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INTERPERSONAL
COMMUNICATION
Making Social Worlds
W. Barnett Pearce
Loyola University of Chicago
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Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds

Copyright © 1994 by HarperCollins College Publishers Inc.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins
College Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pearce, VV. Barnett.

Interpersonal communication : making social worlds / VV. Barnett Pearce.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-500288-1
1. Interpersonal communication. I. Title.
BF637.C45P347 1993
302.2—dc20 93-29384
CIP
98765432 1
V
BRIEF CONTENTS
Contents vii
Preface xv
PART ONE
Overture i
CHAPTER 1 Understanding Conversations 2
CHAPTER 2 Competence in Making Social Worlds 50
PART TWO
Motifs 101
CHAPTER 3 Speech Acts 102
CHAPTER 4 Episodes 152
CHAPTER 5 Relationships 200
CHAPTER 6 Self 246
CHAPTER 7 Culture 296

vi Brief Contents
PART THREE
Recapitulation 337
CHAPTER 8 Putting It All Together 338
Photo Credits 371
Name Index 373
Subject Index 376

CONTENTS
Preface xv
PART ONE
Overture -\
CHAPTER 1 Understanding Conversations 2
Narrative 4
The Formal Study of a Familiar Process 4
When Common Sense Is Not Enough 4

Mundane Sites of Important Processes 9
A Distinctive Way of Understanding our Social Worlds 9
What "Knowing" About Interpersonal Communication
Means 1
Interpersonal Communication as Contingent (Praxis) 11
Good Judgment or Practical Wisdom (Phronesis) 13
Conceptualizing Interpersonal Communication 16

What We Learned from the Failure of the Project of
Developing a Model of Communication 18
Definitions of Interpersonal Communication 26

An Analysis of a Conversation from First- and Third-Person
Perspectives 36
First-person Perspective 36
Third-person Perspective 38
A Final Word: Conversation and Moral Responsibility 39
VII
. .
viii Contents
Praxis 40
1. A Communication Analysis of Your Communication

Class 40
2. "What's Going On Here?" Giving a "Good Reading"
of a Conversation 41
3. Learning the Moral Order of Conversations 43
4. Judging the Actions of Other People 45
5 Comparing Readings of Conversations 46
References 46
CHAPTER 2 Competence in Making Social Worlds 50
Narrative 52
We Live in Multiple Social Worlds 53

The Complexities and Contradictions of Everyday Life 57
Heteroglossia, Polyphony, and Polysemy 59
An Inherent Tension Between "Stories Lived" and "Stories
Told" 63
Social Worlds Are Made 66
The "Heyerdahl Solution" 67
Language 71
Social Worlds Are in a Continuous Process of Being

Remade 74
Social Worlds Are Made with Other People in Joint
Actions 75
Monologue and Dialogue 76
Coordinating Actions 79
Game-like Patterns of Social Interaction 80
Competence in Interpersonal Communication 81
Types of Game-like Patterns of Social Interaction 82
Game Playing and Game Mastery 84
Praxis 86
1 Creating Events and Objects in Your Social Worlds 86
2. A Description of Your Social Worlds 88
3.Applying the "Heyerdahl Solution" to Interesting
Conversations 89
4. Polyphony and How to Resist Linguistic Tyranny 90
5. Identifying the Scripts in Social Settings 93
Contents ix
6. Some Exercises in Conversational Competence 94

7. Competence in Ambiguous, Unstable Situations 96
References 96
PART TWO
Motifs 101
CHAPTER 3 Speech Acts 102
Narrative 104
What Are Speech Acts? 105
The "Basic Building Block" Approach to Speech Acts 106
The "Unfinished Creative Process" Approach to Speech
Acts 109
A Comparison of the Two Approaches 111
How Speech Acts Are Made 1 16

The Co- Construction of Speech Acts 119
The Conversational Triplet 121
Oral Speech is the Medium for Interpersonal

Communication 125
Presentness 129
Personalness 131
Responsive ness 131
Multichannelled 132
Interactive 133
Competence in Making Speech Acts 134

Game Playing: Co-Constructing Speech Acts within Logics
of Meaning and Action 1 34
Game Mastery: Going Outside the Logics of Meaning and
Action in the Co-Construction of Speech Acts 141
A Final Word: Empowerment in Speech Acts 145
Praxis 146
1 . Making Speech Acts 1 46
Doing the Same Thing in Different Ways 146
Making a Speech Act without Cooperation 147
Contents
King of the Mountain 147

Head-to- Head Competition 148
Strangers in the Night 148
2. Nonverbal Communication in Making Speech Acts 148

3. Power and Speech Acts 149
References 1 50
CHAPTER 4 Episodes 152
Narrative 154
Characteristics of Episodes 1 54
Time 156
Boundaries 156
Structure 156
Punctuation 160
The Episodic Structure of Social Worlds 162
Interaction Analysis 163
The Factorial Structure of Episodes 166
Frame Analysis 168
Interactional "Ladders" 172
How Episodes Are Made 174
Scripts 175
Goals 180
Rules 181
Juggling Scripts, Goals, and Contingency 183

Punctuate the Sequence of Events 185
Give Accounts 186
Metacommunicate 188
Reconstruct the Context 188
A Final Word: How Do our Social Worlds Appear "Real"
to Us? 189
Praxis 191
1. Coordinating the Meaning of Acts in Episodes 191
2. Identifying Cues Used to Punctuate Episodes 192
3. An Exercise in Coordination 192
4. Unwanted Repetitive Patterns 195
References 197
Contents xi
CHAPTER 5 Relationships 200
Narrative 202
Relationships and Interpersonal Communication 203
Relationships Are Made in Conversations 204
Relationships Are Made of Clusters of Conversations 206
Relationships Are a Category of Contexts for
Conversations 209
Language Games and Relationships 209
Schutz's Concept of Interpersonal Needs 210
Buber's Implicit Theory of Reflexivity 212
Rawlin's Dialectical Perspective 214
Bateson's Ecological Analysis of Relationships 215
The Missing Social Constructionist Alternative 219
Some Things We Know About Interpersonal
Communication in Relationships 220
Types of Relationships 222
Developmental Stages in Relationships 226
Significant Patterns of Communication 231
A Final Word: A Language Game for Relationships 240
Praxis 240
1. Conflict and Confusion in Multiple Relationships 240
2. Dealing with Confusion Competently 241
3. Stages in Relationship Development 242
4. Circular Questioning 243

References 243
CHAPTER 6 Self 246
Narrative 248
Self as Part of your Social Worlds 250
Some Events Make Us Mindful of Our Selves 253
Concepts of Self Develop Historically 255
Concepts of Self Develop Culturally 256
Multiple Languages of Self 257
Enlightenment and Poststructural Languages of Self 257
.
xii Contents
Romantic, Modernist, and Postmodern Languages of

Self 259
Multiphrenia 265
Some Concepts for Making Sense of Self 269
First- and Third- Person Perspectives 269
Self as Physical Entity and Self as Moral Agent 271
The Locus of Identity 274
The Self in Interpersonal Communication 275
Self As a Moral -Physical Entity From a Third-Person
Perspective: Personality Traits 277
Self As a Moral-Physical Entity From a First-Person
Perspective: Social Identity 278

Self As a Moral Agent From a Third-Person Perspective 281
Self As a Moral Agent From a First- Person Perspective 282
A Final Word: Second Thoughts about a Postmodern
Sensibility' 288
Praxis 289
1. Power, Oppression, and Liberation 289
2. The Identity Crises 291
3. The Spiraling Cycle of Enfeeblement 291

4. Popular Culture and Fashion 292
5 Constructing Your Self in Conversations 293
References 294
CHAPTER 7 Culture 296
Narrative 298
A Concept of Culture for Interpersonal
Communication 300
Culture is Normally Invisible 304
Two Ways of Discovering Culture 305
Communication and the Family: A Case Study of Cultural
Change 311
InterculturalCommunication: A Special Case of
Interpersonal Communication 314
Culture and Interpersonal Communication 321
Distrust Intuition 322
Contents xiii
"Knowing About" Other Cultures from

Differentiate
"Knowing How" to Converse with Them 324
Developing a Pidgin as a Means of Achieving
Coordination 328
Developing a Creole for Intercultural Communication 328
A Final Word: New Communication Skills are Needed 330
Praxis 330
1. Improving Intercultural Communication 330
2. Family Communication Patterns 332
3. Common Sense and Intercultural Communication 333
4. Recipes for Living in Postmodern Society 333
References 334
PART THREE
Recapitulation 337
CHAPTER 8 Putting It All Together 338
Narrative 340
Two Metaphors for "Putting It All Together" 341
luggling 341
Weaving 344
Relations Among Aspects of our Social Worlds 344
Compatibility 345
Hierarchy 346
Patterns of Interpersonal Communication 349
Enabling 349
Supporting Healthy Self- Concepts 353
Persuasive Interviewing 354
Living Comfortably with Paradox 357
Three Final Words 361
Robinson's Laws of Shared Pain and loy 361
Stability and Change in Our Social Worlds 364
What "Good" Communication Means 365
/.
xiv Contents
Praxis 366
1. Racism, Sexism, and Classism 366
2. Developing Healthy Self- Concepts 367
3. Interviewing 368
References 368
Photo Credits 371
Name Index 373
Subject Index 376

PREFACE
Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds is a textbook for college

and university courses in interpersonal communication. These are very popular
courses, but their popularity does not derive from a consensus on how they
should be taught. Fifteen years ago, my survey of the field found three very
different clusters of textbooks and related research programs. I called them
the "objective scientific," "humanistic celebration," and "humane scientific"
approaches (Pearce 1977). Although the field has developed in the interven-
ing years, considerable diversity in the way this course is taught still remains.
One index of the lack of consensus is found in bibliographies. Boynton-Trigg's
(199 1 ) survey of five leading textbooks in interpersonal communication found
that although a total of 336 authors were cited, only two Mark Knapp and —
—
Paul Watzlawick were cited in all five textbooks.
I set my hand to the task of writing another textbook with the explicit
understanding that it would not be "just another textbook." I wanted to

make a contribution to the materials available for teaching interpersonal
communication, and I had two choices: to write an integrative textbook
including all the topics taught under the rubric of interpersonal communica-
tion, or to write a distinctive book that takes what I consider to be the most
powerful concepts in the field and makes them available for students. I
chose to do the latter; if I have succeeded, Interpersonal Communication:

Making Social Worlds is conceptually distinctive, pedagogically rich and
"user friendly."
The Conceptual Orientation
This book is written from the "social constructionist" approach to interper-

sonal communication. The body of work known as the "coordinated manage-
ment of meaning" is the supportive infrastructure of this book, and is located
in the larger context of systems theory (as articulated by Gregory Bateson
and his intellectual heirs); language -game analysis (as developed from Ludwig
Wittgenstein by Rom Harre, John Shotter, Ken Gergen, and others); the
American Pragmatists (chiefly William James, John Dewey, and George Her-
bert Mead,they have been interpreted by Richard Bernstein, Giles Gunn,
as
and Richard Rorty); the symbolic analysis of Kenneth Burke (as it has influ-
enced a generation of scholars); and contemporary ethnographic research
xv
—
xvi Preface
manner of Clifford Geertz, Harold Garfinkel, and Erving Goffman

(after the ).
My appropriation of all of these into a communication theory, particularly a

theory of interpersonal communication, was done as part of a loosely bound
group and in (sometimes intense) dialogue with communication theorists
whose work focuses on interpersonal, intercultural, mass-mediated, and rhe-
torical communication.
The social constructionist approach thematizes interpersonal communi-
cation in a distinctive manner. The "process" of communication per se
an undulating, co-constructed activity of conversation — is emphasized; the
various "products" of interpersonal communication are situated in that pro-
cess. Traditional topics, such as intercultural communication, nonverbal com-
munication, and self-disclosure are presented as part of an integrated analysis
of conversation rather than as isolated variables or themes.
The Structure of the Book
Each chapter includes three parts: "Narrative," "Counterpoints," and

"Praxis." These allow students to learn from complementary perspectives.
"Narrative" sections provide information and concepts with which to think
about interpersonal communication, "Counterpoints" provoke a playful peer-
ing around the corners of taken- for- granted assumptions, and "Praxis" sec-
tions structure activities in which students can learn from encountering the
stuff of interpersonal communication. These sections do not duplicate each
other. In fact, they are not always consistent: the tensions between exposition,
provocation, and participation are the sites in which learning about interper-
sonal communication takes place.
The "Narrative" sections are the most familiar; they are straightforward
expositions of information about interpersonal communication. This material
is didactic, allowing students to learn by remembering what they read. Of
the three types of material, this is the one about which I am most ambivalent.
Straightforward expositions are the most effective way of teaching students
who are highly motivated and who are appropriately focused. However, it is
the least effective way of learning about interpersonal communication.
While Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, George Gerb-
ner noted that universities developed in a context best described as "informa-
tionally deprived." Students would leave their homes and go to colleges
that were oases of information and intellection. Libraries and lecturers were
appropriately seen as repositories of the accumulated information of the
culture,and education was primarily a matter of access to those resources.
This hardly describes the contemporary scene; Gerbner described ours as an
"information-saturated" society. To avoid being swamped by information,
our students have developed sophisticated skills in disattending to informa-
Preface xvii
tion; the college classroom often fares poorly in competition with the enter-
taining presentation of information in films, television, specialty magazines,
and conventions of hobbyists or fans. The narrative description of interper-
sonal communication must be very good indeed to rival that provided in
soap operas, serious films, Nova presentations, and an increasingly sophisti-
cated street wisdom in which gangs, drugs, sex, and racial prejudice are a
part of the overt consciousness of students. Because the "Narrative" sections
must compare unfavorably with the production values of A/TV and the mar-
keting strategies of specialty magazines or narrowly cast electronic publica-
tions, the "Counterpoint" sections are included to exploit the potential of
a printed textbook and the "Praxis" sections to exploit the resources of a
college classroom.
"Counterpoints" comprise the second type of material in Interpersonal
Communication: Making Social Worlds. Print remains the best medium for
stimulating reflective, analytical thought. Inserted into the "Narratives" but
distinguished from them by being enclosed in boxes, these materials include
provocations, commentary, imitations to shift perspectives, metacommunica-
tion, and the literary equivalent to theatrical asides in which I "break charac-
ter" as author and speak directly to the reader. Some are thought-provoking
quotations or questions; some are simply bits of information or ideas that I
want to call to students' attention; some are conundrums that perplex me;
but all are intended to develop that serious but slightly irreverent attitude
toward the "Narrative" that is the precondition for reflective, analytical
thought.
The importance of an irreverent, playful mindset cannot be over stressed.
Interpersonal communication is a fluid, contingent, unfinished process in
which we participate from a perspective more like that of the paddler of a
canoe on a Whitewater river than that of a cartographer mapping the river's
course; from a perspective more like that of a boxer whose chin has suddenly
encountered the fist of his opponent than that of a celebrity television an-
nouncer. Our knowledge and participation in such a process from such a
perspective requires a good bit of playfulness or at least intellectual athleticism.
Much of the material in the "Counterpoints" consists of conceptual agility
drills; limbering exercises for the mind that enable more flexible practice of
interpersonal communication.
The "Praxis" sections comprise the third and most distinctive feature
of the book. These are activities that I urge students to do, usually in groups
and generally in class. I do not view these as a supplement to the text; to the
contrary, these activities are the site where the most effective and valuable
learning will take place. The activities are closely tied to the concepts presented
in the "Narrative" and "Counterpoint" sections, but one were forced to
if
choose among them, I think that a student would learn more about interper-
sonal communication from participating in the praxis activities than from
reading (and passing an examination on) the "narrative."
xviii Preface
Differentiating Kinds of Knowledge

I am committed communication
to "participatory learning" in interpersonal
not because of personal preference but because that what my analysis of
is
interpersonal communication requires. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

differentiated theoria (spectator knowledge), poesis (knowledge of tech-
niques), and praxis (good judgment, or practical wisdom). Each of these
ways of knowing are appropriate for a particular category of events. Theoria
is appropriate for eternal, immutable objects; poesis, for repetitive, rote perfor-
mances; and praxis, for things that are contingent. Contingent things, in
Aristotle's words, are those that could be other than what they are. Politics,
public speaking, and household management, according to Aristotle, are
included in the domain of praxis because they are contingent.
Interpersonal communication is clearly part of praxis; every conversation
in which we participate could be (or has been) something other than it is (or
was). If we had done this rather than that, then she would have done that
rather than this, and our lives would have been different. This is the form of
knowledge about interpersonal communication: it is contingent, uncertain,
temporal, and from a first-person perspective. The next time we meet, so our
knowledge goes, if I do this rather than what she expects me to do, then she
may do that, which opens up a space in which we can do that and so. . .
on.
The kind of knowledge illustrated in the preceding paragraph has little
to do with "facts" and, although it presumes a mastery of technique, it goes
far beyond it. Aristotle used the term phronesis for the kind of knowledge
that is useful in praxis: it has more to do with the skilled judgment of a virtuoso
artist than with a list of facts; more with the "instinctive" performance of
a dancer or ballplayer than with an encyclopedia of information; it is better

"coached" than taught.
Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds is explicitly com-
mitted to facilitating the development of phronesis in the students who use
it. For that reason, it invites participation rather than prescribes formula; it
probes, suggests, playfully nudges, as well as didactically sets forth the received
wisdom. It will frustrate those — teachers and students—who seek to utter
the last word about interpersonal communication; it will reward those who
seek to explore, open up possibilities, and enhance their ability to appreciate
beauty and goodness in the social worlds in which they live.
Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds provides a rich

At the same time, it is a demanding text.
array of materials for the instructor.
The instructor must decide how much to emphasize the didactic material in
the "Narratives," the metacommunication in the "Counterpoints," and the
activities in the "Praxis." Some instructors will want to incorporate materials
not covered in the textbook or to read further in social constructionist theory

to lead critical discussions of the conceptual basis of the course. These topics.
Preface xix
as well as suggestions for syllabus preparation and evaluation, are discussed

in the Instructors' Manual.
Interpersonal Communication and "The Real World"
Just as our social worlds must, Interpersonal Communication: Making Social

Worldsdcals with tough problems such as race, gender, class, injustice,
real-life,
and ideological oppression as they relate to interpersonal communication.

Embedded in the description of the process of interpersonal communication
is a treatment of the human life cycle. The forms and functions of interpersonal
communication change as we mature; the challenges and resources available

to us are not always the same. Interpersonal Communication: Making Social
Worlds attempts to enable students of all races, ages, and social classes to
identify their own positions within the matrix of conversations in their lives,
and to understand that others occupy other positions.
This leads me to a final confession. For twenty-something years I have
labored as a minor academic, trying to develop communication theory. Any
sufficiently self- aware person must occasionally ask, "Why?" What deep psy-
chosis or purpose impels one to labor long into nights better suited for
feasting or sleeping?What unconscious attraction drags the attention again
and again to the same phenomena when one could look elsewhere for novelty?
Why continue to wrestle with language, imprisoning legions of words on
ranks of pages and struggling to find new ways of putting things?
These dark musings are in the spirit of e.e. cummings' observation that
since feeling is first
who pays any attention

to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis
Sometimes our students will ask, with fewer dark edges to their questions,
"What will a course in interpersonal communication do for me?"
The answer that sustains me, and that I offer through this book to
generations of students whom I will never see, is this. The study of interper-
sonal communication enhances our ability to appreciate beauty and goodness
in the social worlds around us, it increases our ability to call into being
patterns of social interaction that are good and beautiful, it empowers our
ability to embrace the conditions of our lives playfully and thus transcend
them, and in these ways, it enriches our lives and enhances our value as
participants in our social worlds.
xx Preface
Because interpersonal communication is a form of praxis, it is best

understood in terms of whether it is done well or poorly, and whether the
patterns it produces are beautiful or ugly. There is far more than enough
ugliness in the patterns of interpersonal communication that surround us,
and the one pays for heightened ethical and aesthetic appreciation
price that
is a keener awareness of evil and ugliness. But if we are to avoid reproducing
in our own lives variations of the same old reprehensible patterns we abhor,
we must increase our phronesis.
The patterns of interpersonal communication in every social setting also
contain beauty and goodness. Students who take seriously what is written
here, and who engage with the questions and activities suggested in the text,
will be better able to discern, appreciate, and create instances of such beauty.
Acknowledgments
Many people have contributed to the production of this book; some have
contributed far more than they knew. (Confidentially, that's the risk you take
when you are in the presence of social theorists who regularly plagiarize daily
life!) Citing them in this preface reflects much more heartfelt gratitude than
might appear to be conveyed in a list of names.
Vernon Cronen, University of Massachusetts, has been my partner for
nearly two decades as we have tried to develop a coherent set of thoughts
around the metaphor of "coordinated management of meaning." His influ-
ence on this book far exceeds the number of times his name is cited; of
— —
course, he will think probably correctly that the book would be better
were his influence even greater!
My most valuable learning experience during this past decade has been
working with an international group of therapists, consultants, and researchers
who have been heavily influenced by the work of Gregory Bateson. Among
many others, they include Peter Lang, Susan Lang, Martin Litde, and Marjorie
Henry of the Kensington Consultation Centre (London); Gianfranco Cecchin
and Luigi Boscolo of the Centro Milanese di Terapia della Famiglia; Anna
Castellucci of the Ospedale psichiatrico "F. Rancati" di Bologna; Laura Frug-
geri of the Universita di Parma; Maurizo Marzari of the Universita di Bologna;
Dora Schnitman of the Fundacion Interfas (Buenos Aires); Elspeth McAdam
of Bethel Hospital (Norwich); and Eduardo Villar C. of the Fundacion de
Psicoanalisis y Psicoterapis (Bogota).
James Applegate, University of Kentucky, and Bob Craig, University
of Colorado, made more contributions to this work than they probably
realize; to them, a heartfelt thanks. The ideas in this book have been worked
out in conversations over many years with Jim Averill, University of Massachu-
setts, Amherst; Art Bochner, University of South Florida; Bob Branham,
Bates College; Donal Carbaugh, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Victo-

ria Chen, Denison University; Don Cushman, State University of New York
Preface xxi
atAlbany; Sally Freeman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Ken Gergen,

Swarthmore College; Rom Harre, Oxford University-; Kang Kyung-wha, Of-
fice of the Speaker, National Assembly, Republic of Korea; Jack Lannamann,
University of New Hampshire; Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, University of Wiscon-
sin, Parkside; Uma Narula, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi;
Robyn Penman, Communication Research of Australia; Gerry Phil-
Institute
ipsen, University ofWashington; John Shotter, University of New Hampshire;
Tim Stevens, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Claudio Baraldi, University of
Urbino; Jennings Bryant, University of Alabama, Tuskaloosa; Paulo Sacchetti,
Forli; Stuart Sigman, University of New York, Albany; and Bob Saunders,
University of New York, Albany.
I am particularly indebted to Diana Kincaid, North Central College,
for many useful responses to early drafts of the manuscript. Melissa Rosati
was the Communications Editor at Harper Collins who initially suggested
this project; Anne Boynton-Trigg was the Development Editor who kept my
feet to the fire; and Dan Pipp, the Editor who saw the project through: to
them, thanks for allowing me the opportunity' to break some of the conven-
tions of textbook writing.
A number of anonymous reviewers sent often-conflicting messages
about what was good and bad in various drafts of the manuscript; they
comprised a goodly chorus of interlocutors to whom I am deeply indebted.
When I discovered their identities, I found that three of these reviewers
deserve my double thanks, both as reviewers and as continuing conversational
partners over the years. So a special affirmation of gratitude for matters
great and small to Stanley Deetz, Rutgers University; Stephen W. Littlejohn,
Humboldt State University; and Sheila McNamee, University of New Hamp-
shire. I appreciate the help offered by Joseph Folger, Temple University;
Roger L. Garrett, Central Washington University; Beth A. LePoire, Texas
A&M University, Jonathan Millen, Rider College; and George B. Ray, Cleve-
land State University.
Finally, my wife, Nur Intan Murtadza, accepted the intrusion of this
project into our family gracefully. Her support and encouragement, particu-
larly during the period when writing was a necessary obsession, is greatly
appreciated.
References
Boynton-Trigg, Anne. Personal communication. 1991.
cummings, e.e., "since feeling is first." The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 3rd
ed., 1042. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.

Gerbner, George. "Liberal Education in the Information Age." 1983-84
Current Issues in Higher Education, pp. 14—18.
Pearce, W. Barnett. "Teaching Interpersonal Communication as a Humane
Science: A Comparative Analysis." Communication Education, 26
(1977): 104-112.
N
Overture
I use the word "conversation" metaphorically to refer

not only to speech but to all techniques and technol-
ogies that permit people of a particular culture to
exchange messages. In this sense, all culture is a conver-
sation or, more precisely, a corporation of conversa-
tions, conducted in a variety of symbolic modes.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin,

p. 6.
CHAPTER
1 Understanding Conversations
Suppose that a social scientist had observed a pair of

friends sitting on a park bench having a conversation. . . .
Suppose further that the social scientist approached

the pair with the following: "Pardon me. noticed
I
that the two of you were having a conversation. As a

scientist and a student of conversation, what want
I
to know is this: How did you do that?" Clearly the initial

response to such a question would be utter befuddlement;
the second would probably be "Do what?" Most of us
regard conversation as effortless. ... To suggest
to its unreflecting practitioners that it might be appro-
priately regarded as an accomplishment would be
to create doubt as to the number of oars, so to speak,
that one had in the water.
Despite the fact that most people take the ability to

carry on a conversation for granted, closer inspec-
tion reveals that [it] . is a highly complex activity
. .
that requires of those who would engage in it the

ability to apply a staggering amount of knowledge . . .
McLaughlin 1984, pp. 13-14.

