream organizational situations in “An Outsider within Perspective to Organizational Communication: Explicating the Communicative Practices of Co-Cultural Group Members,” Management Communication Quarterly 12 (November 1998): 230-79. Frances Trix and Andrea Sankar discuss the media’s role in silencing the female perspective in “Women’s Voices and Experiences of the Hill-Thomas Hearings,” American Anthropologist 100 (March 1998): 32-40. The ultimate fictional example of women as a muted group is Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1986), which is also available as a film. For speculation about why women’s voices are underrepresented in the media, see Naomi Wolf, “Are Opinions Male?” The New Republic (November 29, 1993): 20-26. Wolf’s piece partially addresses the issue raised by Essay Question #21, below. For further discussion of mutedness “on line,” see Barbara Warnick, “Masculinizing the Feminine: Inviting Women on Line 1997,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16 (March 1999): 1-19. For an alternative view of male power, see Warren Farrell, “The Myth of Male Power,” Part One, Playboy 40 (July 1993): 112-13, 152, 154-56; Part Two, Playboy 40 (August 1993): 104-05, 108, 151-53. For a study that challenges some of Kramarae’s assumptions about public discourse, see Ann Weatherall, “Language about Women and Men: An Example from Popular Culture,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 15 (1996): 59-75. Weatherall argues, “A quantitative content analysis of the selected conversations gave virtually no support for the claim that general patterns of language use largely ignore or narrowly define women but not men” (70). For discussion of gender-specific language, sexist linguistic practice, and related problems, see Pearson, Turner, and Todd-Mancillas, Gender and Communication (Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, 1991).

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For further discussion of name choices, see Laura Stafford and Susan L. Kline, “Married Women’s Name Choices and Sense of Self,” Communication Reports 9 (1996): 85-92. Controversial analysis of marginalizing discourse in our own profession is provided by Carole Blair, Leslie Baxter, and Julie R. Brown in “Disciplining the Feminine,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 383-409. For applications of muted group theory to rhetorical analysis in general and to nineteenth-century abolitionist rhetoric of women and African Americans in specific, see Jacqueline Bacon, The Humblest May Stand Forth (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 53-54, 112-13, 141-42, 157, 175-76.

Sexual harassment § Shereen G. Bingham, Conceptualizing Sexual Harassment as Discourse Practice (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994). § Gary L. Kreps, ed., Sexual Harassment: Communication Implications (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1993). § Diana K. Ivy and Stephen Hamlet, “College Students and Sexual Dynamics: Two Studies of Peer Sexual Harassment,” Communication Education 45 (1996): 149-66. § To explore connections between sexual harassment and organizational culture, see Joann Keyton, Pat Ferguson, and Steven C. Rhodes, “Cultural Indicators of Sexual Harassment,” Southern Communication Journal 67 (Fall 2001): 38-50.

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ETHICAL REFLECTIONS GILLIGAN AND BENHABIB Key Names and Terms Carol Gilligan A professor of education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education whose landmark book, In A Different Voice, presents a theory of moral development that claims that women tend to think and speak in an ethical voice different from men. Lawrence Kohlberg A Harvard University professor who identified increasing levels of ethical maturity by analyzing responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas. His work characterizes the male ethic of justice that Gilligan contrasts with the female ethic of care. Seyla Benhabib A professor of government at Harvard University who champions the ethic of interactive universalism. Interactive Universalism According to Seyla Benhabib, the goal of an ethical consensus that would be interactive rather than legislative; cognizant of gender differences instead of gender blind; and contextually sensitive as opposed to situation indifferent. Postmodern Critique of Enlightenment Rationality Transcendental guarantees of truth are dead; there is only the endless struggle of local narratives vying with one another for legitimization. Communitarian Critique of Enlightenment Rationality Regarding people as disembodied moral agents who are devoid of history, relationships, or obligations renders one unable to deal with the messiness of real-life contexts. Feminist Critique of Enlightenment Rationality Women’s experiences and the way they talk about them are different from men’s.