KEY WORDS
OUTLINE OBJECTIVES AND PHRASES
Narrative After reading this Some terms that will help

chapter, you will be you understand this
The Formal Study of a able to chapter include
Familiar Process
Analyze models and definitions
What Knowing About conversations from of communication,
Interpersonal Commu- both first- and third-
nication Means common sense, first-
person perspectives
and third-person
Conceptualizing
Describe the moral perspectives, theoria
Interpersonal
orders of specific and praxis, phronesis,
Communication
conversations
and logics of meaning
An Analysis of a Conver-
Choose among and action
sation from First- and
alternative
Third-Person
"readings" of
Perspectives
conversations
A Final Word: Conver-
sation and Moral Compare the social
constructionist
Responsibility
on
perspective
communication
with the
Praxis transmission/
representation
1. A Communication model
Analysis of Your
Communication
Class
2. "What's Going on
1
Here?' Giving a
"Good Reading" of
a Conversation
3. Learning the
Moral Order of
Conversations
4. Judging the Actions
of Other People
5. Comparing Read-
ings of Conversations
4 Chapter 1 Understanding Conversations
Niarrative
People have always participated in interpersonal communication, but only a
few, and those only relatively recently, have ever studied it. Interpersonal
communication is a relatively new addition (i.e., within the past fifty years)
to the curriculum ofmost universities, and courses in interpersonal commu-
nication are most commonly found in the United States. In most
still
other countries, "communication" is virtually equated with "mass

communication."
What have researchers found sufficiently interesting in interpersonal
communication that we have invested our adult lifetime in studying it? Why
have hard-nosed college administrators decided thaLthe results of our work
is important enou^fh,-eA^n-4fi-aiT~eTal5Ftight budgets, to include it in the
curriculum? Much more importandy, what do you want toknow about inter-
personal communication? What do we mean by interpersonal communication
anyway? What does "knowing" about interpersonal communication mean?
The Formal Study of a Familiar Process
Those who raise a quizzical eyebrow at the formal study of interpersonal

communication have a point: there is nothing more "normal," central, or
basic to what it means to be a human being than to be in interpersonal
communication. Every one of us "knows" a lot about interpersonal communi-
cation, and we are all able to get along quite well in the conversations that
comprise our daily lives.
When Common Sense Is Not Enough

If you are like most people, interpersonal communication is so much a part
of your everyday life that you are unaware of it. Like walking or breathing,
interpersonal communication is so normal that you only think about it when
something goes wrong. But things do go wrong: if you have sprained your
ankle, walking from your home to your car requires both thought and cour-
age, or if you have asthma or infected sinuses, the very idea of an effordess
breath of fresh air seems like an impossible ecstasy. A sufficient reason for
taking a course in interpersonal communication as part of your higher educa-
tion is that all of us will face situations for which our common-sense knowledge
is insufficient.
What you learn from this book will probably not loom large in your
consciousness while you are having a casual chat with your friends or enjoying
a conversation during dinner with your family. However, life is not always
so "normal." Think with me about some of the conversations that you will
surely have at one time or another.

You about the careers you expect to have after

are talking with a classmate
graduation. To your surprise, your friend thinks that your assumption that
hard work and personal contacts will lead to financial success is naive. She
believes that God has a purpose for every life,and that this purpose may
mean that you will live your life in poverty, regardlessof your efforts. For
the sake of your soul, she suggests, God might destroy your career and teach
you the virtues of humility and poverty no matter how intelligent or diligent
you are. A third classmate has overheard the conversation and disagrees with
both of you. Citing the extent to which personal fortunes are dependent on
political and economic factors far removed from the control of individuals,
he cites economic determinism as the causal factor in your financial success.
Your prosperity will rise or fall on the basis of decisions made by Japanese
stockbrokers or Middle Eastern oil investors whom you will never meet.
You have never reallv thought about these issues; how do vou continue the \
conversation? (jj<? 1 QUA CX
You are preparing for an important job interview. How do you make a
good impression? How can you discern what the interviewer is looking for?
How can you present yourself most favorably? ^4-PaY) f-MrCV ^.Â SÔ d(\ _L^>" .0-^
At another time, you are interviewing someone towork for you. What ^^^(p
questions can you ask that will enable you to choose someone whose work
will meet your needs rather than someone who just knows how to perform
well in an interview?
A friend drops by your apartment late one night, deeply upset and needing / q n ^^
to talk about some personal problems. What kinds of questions do you
ask your friend? How do you answer your friend's questions? How is this
conversation similar to and different from an employment interview?
Sooner or later, you will have a conversation with a medical doctor who
will tell you bad news. These conversations often go badly; you find that you
do not get the information you need to make some important decisions,
such as whether to have surgery or to change some important part of your
lifestyle. How can you do better in these conversations? How do you tell
your spouse, your parents, or your children that you have a life -threatening
physical condition? What do you say to a member of your family or a friend
who has just learned that she or he has a sexually transmitted disease or a
terminal illness?
There will be significant events in your relationships with your parents,
your lover(s), your spouse, and your children. For example, you will discuss
whether to live together, to get married, to get divorced, or to take that
fateful first trip to meet your significant other's parents. You will decide
whether to have children, how to apportion the tasks of raising the children,
and whether the children should be encouraged to play contact sports in
school. The meaning of these events will be constructed in conversations
about them. Should these conversations have a special form? How should
you speak and how should you listen in these conversations? Should you do
anything differently than you normally do?
z
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^b^b^b^b^H* ^H b^bt ^b^b^b^h

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_
/A// of us w/7/ face situations for which our common-sense knowledge about interpersonal communication
is insufficient.
Counterpoint 1.1
A sufficient reason for studying interpersonal communication is that all
of us will participate, sooner or later, in unusual situations for which

our common sense is not sufficient. This claim, however, depends on a
particular notion of what is meant by normal situations and by common

sense.
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1983, p. 75) defined common sense as
"a relatively organizedbody of considered thought." That definition,
of course, could apply to religion, science, or any political ideology. The
distinguishing characteristic of "common sense," Geertz claimed, is that
itdenies that it is "a relatively organized body of considered thought."
To the contrary, common sense presents itself as what anyone in his
right mind knows, and its tenets as "immediate deliverances of experi-
ence, not deliberated reflections upon it." The power of common
knows
sense is exactly this pretense of immediacy, that everyone naturally
what common sense means. As Geertz said, "Religion rests its case
on revelation, science on method, ideology on moral passion; but com-
mon sense rests its on the assertion that it is not a case at all, just
life in a nutshell. The world is its authority."
As a person who has lived in and studied many cultures, Geertz (1983,
p. 80) noted the importance of common sense. "It is this conviction of the
plain man is on
[sic] that he that makes action possible
top of things . . .
for him at all, and which must therefore be protected at all costs."
. . .
Your ability to move through a day filled with complex conversations

requires that you do not stop and make scientific or philosophical
analyses every time someone asks you "How are you?" or encourages
you to "have a nice day!"
However, the necessity for all of us to rely on common sense does not
mean that the content of your common sense or mine is "right." Science
is, amongother things, a process for discovering that certain common-
sense notions do not work out in real life, and anthropologists have shown
that the common senses of various cultures differ significantly. For exam-
ple, although the division of human beings into two genders is one of the
most powerful dichotomies we know, there are many people who
that
have physical characteristics of both sexes. This is known as intersexuality
or hermaphroditism. Geertz (1983, pp. 80-84) contrasted three cultures'
common sense about hermaphroditism: contemporary Americans,
Navaho, and Pokot (a culture in Kenya), and concluded (p. 84) that "Com-
mon sense is not what the mind cleared of cant spontaneously appre-
hends; it is what the mind filled with presuppositions . . . concludes.
God may have made the intersexuals, but man has made the rest."
Our ability to carry on the many conversations that fill our days requires
us to rely on our common sense. However, this common sense is a
more or less well-organized body of (more or less) considered thought.
One function of a liberal education is to call into question the common
sense that you have acquired from your culture, permitting you to sift,
test, rearrange, and finally to "own" your own common sense rather
than relying on it unreflectively. This ownership of your common sense
is valuable in two types of situations: those so unusual that your
common sense provides an insufficient guide and those that strain your f
ability to act normally.
The concept of acting normally also requires some
thought. The most
common concept is that the norm is what most people do. That is, if a survey
£
shows that most people between the ages of 18 and 22 have three roman-
tic relationships, you are "normal" if you have three and "abnormal" if you
have more or fewer.
Jack Bilmes (1986), among many others, argues that this concept of
c-~ normal simply does not work. He came to this conclusion while doing
\ \ /) research for his doctoral dissertation; the study "failed" (Bilmes 1986,
'/ p. 1) because people's talk does not represent how their minds work. He
asked his subjects to explain how they came to community decisions, and
WX^ found that their "talk was no longer useful to me as a description of the
^ invisible motions of their minds
I
I
—
it was just talk. From their ex-
planations of their decisions, could not hope to learn how they had
reached those decisions, but could learn about how villagers explain their
decisions, if would be willing to settle for that."
I
Bilmes (1986, p. 161) suggested that norms are not statistical averages
(e.g., "65 percent of 21-year-olds have had three romantic relationships") or
moral imperatives (e.g., "21-year-olds should have had three romantic
relationships"). Rather, they are "the idiom of negotiation." That is, they are
bits of common sense that are cited in conversations to make what people
say and do normal. We "orient to rules and are capable of recog-
. . .
nizing whether behavior conforms to the rules" (Bilmes 1986, p. 166).

Twenty-one-year-olds are not abnormal if they have had more or
fewer than the average number of romantic relationships as long as they
know how to normalize their romantic history by orienting to the norm. "I'm
saving my libido until later, when can afford it," Emil said, normalizing
I
his fewer-than-average relationships.

—
Normalizing your actions that is, orienting them to some of the bits
of information or value judgments embedded in common sense is—
an important part of communication competence. However, there will be
times when you need to examine the content of yourcommon sense. Perhaps
you want to be outrageous, acting in ways that are not normal; perhaps
you need to expose and bring about change in some aspect of com-
mon sense. In these situations, you need to be able to put your common
sense in the foreground and to choose whether and how to "normal-
ize" your behavior.
You meet with your teacher to discuss an assignment for class. The quality
of this conversation may determine whether you do well or poorly on the
project, whether you understand when the- assignment is due, and thus
whether you do well in the course. How can you be sure that the conversation
goes as well as possible?
Someone you know commits commits an unthinkable crime, or
suicide,
suddenly and has to be treated for mental illness.
starts acting irrationally
When this happens, you will ask yourself why you did not see it coming.
What did they say or do that might have given you a sign of how distressed
they were? You will find yourself thinking like a communication theorist,
asking, If I had done this, would she have done that: or Was it inevitable?
Mundane Sites of Important Processes
When we examine these significant, abnormal conversations, we realize that

many of the most important things that we do in our lives are done in
conversations. From this realization, it is a simple step to realize that for most
of us, most of our waking lives are spent in conversations. Interpersonal
communication is not only normal, it is ubiquitous. When we stop taking
conversations for granted and focus on them, we discover that even ordinary,
mundane conversations are the sites of important processes.
For example, the way our parents treated us when we asked them to
play with us in the park or if we could have a dog is more important than
whether we went to the park or got the dog. These conversations taught us
about who we are, what rights we have, and which ways of interacting with
others are effective. Some of us learned that "asking politely" is both appro-
priate and effective; others of us learned that demands got better results than
requests; still others learned that tears and tantrums worked best. Most of
us have long since forgotten that we learned these lessons in conversations
when we were very young, but they continue to give shape to our manner
of relating to authority figures long after we have become adults.
A Distinctive Way of Understanding our Social Worlds

The best reason to study interpersonal communication is that it gives us a
unique and incisive way of understanding ourselves, our relationships with
others, and the situations in which we find ourselves in — our "social
short,
worlds." Of course, most of the departments in a university enhance your
understanding of social worlds, but they do so in different (although fre-
quendy overlapping) ways. In this course, we will think about many of the
same topics as you might explore in anthropology', psychology, sociology,
economics, literature, political science, and history, but the interpersonal
communication perspective is distinctive for three reasons.
First, it includes a first-person perspective, not only describing patterns
of social interaction but also placing you within those patterns and helping
you address the question, What should I do? That is, this course does not
just tell you what generally happens or how you should critique what happens,
it includes you and what you do in the process we are studying. Increasing
your ability to sense openings, to envision a wider array of opportunities,

and to intervene in ways that serve your purposes and those of the people
—
around you that is, your competence is an integral part of the course.
Second, the interpersonal communication perspective focuses on actions
rather than on objects. That is, in addition to describing some of the wonderful
and horrible events and objects in our social worlds, the study of interpersonal
communication helps you deal with the question What should I do about it?
Third, the study of interpersonal communication is incomplete if all it
does is to give you new facts about interpersonal communication (although
Counterpoint 1.2
The distinction between the first- and third-person perspective explains

the difference between two wings of empirical research in the social
sciences the United States. About one hundred years ago, social theo-
in
rists were just beginning to use empirical methods of research. J. B. Watson

(1919; 1928) founded the school of behaviorism, which took an unremit-
ting third-person orientation to the social world. In this view, the scientist
cares only about data obtained by third-person observers in controlled,
preferably laboratory, settings. On the other hand, William James and
John Dewey, in somewhat different ways, offered versions of a first-
person orientation to the social world. James (1967, originally pub-

lished in 1912) used the term radical empiricism and Dewey (1929, origi-
nally published in 1925) experience. Both focused on the experiencing
subject as the proper data for social theory.
Watson's ideas won the battle and dominated American social theory
during the first half of the century. More recently, social scientists
trained in this tradition have expended much energy learning how to
think beyond it. "New paradigms" have been on the agenda for social theo-
rists for the past twenty years.
The contest between these positions seldom focused on the perspective
from which social activity was being analyzed. Perhaps it should have; in
this book, we will carefully differentiate among the person-perspectives
from which we understand interpersonal communication. A conversa-
tion is a very different thing, depending on whether it is understood from
the first-person or the third-person perspective.
I suspect that you will learn quite a few). It is more important

you learn that
new tools for thinking about the process of interpersonal communication.
That is, if you do well in this course, you may or may not increase your
knowledge about interpersonal communication, but you will certainly increase
your sophistication and ability to make jjood judgments in real situations. When
someone asks you what you learned in this course, I hope that you will say
something to the effect that you learned some new ways of thinking and
acting.
To help achieve these goals, each chapter includes two sections. The
first is "Narrative": these sections contain a straightforward presentation of
information similar to any textbook. The second is "Praxis": these sections
contain a series of discussions that require you to do things. I believe that
the "Praxis" sections are the most important of the two; the "Narrative"
sections provide you with information, but what you learn from this course
will be achieved in the process of doing things with that information.
What Knowing About Interpersonal Communication Means 11
What Knowing About Interpersonal

Communication Means
In the passage I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, McLaughlin 1984, (
p. 13-14) said that a "staggering amount of knowledge" is required to

participate in a conversation. Clearly she is right, but questions remain. What
knowledge? What kind of knowledge? Does this kind of knowledge come in
measurable, quantifiable amounts? Is it more like the knowledge required to
compute the radius of a circle or to run the weave pattern in a fast break in
basketball? Is this knowledge something you learn by memorizing the results
of research or by reflecting on your own experience?
A long-established prejudice in Western intellectual history makes us
think that "knowing" means the ability to write sentences or answer multiple-
choice questions, and that "knowledge" should take the form of the axioms
in geometry or the equations This book about interpersonal com-
in physics.
munication offers way of understanding your social worlds, in
a distinctive
part because it opposes this prejudice. It envisions your knowledge as some-
thing more like a football running back who knows when to cut to his left
than a diagram of a play in the playbook, more like an expert seamstress's
knowledge of how to tie a thread than a textbook description of how the
thread should be tied, and more like a public speaker who knows when to
quit speaking and sit down than a rhetorical critic's checklist for a good
speech.
If all goes well, what you will learn in this course will be more like getting
the point of a joke than memorizing a Understanding interpersonal
list.
communication is, as Clifford Geertz (1983, p. 10) put it, "rather closer to
what a critic does to illumine a poem than what an astronomer does to
account for a star."
Fortunately,we can do more than cite similes to make distinctions
among The following paragraphs review some historical
kinds of knowledge.
differentiations about things which are known and the form knowledge about
them takes. In addition, they present some new models of the kind of knowl-
edge that you should develop about interpersonal communication.
Interpersonal Communication as Contingent (Praxis)
The term praxis is a transliteration of a Greek word used by the philosopher

Aristotle in hisbook, the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle was primarily a natural
scientist; his studies of how eggs become chickens is a landmark in the
development of science, and he spent much time categorizing the flora and
fauna brought back by the armies of his student, Alexander the Great (Harre
1981). However, Aristotle also made important contributions to what we
now know as the social sciences and humanities.
As Aristotle thought about these topics, he realized that it was important
to distinguish different kinds of knowledge because, as he put it, in the
MJ
physical world, things have to be what they are, but in the world of human
activities, things can be other than what they arc. That is, if you throw a rock,
it has no choice but to travel in a trajectory governed by gravity, the resistance
of the air, and the momentum that you know these things,
you gave it. If
you can compute (as Galileo did many years later) just where and when it
will hit the ground. You need not ask the rock if it wants to hit the ground
on that spot or what it thinks about being thrown. However, if you make
an argument, the persons to whom you are speaking may or may not be
persuaded, and you can never predict the extent and direction that they will
be affected by your argument with the confidence that you can predict ballistic
trajectories. Knowing that, you may decide not even to try to persuade them,
—
or to use unusual techniques to persuade them in short, your actions and
theirs are contingent on each other and both may be, in Aristotle's terms,
other than what thev are.
Refrain 1.1
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle differentiated three parts of the world

that humans know and said that the kinds of knowledge possible in each
were different.
Types of Types of
Domains events/objects knowledge Expression
Theoria Eternaland Episteme Syllogistic

immutable;they must (facts) reasoning
be what they are (induction,
deduction)
Praxis Things are contingent Phronesis The practical
on each other; they (practical wisdom; syllogism;
may be other than good judgment) deontic
what they are logics*
Poesis Things that are made Techne How-to-do-it
(skill) manuals;
training
Interpersonal communication is a part of the domain of praxis. What

happens any given conversation is contingent on everything else that
in
happens; the conversation could have turned out differently if you had
said "this" instead of "that." Knowledge about interpersonal communication
takes the forms of phronesis or practical wisdom. The closest thing we
have to a formal model of phronesis is the practical syllogism; the
best metaphors are the ability of a virtuoso musician or the seemingly

instinctive moves of a great athlete.
•Although formal deontic logics were developed only in this century, they are fully
consistent with Aristotle's notions of praxis and phronesis. think Aristotle would enjoy
I
using modern modal logics.
Good Judgment or Practical Wisdom (Phronesis)
Being the great systemizer that he was, Aristotle developed formal descriptions
of these domains of experience and the appropriate forms of knowledge for
each. Aristotle believed that theoria (fromwhich we get the term theory) was
possible for things that must be what they are (e.g., the ballistic trajectories
of a well-thrown rock), and episteme (from which we get the term epistemology
or the study of how we know) is the corresponding means of knowledge.
For this part of our experience, syllogistic reasoning is the valid form of
thinking. For example, the following is a valid syllogism in that if the premises
are true, then the conclusion must (without exception) be true:
All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man;
therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Syllogisms do not tell us anything we did not already know; that is, the
"conclusio n s" are already contained in the "premise s." Their usefulness lies
in providing patterns for our reasoning so that we can see just how we connect
one thought to another. In the best instances, we can check to make sure
that we are not making mistakes, such as believing what would be nice rather
than what is true.
However, the syllogisms described above are not very useful for under-
standing interpersonal communication. Two features of interpersonal com-
munication distinguish it from the class of statements like "All men are
mortal." First, among acts are contingent, not certain; that
the connections
is, they deal with moral obligations rather than statistical probabilities or
lawlike relationships. Second, interpersonal communication deals primarily
with the question of What should I dot rather than the question What do I
know}
To represent the logical structure of interpersonal communication, we
have to deal with what people think they must or ought or must not do, and
we need to deal with the fact that people do not always do what they think
they should, and even when they do, things do not always work out as they
expected.
For example, Kristina "knows" that if she says, "I want a puppy," her
father will reply with a long list of reasons why a canine around the house is
impractical, unnecessary, and expensive, and finally say "No!" However, she
also "knows" that if she wants a puppy (i.e., for X to occur), she can bring
one home and let her father play with it (i.e., she must do T), and her father
may bond with the puppy and agree to let her keep it. Therefore, she tries
to find a puppy that she can bring home. Whether she gets to keep the puppy
is clearly contingent: whatever happens does not have to happen, it could
work out differently. The kind of knowledge that is useful for contingent
relationships is not the sort that you write as "laws" or describe in formal
syllogisms. Rather, it is the kind of knowledge that has conditional probabili-
ties and first-person pronouns in it ("Maybe if I did this, then he would do
that. . . .").
Praxis is the term Aristotle used for those aspects of human experience
in which contingency and moral obligation provide the structure. He named
politics, public speaking, and household management as examples. Certainly,
interpersonal communication belongs on this list.
When dealing with things that are contingent, however, we strive for
phronesis (practical wisdom and good judgment) rather than truth (i.e., intel-
lectual certainty), and we must use a form of reasoning that differs from that
syllogism described above. Fortunately, logicians have developed many useful
logics.
When we begin to compare types of logic, the "covering law" syllogisms
dealing with statements like "All men are mortal" are revealed as a particular
form of logic, not the only one. Because the syllogistic reasoning structure
deals with statements that are evaluated as "true" or "false," it is called an
communication, we need
alethic (i.e., truth -oriented) logic. In interpersonal
a logical form in which the statements describe whether we should perform
certain acts. Because it deals with moral obligation, this logic is called deontic
logic.
For present purposes, it is not necessary for you to become an expert
on various forms of logic. Just remember that the structure of interpersonal
communication can be described in a logical form, and that the basis of that
logic involves our perceptions of how we ought to act, rather than statements
about how the world is.
Counterpoint 1.3
In its most general sense, logic refers to the way things relate to each
other. If Jose cannot see the logic says, he cannot fit what
in what Carmine
she says into a pattern of other statements that she has made or that
Jose thinks are relevant.
We use many patterns or logics when we think. Some involve rigorous
reasoning, others, intuitive leaps. Kaplan (1964) made a useful distinction
between "logic-in-use" and "reconstructed logic." Logic-in-use refers to

the sometimes chaotic, fortuitous, serendipitous movement of our
minds; reconstructed logic refers to the calm, orderly, formal patterns
thatwe describe when we subsequently explain why we arrived at a
conclusion. These patterns of reconstructed logic are useful for presenting
ourselves as more logical than we really are, for stating our reasoning
so thatwe can perhaps persuade others to agree with us, and for dis-
playing the patterns of relations so that we can expose any unwanted
leaps.
I included these formal patterns in the "Narrative" to make three points.
First, the comparison of the different forms shows that there is a logic
of meaning and
action, not just a logic of propositions. The old adage
is "The heart has reasons of which the reason is unaware." Sec-
correct:
ond, the formal patterns of deontic and practical reason show that
it is possible to reconstruct the logic of meaning and action for what
conversants do, even if they say that they do not know why they did
what they did. Third, the presentation of the deontic and practical logics
begin an argument that extend throughout this book: the appropriate
I
vocabulary for explaining my/your/our participation in conversations is

comprised of terms of "oughtness" and "intentionality." That is, it is an
inherently moral vocabulary.
The deontic logic of moral obligation resembles the alethic logic of
truth in its syllogistic structure, but differs in the "logical operators"
that comprise the verbs of the statements in the syllogism. Instead of
using various forms of the verb "to be" (as alethic logic does), deontic
logic uses various terms describing the moral obligation of an action. For
example, Gerry Philipsen's (1975) studies of "teamsterville" (a suburb
of Chicago) found that certain conversations follow this logical structure:
If another man insults your wife, you are obligated to fight him.
This man insulted your wife;
therefore, you must fight him.
This deontic syllogism reconstructs the logic in the following conversation

(read it with a strong Irish accent):
Father O'Malley: Mike, I hear that you've been fighting in the bar again!
What do you have to say for yourself?
Mike: Ah, Father! had my mind set against it, just like you told me, but
I
then he up an' said a word against my wife and had no choice but to I
deck him. Sure and you can see that, can't you, Father?
Father O'Malley: A man's got to do what he's got to do, sure enough,
Mike, but can persuade you to do your drinking in another bar
I
where such a word might not be said quite so frequently?

Communication Vernon Cronen (in press) argues that two sets
theorist
of deontic logics are necessary for understanding conversations. The first
includes the operators "obligatory," "legitimate," "prohibited," and "un-
determined." Using these terms, we can reconstruct the logic of meaning
and action for things we do that we perceive as within our conscious
choice as, for example, Mike's account of his fight. A darker form of
human experience requires the operators "caused," "probable,"

"blocked," and "random." These terms express the felt moral obliga-
tion of action that we perform but do not think we can control. Outside
n ~ Wrf ton conscious volition, they are actions that we just do, or do not do, or have
happen to us. For example, our common sense tells us that we "fall" in
love; it is something that happens to us rather than something that
is in our conscious control (Averill 1992), and to reconstruct that logic,
we would need the latter set of deontic operators.

Father O'Malley asked Mike's friend Pat about Pat's participation in
If
the barroom brawl (noticing that Pat's knuckles and nose are both a bit scraped
up), Pat might reply, "I can't explain it, Father. When I'm talking to one
of the fellows, sometimes something just comes over me and before
I know it, I've hit him. One thing just leads to another, you know." Pat
and Mike may get into the same number of fights and for what appears
to a third-person observer someone
(i.e., like Philipsen, who is doing a
research project and is not from the culture) for the same reasons.
However, they very different moral worlds. Both reconstruct their
live in
logic of meaning and action as deontic
logic, but for Mike, there is a
sense of consciousness of the relations within that logic. Pat, on the other
hand, is always surprised by the course of events, no matter how
frequently they occur because they just seem to happen.
Practical reasoning differs from alethic logic in both form and operators.
A formal reconstruction of practical reasoning goes like this:
I want Xto occur.
I believe that if X is to occur, I must do Y,
therefore, I set myself to do Y.
You probably have not seen this syllogism laid out just this way because
itis a logician's nightmare. Even if both premises are true, might I
be prevented from doing Y, might do V badly and thus fail

I to bring about
X, or might do Y perfectly and find out that X still does not occur for any
I
of a dozen reasons (Pearce 1983).

At the end of this course, you will understand better where your "wants"
come from, you will have some tools with which to analyze the process
by which Xs and Ys are made, you will have a richer set of resources for
your beliefs about what Ys bring about what Xs and for understanding how
complicated that process is, and you will have an experiential knowledge
of what "setting yourself" to do things in interpersonal communica-
tion is all about.
Conceptualizing Interpersonal Communication
The best way to define interpersonal communication would be for yo u and

me to engage in a conversation and then stop it suddenly with the comment,
<c
This is what this book is all about!"
^[C)0 <^^cJ ci,

The second-best way of defining it is to call your attention to the

conversations occurring around you: neighbors quarreling, students help
all
ing each other figure out registration procedures, teachers talking about a
new study, Phil Donahue talking to the prominent or weird people on his
show, and more. There is no dearth of conversations, and I hope that you
will develop the knack of listening to those that go on around you using the
concepts that you will learn in this book.

If we were in a conversation, we could work together to construct a
satisfactory definition. Both of us would use practical reasoning ("Hmmm!
If I say this, they will understand what I mean, but if I say that, it may be
misleading"); and we would take turns directing the conversation ("Let
interpersonal communication be defined as ." "Wait! Do you mean
. .
. .?""Exacdy! And then.

.
." "But what if .
.?" "Yes .""No.. .
." . . .
"I see!"). Such rapid give-and-take comprises the distinctive characteristic of

interpersonal communication, and it clearly shows the difference between
being in conversation and writing or reading about conversation. Because
we are communicating in print, we are using the third-best way of defining
interpersonal communication: to describe a conversation as an example that
we can think through.
Sonia and Luis have just watched a movie. Luis is driving the car that
is taking them home. They are riding in companionable silence when the
following exchange occurs:
Sonia: Are you hungry? ( 6rt

*
Luis.No^ i
O^^ ÔO Vo^C^vyJ '
There is a brief pause.

Sonia: You are so selfish!
Luis: What? What are you talking about?
Sonia: I'm hungry and you don't even care!
Luis: Of course I care! If you wanted to stop for dinner, why didn't
you say so?
Sonia: I did say so! Why don't you listen better?
Luir. There's a good Italian restaurant in the next block. I'll stop there.
Sonia: Don't bother! I'm not hungry anymore. Take me home.
This conversation is interesting in part because so many people find it
familiar. I adapted it from Deborah Tannen's (1990, pp. 26-27) analysis of
conversational styles in contemporary America, and the reception of her books

shows that she is onto something that strikes a chord with many
clearly
people. I have used this example in lectures on three continents, and I find
that men often laugh with rueful recognition of Luis's situation, and women
often identify with Sonia's frustration.
Note that this conversation is not the stuff of great literature. No
important aspect of human history hinges on whether Luis is clueless about
what is going on; civilization as we know it is likely to continue regardless
Both Sonia and Luis

think that they are mis-
understood. This com-
mon conversation can
be interpreted in a sur-
prising variety of ways.
of whether Sonia gets dinner or not. This conversation is not "steamy"

enough to be the basis of a popular romance novel or soap opera. However,
this conversation — and the hundreds like it that we engage in every day — is
important; these conversations are the ordinary, normal material out of which
we fashion our our personalities, and our relationships with others. Such
lives,
apparently trivia! frail and imprecise processes in

interactions are the seemingly
—
which we dream and make those dreams and the attendant nightmares that
are their shadows —
into reality.
For many years, communication theorists have tried to develop a model
of communication that would describe this process. A good model should
serve as a heuristic (i.e., a device that facilitates discovery) to determine the
factors that make communication sometimes succeed and at other times
fail.Modeling communication has been an unexpectedly difficult process,
requiring us to discover some embedded presuppositions in the structure of
our language and work out some unconventional ways of thinking.
The concept of interpersonal communication used in this book is rather
far from the first, or common-sense, idea of what communication is or how-
it works. To put it into context, let me give you a very brief description of
some of the shoulders on w hich this idea stands.
What We Learned from the Failure of the Project of

Developing a Model of Communication
Ifyou were to ask the first ten people you meet on the street to define
"communication," all ten would likely give some version of what we call the
transmission theory. That is, they might identify communication with the
media, by which messages are transmitted from one place to another (e.g.,
television, radio, or electronic mail) or offersome definition that describes

a process of transmitting information or meaning from one mind to another.
These ten people you meet on the street are reflecting the dictionary
definitions of communication, and they should, since dictionary definitions
are based on popular use. However, the first notion that something might
be wrong with the transmission concept comes from the etymology of the
word "communication." There is an older concept of communication that
identifies it with the process of "making common." What kinds of things
are made "common"? Is the process by which things are "made" common
limited to the transmission of messages?
—
As you will see, this book and current communication theory has a —
rich understanding of the process of "making common" that can easily be
Refrain 1.2
The transmission model of The social constructionist model

communication of communication
What communication is:
One of many things that people The webs of social interaction in
do. which we find ourselves and in
which we live, move, and have our
being
How communication works:
Messages are encoded/decoded Patterns of social action are co-
so that they represent either the constructed in sequences of
world of objects that exist outside evocative and responsive acts;
the communication process or these patterns comprise an ecology
the intrapsychic world of that is our social worlds. This
meanings and emotions of ecology includes systemic
people who communicate. These relations and is the site of co-
messages are transmitted from evolutionary processes,
one place to another.
What work communication does:
It moves information from one It calls into being and reproduces
place to another with various the events and objects of our

degrees of accuracy and social worlds; it is a process of
efficiency, it is encoded as a making and doing,
description of something else
with more or less fidelity; and it
is used in ways with greater or less
persuasive effect and aesthetic
value.
distorted if the relatively simple process of transmitting messages is overem-

phasized. Let me show you how we got from the currently used definition
of communication to an enriched sense of its etymological meaning.
From our current perspective, ihe earliest models of communication
do not seem very helpful because they unquestioningly reproduced the
"linearity" of the European languages in which they were framed. The Indo-
European family of languages is built around a grammar of "subject-verb-
object" and thus creates a picture of one thing (active, with powers) doing
things to other things (inactive, without powers). As Ludwig Wittgenstein
1953) noted, whole clouds of philosophy are embedded in drops of grammar,
(
and so it has been for communication theory.

The earliest models of communication were based on a unidirectional
arrow, tracing the movement of a message from a source to a receiver. The
Greek god Hermes (and his Roman imitator Mercury) is depicted (Figure
1.1) wearing boots with wings on them and carrying a messenger's staff. This
symbol is still used by telegraph operators and florists who make deliveries.
In 1949, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver introduced one of the
most influential models of communication, which described the origin of a
message in a "source" who "encoded" it, entrusted it to a "transmitter"
that delivered it to a "receiver" who "decoded" it (Figure 1.2). They realized
that messages go both ways on many transmitters, so they included a second
unidirectional arrow that represented "feedback." David Berlo's (1960) com-
munication model set the parameters of model-making in the 1960s. Working
within the same paradigm or philosophy, Berlo's model was named by its
acronym for "source," "message," "channel," and "receiver" (SMCR).
By the late 1960s, the limitations of this linear model for thinking about
communication were becoming very obvious, even if the alternatives to it
were not so apparent. hard to use English to express concepts that are
It is
contrary to the embedded linearity' in its grammar, and some of the attempts to
model communication were a bit bizarre. For example, Berlo's very influential
book contained an excellent chapter on communication as a nonlinear process
but then laid out a linear model. Frank E. X. Dance (1970) proposed a
concept of communication as a "spiral," but generations of students looked
at the picture he drew and called it the "bedspring model." Dean Barnlund
1968) drew a very complex model using curved arrows that captured some
(
of the dynamism of the process of communication. Again, a generation of

students looked at the picture and called it the whirlpool model.
The most influential and sophisticated attempt to get away from the
transmission model was developed by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and
Don Jackson (1967), based on the systemic ideas of Gregory Bateson. This
—
model did not use arrows at all; instead it took an -ainteractional view that i
defined the fit between sequences of messages, not the movement of a message
from one place to another, as the basic unit of analysis for communication
theory. In 1970, Dance suggested that we adopt a "family" of models, each
of which illuminated some portion of the process of communication and
distorted some other, and most communication theorists agreed. After 1970,
Figure 1. 1 In the Odyssey, Hermes served as the messenger of the gods.

Consider Hermes, the god of communication. In contemporary culture, Hermes is
well-known as the Olympian being whose winged sandals whisk him from god to
god, bearing messages of good and ill. Indeed, the predominant image of communi-
cation in the modern world concerns the transmission, rather than construction
and interpretation, of symbols. . . .
Less well known is Hermes the god of invention, cunning, commerce, and thievery,
the patron of both travelers and the rogues who may waylay them, the conductor
of the dead to Hades, the prodigious liar and trickster, and the being who lends his
name to hermeneutics. By making one being the god of communication, lying,
invention and trickery, the ancient Greek recognized the family resemblance among
the polymorphously perverse forms of human conduct: they are all the offspring
of human artfulness. The Greeks saw that communication is not only a matter of
conveying information; it is a matter of the construction of culture in the widest
—
sense. Let us embrace the whole Hermes not only the messenger of the gods but
the clever fellow who displays the fruits and foibles of human creativity in all their
glorious raucousness.
(Peters and Rothenbuhler 1989, pp. 25-26)
few people drew models of communication, and for those that did, unidirec-
tional arrows were considered old-fashioned and unhelpful.
From these two decades of attempts
draw models of communication,
to
we learned some important things. First, we learned that communication is
processual and reflexive; that is, the sequence of events is important, and the
Source Encoding Message Decoding Receiver
Figure 1.2 The Shannon-Weaver model of communication. Note the linearity

of the model, as evidenced by the unidirectional arrows.
meaning of events is derived from their location within an ongoing sequence.

The implicit linearity of our language was revealed in the collective stuttering
that afflicted communication theorists as they tried to describe the process.
We had to develop new ways of talking, new concepts, and new research
methods. Our professional journals were filled with attempts to say in English
things that went against the grain of English grammar. Much of the jargon
that you encounter in this book is an attempt to say things in ways that stress
the structure of the language in which it is written.
We learned to focus on patterns rather than on individual messages,
and on interactions rather than on the movement of messages from one
r' place to another. Specifically, we came to understand that the differentiation
between "sources" and "receivers" distorts the extent to which all the partici-
pants in a conversation contribute to the meaning of any given aspect of the
conversation. We now see sources and receivers as constructed in and by the
shape of the conversation in which they participate.
We think of conversations themselves as fluid and systemic, metamor-
phosing from one configuration to another. The forces that give shape to
clouds became our metaphors rather than the more mechanical structures of
Newtonian physics. We are more attuned to "chaos theory" (Gleick 1987),
ecological concepts, and evolutionary processes (Bateson 1979) than to New-
ton's "laws of motion." We spoke less of "things" and more of "relation-
ships," less of "objects" and more of "patterns." Our language shifted from
^ objects to energy, and then from energy to information, and then again from
information to communication.
Second, we learned to think about communication as the "field" or
"ecology" or "container" in which communicators act, not as one thing
among many that communicators do. That is, as shown in Figure 1.3, concep-
tually we place the communicators "inside" the processes of communication
in which they participate, not "outside," unaffected by the processes in which
they are engaged. The technical name for this is social constructionism; it is
a way of looking at communication as the site where the identities of the

communicators are fashioned in interaction with other people, as the process
in which purposes emerge, and as the means by which the events and objects
of our social worlds are created.

This is the "learning" that breaks most dramatically from the implicit
linearity of the Indo-European family of languages. The "drop of grammar"
Figure 1.3 Instead of thinking of conversations as the exchange of messages C

(
^—between conversants, the social constructionist perspective sees conversants

\ A '"~->0
(
as within an interlocking matrix of conversations. Each conversant is the \
product of previous conversations and the producer of the present and future^/
conversations.
"From a communication standpoint we would have to say that each presumed
. . .
—
autonomous elements an inner world, outer world, social relations, means of
—
expression are not only products of prior communicative processes, but require
reproduction (enactment) to function in any particular context."
(Deetz 1992, p. 14)
in English would lead us to see the verb (i.e., what people do) assomething
that happens between two independently existing entities, the subject and
the object. The social constructionist way of thinking proposes a different
cloud of philosophy, which is difficult to express in English without waving
your hands or drawing strange pictures with brackets in funny places. In
addition to making communication theorists stutter, there are three important
implications of this way of thinking about communication.
First, this way of thinking treats actions as real, pivotal events, rather
than simply as transitory states of, or between, preexisting entities. That is,
the events and objects of the social world (subjects and objects) exist because
of patterns of actions that have occurred previously and because actions are
being performed now to bring them into being. Among other things, this
social constructionist perspective portrays the events and objects of the social
world as "achievements" rather than as "objective realities"; that is, the
identities of persons and the reality of institutions are accomplished by patterns
of interactions rather than being objects found to have the characteristics
they possess.
Second, this social constructionist perspective on communication re-
quires us to think in terms of interactive patterns, not atomistic units. That is,
s
"
Counterpoint 1.4
In this book, I am arguing against some deeply ingrained cultural preju-

dices. The first prejudice is that the study of social worlds is less important,
less elegant, and be said?) "macho" than the study of the
less (can it
physical world. This prejudice was clearly exposed by the social theo-
rist Giambittista Vico (1744/1968, #331) who opposed it over 250 years
ago:
"the world of civil society has certainly been made by men [sic], and
its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of
our human mind. Whoever reflects on this cannot but marvel that the
philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world
of nature, which since God made it He alone knows; and that they
should have neglected the study of the world of nations, or civil
world, which, since men made it, men could come to know.
No sooner is this prejudice overcome than we run afoul of the second

prejudice: within the social world, institutions churches, governments,
(e.g.,
banks, economies, and political ideologies) are more real than particular
actions (e.g., speaking, standing, walking, pounding the streets,
pounding a table, buying a pound of cheese).
For example, the statement "You can't fight City Hall!" is a part of
common sense that explains why people do not protest injustice by
taking specific actions. "City Hall" is believed to be real in a way that a
demonstration in the streets or a petition is not. The (city) government is

taken as a powerful entity while individual citizens are seen as powerless.
While there is a sense in which this is true, there is another sense in which
it is not. In many areas of our lives, our happiness and ability to function
depend on our ability to find that sense in which institutions are

ephemeral and the thoughtful acts of individuals, quite literally, change
the world.
Historically, Western culture has respected abstract concepts (e.g., duty,
honor, virtue, and truth) and social institutions (e.g., the British monarchy,
the state, and the party) rather than particular actions (e.g., what Molly
did yesterday). This preference has shaped our thought, society, and
ethics. Many of us are engaged in attempting to reverse this perspective,
suggesting that the actions in a particular conversation are what is real. Social
institutions only seem more real because we act in ways that (re)construct
them in that manner. Can you think of mottos or folk sayings that express
the concept that the events and objects of your social worlds are made?
For example, pacifists ask, "What if they gave a war, and nobody came?"
Some social theorists have referred to the duality of structure, insisting
that social institutions cannot exist unless they are continually reproduced
in actions, and that actions derive their meaning from occurring within
continuous institutions. For example, Roy Bhaskar (1989, pp. 992-993) said
Society is both the ever-present condition and the continually repro-

duced outcome of human agency: this is the duality of structure. And

human agency is both work (generically conceived), that is, (normally
conscious) production and (normally unconscious) reproduction of the con-
ditions of production, including society: this is the duality of praxis.
Thus agents reproduce, non-teleologically and non-recursively, in
their substantive motivated productions, the unmotivated conditions
necessary for —as a means of— those productions, and society is both the
medium and the result of this activity.
See how hard it is to say this in English!
we cannot follow the well-trod reductionistic path of identifying the smallest

discernable units of what interests us and assuming that the properties of
these smallest units tell us about the characteristics of the whole. Instead, we
— —
must treat conversations and clusters of conversations as systems in which
the whole is different from the sum of the parts.
The organization of the elements in a conversation, not just the elements
themselves, constitute the meanings of what is happening. To ask What did
he say? is to request a quotation of a part of a conversation. Without seeing
—
how that part fits into the rest including what was said immediately before
—
and after is to guarantee that a verbatim quotation will distort the meaning
of what was said.
Counterpoint 1.5
The traditional notion of analysis means to break something down into

its component parts to determine its substance. This method works well as
long as the thing being analyzed has a rather simple organization. When
we start dealing with more complex entities, we have to see themas systems.
To analyze a system is to trace the relationships between the parts, to
learn what emergent properties characterize the system's organization that
cannot be found in any of its parts. For example, stars have a complex,
long evolution that cannot be determined from analyzing a sample of the

—
star you must know some of its systemic properties (such as the ratio
of its heat to its mass) to predict whether it will become a red giant or a white
dwarf.
—
Interpersonal communication is systemic you cannot understand very
much about a conversation by taking it apart. To understand a conver-
sation, you must see it as a whole, with particular attention to the relation-
ships among the parts and the emergent properties.

Gregory Bateson (1979) introduced systemic ideas to the analysis of

interpersonal communication; more specifically, he applied evolutionary and
ecological concepts to the understanding of social worlds. Bateson's writ-
filled with striking insights and lengthy digressions, mystical
ings are brilliant,
allusions and prophetic denunciations. In an attempt to tame Bateson's
restless mind, philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1982, p. 207) summa-
rized him as insisting on three notions: the necessity for multiple descrip-
tions of all processes, a circular conception of causal interconnections, and
the role of coevolutionary processes.
"A properly evolutionary way of dealing with experience obliges us to

recognize that no event or process has any single unambiguous
description: we describe any event in different terms, and view it as
an element in a different network of relations, depending on the standpoint
—
from which and the purposes for which we are considering it. Nor —
shall we usually be able to distinguish the "causes" among phenom-
ena from their "effects" in ecological and evolutionary processes
. . .
. .each of them is implicated in the causal fate of all the others.

.
The best we can do in such a case is to understand all the interlinked

chains within which our affairs are caught up, and consider how they might
be modified so as to operate more advantageously as wholes; that is
to say, in such a way that these entire systems become better adapted."
Finally, because it focuses on actions rather than preexisting entities,

the social constructionist perspective on communication foregrounds moral-
ity. That is, the social worlds in which we live are structured by complex,
interlocking sets of perceived moral obligations. Our first question when we
enter a situation is What should I do> Any increase in our sophistication about
What should I do? must take into account these perceived moral obligations.
The project to develop a common, consensual model of communication
failed.However, the project itself was very useful. It allowed us to learn that
the very grammar of our language provided us with a picture of the process
of communication that limited our understanding of it. By calling this picture
into sharp relief, we have generated alternative ways of thinking about commu-
nication. In my opinion, the social constructionist perspective provides the
richest way of formulating these insights for an understanding of interpersonal
communication.
Definitions of interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal communication term that marks off one form of communica-
is a
tion ("interpersonal") from others, such as communication by means of a
book, a videotape, a compact disk or an electronic database). Its distinctive
feature is that we interact with other people in a pattern known as a
conversation.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines

"conversation" as a noun with two meanings. The first meaning is "An
informal spoken exchange of thoughts and feelings; a familiar talk." The
second meaning is "social intercourse; close association."
I want to use more and descriptive definitions. To do so, it is
specific
important to identify the perspectives from which the definitions are offered.
For present purposes, we will use only the first- and third-person perspectives.
A first-person definition. If we approach interpersonal communication

from a first-person perspective (i.e., using statements like "I feel ." or . .
"I might do ."), we locate ourselves within a continuing process. From

. .
this perspective, what happens next is something that we might guess but
cannot know, but it will have an impact on us. From this perspective, we see
the conversation with an understandable asymmetry: we see our own actions
from the inside and the actions of others from the outside. This perspective
is particularly useful for developing competence in conversing with other
people, particularly in abnormal or stressful situations.

From a first-person perspective, we can define conversations as a process
of coordinating actions within a working definition of a situation. This defini-
tion indicates that persons in conversations (I will call them "conversants"
or "interlocutors") have their attention focused in (at least) two different
directions at once. These directions are indicated by the questions "What
arewe doing here?" (i.e., what is my working definition of the situation in
which we find ourselves?) and "What should I do now?" (i.e., how should
I act so that my actions will coordinate with those of the other person?).
The concept of a working definition of a situation refers to a sense of
coherence, or an orientation to what is going on. As adults, we usually know
Refrain 1.3
Two definitions of interpersonal communication:
From a first-person perspective:

A process of coordinating actions within a working definition of a
situation.*
From a third-person perspective:
A game-like pattern of social interaction comprised of a sequence of
acts, each of which evokes and responds to the acts of other persons.
A person who participates in a conversation may be called a conversant

or an interlocutor.
*Thanks to Jim Applegate for this definition.

what is going on in conversations, but there are instances in which we arc-
not sure. At these times, we experience the opposite of coherence: vertigo.

Vertigo is the unpleasant sense of disorientation that occurs when you
lose the sense of what is up and down. It can happen in an airplane or on a
sailboat in fog; scuba divers can suffer from it, particularly if they are not
getting sufficient oxygen.
There is also a social vertigo that occurs as "culture shock." If you are
living in a strange culture, you may have an overpowering sense of disorienta-
tion; nothing seems to work as you expect it to, and everything is strange.
You do not know whether to greet the strangers you meet or run from them;
you cannot discern between what is for sale and what is free. Culture shock
can make you physically ill. You can experience social vertigo if you have just
joined a new group (perhaps the transition from high school to college), or
if you have changed your role (e.g., by being elected team captain or president
of your fraternity or changing from a single to a married state).

We avoid social vertigo by orienting to particular events, objects, and
relations in our social worlds as if they were real. We construct working
definitions of the situation that include a sense of who we are (our identities,
discussed in Chapter 6), our relationships (see Chapter 5), the event in which
we are participating (see Chapter 4), and the meaning of what is being said
and done (see Chapter 3).
The question What do do now? reminds us that from the first-person
I
perspective, conversations have to be made by doing something in a temporal

context after someone has done something and before they do something
else. From the perspective of the conversant, these doings are not a free choice;
they are enmeshed in a logic of meaning and action that makes some actions
mandatory, optional, or prohibited. ^^^^^^
This "logic of meaning and action" is generated by the conversant's
perception of the moral obligations that link the sequence of actions. If Barry
says "Go to dinner with me tomorrow night," Tasha may feel obligated to
accept the invitation because she cherishes their relationship and has turned
him down three times before; she may feel prohibited from accepting the
invitation because she is a self-respecting feminist, and Barry presumes that
she will drop everything when he asks her out for a date at the last minute;
or she may feel that either accepting or rejecting the offer is permissible. The
underscored terms represent the felt moral obligation to act in various ways
as perceived by the conversant at each particular moment in the conversation.
While the term logic of meaning and action is awkward, it refers to a
common experience. In a study of family violence (Harris et al. 1984), people
who hit their brothers or sisters were asked why they were so aggressive.
Their general response was not very helpful; the usual answer was something
like "I don't know" or "s/he asked for it!" Treating the blow as a message
within a conversation, the researchers then asked questions designed to elicit

descriptions of the aggressors' "felt oughtness." They found that family
members hit other family members when they feel that they wwrthave some
reaction and when all symbolic things that they might do are invalidated. The
subjects in this study often said that they threw the punch because they had
to; they could do nothing else.
From a third-person perspective, these descriptions of an overwhelming

logical force are false. Of course, these people who abuse other members of
their family could have done something else! They could have walked away,
written a letter, phoned a friend, painted a fence, read a book any of a —
thousand things that are obvious if you are not in the first-person perspective.
However, I believe that these subjects gave a valid description of their logic
of meaning and action in which it was true that they had no alternative that
they could think of to throwing a punch.
^^^^^
You probably have a continuing, important relationship with someone,
perhaps a friend or member of your family, in which there is an unwanted
Counterpoint 1.6
The term logical force is not in common use, but cannot find a word in I
ordinary language that expresses what mean. For example, take the first-
I
person perspective on a conversation. You are in a restaurant having

dinner. A man seated at the next table points his fork at you and
shouts "What are you doing in here? Waiter, get those people out of here,
they make me sick!" suspect that you will feel a certain compulsion
I
to do something in this situation: that compulsion is logical force. suspect I
that you and might differ in just whatwe feel compelled to do, but whatever
I
acts are entailed by what this rude man just said is the logic of meaning
and action.
Note that logical force is the force of an argument, not the force of
mass in motion; it is the summation of the felt obligation to acf, not a crude
physical cause of mere motion. The notion of logical force simply says
that people who are in conversations feel a sense of moral obligation
about how they will respond to what was just said and what should be
said next. For example:
B/7/;"Hi! How are you?"