Suggestions for Discussion Griffin’s space requirements have necessitated severe truncation of Gilligan’s work. Therefore, it is important to add here that although In a Different Voice does establish two different ethics—justice based on hierarchical moral reasoning and care based on a web-like concern for others—Gilligan also emphasizes that in morally mature males and females, the two approaches to reasoning, decision making, and communicating typified by masculine justice and feminine care come together. Here is Gilligan’s description of the phenomenon, taken from the conclusion of In a Different Voice: To understand how the tension between responsibilities and rights sustains the dialectic of human development is to see the integrity of two disparate modes of experience that are in the end connected. While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality—that everyone should be treated the same—an ethic of care rests

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on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt. In the representation of maturity, both perspectives converge. . . . (174) Although men and women come to this point of convergence from different perspectives, as morally mature adults they learn to synthesize the competing needs of the individual and the community as they formulate key decisions and make difficult choices.

Further Resources Recent Scholarship by Carol Gilligan § Although In a Different Voice is Gilligan’s most famous work, she has continued to produce interesting scholarship since its publication in the early 1980s. o With Lyn M. Brown she wrote Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). o With Jill M. Taylor and Amy M. Sullivan she edited Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). o With Jamie Ward and Jill M. Taylor she edited Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Woman’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). o With Nona P. Lyons and Trudy J. Hanmer she edited Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at the Emma Willard School (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). o Her recent book, The Birth of Pleasure (New York: Knopf, 2002), analyzes how patriarchal structures impede men’s and women’s realization of their full potential and stifle authentic communication and relationships between men and women. § For further analysis of Gilligan’s work and its relationship to Kohlberg’s, see: o Linda K. Kerber, et al., “On In a Different Voice: An Interdisciplinary Forum,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11 (1986): 304-33. o Lawrence Kohlberg, et al., Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics (New York: Karger, 1983). o Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil, Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy (Philadelphia: Falmer, 1986). o Paul Crittenden, Learning to Be Moral: Philosophical Thoughts about Moral Adjustment (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990). o Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 161-68. § For current rhetorical criticism that builds on Gilligan’s approach to ethics, see Patricia A. Sullivan and Steven R. Goldzwig, “A Relational Approach to Moral Decision-Making: The Majority Opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (May 1995): 167-90. § Lynn H. Turner explores connections between Gilligan’s ideas and muted group theory in “An Analysis of Words Coined by Women and Men: Reflections on the Muted Group Theory and Gilligan’s Model,” Women & Language 15 (Spring 1992): 21-26. § For a critique of Gilligan’s work, see Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Women, 79-90. Feminist ethics

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§ § § §

Rita C. Manning, Speaking from the Heart: A Feminist Perspective on Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman, 1992). Linda Steiner, “Feminist Theorizing and Communication Ethics,” Communication 12 (1991): 157-74. E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End—with its famous epigram, “only connect”— constitutes a literary precursor to Gilligan’s feminine ethic. The recent film version of the novel vividly characterizes this ethic. Ethics of Intercultural and International Communication, edited by Fred L. Casmir (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997), features many essays relevant to theories presented in this section of A First Look.

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COMMUNICATION THEORY Key Names and Terms Karl Weick Previously introduced in Chapter 19, this University of Michigan scholar argues that there are inevitable trade-offs in any theoretical statement. Warren Thorngate A psychologist from the University of Alberta who developed the postulate of commensurate complexity. Commensurate Complexity As applied to theory construction, the need to add qualifications to account for special circumstances. Clock-Face Model Karl Weick’s portrayal of the trade-offs among the theoretical ideals of generalizability, accuracy, and simplicity. David Mortenson A communication professor at the University of Wisconsin who argues that no communication can be entirely free of background or situational overtones.

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CHAPTER 36

ORDER OUT OF CHAOS Outline I.

Introduction. A. However useful, the one-chapter-one-theory organization of the book compartmentalizes communication theory. B. This chapter seeks to integrate the material. C. This text has used the objective/interpretive dichotomy to classify theories, but some theorists resist being pigeonholed. D. In light of these problems, James Anderson locates theories on a worldview continuum anchored by the terms “objective” and “hermeneutic” (or “interpretive”). E. This continuum places theories based on how their authors view the nature of the phenomenal world.

II.

Plotting theories on an objective-interpretive scale. A. Objective theorists believe in the unity of science. B. Interpretive theorists believe in multiple domains. C. Anderson catalogs other differences between worldviews. 1. Whereas objective theorists hold to a singular, independent, autonomous social reality, interpretive scholars assume that reality is a conferred status. 2. Whereas objective scholars posit a timeless social reality, interpretive scholars see knowledge as contextually based. 3. Whereas objective scholars treat language as referential, interpretive scholars question its representational nature. D. Figure 36.1 places each theory along the objective-interpretive continuum. 1. Some theories fit easily into categories, but others are hard to categorize. 2. The continuum is a work-in-progress. E. The entire text has worked toward this synthesis. F. Scholars consulted about the continuum did not always agree on the placement of individual theories, but such disagreements are enlightening.

III.

“On the one hand . . . on the other.” A. The worldview of semiotics and relational dialectics are difficult to place because they have shifted steadily toward interpretivism. B. Although Harding and Wood have a strong postmodern influence, their belief that there is a truth that can be partially apprehended inserts some objectivity into their theory and therefore, their theory is located in column 4. C. Some scholars such as Delia, McLuhan, and Aristotle are difficult to place because of apparent discrepancies between their stated philosophical commitments and their research methodologies. D. The lack of critical consensus allows readers a chance to join the debate. E. Excluding the midscale range, there is a 50/50 split between objective and interpretive theories, which parallel the ratio in the field of communication.

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IV.

Four options for scholars: reject, respect, cooperate, merge. A. Rejection of inferior scholarship. 1. Robert Bostrom and Lewis Donohew reject interpretive scholarship because it is intellectually nihilistic. 2. Many interpretive scholars such as Stuart Hall consider objective theory ideologically naive, narrowly focused on outward behavior, and trivial. 3. These “communication wars” are waged in major communication journals. B. Respect and celebration of differences. 1. Richard Rorty argues that the two sides should learn to live with their differences. 2. Perhaps the empirical and rhetorical communities are best understood as distinct cultures. 3. Respect for and even celebration of differences take place in clinical psychology. 4. People who gravitate toward one type of knowing or the other may diverge due to a preference for sensing or intuition. C. Cooperation with needed colleagues. 1. George Gerbner pictures a symbiotic relationship between the two worldviews. 2. Gregory Bateson’s rigor/imagination dichotomy may describe the contributions of the sciences and the arts, respectively. 3. Marie Nichols argues that the humanities without science are blind, but science without the humanities may be vicious. D. Legitimizing the child of a shotgun marriage (merge). 1. Celeste Condit argues that current theorizing results from a blend of humanism and empiricism. a. Some empiricists no longer insist on covering laws, universal truths, or value neutrality. b. Some rhetoricians now prize rhetorical theory building above rhetorical criticism, write with technical precision, and want more than consensus to validate truth. 2. She predicts that hybrid theories may be more illuminating than traditional approaches.

V.

A final note. A. Readers are encouraged to continue their examination of communication theory. B. Appendix B covers relevant movies. C. Since the field of communication is changing rapidly, readers should participate in its development. Go for it!

Key Names and Terms James Anderson A communication scholar from the University of Utah who recommends classifying theories based on how their authors view the nature of the phenomenal world. Hermeneutics The study and practice of interpretation. Robert Bostrom and Lewis Donohew 494

Communication scholars from the University of Kentucky who reject interpretivism because of its perceived intellectual nihilism. Stuart Hall Previously introduced in Chapter 26, this leader of cultural studies considers objectivists’ findings ideologically naive and narrowly focused on outward behavior. Richard Rorty A Princeton University philosopher who contends that the differences between the sciences and humanities cannot be resolved, only lived with. Sensing Taken from the Myers-Briggs indicator, this perceiving/knowing preference stresses the five senses. Intuition Taken from the Myers-Briggs indicator, this perceiving/knowing preference stresses the meanings, relationships, and possibilities that go beyond the information available to the senses. George Gerbner Previously introduced in Chapter 27, this leader in cultivation theory argues for a symbiotic relationship between scientists and humanists. Gregory Bateson Previously introduced in Chapter 12, this anthropologist emphasized that both rigor and imagination are necessary contraries of the human mind. Marie Hochmuth Nichols Previously introduced in Chapter 22, this rhetorician held that the humanities without science are blind, but science without the humanities may be vicious. Celeste Condit A University of Georgia communication professor who emphasizes the value of the theoretical hybridization of empiricists and humanists.