Henry: (nothing)
6/7/; Well, go to hell, then!
In this conversation, I am not sure what logical force Henry felt, but
clearly Bill felt that his first statement constructed a sufficiently strong
and unambiguous logic that Henry was obligated to make some sort of
friendly response. When he did not, Bill felt permitted, or perhaps obligated,
to respond with a harsh comment. For a fuller description of logical force,

see Cronen and Pearce (1981).
repetitive pattern or conversation. Perhaps the topic varies, but you recognize
the pattern as one that 1) you can predict that it will occur and how it will
go, 2) you dislike and 3) once it starts, you cannot avoid becoming deeply
it,
enmeshed in a logic of meaning and action that apparently requires you to

act in ways that you know that you will regret.
While she away at school, phone calls between Barbara and her
is
father take the same pattern. He asks how she is doing. No matter
what she says, he replies by giving her a lecture on how she should
be more careful, take better care of herself, study more and play less,
and call him more often.
Henry knows that every time politics is mentioned in a conversation
with his father a bitter fight will follow. Both he and his father try
to avoid mentioning anything having to do with current events for
fear that they will lose control and become embroiled in a fight that
neither can win and neither wants.
Charlene and her mother have different ideas about when she should
marry and have children. Charlene wants to establish herself in her
career and besides has not met a man that she wants to marry; her
mother is ready for grandchildren and is afraid that Charlene will
never get married because she spends all her time working. There
are a whole range of topics that they avoid mentioning, because any
reference to Charlene's career, to her sister's family, or to her mother's
of meaning and action in
daily activities invokes an inexorable logic
which her mother must advise Charlene and Charlene must defend
her independence.
A study of college students found that virtually everyone has such

unwanted repetitive patterns. When we asked our subjects why they responded
in the conversation in ways that they knew full well would perpetuate an
unwanted pattern, we were generally told "in that situation, the person that
I am has no choice; I had to act that way even though I did not want to and
I knew that it was counterproductive." Again, we interpreted this as a valid
description from the first-person perspective of the logic of meaning and

action in those conversations (Cronen, Pearce, and Snavely 1979).
A third-person definition. we use

If we take a third-person perspective,
the grammatical form of the question What are they making? and How are
they making it? We view conversations as if we were external to them, creat-
ing — through the power of our imagination and with the facilitation of a
grammatical crutch — a neutral position outside the conversation. The exis-
tence of this position is a fiction, of course, because even observing a conversa-

tion is a form of participation in it. This perspective is particularly useful for
discovering how various categories of people usually act. For example, this
is the perspective from which we discover that men ask questions for different
reasons and at different times than women do.
Refrain 1.4
Concepts for analyzing conversations:
From a first-person perspective:

—
What are we doing here? coherence/vertigo
—
What should do now? logical force/en mesh ment
I
From a third-person perspective:

—
What are they making? game-like patterns
How are they making —the serpentine model
it?
How does it fit into patterns of other conversations? —the atomic model
From a third-person perspective (i.e., as if we were not a part of the

conversation), we can understand
conversation as a game-like pattern of
a
social interaction comprised of a sequence of acts, each of which evokes and
responds to the acts of other persons.
This definition does not contradict the dictionary definition of conversa-
tion, but it calls attention to some particular features that are important.
Focus on two aspects of this definition: sequence of acts and evokes and responds.
As a sequence of acts, conversations are extended through time. Conver-
sations consist of what people actually do. A transcript of a conversation such
as a court reporter might make of a witness's testimony is not a conversation;
it is at best a record of a conversation. Conversations themselves exist in the
real world of our where we make and do things with each other.
lives,
As a sequence of acts, each of which evokes and responds to the acts of

the other person, a conversation is not just a string of unrelated things but
an interaction of interdependent events. As we will discuss in Chapter 3, no
act in a conversation stands alone; its meaning is constituted by its place/
within an unfolding sequence of actions.. There is a sense of back and— —
forth in which what I say at each moment is "because of" what you just said
and "in order that" you will say something else.
Two models represent the process of interpersonal communication from
the third-person perspective: the serpentine mode l and the a tomic mode l. Both
models require a bit of conceptual agility on your part, and both are far
removed from the linearity of early models of communication.
The boxes in the serpentine model in Figure 1.4 represent acts; the
columns of boxes represent an unfinished sequence of acts. The interaction
among indexed by the offset rows; those in each column
conversants is
are understood as the actions performed by each of the conversants. The

serpentine-like movement between the columns of boxes represents the con-
nections between them, in which each action both responds to and evokes
others.
Sonia Luis
Figure 1.4 The serpentine model of conversation.

Taking a third-person perspective, conversations are sequences of acts,
each of which evokes and responds to the others. In this model, the boxes
represent actions: the left column of boxes represents Sonia's actions, and
the right, Luis' actions. The sinuous arrow shows how Sonia and Luis take
turns producing actions, and how each act evokes and responds to the others.
This is a bare-bones model, of course, that can be adapted to more complex
situations.
To use thismodel from the third-person perspective, you first write as

much as you can or need in each of the boxes. Sometimes this will simply
be a series of notes to yourself; at other times, you will want a verbatim
transcript; at still other times, you may want a full transcription of a conversa-
tion, including a verbatim transcript, codes for paralinguistic cues, such as
and the like, and codes for kinetic and vocalic messages.
hesitations, talk-overs,
Record your best judgment of what the first-person participants thought they
were doing. What did they say or do? What did they mean by what they said
or did? What did they think the other first-person participant meant by what
they said or did?
Next, look at the relationships between each pair of adjoining boxes.
How does each communicative turn respond to the one preceding it? How
does each communicative turn evoke particular responses to it? In this part
of the analysis, you are looking at what is between the boxes.
One way of describing the connection between sequential acts is to
assess theshape and strength of the logical forces felt by the participants. In
the conversation between Sonia and Luis cited earlier, how did Luis feel that
he must or must not respond to Sonia in particular ways? What was the logic
of meaning and action in which Sonia was enmeshed? 1&J
You may find it your own shorthand for the substance
useful to develop
of the relationships between sequential acts. This shorthand might be as
simple as a plus for a responsive act and a minus for an unresponsive act, or
it might be much more complicated. Using whatever names you have for
the relationships among sequential acts, take each pair in turn and pose a
series of questions like these: Does Luis's statement "respond" to Sonia's?
In what way? In what way does it fail to respond? How does Sonia respond StpC
to Luis's statement? Answers to questions like these give you a sense of the
serpentine mnvpmenr fhrmicrh
sprnentine movement rhp conversation
through the rr»nv.~r«afir>n / '
Next, look at the conversation as a whole as a game-like pattern of

social interaction. Conversations are game-like in several ways:
They consist of mutually responsive acts performed by several people.

From an observer's perspective, it seems as if the conversants know,
and are following rules for, how they should act, similar to the rules
for playing poker, hopscotch, or basketball.
Each act may be seen as a move in a game; whatever else it might
mean, it has the significance of moving the game along.
Ask yourself: What game is being played here? What are the rules for playing
this game? How does the fact that this is the game that is being played affect
the meaning of the participants' actions? Are all participants playing the same
game? Do they understand the game in the same way?
The most interesting conversations are those in which it is difficult to
say what game is being played. Certainly the conversation between Sonia and
Luis is a "mixed-game" conversation which would have confused me, had I
been riding in the back seat of the car listening to it unfold.
You will find that no analysis of a conversation is ever completed. There
are always possible, even plausible, alternative ways of understanding any
conversation. This persistent open-endedness is not simply the result of our
methodology; it isof the nature of conversations.
a part
Conversations do not stand alone; they are a part of "clusters" of
conversations, some of which are alike and some different; they are a moment
in a historical process in which what comes before and after affect what
happens moving moment of "now" (Figure 1.5).
in the
Communication researchers have become very cautious about giving
interpretations of the meaning of conversations. In order to remind ourselves
that there are literally an infinite number of interpretations of what is said
and done in conversations, and that what is said and done in conversations
is endless, we are careful to say that our interpretations are a reading ( reflecting
our own perceptions, reminding us all that others might read the same
)
Figure 1.5 A general form of the atomic model of conversation.

Each action we perform is simultaneously a part of many conversations.
In this model, four clusters of conversations are depicted: those comprising
the conversant's sense of self,those comprising his or her relationships to
others, those comprising the enactment of particular episodes, and those
comprising his or her culture.
conversation differently) or a gloss (i.e., a story that lays upon another story
as a coat of shellac lays upon polished wood). Good readings and useful
glosses are much to be prized, however, because they reveal the various layers
of meaning in the conversations they describe.
If Katherine describes a conversation between her brothers and herself
to your class, she is taking a third-person perspective to the conversation with
her brothers and a first-person perspective in a conversation with your class.
Anything that she says, for example, "My brother does not understand me,"
is simultaneously a part of at least five conversations:
With her professor (What game is being played? A request for family
therapy? A demonstration of interest or ability in the class? Seizing
an opportunity to pursue her curiosity?)
With the other students in the class (She invites them to be open in
describing their own important relationships? Is this a way of depicting
herself as needing a strong masculine protector in the hopes of at-

tracting the attention of a particular person in the class? Is it an
attempt to cut through all the abstract talk and get to concrete
matters?
With her brother (How does saying this in class fit into their ongoing
relationship?)
With her family (How does being misunderstood by her brother help
define her relationship to her other siblings or parents?)
With her opposite-sex friends (I assume that working out one's rela-
tionship with an opposite-sex sibling has more than a little to do with
relationships one can sustain with opposite-sex friends).
To get a grasp on these multiple conversations, the atomic model helps.

This model is applied to each of the boxes in the serpentine model. That is,
it is applied sequentially to each act in a conversation. It locates each act at

the nexus of several ellipses, each of which represents another conversation.
For example, Katherine's statement about her brother would be located at
the overlap of conversations with her professor, classmates, family, and friends
(Figure 1.6).
Not of these conversations are of the same relevance, of course. One
all
of the heuristic values of this model is that it requires us to address the

question of which of these conversations is more relevant to a particular act
than others. We might decide that Katherine's comments in class are really
not to the class but are a very circuitous way of getting back at her father,
or that they are a way of sending a message to the professor about why she
did not complete her assignment on time. Interpersonal communication is
filled with such oblique, subtle, and sometimes puzzling patterns that the
atomic model helps us sort out.
Figure 1.6 The atomic model of conversation applied to Katherine's discus-

sion of her brother.
We are never only in one conversation at a time. Each act we perform is
at the nexus of many conversations, each with its own logic of meaning and
action. In this illustration, Katherine's act of talking about her brother in class
is part of at least four other conversations.
—
An Analysis of a Conversation from First- and

Third-Person Perspectives
The conversation between Luis and Sonia (on page 17) is a recognizable
part of social life in the 1990s in the urban industrialized countries. Let's
use it as a conversation for analysis.
First-person Perspective
What do Sonia and Luis think they are making in this conversation? What
game do they think they are playing? What does Luis think that Sonia means,
and vice versa?
My reading of the conversation indicates that logical forces were strong
forboth Luis and Sonia and increased as the conversation went on. That is,
when they started the conversation, each felt that they could do a wide variety
of things. However, as the conversation developed, each felt more and more
"forced" by what the other was saying to respond as they did.
Further, these logics of meaning and action drove their working defini-
tions of the situation further and further apart until at the end, each of them
was completely exasperated with the other.
Start with Sonia's first utterance. Lexically, it looks like a straightforward
question about whether Luis is hungry; both we and Luis quickly learn that
there is more to it than that, however.
Here is going on. When Sonia asks Luis if he is
one reading of what is
hungry, although her utterance takes the grammatical form of a question, it

functions both as a statement and an invitation. It states that she is hungry;
it invites a discussion about whether they should stop to eat. She intends to
initiate a three-turn sequence something like this:
Sonia: Areyou hungry?

Luis:No, but are you?
Sonia: Now that you mention it, I am. Let's stop at a good restaurant
I'll treat!
On the other hand, Luis heard Sonia as asking a question, and interpreted
this question to be an inquiry about a state of affairs — in this case, the
state of his appetite. His response provided a factual description of what the
question inquired about: his hunger or lack thereof. His answer was a coherent
part of what he expected to be a two-turn pattern that would go something
like this:
Sonia: Are you hungry?

Luis: No.
If Sonia was hungry, Luis would have expected her to have initiated a different
two-turn sequence. Perhaps it might go like this:
An Analysis of a Conversation from First- and Third-Person Perspectives 37
Sonia: I'm hungry. Let's stop for dinner.

Luis: Sure. I know a good Italian restaurant just ahead. I'll stop there.
See, Luis not such a bad guy! He will cheerfully accommodate

is
Sonia's suggestion —
even though he is not hungry at the moment if he —
understands it. purpose of the conversation centers on a mutual
If the
decision about stopping for dinner, this can be accomplished if Sonia and
Luis coordinate their activities sufficiently well to initiate either the three-
turn sequence that Sonia had in mind or the last two-turn sequence that
Luis envisioned. Either one could be performed graciously and effectively;
problem came from their bungled attempt to coordinate their enact-
their
ment of either one.
The reading in the preceding paragraph assumed that the motives for
both Sonia and Luis were clearly visible, and that the problem is really one
of coordinating their actions within a shared definition of the situation. That
is, they agree that what is going on is a collective decision about whether to
stop at a restaurant, and the problem is Luis's literalness and Sonia's indirect-
ness. But what if deeper levels of meaning were involved? Here is another
reading of the same conversation.
Assume that Sonia is deeply enmeshed in the cultural norm that women
should be thin, and that one implication of this is that no woman should, in
the presence of male friends, appear to be a glutton. Men, on the other hand,
are supposed to be hungry all the time. (This is sometimes referred to as the
"ScarletO'Hara Complex," referring to the practice of the heroine of Gone
With the Wind of eating heartily before going to a dinner so that she could
be seen as having a dainty appetite.)
one level of Sonia's working definition of the situation involves
If at least
her presentation of self as "thin" in this context, this has some important
implications for understanding what is going on. In this definition of the
situation, Luis's statement that he is not hungry is offensive, an attack on
her self-concept, and a malicious refusal to cooperate in the co-construction
of her definition of the situation. Luis's "No" is profoundly injurious, not
just an expression of his insensitivity. It exposes Sonia as the person with the
uncontrollable craving for food.
Her next statement, "You are so selfish," should be understood — in
this reading —to refer to Luis's failure to help her protect her self-concept,
not just his sensitivity to an indirect suggestion. Her accusation of selfishness
attacks his ethics, not just his ability to coordinate a decision about whether
to stop at a restaurant. Luis's response, "If you wanted to stop . .
." and
his following suggestion, "There's a good Italian restaurant . .

." both
compound Imagine Sonia's horror at Luis's suggestion that he take

his error.
her to a fancy restaurant where, in full view of the waiters and the other
customers, she will consume a full meal, dirty dishes piling up in front of
her, while her male companion ascetically sips a glass of water! In this reading,
Sonia's final declaration that "I'm not hungry anymore" is a moral affirmation
-
rather than a statement of frustration at their inability to coordinate, and

certainly not a truthful description of her appetite.
Does it matter which reading is correct? Yes, of course. Given this latter
reading, none of the alternative responses suggested for Luis would suffice;
each would only make matters worse. In the first reading, the problem is
simply one of coordination, and any of several subtle changes would improve
the conversation; in the second reading, the problem stems from alternative
working definitions of the situation. While it is relatively easy to explain "No,
Luis, when I asked if you were hungry, I was really saying that / am," it is
much more difficult to articulate differences in definitions of the situation.
If Sonia really was acting out the "Scarlet O'Hara Complex," it is not likely
that Sonia would explain to Luis the depth of the injury he inflicted on her,
in part because her articulation of this norm would cause her to lose face.
What would she say and how would she say it? "Luis, you are supposed to
collaborate with me in the construction of an identity as a thin person; that
means you always make our dinners seem responsive to your appetite,
that
not to mine ." That sort of talk is not likely, in part because saying just
. .
this would preclude the successful presentation of herself as someone who
does not have to work at remaining thin.

Imagine Luis and Sonia talking about this conversation on the following
day with their same-sex friends. Do you think it plausible that Sonia and her
friends might resurrect the old stereotype of males as "clueless" about what
is going on in conversations? Do you think it is plausible that Luis and
his friends might reconstruct the old stereotype of women as illogical and
unpredictable? If so, do you expect that conversations of this type are likely
to occur between them again in the future? What could they do to minimize
the frequency of such frustrations? What could they do to reduce the un-
wanted effects of such conversations when they do occur?
Third-person Perspective
Sonia and Luis have reproduced a pattern typical of male -female interactions
in contemporary society'. They have done so because the logics of meaning
and action for each of them mesh in such a way as to require each to say and
do things that render them opaque to each other. If we were to inscribe the
conversation in the serpentine model and look at the sinuous arrow between
each utterance, we would see that Sonia and- Luis are pushing each other
away (Figure 1.7). Each successive act is more divergent than the one before.
If we assume that the problem here is simply one of coordination, then
we might turn our attention to typical conversational styles of men and
women, noting how these differ and cause problems. We might envision
some sort of training that teaches women how men speak and teaches men
about the speaking patterns of women. Perhaps we could develop some sort
of "phrase-book" for use in cross-gender communication, similar to the
booklets that people who do not speak the local language take when they
A Final Word: Conversation and Moral Responsibility 39
Sonia Luis
H
H
E
Figure 1.7 Serpentine analysis of Sonia and Luis' conversation.

This is a way
of describing the conversation that shows Sonia and Luis
becoming further and further apart in their working definitions of the situation
and thus having increasing difficulty coordinating their actions with each
other.
Imagine Luis thumbing the pages of this handbook

travel to a foreign country.
to the relevant page, noting that when a woman asks "Are you hungry?"
this may be her way of saying that she is hungry!
On the other hand, if we assume that the problem is one of the cultures
of men and women, or that the conversation in the car is only one aspect of
the real conversation, then it is not nearly so easy to figure out how to
improve the conversation. The atomic model shows one possibility: that the
prospect of being the only one eating was much more of a part of her
conversation with her girlfriends than it was part of her relationship with
Luis. In this reading, poor Luis did not have a chance; Sonia's real conversa-
tional partners were not in the car and nothing he said or did could outweigh
their evaluations of Sonia as she envisioned them.
[A\ Final Word: Conversation and Moral Responsibility
Interpersonal communication becomes a legitimate topic for scholarly re-
search and college-level courses when we focus on actions rather than on the
entities that act and are acted on. Throughout this discussion, I have urged
you to think in terms of activities rather than objects, of the processes of
making and doing things rather than the cognitive act of "knowing." This
way of thinking assumes that the question What do I do? takes precedence
over the questions What do I know? or What exists? or even What is it made
of>
This shift from a noun-oriented technical vocabulary to a verb-oriented
one moves us into a realm of moral obligation; ethics and responsibility are
central to interpersonal communication. The question of what should I do
take the place in a course in interpersonal communication that research meth-
odology takes in a natural science course or proper brush-strokes in a course
in art.
We bear no such ethical responsibility for the fact that we live on the
third planet of a G-class star and breathe oxygen; that's just how we found
things. We are beginning to bear some of this
responsibility for the state
planet, however, because our physical technologies have increased to the
point that the ecology itself reflects the consequences of our actions.
How much responsibility do we bear for the state of our social worlds?
Are the events and objects of our social worlds more like the "found things"
in our physical environment (e.g., mountains, oceans, and air) or are they
more like "made things" for which we bear responsibility? Are our actions
simply in the context of existing patterns of race relations, economic disparit-
ies, opportunities for upward social mobility, and prospects for peace, or are
our actions part of the process by which these patterns are reproduced?
Praxis
1. A Communication Analysis of Your
Communication Class
In the quotation with which I introduced Part One of this book, Neil Postman
referred to cultures as "corporations of conversations." I propose that we
take this metaphor literally. We can treat any complex social event as a cluster
of conversations, and not just conversations in general, but of specific conver-
sations, the nature of which constitute the event.
For example, the class you are currently enrolled in is a cluster of
conversations with the registrar, your professor, your classmates, and perhaps
other people, such as your employer, your parents, and your athletic coach.
As a cluster, it includes some but not other conversations. What conversa-
tions comprise the class? Be careful: usually we underestimate the extent to
2. "What's Going On Here?" Giving a "Good Reading" of a Conversation 41
which anything we do is connected to other people in our lives. There are

conversations in class and about the class with other people. What do your
parents or spouse think about your taking this course?
Do these conversations fall into subclusters? Can you give a descriptive
label to the subclusters of conversations? For example, conversations about
the class with your friends who are physics majors might be described as
explaining that interpersonal communication is not a waste of time; with your
friends who are psychology majors, that interpersonal communication focuses
on the processes of communication, not variables or personality types; and
those with your classmates, comparing notes about the projects your professor
assigned. My examples will surely not be the ones that work for you, but
your descriptions of the clusters of conversations is a powerful way of discern-
ing what the course is for you.
Before coming to class. Make a list of the conversations you have that
are related to this class. Organize that list by clustering together conversations
that are alike. Write a word or phrase that indexes each conversation, and
place the words that name conversations that resemble each other in clusters
on a piece of paper. Draw a circle around each cluster and write a descriptive
label for each. You should have a sheet of paper with two, three, or more
circles, each of which contains the names of several conversations. Bring this
sheet of paper to class.
In class. Form groups of three or four people and compare the number
of clusters that you described on your paper. Also compare the names that
you gave to those clusters. Discuss the following questions with the other
members of your group:
In this project, are you taking a first- or third-person perspective on
these conversations? As you look at the clusters you have developed, what
catches your attention about the meaning of this class for you? Does it loom
large or is it a small part of your life? Is it primarily positively evaluated or
negatively? Would you be happier if you stopped talking about the class to
certain people?
2. "What's Going On Here?" Giving a "Good Reading"

of a Conversation
Practice analyzing a conversation, taking both the first- and third-person

perspective. I suggest that groups of two or three people, helping
you work in
each other stay with the perspective you are working with and helping each
other see alternatives to your first perception of what is going on.
Before class. Select a conversation that interests you. It can be a script
from a play or a part of a novel; it can be a real-life conversation that you
observed; it can even be a conversation in which you participated. Record
the conversation —or some part of it — by writing down what the conversants
said to each other. This might look something like the script for a play or
film.
To start your analysis of the conversation, use the serpentine model.
Pay particular attention to the way each utterance responds to what has gone
before and evokes what is coming after.
Next, examine the connections between each sequential action from

the first-person perspective of the conversants. That is, give answers, from
their perspective, to these questions: How are they coordinating their actions
with each other? What of the situation are they working with?
definition(s)
Finally, take the third-person perspective and ask yourself, What are
they making in this conversation? How are they making it? You might find
it useful to use the serpentine model and identify the deontic logic that each
conversant is following. That is, does each conversant feel that he or she
"must" or "may" respond to the other in the way that he or she did? Also
apply practical reasoning. That is, does each conversant feel that he or she
should or must act in a particular way to evoke certain responses from the
other?
I suspect that you will have some difficult}' doing these analyses the
first time you try. Do as much
you can and bring your work to class. In
as
class, work in groups of two or three and help each other analyze the conversa-
tions that you selected.