Principal Changes Although its content remains largely unchanged, a few revisions to Figure 36.1 are worth noting. Cultivation theory, anxiety/uncertainty management theory, and muted group theory have all been moved one step toward the interpretive end of the continuum. Elaboration likelihood model and face-negotiation theory have moved one step toward the objective end of the continuum.

Suggestions for Discussion More of a beginning than an end In many textbooks, the concluding chapter is little more than a mechanical summary tacked on to fill a page quota or please an editor’s formulaic sense of closure. In the case of A First Look at Communication Theory, however, this is certainly not the case. In fact, it could be argued that this final chapter is the most important in the entire book because it presents— rather than an obligatory afterthought—a culmination of Griffin’s message. Applying Anderson’s theoretical categories and a continuum that incorporates, yet ultimately transcends, the original dichotomy that undergirds the first three chapters, Griffin provides a credible synthesis

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of the diverse theories presented throughout the text. The four approaches to the objective/interpretive dilemma featured in the second half of the chapter provide students with an outline of the primary stances toward the theoretical diversity that currently characterize our discipline. With this material, your students will be equipped to launch further study of communication theory. Thus, we would encourage you to present the chapter as more of a beginning than an end. We suspect that your discussion of this chapter will constitute or closely precede your review of the course, so our suggestions here will consider the twin responsibilities of covering the chapter and preparing for the final exam. A self-consuming artifact As mentioned above, Griffin’s continuum transcends the dichotomy with which he begins the book. In this sense, A First Look resembles what literary critic Stanley Fish calls a self-consuming artifact. Discussing Plato’s Phaedrus, one of the most important ancient texts about rhetoric, Fish describes this special process of textual consumption: “To read the Phaedrus, then, is to use it up; for the value of any point in it is that it gets you (not any sustained argument) to the next point, which is not so much a point (in logical-demonstrative terms) as a level of insight. It is thus a self-consuming artifact, a mimetic enactment in the reader’s experience of the Platonic ladder in which each rung, as it is negotiated, is kicked away” (Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972], 13). Beginning with the relatively simple binary opposition of the opening chapters, Griffin gives the reader a place to stand that—over the course of the book—is gradually abandoned for higher, more sophisticated ground. As he layers theorist upon theorist, the complex interplay of theories tugs the reader ever upward. By the time we journey to the final chapter, we look down upon the original position, our launching place, having gained a superior perspective on the overall theoretical terrain. Our starting point is consumed because, in an intellectual sense, we cannot go home again. If the structure of the book has functioned properly, the final chapter should evoke the kind of “aha” experience that Griffin says Tannen’s theory often inspires. If students are left perplexed by these final developments and do not see how the book “adds up” to its closing theoretical stance, then it would be important to investigate their confusion to determine where the problems lie. Either way, explicit discussion of the intriguing structure of this book will give your students reason to ponder the impact of this chapter—as well as the entire course—and will help you gauge the extent of their overall comprehension. (Integrative Essay Question #28, below, addresses this issue.) Habitual versus analytical communication Integrative Essay Question #31 encourages students to link theories that apply a conscious shift from natural or habitual modes of communication to a more detached, at-adistance approach that analytically weighs a variety of perspectives and balances competing interests or understandings. Concepts such as mindfulness, conscious competence, reframing, and goal-based plans for action potentially fall into this category. What might we learn by grouping such theories together? Do certain meta-theoretical elements or assumptions become apparent? Are there theoretical disadvantages to privileging analytical, reason-based approaches to communication at the expense of the emotional and spontaneous? What

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theories might be arrayed on the opposite side of this particular theoretical perspective? These are interesting questions for your students to consider at the end of the book—and the course.

Exercises and Activities Placing theories on the continuum We urge you to work through the continuum in class, encouraging students to evaluate the placement of each theory. (Essay Question #22, below, addresses this issue.) As Griffin himself notes, the chart is a “work-in-progress” (517), and certain theories are particularly difficult to place. We would recommend that your students particularly scrutinize the placement of theories such as CMM, the interactional view, relational dialectics, the functional perspective, adaptive structuration theory, information systems approach, critical theory of communication, media ecology, cultural studies, face-negotiation theory, and muted group theory. We see some interesting and productive arguments coming out of these cases, although other placements may be equally controversial and intriguing. Awarding a “Best in Show” One good way to review is to ask your students which theory was their favorite or most useful. (Integrative Essay Question #27, below, addresses this issue.) Whether you require oral or written responses to the question, insist that they explain their choices. If you can, try to stimulate debate among the students on this issue. In fact, it may even be pedagogically useful (and fun) to reduce the field to a few finalists and bring the matter to a class vote. As they argue about the relative worth of various theories, they’ll practice applying and prioritizing the sophisticated criteria required for making such judgments meaningful. Of course the particular theory selected as the best is not the point; it’s the reasoning behind the choice that counts. To explore the other side of the preference coin, you may wish to ask students to identify the least favorite or least useful theory. Don’t settle for “It’s too hard!” as an answer. The discussion surrounding this question should be equally challenging and revealing. Grouping by research methodology The continuum helps us to compare and cluster the diverse theories presented in A First Look at Communication Theory. A second method of arranging them that will foster useful comparisons is by primary research methodology. For each theory, have students determine whether experimentation, surveys, textual analysis, or ethnography is most important. As with the continuum, this organizational scheme will also produce some revealing relationships and intriguing fence-sitters. Standard preferences In our treatments of Chapters 1 and 3, we discussed Griffin’s strategy of polling his students about their preferences about objective and interpretive standards for theory, ways of knowing, and so forth. This chapter might provide a good opportunity to revisit their initial judgments. Have they altered their positions or held fast to their first impressions? Why or why not? Telling Em what you really think Another method of review is to require students to write letters to Griffin outlining what they see to be the strengths and weaknesses of the book in a frank, constructive, collegial 497

manner. These letters can be evaluated on a variety of factors: the sophistication, specificity, and balance of the critique; the strength of the prose; and even the extent to which the epistle constitutes a person-centered message capable of achieving multiple goals (to use the language of constructivism) or perhaps a well-elaborated response (to borrow from ELM). Whether or not you actually send the letters to the author is entirely up to you, but we hope that you invest in the postage. You and your students will take the assignment more seriously, and the scholarly exchange that ensues may prove serendipitous. It certainly did for us.

Further Resources § Recent integrative essays on communication theory include: o John Stewart’s “Developing Communication Theories,” in Developing Communication Theories, eds. Gerry Philipsen and Terrance L. Albrecht (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 157-92. o Branislav Kovacic and Donald P. Cushman’s “A Pluralistic View of the Emerging Theories of Human Communication,” in Emerging Theories of Human Communication, ed. Branislav Kovacic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 170-87. § For recent essays on interpretative research, see Kathryn Carter and Mick Presnell, eds., Interpretive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). § For a spirited defense of empiricism based on pluralist premises, see Davida Charney’s “Empiricism Is Not a Four-Letter Word,” College Composition and Communication 47, 4 (December 1996): 567-93, and “From Logocentrism to Ethocentrism: Historicizing Critiques of Writing Research,” Technical Communication Quarterly 7, 1 (Winter 1998): 9-32. From the perspective of a composition specialist and a rhetorician, Charney insightfully argues that parochial attitudes toward methodology and theorizing are unproductive and dangerous. In “Empiricism Is Not a Four-Letter Word,” she concludes, “The only way to progress as a discipline is to undertake the hard task of interconnecting our work, by building up provisional confidence in our methods and our knowledge base by challenging and impressing each other—and anyone else who cares to look” (591). This advice, which resonates with Condit’s call to properly marry the objectivist and interpretivist traditions within the communication discipline (523-24), strikes us as excellent, if we may be so bold, at the end of our pedagogical journey, to speak our mind.

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