Resist thinking that your interpretation is either obvious or final. Peter
Lang, Director of the Kensington Consultation Centre in London, claims
that he chose to analyze conversations the way he does because it allows him
to be intellectually promiscuous. "Some say that you should not marry your
hypotheses," he "Others warn that you should not even fall in love with
said.
them. I say that you should not even date your hypotheses! Be promiscuous!"
Leaving aside the question of how one is to be promiscuous without dating,
Lang's advice is good: be playful with your interpretations; look for alternative
ways of accounting for what happened; build on the differing interpretations
offered by members of your group.
As you go back and forth between the first- and third-person perspec-
tives, you will find that you learn things. That is, you will notice details
in the conversation that previously escaped your attention, you will notice
connections among various parts of the conversation that have more or less
—
meaning than you originally thought, and I predict you will simultane- —
ously be more respectful of the conversants than you were when you began,
and more aware of their shortcomings as conversants.
After your group has worked together. Prepare a brief report summarizing
your findings. Use both the serpentine and the atomic models, and couch
them in the best story you can generate.
Now, discuss among your group to whom this report should be made.
In what conversations would your report in class be a part? What impact do
you think it would have if you were to describe your findings to the conversants
you observed? What impact would it have on the other members of your
class? How should your professor critique it?
3. Learning the Moral Order of Conversations 43
3. Learning the Moral Order of Conversations
Two arguments support the claim that the substance of social worlds is moral
obligation. First, because conversations are activities inwhich each person's
action is contingent on those of all the rest of us, our primary orienting
question is What should I do> and this question is answered by locating
the action within a complex web of intentions, anticipated responses, and
justifications. The second argument simply notes the ubiquity of moral ac-
counts in conversations. Every culture and every relationship develops sets

of expectations for what will and should take place. If someone does not act
as expected, they are challenged to account for their behavior. Why did you
say that? What do you mean? Are you crazy? —
all these are standard ways of
demanding an explanation and presuppose that the other is accountable for

their actions according to some shared set of norms.
The moral structure of conversation is seen by analyzing some of the
responses given to such demand for accounts. "I don't know" is a very weak
response because it denies the presupposition that the speaker is responsible
for what he or she and does. "I was angry" works better because we
says
"comes over" people,
have, in this culture, defined anger as an emotion that
causing them to "lose control" and act in ways that they otherwise would
not. "It seemed like a good thing to do at the time" accepts the implied
criticism of what was done but asserts the actor's competence as a moral
actor.
Communication theorist Richard Buttny ( 1987) has made an extensive
studv of "accounts" —statements that we give when called on to provide
accounts of how our behaviors relate to the rights, responsibilities, and privi-
leges that we have as interlocutors.

In a complex society like ours, it is clear that we do not all have the
same understanding of the moral demands of conversations. Sometimes it is
useful to bring our generally tacit understanding of this morality into full
awareness: we can even write the rules for how particular persons in particular
situations understand the structure of the game-like patterns of social interac-
tion in which they participate.
Careful attention to accounts is one way of doing this. Listen carefully
to a conversation and note the accounts given, the accounts demanded, and
the accounts accepted.
1 Accounts given are those offered spontaneously, for example, "ex-

cuse me, but .", "I know this sounds silly, but
. .
.", "You'll . .
probablv resent my saying so, but .", and "I'm a communication

. .
major, and I noticed ." These accounts signal a very strong sense
. .
that what the speaker is saying or doing violates the moral structure
of the conversation and must be shielded from the normal evaluative
processes.
2. Accounts demanded are statements in which one person specifically
asks the other for an account, for example, Who are you to tell me
<
) —
that?, Did somebody ask your opinion?. Why do you say that?, and
the ever-popular, Oh, yeah? These may be seen as one interlocutor's
request for the other to provide a commentary on the relationship
of his or her actions and the moral order of adult conversation.
3. Accounts accepted are those that when offered, are successful in
explaining a person's unusual behavior. Accounts offered but not
accepted indicate strong perceptions of the underlying moral orders.
Reconstruct the deontic and practical logics implied in these responses

to a demand for an account:
(Belligerent) "Who
wants to know?" (This challenges the other's
right to call the speaker's competence into question.
"What's wrong with what I did? Are you crazy?" (This response
consists of a counterattack, asserting that the speaker's competence
is unquestionable, and that anyone who questions it displays the
insanity of their own moral system.)
"Well, I'maneo-Zoroastrianist, and we . .
." (This response claims a
particular, nonstandard moral code, demanding that the other person
respect it.)
Competent adult conversants recognize their status as moral agents. If

they are about to do something normal rules
that strains, if not violates, the
For example, in
for conversation, they will give an anticipatory justification.
some societies, it is considered rude to interrupt another speaker, and one
who interrupts might well say, "Excuse me, but the building has just caught
on fire, and I wonder if we could move to another location?" This statement
both denotes that the speaker is aware of- and takes responsibility for —
violating the conversational conventions, and gives an explanation that the
other person might reasonably find legitimate.
Consider some other anticipatory justifications and determine their
implications for the moral performance of the speaker.
"No offense intended, but . .

."
(The speaker indicates that he or
she is aware that what about to be said might well be taken as
is
offensive and asks for a temporary suspension of the rules on the

grounds that the speaker is a moral agent and accepts responsibility
for what is about to occur.)
"I know this may sound crazy, but . .
." (Again, the speaker asks
for an indulgence on the grounds of his or her moral rectitude,
indicated by his or her ability- to anticipate the other's response.)
"I don't usually say this, but ." (The speaker asks that this situa-
. .
normal rules.)
tion be treated outside the
"Well, since you asked ..." (The speaker blames the other for the
violation of the norms.)
4. Judging the Actions of Other People 45
"Will you still respect me if I . .

." (A subtle ploy: this statement
asks the other to act on a sufficiently flexible moral code to excuse
what is about to happen.)
Before Over a period of several days, carry a notebook and record

class.
the accounts that you hear. Jot down enough information so that you can
remember what account was offered and the contexts in which it was made.
Differentiate among accounts offered, demanded, and accepted.
Organize your observations. Using the headings of accounts "offered,"
"demanded," and "accepted," list the types of accounts that you heard. This
will give you a table with three columns.
In class. Bring this chart to class. Form a group of three or four people.
Compare your observations. Do you see any patterns? What kinds of accounts
are most rare? Which are most common? What accounts are most often
demanded? Which accounts are not often accepted? Looking at these lists,
draw up a description of the "moral orders" in which you and your classmates
live. Compare your findings with those of other groups.
4. Judging the Actions of Other Peopie
As part of the study of family violence, Dr. Linda Harris (1984) interviewed
a man who physically abused his wife. Following the research protocol, she
kept asking questions that elicited responses from his first-person perspective.
He described a logic of meaning and action in which he simply could not
control himself when he became angry. After beating his wife, he was very
remorseful and begged her forgiveness, but in the heat of the moment, he
said, he simply was not responsible for his actions. "It just happens," he said.
"I can't control myself."

would have interpreted this man's statements as the
Usually, Dr. Harris
valid description ofof meaning and action in which he was deeply
a logic
enmeshed and that compelled him to act in abusive ways. On this occasion,
however, she interrupted the planned interview protocol and shouted, "Why
don't you just kill her, then?" "Oh, I would never do that!" he replied.
His reply raises an interesting question about control and responsibility.
he could not control himself when he beat his wife (i.e., he
Specifically, if
used a deontic logic of causality) then how could he control himself sufficiendy
that he would not injure her fatally (i.e., he used a deontic logic that allowed
him conscious restraint)? Was he in control or not? To what extent are persons
responsible for acting in ways that are prefigured by their logical force? To
what extent are they responsible for changing or transcending their logical
forces?
Form groups of five persons and constitute yourselves as a jury. Consider
the evidence and questions presented in the paragraphs above and reach a
verdict. Is he to be blamed or pitied for beating his wife? Is this man guilty
of abusing his wife, or is he a victim offerees he cannot control? To what

extent is "My logical force compelled me to do it; I could do nothing else"
a valid excuse when he begs forgiveness from his wife? When he tries to
explain his actions to a researcher? When he presents a defense at a trial in
which he is accused of spouse abuse? Compare your verdict with those of

other groups.
5. Comparing Readings of Conversations
I have never analyzed a conversation that permitted only one reading; every
conversation that I have ever examined closely could be understood in at
least two ways. What happens when you take a third-person perspective and
feel confident of your reading of a conversation, and one of the conversants
takes a first-person reading and disagrees with you? Who has the authority
to say which reading is right or best?
In the example above, what reading do you give to Dr. Harris's outburst?
Taking a third-person perspective, I say that she felt sympathetic to the abused
wife and was expressing vicarious anger toward the husband. In my story,
she felt contempt for the story he told of a recurring pattern in which he
lost control, beat his wife, felt contrite, and begged for forgiveness. Harris
did not believe that his abusive acts were out of control.
However, from her first-person perspective, Dr. Harris might say that
she was aware that the planned interview protocol was not working; her
questions were not eliciting interesting information. To probe his logic of
meaning and action further without prejudging him or becoming emotionally
involved in the family, she chose to ask a surprising, unplanned question. She
offers as evidence for the quality of her deliberate decision the tact that
the question "Why don't you just kill her, then?" elicited very interesting
information.
Before class. Think through these issues. How would you decide which
reading to believe: my third-person explanation or her first-person account?
Under what conditions would you allow people to take authority for their
own meanings in the conversations in which they are a conversant? In what
situations would you not allow conversants to take authority for interpreting
their own meanings? How do these conditions relate to the "moral order"
you described in number 3, discussed earlier?
-
/;; class. Be prepared to discuss your interpretation of Harris's outburst.
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CHAPTER
2 Competence in Making
Social Worlds
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Wittgenstein 1922, p. 149 [#5.6]
Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's

[sic] symbolic advances. Instead of dealing
activity
with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly
conversing with himself. He has enveloped himself
in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical sym-
bols or religious rites that he cannot see or know
anything except by the interposition of [an] artificial
medium.
Cassirer 1956, p. 43
Our conversations about nature and about ourselves

are conducted in whatever "languages" we find it
possible and convenient to employ. We do not see na-
ture or intelligence or human
motivation or ideology as
"it" is but only as our languages are. And our languages
are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our
metaphors create the content of our culture.
Postman 1986, p. 15
KEY WORDS

chapter, you will be able you understand this
We Live in Multiple to chapter include
Social Worlds
Analyze the process language;
Social Worlds Are Made by which the events heteroglossia,
SocialWorlds Are in a and objects in your polyphony, and
Continuous Process of social worlds are
polysemy;
Being Remade made
joint action;
SocialWorlds Are Made Identify and resist monologue and
with Other People in linguistic tyranny
dialogue;
Joint Actions
Describe the shape and competence
Competence in and composition of
Interpersonal your social worlds
Communication
Differentiate two
types of
communication
competence
Praxis
1. Creating Events and Some Exercises in

Objects in Your Conversational
Social Worlds Competence
2. A Description of 7. Competence in
Your Social Worlds Ambiguous, Un-
stable Situations
3. Applying the "Heyer-
dahl Solution" to
Interesting
Conversations
4. Polyphony and How-
to Resist Linguistic
Tyranny
5. Identifying the
Scripts in Social
Settings
52 Chapter 2 Competence in Making Social Worlds
Narrative
Chapter One, "Understanding Conversations," helped you understand how
conversations work; this chapter directs your attention to the work that conversa-
tions do. Briefly put, conversations are the means by which the events and
objects of our social worlds are produced; they are the processes by which
identities, communities, relationships, emotions, moralities, ideologies, and
all of the rest that comprises the human world are fabricated.
Of course, conversations could be treated in other ways. For example,

they could be seen as art objects, the site of aesthetic performance. Or they
could be treated as symptoms or manifestations of other, somehow more
real, things, for example, as the site of clues about the conversants' "real"
personalities or motives. Or conversations could be treated as tools to be
used to persuade, mislead, ingratiate, or seduce other people.
However, the most radical and most useful way of treating conversations
is as the processesby which people acting collectively make (and remake)
their social worlds. In this way of thinking, there is no need to search for
something "behind" conversations, and if we look at conversations (rather
than through them or past them) we gain a unique and useful perspective
on what Campbell (1972) identified as the basic questions that all human
beings face: Who am I? (i.e., personal identity), Who are we? (i.e., relationships
and community), What is the nature of the world around us? (i.e., cosmology),
and What is the nature of the answers we get to questions like these?
The first part of the "Narrative" section of this chapter is written from
the third-person perspective on social worlds. This section describes social
worlds as made by —and of being remade by conversa-
in a continual process —
tions and as a complex environment in which to live. Not only are there
many social worlds that interpenetrate each other in sometimes surprising
ways, but each point in these social worlds is a nexus of multiple conversations
that do not always fit together without conflict. Because social worlds are so
complex, all our actions are jointly produced with those of other people.
Shifting to a first-person perspective, the second section of the "Narrative"
focuses on competence in interpersonal communication.
Let the term social worlds denote the totality of all the conversations
in which we participate and which go on around us. Your social worlds
include compliments and insults; friends who take walks with you and business
partners who walk out on you; having coffee with friends and dinner with
your spouse's parents; playing basketball and waiting on tables; dieting and
indulging yourself with a favorite food; making up after a fight, making do
on your salary, and making the best of bad situations.
Your social worlds include yourself as a sexed entity, living within a
(world with predetermined gender roles. They include yourself as an aged
individual, located at a particular moment in a developmental cycle that is
inscribed in your culture by rules of politeness, privilege, and obligation.

Your worlds identify yourself, perhaps in ways not of your choosing,

social
as a member of a racial and economic group. Your opportunities, resources,
and patterns of social interaction will be influenced by the shape of your eyes,
the color of your skin, and the contours of your face.
Social worlds is an ecological concept in that it envisions all the conversa^J
tions that occur in our society as interrelated, connected with each other inC,
a complex system in which what happens at one place often affects some -I —
—
times in surprising ways what occurs in another. For example, a husband
and wife have an argument; because of the argument, she arrives late at her
job as a bus driver. Because she's late, a lawyer misses his meeting and a
contract is not signed. Because the contract is not signed, the funding for a
—
new building is lost, and ten men including the bus driver's husband are —
fired from a construction company.
We Live in Multiple Social Worlds
The plural social world* indicates thai: your world is not the same as those of
other people. In terms of the social geography of these worlds, each of us
lives in a different place; we find ourselves at each moment and throughout
our unique nexus of conversations.
lives at a
Differences between your social worlds and those of other people are
easy to see if we take a third-person perspective on our own lives. For example,
compare young adults in an urban, industrialized society with their contempo-
raries living in the Amazonian rain forest, the Kalahari Desert in Africa, or
the outback in Australia. Of course, there are some similarities in these social
worlds: all human beings expe rience much the same maturational sequence,
all live in societies in which genders are differentiated, and all —so — have"
far
Tived their on the outside ot a very large sphere in which "up" and
liv es
"down" and "day" and "nigfit" have particular meanings. However, these
should not obscure the very real differences between social worlds.
^rrnTlarities
The cultures of Asia, the Americas, and Europe developed very different
moralities, philosophies, and theories of personhood; they also developed
very different patterns of communication. There is a connection here: differ-
ent forms of interpersonal communication cause and are caused by different

cultural patterns, social institutions, and ways of being a person.
The plural world* also denotes a particular characteristic of contempo-

rary society: there are important differences within each of our social worlds.
Not only are the worlds different, but they are also juxtaposed. Those of us
who live in urban, industrialized societies participate in many different social
worlds simultaneously, each with its own logic of meaning and action.
The continuity of our social worlds is not inextricably bound either to
place or to personal identity. The same place may be the site for very different
kinds of and your own moral order may shift suddenly if you move
lives,
from one place to another. For example, if you knock someone down while
" 1
^ r
•«>.
m, A
$ T3SN I -,
M !.
\ Sir i._
Allhuman beings have in common the facts that we make and are made by our social worlds. However,
the social worlds thatwe make —and that make us —are very different. We experience sharply different
forms of life because we are enmeshed in different patterns of communication.
Counterpoint 2.
The study of communication has taken radically new forms in the past
30 years. At least one reason for this is that Western intellectual history
has changed in some important ways. In fact, many current assessments
of social thought refer to the "turns" taken in this century. Some describe
this as the "linguistic turn," others as the "rhetorical turn," and still others
as the development of a "postmodern" sensibility. (For an excellent discus-
sion of these developments, see Rorty 1979; Gergen 1982; and Bernstein
1971, 1978, 1983, and 1992).
At several times during this book, I claim that traditional prejudices
must be set aside if you are to understand current thinking about
communication. If you read these claims baldly (that's a term we will
discuss at length in Chapter 6), they seem arrogant. In fact, I am claiming
that the current understanding of communication is a part of a much
broader shift in the sensibility of Western culture —a shift so great that it
defies precise characterization. That's why some

most articulate
of the
reporters wind up using such vague terms as "postmodern" (which does not
say anything except that it is after something else) and referring to various
"turns." However, these developments are revolutionary in that they require
a patient reexamination of all our assumptions and a willingness to dis-
card many of them.
Communication has aprominent place in late-twentieth-century West-

ern intellectual history. In fact,it has not been seen as so central to
what serious-minded thinkers in a dozen disciplines are doing since the

classical Greek period of the 6th through 4th centuries B.C.E.
In this still-chaotic, rapidly changing constellation of perspectives in
contemporary social theory, communication is seen as the material

substance of the processes by which our forms of life are created. Do
not read this as a cheery advertisement for communication. Many of the
most profound contributors to the new sensibility, among them Derrida
and Foucault, have shown us "that such ideas as authentic dialogue, commu-
nity, communication, and communicative rationality can potentially — and
—
indeed have in the past become 'suffocating straitjackets' and 'en-
slaving conceptions' " (Bernstein 1992, p. 51). Those who decry the effects
of communication outweigh those who, like Habermas, Rorty, and
Bernstein, look to "a practical commitment to" some form of "authentic
—
communication" or "dialogue" as "the basis perhaps the only hon-
—
est basis for hope" (Bernstein 1992, p. 53). agree; in another place
I I
argued that "the material and social conditions of the contemporary world
are profoundly disordered. Not for the first time, there is a discontinuity
between the contemporary form of society and the ways of communi-
cation it institutionalizes. A new round in the coevolution of society and
communication processes is in progress." (Pearce 1989, p. 91)
Our social worlds are

multiple, complex, and
contradictory.
wearing a football uniform duringa game, you may be cheered and given
the"most valuable player" award, but if you knock the same person down
on a sidewalk, you may be arrested and taken to court. Does this seem
strange?
Usually we handle such inconsistencies in our social worlds easily by
making one logic of meaning and action more salient than the others at
particular times. For example, the game of football is clearly marked off from
the rest of life by its special stadiums, the referee's whistle, and the uniforms
worn by the players. Usually we can differentiate among the various "hats"
that we wear when relating to each other.
What are some of the ways in which you mark distinctions within your
social worlds? If you take your meals in a cafeteria, watch the way people
negotiate specific meanings by the way they place their books, jackets, or
—
dining utensils on the table these details define whether the person is merely
eating or dining, whether the person is inviting others to join him or her (it
is an "open" social event) or politely indicating a desire to remain alone.
Observe the way that men and women signal each other about their relation-
ships or their availability for the establishment of relationships. Notice the
signals given at parties that define some people as a couple. For example,
reciprocated glances across the crowded room, the use of the pronoun "we"
to talk about plans, or a proprietorial straightening of the partner's clothing
are bitsof language used to say something like "We're together; intruders
beware!" What language do people use to define themselves as "single"?
—
Some people are very skilled at giving complex signals for example, letting
one person know that more attention would be welcome while letting others
know that they should look elsewhere for social partners.
Sometimes, however, we run into problems. Young married couples
find that the logic of meaning and action that was appropriate for them as
lovers does not function as well when they are handling the family finances
cooing and caresses, however wonderful, do not help them decide whether
to buy a new car or pay tuition for graduate school.
Sometimes the boundaries among these social worlds is blurred, such
that we are not sure just what logic is in place. Using myself as an example,
I am at once husband, father, son, and brother —
each with a different, some-
times conflicting, set of rights, privileges, and responsibilities. I am at the same
time student, professor, and Department Chair: sometimes I (the Department
Chair) have to write myself (the Professor) a memo me (who?)
informing
about the rules for processing final grades or noting the results of the latest
round of student evaluations. I am also a citizen, taxpayer, automobile opera-
tor, sometime sailor, and, in memory and imagination at least, martial artist.
The Complexities and Contradictions of Everyday Life
As social scientists have turned their attention to the accomplishment of the

apparently routine events of everyday life, such as a person making a decision,
a group arriving at an interpretation of an unusual event, or a family coordinat-

ing its actions well enough to get through the day, they have discovered that
our social worlds are not homogeneous. Bilmes' (1986) study of group
decision making showed that common sense contains contradictory moral
precepts. Often our discussions consist of negotiations about which of these
is the most working definitions of the situation. Billig
relevant within our
and his colleagues ( 1988) were impressed by the frequency with which people
in ordinary jobs encountered and coped with what he called "ideological
dilemmas." Cronen's (in press) study of family therapists revealed that the
overlap of conversations in each client's life presented a unique set of conflicts
and implications for each act that they would take. For example, he noted
that a middle-class professional woman who is abused by her husband found
severing her relationship with him difficult but conscionable; in fact, the logic
of her self-concept "required" it. On the other hand, a working-class woman
whose self-concept was defined by her marital relationship found severing
her relationship with her abusive husband virtually impossible; that is, her
deontic logic blocked her from divorce or separation and caused her to remain
in an abusive relationship.
The implication of these findings is that everyday life is not a particularly
orderly place in which reasonable solutions to problems can be found. Rather,
it is complex place in which each action is at the intersection of
a fluid,
multiple logics, and these logics may reinforce, be irrelevant to, or contradict
each other. Sometimes we are "compelled" by these logics of meaning and
action to take mutually exclusive actions simultaneously; sometimes we are
left confused by oddly intersecting logics.
Counterpoint 2.2
The between the various logics of meaning and action were first
conflicts
taken to be a "problem." Gregory Bateson and his colleagues coined the
phrase "double bind" to describe a situation in which a person was
simultaneously required to act in mutually exclusive ways, prohibited
from leaving the situation, and prohibited from talking about it. They
claimed that double binds caused major psychological problems, such
as schizophrenia. This idea was a rich source of insight into certain forms
of interpersonal communication, particularly family communication
patterns (Watzlawick et al. 1967; Sluzki 1976).
The neat linear hypothesis ("double binds cause schizophrenia") did
not stand up well to tests, however. Although proponents of the idea were
able to show that there were double binds in the families of schizophren-
ics, other researchers found just as many double binds in the families
of people who were healthy. One result of this was to accept double binds
as a natural part of social worlds and to explore farther the patterns of

conflicting logics.
Some interesting ideas were developed. A group of family therapists
in Italybegan using "paradoxes" as therapeutic interventions (Selvini Palazolli
et al. 1978). A group of communication theorists reconceptualized the
double bind and offered a much more rigorous understanding of "charmed"
and "strange loops" and other forms of "paradoxical" relationships within
logics of meaning and action (Cronen et al. 1982).
At present, communication theorists seldom treat a conflicted logic
of meaning and action as if it were a problem, not even if the conflict is
paradoxical. Rather, paradoxes and inconsistencies are seen as nor-
mal and are typically dealt with successfully by conversants. This benign
treatment of paradox has improved the practice of therapists as well as
facilitated the development of communication theory.
Heteroglossia, Polyphony, and Polysemy y ^ s'

If you were to make a map of your social worlds, it could not be as simple ÂIaV ^^ Ju
as the two-dimensional road maps that you use to find your way to another LJ^ ,
nk/yz? )0
city or to a strange street in a large city. As shown in Figure 1.6, each point \ hf/Tb \ ^â OJlkJt
in your social worlds is the nexus of several simultaneous conversations; each
v \. ^ x S
act thatyou and others perform continue several conversations.
The geometry of such space presents an interesting challenge and would
drive the Rand-McNally cartographers crazy. If you have a mathematical
mind, you might find the work done by Forgas 1985) and Woelfel and Fink
(
(1980) very interesting. They used the notion of multidimensional space as

ways of mapping the shape of our social worlds. They found that the social
worlds of different people have different shapes and that the complexity of
these social worlds is not constant.
People who are more oriented to language than to mathematics have
coined Latin or Greek neologisms to describe the plurality of our social
worlds. Each of the three terms presented here focuses on a slightly different O* 1 ir/) iA/| /i
aspect of our social worlds. U 1 t J\Ji '
}
Polysemy (literally, many meanings) on each point within our
focuses
social worlds. It refers to the fact that any single word or action is simultane
ously a part of many conversations, each with a history and a future. For
example, any word that "I" speak has many meanings because it has a history
in which has been used in various ways by myself and others, and it has a
it
future, in which it will be used in various ways by myself and others. I am

never in complete control of the meaning of what I say; once it is said, it
enters into the public world, where you will hear it within the contexts of
your social worlds which cannot be exacdy the same as mine and which may
differ substantially.
1
60 Chapter 2 $hhfaeteoa?in Making Social Worlds
Refrain 2.
Heteroglossia:
^S^ ^) Literally: "many tongues." Many sublanguages are present within a lan-
guage; "families" of language games resemble each other but have different
logics of meaning and action
^> n {'Polysemy:
lC
Literally: "Many meanings." Words and phrases have multiple meanings;
,
var ous sublanguages use the same words, but for different purposes; no
\N/) DC/Ya^/
'
L
/ utterance or action ever has only one meaning; meaning depends on the
uUlF^'' ..»^^f
rxf\ f\ltf\ YPkY'
— context in which it occurs and the perspective from which it is interpreted
\ Polyphony:
\ u rO ^\ Literally: "many sounds." We are always involved in many

conversations
(\rVW ^ ^\
ft
simultaneously; each utterance or action we perform is a voice in

\rr\\ -•
ClA/A (wLPY/IA / several conversations, and we may be saying very different things in
From a third-person perspective, polyphony (literally, many voices) refers

to the fact that none of us is alone in our social worlds. The same words
spoken by someone else mean something quite different. Think of the injunc-
tion "Stop!" spoken by your 3-year-old nephew whose stomach you are
tickling; Salvadoran Archbishop Romero, outraged at the violence of the civil
war, addressing the death squads in a nationally broadcast sermon; and a
proctor announcing the end of the time allotted for taking a standardized
achievement examination. I am rather glad that the conversations that com-
prise our social worlds are not all in any one voice! The term polyphony
reminds you that your social worlds include a wide variety of others who are
not only not you but also not necessarily very much like you.
Also from a third-person perspective, heteroglossia (literally, different
tongues) refers to the fact that the languages. we use are differentiated into
clusters, and these clusters permit us to do some different things. English
(or any other language) is not just one language. It is better described as a
family of languages, most of which are mutually comprehensible but each of

which facilitate some things and impede others. You are familiar with this: if
you are an expert in anything, you know how difficult it is to explain what
you know to someone who does not know your technical language. I play
chess but not bridge; I find discussions of chess strategy in the newspapers
interesting and helpful but cannot make sense of the columns on bridge.
Although I know—and, in other contexts, have used! —every word in Charles

Goren's commentaries, I have no idea what he is talking about.
Linguist Michael Bakhtin ( 1986) forcefully called our attention to heter-
oglossia. Writing during the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union, Bakhtin and —
—
everyone else in his society knew that there were several very different sublan-
guages, and that these served very different purposes. Sometimes one had to
use the official sublanguage of official Marxism; at other times (perhaps taking
care not to be overheard ), one could speak in the languages ofreligion, individu-
alism, or capitalism. Further, they knew that the choice of what language to use
was not a politically neutral act. According to many reports, citizens of the
Soviet Union became expert in code switching and in using the conventions of
one sublanguage to perform the functions of another; that is, by deliberately
playing with the polysemy of their vocabulary, they recognized the polyphony
of their society. This was a subversive political act, of course: by their forms of
conversation they were preventing the authoritarian government from silenc-
ing their voices. Polysemy gave them the opportunity to seem to speak in the
politically correct manner while at the same time carrying on conversations that
were independent or subversive to the party line.
At about the same time that Bakhtin was writing, the American linguist
Benjamin Whorf was working out similar ideas but in a very different social
context. The freedoms of speech, press, and assembly are guaranteed in the
U.S. Constitution, and the popular myth in this country is of a free market-
place of ideas in which words are neutral tools of expression. Words are
supposed to mean just what they say and nothing else, regardless of who says
them. The commitment to an open society in the United States, for all of its
many virtues, had the unexpected consequence of denying the heteroglossia,
polyphony, and polysemy of our social worlds (Schultz 1990). Whorf worked
within a society that embraced the notions of a conversational melting pot,
or "level field," in which all could speak the same language, in which every
voice sounds alike, and actions mean only what they are intended to mean,
"ssjt turns out that this implicit theory of how communication works is simply
not correct. The citizens of this country do not all speak English as their first
language. Even those who do speak English do not speak it the same way.
There are regional dialects: as a southern male, I know that when I begin *-
to speak, a well-developed set of not-very-favorable stereotypes slide into / (]|0/^[\a\

place. Other stereotypes are associated with the tonal and pronunciation
characteristics of people from Brooklyn or the Bronx, Texas, Vermont, Bos- <$tx®M,?&)
ton, and other places not fully assimilated into the generic "American" accent.
Americans who have brought some of their national heritages with them
have developed particular forms of English. You probably are aware of the
controversy about whether these are alternative forms of English or just
"bad" English. If you enjoy arguments like this, you are in for a good time:
recent waves of immigrants to this country will present us with rich new
forms of expression and communication.
There are technical languages used by the experts in every activity from
knitting to sailing to computer programming. The language used by experts
and teachers in these arcane arts is often completely unintelligible to outsiders.
Different discourses are used to discuss various topics. For example, since
1947, foreign policy in the United States has been framed within a particular
use of language referred to as the "national security" discourse (Morales
1989). This discourse — like any other — has hidden presuppositions about
what is important, what is equivalent, and what is dissimilar. Once you start
to speak in a discourse, some some seem necessary,
things are easy to say,
others are difficult, and seem silly. In the same way, discussions
still others
with your parents or friends of what you should select as your major might
be in any of several discourses, some of which focus on your lifetime earning
power, others on your interests and personal development, and others on
the amount of time you will need to spend studying.
Counterpoint 2.3
The polysemy what makes wit, word games, and

of our social worlds is
creativity possible. The humor

pun stems from the recognition
in a
that a particular utterance simultaneously references two different mean-
ings. For example, what do you call a woman who pretends to be a
tailor? (A seems-tress.) What do you call an adult who makes puns? (A
groan-up.)
Ambiguities in the words we use can cause real troubles. Benjamin
Whorf was an insurance inspector who noted that fires kept starting in pre-
sumably empty gasoline containers. Of course, these containers were
not empty at all; they contained highly volatile gasoline fumes but not liquid
gasoline. Whorf is remembered for his contribution to the "linguistic
relativism" hypothesis that claims that the structure of our language
determines (or at least is correlated with) the structure of our thoughts
and perceptions. If Eskimos, so goes the classic illustration, have
many words for what we who speak English call by the one word "snow,"
then they will perceive differences where we do not. As Whorf (1956,
p. 252) put it:
Every language is a vast pattern system, different from others, in which

are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality
not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects
types of relationship and phenomena, channels his [sic] reasoning, and
builds the house of his consciousness.
Given the it is a short step from the recogni-

sensibilities of modernity,
polysemy
tion of the and heteroglossia of language to a moral com-
mitment to "fix" it. Among the attempts to purify language so that things
mean only what they say are the movement called "General Semantics"
(Korzybski 1958; Hayakawa 1964) and "analytical philosophy" (Whitehead
and Russell 1962; Rapoport 1953).
This puritanical attempt to fix our language is not well advised. Some
things that we would be lost if language were so deter-
prize greatly
minedly prosaic that there were no polysemy or heteroglossia. For exam-
ple, Parry (1968) warned that
We must not assume that the whole purpose of communication is to

ensure understanding by every hearer. Such an ideal would
full
entail the banishment of wit and vivacity from human discourse and
the anaesthetization of keener instincts by laborious explanation.
In these matters, the speaker must at times take calculated risks; some-
times his remarks will fall on strong ground and he will have lost the
gamble.
In polysemy and heteroglossia of our social worlds is a

addition, the
vital Assume that you want to say something
resource for speakers.
new, or that you want to say something that will escape the notice of the
censors or thought-police; where do you find the resources to do it?
Speakers have far more resources at their disposal than the single set
of forms and stylistic conventions of a single "language." In fact,
every national language is teeming with sublanguages, each with its
own conventions. Wherever significant social differentiation occurs in life,
there too will begin to form a new sublanguage. In any society of any
complexity, therefore, numerous such sublanguages always coexist, chal-
lenge one another, and become grist for the verbal mill of those who
master their conventions. What we are describing, of course, is the
state of heteroglossia, which Bakhtin takes to be the primordial linguis-
tic state for human beings in society. (Schultz 1990, pp. 34-35)
Heteroglossia and polysemy provide the opportunities for us to speak

in our own voice, even if that voice is something different from the
Establishment voice, and thus we can participate in a polyphonous soci-
ety. How boring and tyrannical a monophony (one-voiced society)
would be! Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, and George Orwell, in
1984,imagined the worst that our contemporary societies might become. In
somewhat different ways, both envisioned a society in which only one

voice was allowed.
An Inherent Tension Between "Stories Lived" and

"Stories Told"
The comparison of and "lived" evokes a recognition of the

"stories told"
two sides of human experience. We
write of the stars with hands genetically
shaped for grasping a branch or crude tools, we dream of universal peace
with minds that are affected by the enzymes secreted by our livers, our souls
—
soar with aesthetic ecstacy while our bodies struggle against a maturational
cycle that makes hair grey, skin wrinkle, and tendons tear instead of stretch.
We can come to grips with the tension between these two aspects of
our experience by contrasting stories told and stories lived. On the one hand,
our experience is the stuff of dreams: in the we tell, we can be like
stories
Superman, leaping over tall buildings in a single bound and feeling more
powerful than a speeding locomotive. (If such stories do not have so much
appeal, why did the James Bond and Rocky movies earn so much money?)
However, our experience is also the stuff of the physical world. In the stories
.
n i\
. \ we live, our attempts to leap too rarfar produce personal injury and public
WP \tj\A \ r\ \Aj\ ^ humiliation, and speeding locomotives, in the form of our personal mortality,
tne w ^ ms °f the DOSS and the routinized practices of the Internal Revenue
f\(k\A^ k((JLj >
Service, flatten us where we stand.

\(Al^P\ A ^P**v^
'
^[wXCl^ ^ ne stor es we te M are subject only to the limits of our imaginations;

i
\\(w however, the stories we live are performed in concert with other people. In
^ the stories we tell, we have access to every resource that we can imagine
we can imagine ourselves with superhuman strength, surrounded by admiring
f \ 'A'K an<^ ca P a t le assistants,
> and with an unlimited supply of money; in the stories
\ \n
&> \ VV-^
ve we can only
we ^live, '
on 'V P
put
ut into P^ resources that we can access
mto play access.
\mV> pofV^X »
A/ Am/
Any attempt to reduce our lives to either the stories we live li or tell is a
Q
v(^ ^ Af^L
X
\fY^ mistake. Although inextricably interrelated, they are distinguishable. One
y{ expresses our enmeshment in a world of imagination, including both logic
\V^ r\^D^
c y a^ v and fantasy. The other expresses our simultaneous enmeshment in a world
\ .
r\\\0^^^ °f movement, including the coordination of our movements with those of
fV^V> the objective world and other people.
>< Conversations are a fluid result of the interpenetrations of these two
worlds.^They include both the dream-stuff of the stories we tell and the
physical-stuff of the stories we live. Neither is complete without the other;
neither is reducible to the other. That is, while we are in fact the "authors"
of our experience, we are at best, "co authors." As any journalist or textbook
writer can tell you, the stories we live (or publish) are co-constructed by
authors, editors, reviewers, publishers, and distributors. Contemporary Amer-
ican culture celebrates individual autonomy; however, far more than we usu-
ally realize, we have to share authorship with others in the stories we live.
Even the resources we have for the stories we tell are derived from
other people. We are born into clusters of conversations already in progress.
The main themes have already been selected; the lines of discussion deter-
mined, and the major roles defined.
As human beings, we have a biologically implanted ability to join in
—
ongoing patterns of activities we do not have to be taught how to play
games, just given the opportunity. We "internalize" the games we are playing;
to do well becomes important for us. When we are born into a cluster
of conversations comprising gender, race, economic processes and classes,
religion, and identity, we find our place in these conversations by understand-
ing their terms. We act in ways prefigured by the logics of meaning and
action of these conversations, andwe come to know who we arc, what we

want, and how to getfrom the perspective of being inside these games.
it
Our dreams, religions, and philosophies are composed of the terms of the
conversations into which we are born. Muslims seldom have visions of the
Madonna (the Virgin Mary, not the singer), and Christians seldom call upon
the compassionate Buddha.
Counterpoint 2.4
Being deliberately provocative, Nigel Calder (1976) argued that there is

a "human conspiracy" to take newly born infants and turn them into
copies of the adults who care for them. Calder notes that a newborn
homo sapiens is far more helpless than the infants of, for example, the
great apes or other mammals. He claims that a member of our species
is not a human being at birth but has the capacity to become one.
Put with slightly less sensationalism, it is clear that newborn babies

are absorbed into ongoing game-like patterns of social interaction
not of their choosing or making, and that they have tremendous abilities
to find places in these games in which they can act as first persons.
We do not have to teach children how to engage in game-like patterns
of action, but the specific games they find teach them many things
about who they are and about the possible and appropriate array of
relationships with others. Researchers who have studied the social
worlds of infants have repeatedly revised their opinions of the significance
of early social experiences. These experiences are far more important
than they first thought, and they occur at a far earlier age.
What seems like free play or purely social interactions between parent
and infant during the first six months of the infant's life are the site
of important developments.
The infant has developed schemas of the human face, voice, and touch,
and within those categories he knows the specific face, voice, touch, and
movements of his primary caregiver. He [sic] has acquired schemas of
the various changes they undergo to form different human emo-
tional expressions and signals. He has "got" the temporal patterning
of human behavior and the meaning of different changes and varia-
tions in tempo and rhythm. He has learned the social cues and
conventions that are mutually effective in initiating, maintaining, termi-
nating, and avoiding interactions with his mother. He has learned different
discursive or dialogic modes, such as turn taking. And now he has the
foundation of some internal composite picture of his mother so that, a few
months after this phase is over, we can speak of his having established
—
object permanence or an enduring representation of mother that he car-
ries around with him with or without her presence. (Stern 1977, pp.
5-6)
Curiously, the way adults converse with infants has some striking
similarities, even in very different cultures and language groups.
"Baby talk" uses a simplified syntax, short utterances, many nonsense
sounds, and certain transformations of sounds. Even more conspicuous is
the variation in adults' prosody (i.e., the vocal, facial, bodily manner in
which they engage in conversation). The pitch of the voice is raised, long
utterances in common, sometimes interspersed with deep
falsetto are
bass rumbling. Variations in loudness or intensity, from whispering to loud
"pretend scary," are exaggerated. Facial expressions and body move-
ments are simplified and exaggerated. A sing-song quality is achieved
by exaggerating the stress on syllables, elongating vowels, and paus-
ing between utterances (Stern 1977).
This cross-cultural similarity seems unusual.What else might be going
on these patterns of baby talk? How and when do human beings
in
learn the array of human emotions? How do personalities get formed?

What happens if an infant or child is invited to participate in a broader-than-
usual array of conversations? Do they become confused, or do they de-
velop unusual abilities? What happens if an infant or child is limited
to a smaller-than-usual array of conversations? Do they fail to develop
some of the normal human emotions? Are there crucial game-like patterns
of social interaction for the development of prosocial emotions, such as
empathy, altruism, courage, and responsibility?
Social Worlds Are Made

In the experience of each person, the events and objects of the social world
seem solid, objective, and monolithic. However, just a moment of reflection
reminds us that there was a time when none of the "facts of life" in your
social worlds existed and that there will be a time when they have vanished.
In the present moment, there are other families and other cultures in which
very different facts of life are believed as ferventlyand for the same reasons
as you believe your own. At the very least, the events and objects of the social
world are transitory; I want to make the further claim that they are fabricated
or made in conversations.
Common sense treats the events and objects of the social world as
"found" things, fully formed and CIA, mass murderers,
finished. Families, the
weddings, political parties, IBM, the film industry and the like all seem like
physical entities that exist whether we do anything about them or not. How-
ever, I suggest that we see them as events and objects that are made in
conversations by human beings. That is, let's focus on the process by which
the events and objects in the social world are made.
The claim that the events and objects of our social worlds are made
stands opposed to a historic prejudice. This prejudice was most forcefully
stated by the French philosopher Rene Descartes and is known as dualism.
In this way of thinking, there are two separate types of things: subjective (i.e, ^\jl0\^C/TW^> '
cognitive processes like thoughts, doubts, and beliefs) and objective (i.e., J
the uninterpreted things outside our consciousness). This Cartesian dualism c\"
created the epistemological problem that has entertained philosophers for
hundreds of years. This problem can be stated very simply: how can what is 6\3)NM
outside be represented accurately by whatis inside our heads? That is, How
can we know (i.e., construct accurate representations in our heads using

subjective materials) the real world?
From Descartes to Kant, the history of philosophy consists of various
ways of wrestling with the epistemological problem. In his book Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism, Richard Bernstein (1983) declares the problem
a conundrum; that is, Descartes' question itself is based on a misleading set
of assumptions (dualism) such that no matter how you answer it, the answer
is not very useful. It is like asking Which way shall we go, left or right? when
your purpose is to remain right where you are. No matter how well someone
argues for "left" rather than "right," it does not help you stand firm.
Bernstein said that we should not even try to answer the dualists'
question of How can we cognitively represent external reality? Rather, we
should set the question aside in favor of a more useful perspective. Three
sources converge, in what Bernstein (1992) called The New Constellation, to
produce a more These include Wittgenstein's analysis of
useful perspective.
language; contemporary hermeneutics (particularly the work of Gadamer);
and the American Pragmatists, including William James, John Dewey, George
Herbert Mead, Richard Rorty, Clifford Geertz, and Bernstein himself.
Instead of dualism and its question about How can we cognitively
represent external reality? this new constellation of approaches assumes that
we have experience, that this experience includes both us (i.e., our subjective
perceptions) and what is known (i.e., objective reality). Further, it identifies
experience as a form of acting in the world of which we are a part. When

this prejudice replaces that of dualism, the problem that interests us is How
do we (collectively) act in the world to create our experience? or, more
prosaicallv, How do we make our social worlds? At least part of the answer
to that question is "in conversations."
The "Heyerdahl Solution"

To understand which things are continuously being created, we/
a process in
need to ask the question How is it made? We do best if we develop a certainj
kind of curiosity, the kind that takes things apart and looks for the patterns
that connect some things with others.
An excellent example of this kind of curiosity was displayed by the
Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (1960). It is so simple, so unusual in
its context, and so clearly successful that I call it the "Heyerdahl solution"
and nominate it as the model for us to use in understanding the events andi-
we '
objects of the social worlds in which live.
—
These giant stone carv-

ings baffled scientists
for many years. Instead
of asking Who made
them? or Why were they
made? Thor Heyerdahl
asked the islanders if
they could make an-
other one and was able
to watch as it was carved
and set into place. Ap-
plied to the events and
objects of our social
worlds, the Heyerdahl
solution focuses our at-
tention on how they are
made.
Perplexed like many others by the giant stone carvings on Easter Island,
Heyerdahl resisted the temptation to treat the figures as "found things" and
speculate about who might have made them. Instead, as he reveals in his
book Aku Aku, he focused on the activities by which the heads were brought
into being. As a bet, he challenged the mayor of the community on Easter
Island to duplicate the feats of whoever was responsible for the carvings.
As Heyerdahl told the story, he asked the mayor, Petro Atan, if he knew
how the giant stone carvings on Easter Island had been raised into place.
Atan: Yes, Senor, I do know. There's nothing to it.

Heyerdahl: Nothing to it? It's one of the greatest mysteries of Easter
Island! [One Western investigator suggested that the ancient
Egyptians had somehow found their way to this remote south
Pacific Ocean island to practice their well-known expertise with
large stones; another claimed that aliens from outer space had
visited the earth and left these stones as a symbol of their visit
perhaps to inform us that they, like the stones, were red-headed.]
Atan: But I know it. I can raise a moai.
Heyerdahl: Who taught you?
The mayor grew solemn and drew himself up in front of me.

Atari: Senor, when I was a very little boy I had to sit on the floor, bolt
upright, and my grandfather and his old brother-in-law Porotu

sat on the floor in front of me. They taught me many things, just
as in schoolnowadays. I know a lot. Ihad to repeat and repeat

it was quite right, every
until it single word. I learned the songs,
too. (Heyerdahl 1960)
Heyerdahl was able to watch as the Easter Islanders repeated the forms
of action that had been passed down from father to son for many generations,
and 18 days later, a new stone head was standing, facing the sea as did all
the others.
Note what the Heyerdahl solution does to the question of how the
events and the objects of social worlds come to be. Instead of asking why or
even by whom, he asked how they were made. I suggest that we apply the
Heyerdahl solution to the events and objects of social worlds. Rather than
treating sexism, racism, the university, or even textbooks as found things, or
asking why or for what purpose or whose fault is it, let's ask how they are made.
Counterpoint 2.5
The Heyerdahl solution consists of looking at how something is made.

It stands in contrast to asking What is it? or Why did it come to be? As such,
the Heyerdahl solution is particularly useful for thinking about how the
events and objects of our social worlds are made in conversations.
My selection of Thor Heyerdahl's work is an appropriate tribute to this
resourceful explorer, but his solution is really just an application of the
pragmatic method developed at the beginning of the twentieth century
by the American philosophers William James and John Dewey. This
pragmatic method consists of looking at how things work out in practice.
That is, "truth is what works." As James (1907/1975, p. 97) put it,
"The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth
happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity
is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself,
its veri- fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-af/on."
In the minds of self-centered people who see themselves as individuals

acting on or against other people (i.e., in what call monologic commu-
I
nication later in this chapter), this seems a vulgar excuse for making up
any story that will get them what they want. James and Dewey had quite
a different view. Because they looked at the ecology of conversations as
a whole and saw these conversations continuing into the future (i.e.,
what call dialogic communication later in this chapter), they defined
I
"what works" in terms of its implications for all of the people involved. In
this way of thinking, "truth" is what stands the test of being put into
practice; those practices create the future in which we live, and the self-
centered individualism embedded in monologic communication is one
of those things that do not "work" very well.
Counterpoint 2.6
How far should we push the Heyerdahl solution as a way of understanding

our social worlds? Should we treat all the events and objects of our social
worlds as existing solely because they are made in conversations, or
should we take a less extreme position? This is an issue about which
many people have thought carefully, and they do not agree. Here are
some questions that will help you think through the issue. Be warned,
there are no simple answers to these questions.
Ifyou grant that some of the events, objects, and relations in our social
worlds are made, by what criteria do we judge which are socially
constructed and which are not?
—
What kinds of conversations can and should occur when we dis- —
agree about which events are socially constructed and which are not?
What events, objects, and relations are made by the conversations that
occur when we disagree about whether specific things are socially
constructed?
The issue is whether the social worlds in which we live have some
permanent, objective landmarks or whether it is all fluid and shifting.
If we use the similies "clouds" and "clocks," the question is how
"cloudlike" and how "clocklike" our social worlds are.

On one hand, if we see the events and objects of our social worlds as
socially constructed, we risk a rootless relativism. The folk maxim from the
1960s, "Different strokes for different folks," is not a particularly strong
basis for choosing a President, devising national strategy, or ad-
dressing the ethical questions surrounding racial prejudice, prevention
of sexually transmitted disease, and protection of human rights.
On the other hand, if we treat the events and objects of our social
worlds as found things, we prepare ourselves to be prisoners of the conversa-
tions into which we were born and tyrants who enforce our perceptions
onto others. That is, instead of saying "That's the way see it," we insist I
"That's the way it is!"

The issue is both real and important. It may be expressed as the question
of whether the polyphony of our social worlds is superficial or deep seated.
That there a single reality somewhere out there that is obscured by
is, is
the many
voices that describe it, or is reality itself polyphonic, called into
being by the voices that speak? The implication of this decision is summa-
rized in the prayer offered by Alcoholics Anonymous: "Lord, grant me serenity
to accept the things that cannot change, courage to change those that
I
I can, and wisdom to know which is which."

Language
Language is the single most powerful tool that humans have ever invented for
iftouqlnte
the creation of social worlds. In fact, it is so powerful a tool that some thoughtful
analysts have suggested that language created us! Do we speak language or does YÔtTXS
language speak us? Which came first, the thought or the word?
There is much about the origin of language that we will never know.
There is evidence that one million years ago our ancestors were engaging
some degree of cooperation and foresight, including
in activities requiring
organized hunting of large animals and the controlled use of fire. Whatever
language they spoke was surely simpler than any modern language because
far
the anatomy of the vocal of our distant ancestors could produce far
tracts
fewer distinguishable sounds than our own. How ever, as long as 50,000 years
ago, our ancestors had fully modern vocal tracts and were capable of producing
the full range of sounds in today's languages (Claiborne 1983, pp. 22-23).
However, we can be absolutely sure that the first instance of human
—
communication was a conversation language was originally spoken (not
written) in the physical presence of another person with the keen anticipation
of a response by that other person. That is, Ug the Caveman said/signed/
grunted something that indicated to Uk, who lived in the next cave, that it
would be nice if they went hunting together tomorrow, and found Uk ready
and waiting to go the next day.
Counterpoint 2.
The relationship between the media and the process of communication

has caused considerable confusion.
Entranced by the potentials of telegraph, telephone, television, audio-
and videotape recording, and other technical means of getting a message
from one place to another, some people have focused on the media and
neglected the process of communication. Those who use the late,
unlamented transmission model of communication discussed in Chapter
1 are particularly susceptible to this temptation, of which Ong (1972, p. 176)
remarks, "This model obviously has something to do with human commu-

nication, but, on close inspection, very little, and it distorts the act of
communication beyond recognition."
On the other hand, those who are entranced by the process of com-
munication have sometimes treated the media as if they were merely different
technical means by which the same process occurs. For example, Berlo
(1960) put "media" as one of the variables ("channels") within the
process of communication in his "source -» message -» channels —
receiver" (SMCR) model.
We now have sufficient reason to believe that the medium in which
communication occurs is far more important than we believed, but that its
effects are far more subtle than early analysts imagined. In brief: media
are the enabling infrastructures of the process of communication; they shape
what is possible, what is usual, and what is difficult. In doing so, they
constrain the development of communication processes (including the forms
of consciousness of the communicators, the patterns of social interaction,
and thus the events and objects of social worlds) in much the same
way as the course of rivers affected the development of cities and trade
in Canada (Innis 1951) and railroads determined the place of cities in
the American west (Cronon 1991).

Oral speech is the primary medium of communication. Every language
used by human beings (with the exception of computer "languages,"
if they be included) was first spoken without having a written form.
"Wherever human beings exist they have a language, and in every

instance a language that exists basically as spoken and heard, in
the world of sound Indeed, language is so overwhelmingly oral
. . .
that of all themany thousands of languages—possibly tens of thousands —

spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been
committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced litera-
ture, and most have never been written at all. " (Ong 1982, p. 7)
Every society has, at one time or another, relied on speech for its most
important social functions. Ong calls these "primary oral societies."
Some societies have become "primary literate societies" in that they
regularly entrust their most important social functions (or at least
some of them, perhaps the most "public" of them) to printed materials
using written language. We now know that this is not just an exchange of
one medium for another; it is an exchange of one form of consciousness
and society for another (Ong 1982).
We most interesting moment in social evolution.
find ourselves at a
The United States (and many other industrialized nations) are moving from
a literate society to one that uses the electronic media for many of its
most important functions. Although we are not sure exactly what
effects this shift will have, there is reason to believe that they will be
significant, rivaling the change from oral to literate society in impact.
For example, Postman (1985) argues that television has trivialized our
ability to engage in public discourse about the public's business, and
Meyerwitz (1985) argues that the structure of society's boundaries have
been changed by the electronic media. At the same time, many of
the nations of the world that did not become so deeply literate are moving
from what Ong calls a "manuscript" society (they have a written
—
language, but manuscripts are used to back up not replace oral speech) —
directly to an electronic society. We really do not know what kinds of
effects this shift will have: the best discussion is by Tehranian (1990),
—
who offered four possibilities and said in the best pragmatic tradition that —
subsequent events will determine which one is true.
The development of other media of communication (e.g., print or elec-
tronic)enables us to see more clearly the characteristics of oral
speech, the medium of interpersonal communication. Speech involves
the whole person; it includes both verbal and nonverbal elements,
such as the quality of the voice, facial expressions, body posture and
movements, and use of the space between conversants. These non-
verbal aspects of interpersonal communication are so important that
some books and college courses focus specifically on them (Knapp and Hall,
1992). In addition, speech includes a give-and-take between speakers, in
physical proximity to each other, and in a specific setting. Unlike print,
which can be anonymous, taken from one setting to another, and read
and written in private, speech disappears as it is said and is intensely personal.
Once language was developed, it permitted our ancestors and us to — —

go far beyond what is possible without language. "Language creates a domain
—
which has no counterpart in the animal world an elaborate set of rules and
norms, rights and duties without which it is impossible to visualise, let alone
describe, the realities of human existence. It is only inside this framework
that concepts such as shame, pride, honour, embarrassment and humiliation
have any meaning" (Miller 1983, Symbols have the power to conceal
p. 156).
as well as reveal. When we call a certain person "uncle,"" this symbol illumi-
nates certain aspects of his identity but at the price of ignoring other aspects.
Your uncle is many things in addition to being your uncle taxpayer, Vietnam —
veteran, forward on his over-40 basketball team —
and calling him "uncle"
directs your attention away from these things and toward your relationship
with him.
Language and human beings have grown up together. Philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein demonstrated that words do not have meanings, they
have uses. We use them to signal others, to express our moods or emotions,
to refer to events and objects, and to write textbooks. These uses change
from one context to another and over time. Linguist Richard Lederer ( 1989,
pp. 177, 187-188) captured this relationship between conversations and
language with this observation.
Has it ever struck you how human words are? Like people, words
are born, grow up, get married, have children, and even die . . .
The family resemblances between words and people should come as

no surprise. After all, language is not something that cave people
discovered in the woods or turned up under a rock. Language is a
human invention, and humanness is the invention of language. The
birth of language is the dawn
of humanity, and each is as old as
the other. It is people who make up words and it is people who decide
what words mean
shall From a creature who is a little lower
. . .
than the angels and a little above the apes, who embraces tiger and
lamb, Apollo and Dionysus, the Oedipus Cycle and the Three Stooges,
we can expect nothing less or more than a language in which people
drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and play at a recital
.
and recite at a play, a language in which a slim chance and a fat

chance are the same but a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.
From such a changeful and inconstant being we can expect nothing
more or less than an outpouring of words that are brightly rational,
wonderfully serviceable, maddeningly random, frenetically creative,
and, of course, completely crazy.
Communication theorists sometimes differentiate language from non-

verbal cues. That is, words are separated from voice quality and tone, facial
expressions, posture, and bodily movements. However, in interpersonal com-

VOitf, fact, Yxdij munication, these are artificial distinctions. Conversations are oral, and in
1f\r\ "VO f\i ^TV\ J iJ

ora^ s
P eecri -.
there can be no words without all of these nonverbal cues. For
^ ^ '
^^\\ .- us, language is not separate from its embodiment in a speaker.
YVlAO VY\ VJIfYAjlXolUfO Yl1 l The invention of
the phonetic alphabet led to the differentiation of
i ia^/i lArtn -—
i
language and nonverbal communication. This one-time event in human his-
4KjL \0Jf\\OMjL tory allows us to freeze words on a page, thus stripping them of voice,
face, body, interpersonal relationship, and situational context in which they
occurred. Like butterflies in a museum, words in print are killed, impaled,
anc* ne ^ U P * or display in an artificial setting (Ong 1982). Because we are
rn '
\C-A_ t-firA^
^^
r\
[AN v-/ jUO' interested in conversation, I will not treat verbal and nonverbal cues as sepa-
rate; but because I am writing about interpersonal communication in a printed
book, I will often give you a transcript of a conversation. Please understand
that you should reincarnate these transcripts as you read them, investing them
with sound and movement. All of this is part of language.
Social Worlds Are in a Continuous Process of

Being Remade
Clarifying the nondualistic assumptions of the social constructionist under-

standing of interpersonal communication is important because the concepts
that are presented here simply do not make sense if they are stuffed into
the categories of Cartesian dualism. Conversations are neither objective (in
Descartes' sense) nor subjective; they are a form of action and they are, in
themselves, the real substance of our social worlds. Participating in conversa-
tions by speaking, listening, laughing, grimacing, frowning, answering, not
answering, embracing, and shrugging calls into being something that never
existed before that will always be a part of your social worlds from this time
on.
Physicists arc undecided about the nature of the physical world. Some
believe that the universe began "Big Bang," and everything that now
in the
exists \\ as created at that moment. Othersbelieve in "continuous creation,"
that there is an ongoing interaction between matter and antimatter such that
new material is being created in the universe all the time.
Social Worlds Are Made with Other People in Joint Actions 75
There is no such ambiguity about the social world. Clearly, the social £^/(\A (\jlt\l^ »
^^^
world is in a process of continual creation. The actions that you perform in ^»». »L rvy\
MXYU/tt
moment add to the sum total of human experience; the future of the
this ^yQHjJli, *^V
human race is not fixed, it is still being developed through our actions. ()$} TO ^-H^X
ty\\
I get very excited about this. When we communicate, we are not just \â i ~ _ «d--
talking about the world, we are literally participating in the creation of the JUlM
^'^f^tf f)
social universe. What will be will grow out of what was, but it on
will take •MJiy .
|(\jjpfl(!l^
the form of the actions that you and I perform in this particular moment.
If I tell you that it is snowing heavily and that you should not come
to my office today, part of what I have done is to refer to a meteorological
condition. However, this is just a component of performing a particular act.
Depending on the rest of our conversation, that act might be understood as
warning, advising, giving permission (for you to turn in your paper a day
late), or explaining (my absence from my office).
Social Worlds Are Made with Other People in

Joint Actions
Conversation cannot be done by one person alone. You can simulate a conver-
sation by talking to yourself but only by shifting from one role to another.
To be involved in a fight, a love affair, or an intellectual discussion, you have
to find someone with whom you can coordinate the appropriate actions. You
co-construct the conversation when each of you cooperate in shaping a logic
of meaning and action that

definition of the situation.
Communication
calls into being something
John Shotter (1994, p. 9) coined the term

theorist
joint-action to describe "the contingent flow of continuous communicative
like your working
i W Ofcfofl *
interaction between human beings." Joint-action is a category of events

"lying in a zone of uncertainty somewhere between human actions . . .
(what T
as an individual agent do, explained by me giving my reasons),
[and] . natural events (what merely 'happens' to, in, or around me, outside
. .
of my agency as an individual to control, explained by their causes)" (Shotter,

1994, p. 3). That is, joint-actions are those that we do that are produced by
the intermeshing of your acts and mine. ~\\ If
To understand the nature of joint actions, consider the first person ^j£ K /"
1 ^X^
plural pronoun we. The grammar of Indo-European languages makss it easy ~ ,
\JfjJft"
for us to think of "we" as an aggregate of autonomous individuals, such that CM
the phrase "we construct our social worlds" is heard as "we" (each one of
us, acting autonomously, each like the other) "construct" (invent) "our social
worlds." However, Shotter is right in saying that conversation is a form of
joint action, which means that we must strain our language a bit and hear
the statement this way: "we" (acting collectively) "construct" (our actions
intermesh in such as way to produce) "our social worlds." That is, we need
to think of the first person pronoun as a collective term.
Counterpoint 2.8
If Bill and Mary have is often treated as if one or

a fight, the fight itself
both of them intended However, the events and objects of our social
it.
— —
worlds fights as well as helping episodes are often the aggregate of
actions that were not intended to produce them; in fact, sometimes
joint-actions produce things quite the opposite of what we intended.
The difference between each act taken singly and their aggregate was
captured in an old Roman saying that translates something like "Every
Senator is a prince, but the Senate is a beast." Closer to home, as people
select their seats in an auditorium, they want to sit close to other people but
not too close, and they do not want to sit in the first row that has people
in it. As a result, the front of the auditorium is empty and the back over-
crowded. No one set out to produce this pattern, it is simply the result
of the aggregate of a particular style of individual choices. Several
new areas of study have opened up that look at the properties of aggre-
gates produced by iterations (repeated instances) of individual behav-
iors (Schelling 1978; Gleick 1987).
Shotter (in press) suggests that we (individually) act into situations that
are unfinished and underdetermined by our individual actions. Their
meanings are determined by the way they intermesh with others. As a
result, we should not necessarily assume that the result of our actions will
be consistent with our intentions, and we should not assume that those
who participate in the creation of a particular event or object intended
to do so.
Thus understood, joint-action is at the same time the product of what

we do but not solely the product of what any one of us does; it is better
understood as the combination or intermeshed product of the collective "we"
who act. This means that we affect but do not individually control the
conversations in which we participate. Shotter (1994, p. 3) says that the key
characteristic of joint action is "its very lack of specificity, its lack of any pre-
determined final form, and thus its openness to being specified as determined
by those involved in it."
Monologue and Dialogue

Communication theorists have long recognized that there are qualitative
differences in conversations. One way of distinguishing them is to contrast
monologic and dialogic conversations. In monologue, one conversant treats
the others as were third-person objects to be manipulated; in dialogue,
if they
one conversant treats the others as if they were second-person subjects to be

in relation with.
Depending on what person-perspective you take and on how you treat

other persons, very different moral orders are invoked. Acting as a first person,
you are a performer or an agent who does and makes things. If you act as a
first person and treat someoneelse as a second person, you are one who
understands, and you are the recipient of the actions of another first person.
However, if you act as first person and treat someone else as a third person,
you are the judge, critic, or "object" of that other person's actions.
Second persons are personified; that is, they are exp_ ected a n d allowe d
to engage in the disting uishing acts of persons, such as having purposes,
acting as agents of their own motives, and owning their own feelings and
meanings. The difference between second and first person occurs in a court-
room, in which defendants (treated as third persons) are told at the end of
a trial whether they are innocent or guilty, regardless of what they claimed
(when treated as second persons) at the beginning of the trial.
Elaine had worked for Harry until an incident occurred at an office
party. From Elaine's perspective, Harry had sexually harassed her; Harry did
not agree. A few days later, Elaine quit her job. A few days after that, the
two accidentally met on the street. "Hi!" Elaine said, "I'm glad to sue you
I mean, see you!"
How should Harry reply, and what should he think about this slip-of- //
the-lip? If he treats Elaine as a second person, he will allow her to specify ^
what she means and read nothing else into what she says. Shotter (1984, p. /^
16) explains
As second-persons in everyday life, we do not have the right to step

out of our "personal involvement" with other people, and attend to \
Refrain 2.2
y^
#
In monologue, you treat other people as if they were "third persons" or
"objects." You take the role of observer, critic, "cause" of certain
effects," an "agent" who acts intentionally. In monologue, it is easy to
v
treat other people as if they had no value except to the extent tha .
they serve your purposes.

In dialogue, you treat other people as they were "second persons"
if
or "moral entities." You take the role of one who understands, acts with,
is a participant in the experience of the other. In dialogue, it is easy to
treat other people as if their intentions are as valid as your own, and to seek
ways of braiding together your fortune and theirs. You feel a strong
interdependence with others such that their feelings and meanings
are part of your own experience.
aspects of their person to which they do not intend us to attend —

and to ask them to account for matters for which they do not deem
themselves responsible. In the ecology of daily social life, there seems
to be a moral sanction against such a shifting of roles; unless, that
is, one is a physician or psychotherapist, hairdresser or dentist, or
suchlike, and then people do intend you to examine the unintended
aspects of their behaviour and appearance.
On the other hand, if Harry treated Elaine as a third person, he would

likely interpret her misstatement as a "slip" that indicates that she intends
to press charges against him based on the incident at the office party. In his
thoughts and in his report of this meeting to his lawyer, he will probably use
the third-person pronoun (and maybe some vivid descriptive adjectives) when
referring to Elaine and offer explanations about her actions that differ from
the ones she herself gave. Again Shotter (1984, p. 14) explains,
. . . third persons need not be personified (they can be "its"); nor

are they "present" in themselves, so to speak, to other beings or entities;
nor are they necessarily "in a situation. " Indeed, the category is so
non-specific that it may be used to refer to absolutely anything so

long as it is external to, or outside of, the agency or situation offirst
as well as second persons.
Counterpoint 2.9
The distinction between monologue and dialogue marks incommensurate

ways of communicating. Not only do monologists read the definitions of
interpersonal communication offered in Chapter 1 differently from the
way dialogists do, but they coordinate their actions with those of
other people in a very different way. In my judgment, monologists are
usually genuinely oblivious to aspects that are of primary concern to
dialogists and hence do not understand what dialogue is all about. On
the other hand, dialogists sense what is missing in the monologists perspec-
tive but often have a hard time expressing it." For this reason, review I
two of the most articulate descriptions of the differences between the

two forms of communication.
Martin Buber (1967, p. 113) distinguished "genuine dialogue" from two
counterfeits. In genuine dialogue, "each of the participants really has
in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns
to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between
himself and them." Technical dialogue makes "objective understanding"
the sole goal, not the establishing of a continuing relationship. Monologue
disguised as dialogue is a "strangely tortuous and circuitous way" in
which people imagine that they have "escaped the torment of being thrown
back on their own resources" by giving the appearance of establishing

an l-Thou relationship when it is in reality an l-lt.
Anatol Rapoport (1967, pp. 90-91) made a similar distinction between
people who approach others strategically (i.e., in monologue) and
those who approach others based on conscience (i.e., in dialogue).
The basic question in the strategist's mind is this: "In a conflict how
can I gain an advantage over him?" The critic cannot disregard the
question, "If I gain an advantage over him, what sort of person will I
become?" For example, he might ask what kind of a nation the United
States might become if we succeeded in crushing all revolutions as
easily as in Guatemala. With regard to deterrence, the critic might
ask not, "What if deterrence fails?" (everyone worries about thaU but,
on the contrary, "What if deterrence works?"
Rapoport's example is all the more powerful because it was offered during
the Cold War. Subsequent events have shown that the United States
was unprepared for the "victory" for which it fought so hard. According
to Rapoport, there are three distinctions between the forms of thinking
characteristic of monologue and dialogue.
First, "strategists" conceive action in terms of its effects on objects or
other people, whereas dialogists think of action in terms of its reflexive
effects on themselves as well as on others. Second, monologue presumes
that values are already established; for dialogists, determining values
is monologue, conversants assume
a principal preoccupation. Third, in
whereas dialogists take
that objective facts are there to be ascertained, into
consideration their perspectives and the forms of action that they take
to determine what the facts might be.
Think of a conversation from the first-person perspective. You are acting

in ways that respond to and evoke actions from another person. There are
qualitative differences in the kinds of conversations you produce, depending
on whether you treat the other person as a second or third person. These
differences start with who you are. Martin Buber (1988) captured this differ-
ence in his famous aphorism, "The T
of 'I-thou' is not the same as the T
T of 'lit.' " Specifically, in monologue, you treat the other as an "it" and
you treat yourself as if you were an autonomous individual acting in ways

that affect the other. On the other hand, in dialogue, you treat the other as
"you" and you treat yourself as if you were part of a relationship, engaged
in joint action with another "I" whose motives and meanings are a part of
the conversation in which you live.
Coordinating Actions
The distinction between monologue and dialogue gives distinctively differ-
ent readings to the definitions of interpersonal communication offered in

Chapter 1.
'
¥ From a monologic first-person perspective, the issue

autonomous individual) can coordinate my actions with those or the other
person whose cooperation is necessary for me to achieve my goals. That is,
how can I work through this joint action to accomplish my purposes? This
is how "I" (as an
gives rise to questions about how I can achieve my goals, secure the other
person's compliance, and perhaps induce the other person to act in ways that
I can use against him or her.
^ I f a
^J
From a dialogic first-person perspective, the issue
coordinate our actions so that we can
is how "we"
our goals. The most important
can
)(~,(L MQlAo^"' realize
^, , difference in the dialogic perspective is that "I" see myself within the conversa-
LA-^ y(Xl i
0j W^>\ tion rather than outside it, of my own. With this comes
using it for purposes
an identification with the other persons in the conversation such that their
A //v^Q r -liY/V/ l\C^T
l^ljlWU' ^->LM'^ well-being and purposes and meanings are a part of the whole to which I
- i. .
-C •/ ^ attend. This perspective gives rise to questions about what kind of person I
t**"
l/L/T O'CA-*-' i
will become if we produce this or that form of conversation. What goals are
,
r
, /-/j^-oo^^ A ^^constructed in the conversation, and how do they relate to the form of the
C^TiL/ûfl' (j^ T^ conversation? What resources are available to us to improve our coordination?
Game-like Patterns of Social Interaction

The definition of interpersonal communication from the third-person per-
spective also differs depending on whether one takes a monologic or dialogic
stance.
If I treat the other as a third person, then the "game-like pattern of
social interaction" is a means of doing something to the other person. It is
this sense of "game-playing" that has acquired a negative connotation. For

example, Donna acts hurt every time Ronald works late: she is playing a game
in which he is forced to take the role of penitent, begging her forgiveness,
and she gets to play the role that she wanted, of judging his behavior. Psychol-
ogist Eric Berne (1964) compiled a book full of examples of these games
people play in order to take advantage of others.
On the other hand, if I treat the other as a second person, then the
"game-like pattern of social interaction" means of doing something with
is a
the other person. (Berne, 1976). In this sense, "game-like" means only that
there are complex clusters of reciprocal expectations in which each action
^- does not stand alone but is a "move" that initiates a logic of meaning and
.*-y action. For example, when Ronald comes home after working late, he notices
<'\^j that a single candle is lit on the dining table. Because he and Donna have
\1 worked out a game-like pattern of social interaction, he knows that the candle
\^
\t
is a "move" rather than just a single act. That is, it does not indicate that
the electricity has been shut off or make the statement "candles are pretty";
rather, it invites him to respond with the next act in a sequence that comprise
the episode "romantic evening home alone."
The ability to participate with others (treating them as second persons)
enriches human life by an incredible amount. The existence of such game-
like makes complicated patterns of coordination possible that could

patterns
not be achieved without them. Think of the difference between the artistry
demonstrated by a pair of ice skaters who have practiced game-like patterns
for years in contrast to what two skaters of equal ability would be able to do
spontaneously the first time they ever skated with each other. In addition,
the existence of such game-like patterns makes wit and eloquence possible.
The eloquence of the single candle burning when Ronald arrives home is far
greater than Donna's explicit statement that she would like a romantic evening
home alone.
It is not too far-fetched to say that participation in such game-like
patterns of social interaction as second persons'xs the way that we become human
beings. Philosopher/psychologist Rom Harre noted that "When mothers talk
to babies they continually embed their babies in a conversation in which the
baby is treated as if it had a full complement of moral and intellectual quali-
ties." (in Miller 168) In baby talk, the infant is treated as if he or
1983, p.
she possessed the characteristics of moral agents that he or she will need but
does not now have. "It really is a vastly complex psychology and moral
sensibility that they are ascribing to their infants. They do not talk about their
infants' intentions; they provide them with them, and then they react to the
infant as if had them." (in Miller 1983, p. 168).
it
Of course, adults do the same thing with their pets, and children with
their dolls, toys, and imaginary friends. The difference is that the animals
with which we live and the inanimate objects with which we play do not have
the human infant's capacity to appropriate the moral world in which they
are enmeshed; they do not have the human infant's ability to discern spaces
in ongoing game-like patterns of social interaction in which they can insert
themselves as a first-person participant. This process of becoming a participant
in the game is what differentiates a human child from, for example, a gorilla
or chimpanzee raised identically in a human home. The human child begins
to use the language surrounding it, sometimes making up sentences, grammar,
and vocabulary that it has not heard; it begins to act out of a position of
moral responsibility; it is started on a path in which it will eventually pick
out certain features in the social environment as "me" and reproduce those
features as "who I am." This is so momentous a process that we treat the
child as if it were no longer an object but a subject, no longer an "it" but
a person: a "he" or "she" with the rights, responsibilities, and obligations
of an interlocutor, a full participant in our social worlds.
Competence in Interpersonal Communication
The dialogic perspective on the simile that conversations are "game-like"

provides us with a way of talking about competence that does not reduce it
to a static list of things that you know or can do. Competence is found in
the relationship between what each communicator can do and the game-like
Counterpoint 2. 10
The topic of communication competence is of great interest; it is equally

relevant to a little boy caught with his hand in the forbidden cookie jar and
to the candidates for elected office in democratic nations. Not surprisingly,
it has been the subject of serious inquiry for thousands of years. Spitzberg
and Cupach (1984) offer a comprehensive survey of issues, ideas, and

research about competence in interpersonal communication.
Many concepts of interpersonal communication competence focus on
an individual's ability to align his or her own interests with the de-
mands of the situation in such a way as to maintain the cooperation of
the other people involved. For example, John Weimann (1977, p. 198)
defined "the competent communicator [as] the person who can have his
way in the relationship while maintaining a mutually acceptable definition
of that relationship." In his introduction to the Spitzberg and Cupach
(1984, p. 7) book, series editor Mark Knapp praised their emphasis
on "communicator interdependence."
This issue strikes at the very heart of where competence resides. Virtu-
accounts of communicative competence have conceived of
ally all prior
competence as something exhibited or possessed by a single individ-
ual. To say that competent interaction is rooted in the configuration
of behavior manifested by both interactants is a radical departure from
—
previous ways of thinking about this issue although it seems more in line
with current communication theory. By taking into account the re-
sponses of one's interaction partner, our whole previous under-
standing of what is competent, normal, and problematic seems subject
to revision.
Mydiscussion of competence in this chapter is far from comprehensive.

In one sense, using Spitzberg and Cupach's terms, the concept offered
here is a radical contextualist one because the acts that are considered
"competent" derive from the characteristics of the situation. In an-
other sense, however, it focuses on the individual, making the distinction
between game playing and game mastery. The combination is a rela-
tional model, in which competence is determined by the "fit" between
the situation and the mode of acting by the communicator.
pattern of social interaction in which he or she acts. Let us focus on two

characteristics: one of the game, the other of the communicator.
Types of Game-like Patterns of Social Interaction

For these purposes, the game-like patterns of conversation may be described
along a continuum from stable and clear to ambiguous and unstable. Stable
and When you enter an elegant restau-

clear conversations are fully scripted.
rant, you seldom surprised by the sequence of events. First, you will be
are
asked the size of your party, about your seating preferences ("Smoking or
nonsmoking?"), then you will be offered a place at the bar to wait until your
table is ready and encouraged to purchase a greatly overpriced beverage
("May I get you started with something to drink?"). When finally seated,
you will be offered another expensive beverage, followed by a confrontation
with the specials of the day. Your order will be taken, you will be asked if
you want anything more, perhaps enticed with a tray of tempting desserts,
and presented a bill that you are expected to pay in addition to leaving a
sizable tip.
Of course, this is a carefully scripted sequence of action. The staff of
the restaurant have been trained (in a process in which customers are treated
as anonymous third persons) just how to proceed. Very skillful waitpersons
can perform this script as if it were spontaneous and make it seem as if they
were treating specific customers as second-persons. They are the ones who
get large tips.
Most of the social situations you confront during a normal day are
sufficiently stable and clear that you need not think very much about them;
in theater terms, you are part of a cast of a long-running play, doing daily
performances with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Other conversations are ambiguous and unstable. These are less frequent
in your social worlds, they tend to be traumatic, and they capture your
attention in dramatic fashion. For some of these situations, you do not know
the rules; if there is a "script," you do not know it. Others are situations in
which there are many rules, but they contradict; you know two or more
scripts for how to proceed but cannot follow them all.
"The first time" for any important activity is usually somewhat ambigu-
ous and unstable. Watzlawick et al. (1967) told a sorrowful story of a couple
whose marital problems started on their honeymoon, simply because they
had different scripts for how to be a married couple. He expected them to
spend of their time together, shutting the rest of the world out. Specifically,
all
he expected to be the sole object of her attention. She was excited about
being married and wanted to show off her husband and their new relationship
to everybody they met, so she invited other people to their table at dinner
and spent time talking with other couples. He perceived her as well, . . .
you can fill in the rest, but this is an example of an ambiguous and unstable
game-like pattern of social interaction.
Everv time there is a change in a relationship, there is some degree of
—
ambiguitv which is the source of revitalization and excitement as well as
uncertainty and problems. For example, during some transitional stage, dating
couples change from separate people who are dating to a "couple"; at another
point, from being a couple to being married; at another point, to being
parents of an infant; at another point, to being parents of a teenager; at
another, to being parents of grown children who are parents themselves; and,
often, one member of this couple will survive the other and have to adjust
1
Figure 2. SITUATION
Competence in interper-
sonal communication. Stable and clear
CONVERSANT
Ambiguous and unstable
to being a widow or widower. Each of these transitions introduces a great

deal of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Game Playing and Game Mastery

Competence communication is clearly different in stable and
in interpersonal
clear situations than ambiguous and unstable ones (Figure 2.1). Again
it is in
staying with the games metaphor, there is a distinction between game playing
and game mastery.
The basic move
game playing
in is to follow the rules, to perform as
expected, and perhaps to move within the rules in unusually effective ways.
For example, a person who dresses in a conservative business suit while
interviewing for a job at IBM is playing the game; a salesman who uses the
"pitch" taught to him in the company training program is game playing. If
you do not know the rules, or if you are somehow incapable of performing
them adequately, you have not performed competently. The best form of
game playing consists of following the rules and doing so with just a bit of
style, wit, or cleverness.
As form of communication competence, game playing is relatively
a
easy to develop. All of us have great skill in discerning the rules of the games
in which we are caught up. There are many self-help books that will give
you some additional information on how to play the games of your social
worlds. They deal with everything from how to fight productively with your
spouse to how to find a spouse, from how to lose weight (yes, that is a
conversational as well as nutritional process) to how to cope with the loss of
a job, a leg, or a loved one.
Game mastery refers to ways of moving within or among games for
purposes not comprehended by the games themselves. Game mastery may
take several forms. For example,

you might participate in a game while locating
it in a larger context. However, sometimes you may not want to play
the
game even if you know how. Game mastery in stable and clear situations
may consist of breaking the rules on purpose and deliberately forfeiting one
objective within the game to achieve another outside the game. I have the
image of two people seated at a table on which are the objects for many
games: cards, dice, several types of boards, chess figures, dominoes, and
checkers. One person picks up the deck of cards and deals five cards to each
player; the second ignores the cards and moves kings' pawn to K-4. This is
an act of game mastery. In conversation, one person may attempt to initiate
a sequence of events that will culminate in the other's spending money for
a product; the other person may deliberately choose not to play that game
by selecting another —for example, by analyzing the strategy of the first.
In ambiguous and unstable situations, game playing is a losing strategy.

There are many poignant instances of people trying their favorite or most
familiar patterns of social interaction in situations in which the rules have
changed or in which there is simply too much ambiguity. For example,
tourists in exotic cultures often find themselves —
after the novelty wears off
reproducing the familiar patterns of their native culture and getting irritated
when the "locals" do not cooperate sufficiendy. (When this happens, it is
time to go home!)
Game mastery in ambiguous and unstable situations consists of creating
order where there none, of calling into being forms of social coordination
is
under the most difficult circumstances. This is often accomplished by giving

a description of the situation: that is, one conversant will say admit that there
is no single way to act. Sometimes the person uses the ritualistic formula, "I
just don't know what to say . .
." or "I just can't tell you . .
." and
sometimes it consists of full-blown analyses of the lack of, or conflict between,
various scripts.
Another form of game mastery in ambiguous and unstable situations
is to perform a creative act that generates clarity and stability. Rather than
be caught between the demands of adolescence and adulthood, at some point
most of us will take decisive actions to clarify that we are no longer children
(that is, "to put aside childish things") and in that moment
as St. Paul said,
of clarifying action, initiate a new set of conversations with those around us.
By its very nature, game mastery cannot be codified into a skill to be
learned as you would the multiplication table. Rather, it consists of an ability
to perform in unique ways that are responsive to the demands of specific
situations. One major purpose of this book is to increase your ability to act
competendy as game masters in both clear and stable and ambiguous and
unstable situations.
Adult conversations are structured on a vast set of performance skills
and moral obligations. To perform in this complex, game-like pattern of
social interaction requires years of practice, and even then, mistakes will occur.
Subtie nuances of timing, expression, or prosody to say nothing of speech —
itself —can make the difference between making a friend or an enemy, getting
a job or losing one, or finding out what one wants to know or being misled.
These first two chapters have introduced many themes that will be
discussed in greater length later in the book. They function as an "overture";
Chapters 3 through 7 develop particular "motifs" at greater length.
The organization of Chapters 3 through 7 is shown in the general
atomic model of communication (Figure 1.5). Each chapter focuses on one
of the aspects of our social worlds that simultaneously envelop each act that
we perform.
Praxis
I
1. Creating Events and Objects in Your Social Worlds
To demonstrate how the events and objects of the social world are made,
let's examine one particular object: contemporary standards of feminine at-
tractiveness, specifically the criterion of "thinness." If you look at the women
who are selected as models for clothing or just to adorn advertisements for
all sorts of things, you notice that they are much thinner than the norm.
A first step in showing that this standard is made, not a fact of nature,
consists of making comparisons. That is, we can illumine the social processes
of making the events and objects of our social worlds by showing that the
products of these processes are different in various times and places. Specifi-
cally, thinness has not always or everywhere been associated with attrac-
tiveness. Take a look at the nudes painted by Renaissance artists and you will
see figures that would today be used as the "Before!" part of an advertisement
for a health club or diet food. However, these physiques were the standard
of beauty in their own society 7
.
A second step consists of looking at who is involved in the conversations

in which this particular aspect of our social worlds is made. For example, we
might ask who stands to profit most from the contemporary concept of
feminine beauty? The proprietors of exercise clubs, the makers of diet prod-
ucts, the purveyors of motivational or exercise videotapes, and fashion design-
ers, among others, come to mind.
Third, identify the particular conversations in which this event or object

is made. How are you informed of this standard of feminine beauty? In what
conversations is the physical attractiveness of women important? Who initiates

these conversations? Women might ask: To whom do you show the weight
that you have lost or gained? Who is the first to notice a change in your
figure? Which of your relationships would be most affected if you suddenly
7. Creating Events and Objects in Your Social Worlds 87
gained or from your waist? Men might ask: How do you know
lost inches
which women your friends think are attractive? How do you tell a woman
that you find her attractive?
You should answer these questions for yourself, but I suspect that the
answers are straightforward. Women talk a lot with each other about their
weight and figures; many conversations about such topics
I have overheard
as dietsand exercise programs. In addition, there are organized groups delib-
erately attempting to induct women into conversations in which "thinness"
is equated with beauty. These groups include fashion magazines, advertise-
ments in every medium from television to magazines, and the selection of

models and actresses featured as the examples of femininity. Might there be
a more sinister political and economic movement to equate thinness with
health in the medical and pharmacological professions?
Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are two major medical problems confront-
ing primarily young women in Western societies. Which came first, the societal
norm that thinness equals attractiveness or the behaviors that we call anorexia
nervosa and bulimia? I do not want to suggest simple causal relationships,
but do you think that there is some more complex relationship between the
quest for thinness and these eating disorders?

In this example, I am first asking you to see standards of feminine
beauty as socially constructed rather than fixed. That seems easy enough. We
could even invent some new objects of lusty fascination. Let's try it.
As know, the line from earlobe to neck vertebrae has never been
far as I
—
featured as the most alluring body part we have not even given that line a
name as we have "lap," "forearm," and "ankle." But we could name it.
Because this is a line perpendicular to the nape of the neck, I suggest we call
it the apne —
an anagram of "nape." Now that it is named, it can enter into
our conversations.
"You are so beautiful! Your eyes . . . your lips . . . your apne!"

"Doctor, I want to have cosmetic surgery. My self esteem is low
because I have such an ugly apne. Do you have some photographs
so that I can choose a more attractive shape?"
"Do a few more military presses, buddy. That'll build up your apne."
Now we can develop a keen sense of aesthetic appreciation for apnes, making
them the subject of romantic poetry and songs, a site for reconstructive
surgery and cosmetics, and a special feature challenging the skills of those who
design clothing. Perhaps a pornographic industry would develop showing
photographs of particularly attractive apnes. All of this activity would socially
construct a new object and locate it within our logics of meaning and action.
Those who did not cover (or uncover) their apne would be considered vulgar
or rude.
In class. Form groups of four or five. Create an event or object in your
social worlds following a process similar to that in which apnes were created.
Make making comparisons with other events

the event or object real by
and objects, by identifying who else is involved, and by locating particular
conversations in which this event or object exists. Compare your creation to
those of other groups.
2. A Description of Your Social Worlds
For several days, keep a running record of all the conversations in which you
participate. Use an appointment book or something that will allow you to
note what you are doing at specific times of the day.
In your description, note the duration of the conversation, the partici-
pants,and the topic. Think of verbs, not nouns. For example, you may write
"having lunch with Bill" or "doing physics homework with Elise."
For your own use, put a few descriptive words about each conversation.
Think of adverbs and adjectives: "dull," "useful," "painful," or "vacuous."
After completing these diaries, get a pack of index cards and transfer
what you have written about each conversation to the cards, one card per
conversation. Include a descriptive label that answers the question What were
you doing with whom?, the time, and the date of each conversation.
If you compare these conversations, you will find that some of them
seem more similar than others. Put those that are pretty much alike in a stack
—
and make a series of stacks at least two, perhaps as many as five or six in —
which the conversations in each stack resemble each other in ways that those
in different stacks do not.
The number of stacks give you a rough description of the complexity
of your social worlds. How many stacks do you have? Do these translate into
the different worlds in which you participate in a normal day?
The size of each stack gives you a rough description of the array of
conversations in each of your social worlds. Without pushing this too far,
—
these conversations are substitutable for each other at least, you have per-
ceived them as similar in some sort of way. If you were prevented from
participating in one of these conversations —for instance, your interlocutor
—
moved away one of the other conversations in this stack would allow your
social world to remain pretty much intact. However, if something happened
that eliminated all of the conversations in one of the stacks, this would be
much more traumatic; you would have to restructure your social world in
some important way.
Now compare the stacks. What is the characteristic that all of the conver-
sations in one stack possess that differentiate them from those in the other
stacks? This is a way of answering for yourself how you structure your social
worlds. Perhaps the difference is by persons; one stack includes all the conver-
sations with a specific person and the other stacks, with other persons. Perhaps
you differentiate on the basis of purpose: some stacks have to do with your
job, some with your schooling, some with your family, and some with your
3. Applying the Heyerdahl Solution to Interesting Conversations 89
your best friend. Perhaps you have several different criteria on which you
base these distinctions.
Finally, look adverbs and adjectives you provided as descriptions
at the
of each conversation. Do they cluster? That is, do all the positive descriptions
fall into a particular stack and all the negative ones in another? If so, what
does this tell you about your social worlds? Or do you have more complex
structures, in that a single stack contains both the most positively and most
negatively described conversations? If so, what does this tell you about your
social worlds?
The information you have gained is your own, and you should indeed
feel thatyou own it. However, it would be interesting to compare with your
classmates the number of stacks, the number of conversations in each stack,
and the criteria for differentiating among them.
3. Applying the Heyerdahl Solution to

Interesting Conversations
Look at the stacksof index cards you made. If you treat them as a rough
map of your probably some conversations that are
social worlds, there are
particularly interesting. Perhaps there is one that stands out from the others
in its stack — it is the only positively described conversation in a stack of
negatively described conversations, or it is the one in which you feel most
constrained in a stack where you generally feel quite free and spontaneous.
one or two conversations that interest you and apply the Heyer-
Select
dahl solution. That is, observe it in the process of being made. One way of
doing this is to write a script that records the conversation; use all the
conventions of script writing that the authors of plays have developed. De-
scribe the setting and the characters; write the dialogue, with stage directions
for how the actors —
that is, you and your interlocutors —
moved, spoke, and
—
expressed emotion. Keep developing the characters what was she thinking
when she said what she did? How did you feel when you replied? Continue
until you feel that you have written everything that an actor playing the part
would need to know to experience this conversation in the same way that
you did. You might find the serpentine model from Chapter 1 a useful way
of structuring your dialogue.
Now shift your perspective from author to critic. Do you find this
believable? Are the characters well developed? Are they equally developed?
Would it make an effective play? Who should be praised or blamed? How do
each of the characters participate in the co-construction of what happened?
What surprised you as you were writing the script? Did you have to
change your mind about the meaning of what was said and done? Write some
—
new dialogue this time not trying to reproduce what was really said but
taking this opportunity to have all conversants say what you would have liked
them to have said.
What surprised you as you were critiquing the script? Are your evalua-
tions more or less certain than they were before? Do you praise or blame
one person more than the others?
4. Polyphony and How to Resist Linguistic Tyranny
Every communication event is polyphonous; even when you talk to yourself,

there are multiple voices that support or contradict each other. But what is
the relationship among these voices?

Bakhtin (1986, pp. 88-89) introduced two useful terms. Canonization
is the development of a standard form of speech that serves as the norm
against which every other voice is heard. For example, in Medieval Europe,
Christianity was the norm for expressing religious experience; any other form
of expression was defined as deviant. Even if they were tolerated, Muslims
and Jews knew that when they used the words of their religious heritage,
they set themselves apart by doing so. In the contemporary United States^
the whole "political correctness" controversy is about what, and to what
extent, certain forms of communication will be canonized.
The opposite of canonization is reaccentuation, the process by which
our voices can use words that have been used by many others to express just
our meanings. For example, Bakhtin noted how authoritative utterances can
be undermined by repeating them word-for-word in a mocking, ironic tone
of voice. Bakhtin urged us to understand the genres of speech in our society
to achieve freedom of speech; that is, by assimilating, reworking, and reac-
centuating them, we can express our own individuality.
These terms describe our social worlds as a dynamic place in which we
must deal with the tensions between pressures to conform to the standards
v
(canonization) and the need to speak our own individual voices (reaccentua-
tion). I propose the term linguistic tyranny for a category of communication
situations in which the polyphony of our social worlds is suppressed. That
is, by whatever means, you are required to speak in the canonical form; any
attempt to speak freely in your own (reaccentuated) voice will be punished

if detected.
Whether benevolent, benign, ordespotic, linguistic tyranny consists of
a local suppression of polyphony and polysemy. It treats what you say as if
it had only one set of possible contexts and thus meanings, and as if you were
participating in only one conversation. Although this standard is sometimes a

useful fiction, allowing us to coordinate lines of action within reasonably
stable definitions of the situation, it remains a fiction. If you are to achieve
the freedom of speech we prize so highly, you need to be alert to the efforts
of others to restrict you to a particular sublanguage or to limit your social
world to a particular set of objects and relations.
The linguistic tyranny that I have in mind occurs when someone insists
that their language is the only language and requires you to answer in it. This
happens in legal proceedings: the judge will require you and your attorney to
4. Polyphony and How to Resist Linguistic Tyranny 91
speak in a strange language with very specific meanings. There are precise
differences between an adult and a minor, between a misdemeanor and a
felony, between civil and criminal courts, and between manslaughter and
—
murder and these differences are very important to the defendant.
Linguistic tyranny also occurs in academic settings. "Without using any
11 11
big words," I was once charged, "tell me the result of your study. "I can't,
I replied honestly. On another occasion, one of my colleagues demanded
that I explain my theory of communication (that features stories and interpre-

tations) in his language (which is limited to descriptions of physical move-
ments). Again, "I can't," I replied honestly. Neither person believed me, and
both were displeased.
Linguistic tyranny occurs when you are forced to put your experience
into a language in which it does not fit. Perhaps you need to make a distinction
that the language does not allow or suggest an additional explanation:
Did you screw up on purpose, or is it just your ignorance that enabled

you to make such a mess? Don't try to squirm out of it! Which
was it?
One way to escape linguistic tyranny is to remember that no answer

might be better than a wrong answer to some questions. My response "I
can't" was honest, but it was also not very eloquent. Here's one way of doing
better. If someone tries to make you the victim of linguistic tyranny, reply
with a question:
In what language would you like for me to respond?
For example, if asked the question about "screwing up" you might say,
In what language would you like for me to respond? Shall I limit myself
to the simplistic moral dichotomy between purposive and ignorant
action? Or may I use a more realistic set of explanations of what
occurred?
In class. Working in groups of two, practice escaping from linguistic
tyranny. Take turns interviewing each other, but instead of answering the
questions, 1) identify the assumptions presumed in the question, 2) identify
the language-game in which that presumption occurs, and 3) respond in a
way that calls into question that language-game. For example:
Tom: Why vou choose

did to take a course in interpersonal
communication?
Mary "chose" it was

to take the course. Perhaps
The assumption is that
a requirement for her major; perhaps she found herself in the course by
accident having made a mistake in registration or wandering into the wrong
room; perhaps it was the only course that she could take because other work
schedule. Let her say:
Mary: You assume that I chose to take the course.
In what language-game does this assumption fit comfortably? It presumes

that Mary is a free moral agent, that she has the ability to choose among
various courses, and that she knew something about this course so that she
could choose. Is this necessarily correct? No, perhaps Mary is a full-time
employee at a research center on campus and has only this time period open;
perhaps she is on scholarship, the terms of which require this course; etc.
But how should she respond?

The question prefigures an answer using the vocabulary of individual
motivation: "I wanted ." or "I chose
.
." or "it will help me to
. .
." . . .
or even "Bob told me that it would be a good course for me." What other
vocabularies are available? One has to do with causes "because it was re-
—
quired," or "because had no choice."
I
Let's assume that Mary wants to escape the linguistic tyranny imposed
by the assumption presumed in the question. She might say:
Mary: Just lucky, I guess.
This is a surprising answer that rejects the vocabulary of individual intention
and perhaps opens the conversation up to new vocabularies of accounts for

how she came to be in the class. Or she might say,
Mary: It is my fate. I must have done something terribly wrong in my

previous life.
If this does not end the conversation, it will open it up to all sorts of interesting
possibilities.
Another form of linguistic tyranny is the claim that anything can be
said,and that if you cannot say (or write) it, then you are being evasive or
are not thinking very well. For example, philosopher John Searle (1969, p.
17) proposed the principle of expressibility, by which he meant that "whatever
can be meant can be said. A given language may not have a syntax or a
vocabulary rich enough for me to say what I mean in that language but there
are no supplementing the impoverished language or
barriers in principle to
saying what I mean in a richer one." Literary critic George Steiner (1967,
p. 12) claimed that Western culture has always believed "that all truth and
realness —with the exception of a small, queer margin at the very top —can
be housed inside the walls of language."
Are Searle and Steiner practicing linguistic tyranny? There are persistent
reports from some of the most articulate speakers and writers that any verbal
description they give of experience trivializes it. Someone once lamented that
5. Identifying the Scripts in Social Settings 93
our fate (what "our" was he referring to, wonder?) was to touch the pure
I
lyrics of experience and, unless by a million-to-one chance we happen to be

Shakespeare, to reduce them to the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.
A remark by Joseph Campbell (1976, p. 84) has haunted me for years: "The
best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that
comes civilized conversation ..."
The artist M. C. Escher found ways to do marvelous things with wood-
cuts, expressing impossible realities, and yet he said, "If only you knew the
things I have seen in the darkness of the night ... at times I have been
nearly demented with a wretchedness at being unable to express these things
in visual terms. In comparison with these thoughts, every single print is a
failure, and reflects not even a fraction of what might have been" (quoted
byFalletta 1983, p. 43).

In direct contradition to Steiner and Searle, Shands (1971, pp. 19-20)
urged us to transcend words:
The problem is words. Only with words can man become conscious;
only with words learned from another can man learn how to talk
to himself. Only through getting the better of words does it become
possible for some, a little of the time, to transcend the verbal context
and to become, for brief instants, free.
In class. Stage a debate, with some people defending the Searle/Steiner

principle of expressibilityand others the Shands/Campbell/Escher principle
of ineffability. As you debate, explore what Steiner might have meant about
the "small, queer margin at the top" and what Shands might mean by
becoming, briefly, "free." Use this debate as a way of testing what you think
about the issue.
Now simulate a conversation between Searle or Steiner as one conversant
and Shands, Campbell, or Escher as the other. Start the conversation with
Shands/Campbell/Escher claiming to have had an experience that cannot
be expressed verbally; let Searle/Steiner reply next by denying the claim.
Then play out the conversations in several ways. After several simulations,
decide whether Searle/Steiner are cutting through the murk of obscure ex-
pressions or whether they are practicing linguistic tyranny.
5. Identifying the Scripts in Social Settings
The extent to which our social worlds are stable and clear often escapes us;
we are not mindful of the repetitiousness of much of what we do. Some
we put the same shoe on first every day and go through the
people say that
same sequences of brushing our teeth and our hair. It is clear that we develop
patterns of who to greet and how to greet our friends, classmates, and
coworkers. A psychologist once confided his greatest problem listening to
his clients:he was tempted to lip-synch what they told him! After awhile, he
said, there was a great predictability' in the problems that people brought to
him. (Hmm ... I wonder to what extent the predictability was in the stories
they told him and what stemmed from the way he heard them? That is, were
his clients boring him, or was he bored?)
As an exercise, pay attention to these "fully scripted" parts of your
social worlds. The "sales pitch" used in commercials and by salespersons are
usually carefully patterned.
Stable and clear game-like patterns of social interaction are deliberately
used by those who want to get their hands into your wallet. Salesmen learn
to initiate conversations in which your "place" is as a paying customer; if
you interact with a sales person on his or her terms, you will find yourself
"forced" to a point where you should sign an agreement or pay for goods
and services. Note that the persuasion in these conversations does not neces-
sarily have anything to do with the product you are purchasing; it has much
to do with the role you have taken in the conversation initiated by the sales
person.
Although there are some "intuitive" salesmen, most are trained to
initiate specific forms of conversation. For example, one simple trick is for
them to ask you a series of questions to which you will answer affirmatively,
"Yes." (Do you want your parents taken care of in their old age? Would you
like to have financial independence? Then they will confront you with another
)
question that relates far more directly to the cash in your wallet: "Then you
want to subscribe to our new magazine, Financial Tips for the HomelessV
The conversation has steered you to a point where it is logical for you to say,
"Yes! Sign me up!"
As a way of increasing your competence in dealing with these situations,
see if you can infer the conversational structure that sales persons try to
initiate. Observe or participate in a sales interview or watch or read some
commercials. However, instead of acting spontaneously, think about what

the sales person is trying to do by saying what he or she says. How is the
customer being maneuvered in the conversation into a position to send
money?
Before class. Write the underlying scripts of some of these sales pitches.
In class. Compare the scripts you wrote with those written by other
people. What common features stand out? What are some of the unique
features?
6. Some Exercises in Conversational Competence
There are many self help books that advise you how to be competent in
monologic games. For example, Stephen Potter's (1970) The Complete Up-
manship contains advice on how to win games without actually cheating.
One specific set of advice shows you how to "win" at chess even if you do
6. Some Exercises in Conversational Competence 95
not know anything about the game. You begin by making a series of very
ordinary moves but spending an increasing amount of time between moves,
giving the impression that you are laboring hard. After the sixth move, you
concede the game, saying "Well done! You have me checkmated on the
ninety-third move. Thank you for the game." As you walk away, you suddenly
stop and say "Unless, on the seventy-sixth move after sacrificing your . . .
Queen, you but, no, you are far too skilled a player to make such a
. . .
foolish move. Thanks again." As you walk away, you have lost the game of
chess but established your reputation as a chess expert. For more active
gameplayers, Lardner's ( 1968) The Underhanded Serve: Or How to Play Dirty
Tennis will be interesting.
Are these "tricks" best understood as examples of game playing or
game mastery? Compare the structure of Potter's examples with the advice
in a good book on training dogs, such as Siegal and Margolis (1973). Dogs
want to train
are prefigured by their genetics to act in particular ways; if you
a dog, you must accept these prefigurations as part of the scripts and find
ways to insert yourself so that you and your dog can coordinate in the ways
that you want. For example, a dog will "heel" if you fit that behavior into
its scripts.
Is training a dog best understood as game playing or game mastery?

What are the similarities and differences between what Potter's chess player
did and what Siegal and Margolis urge you to do?
Now, and clear scripts that you developed
take the descriptions of stable
in Praxis #5, and think of how you would engage in game playing and game
mastery in them. Use the scripts as a way of structuring improvisational skits
in which you practice the skills of competence. If these scripts do not work,
use the scenarios sketched below
Bill has just been hired as a reporter for a major newspaper. Because he
impressed his editor when he interviewed for the position, he was assigned
to cover the governor's press conference. When he arrived, he realized that
there was a very powerful logic of meaning and action governing who asks
what kinds of questions in what sequence at these press conferences, and
that he did not know how to fit into it. What should Bill do? How long will
it take and by what means can he learn to fit into the logic of gubernatorial
press conferences?
Elsa is a member of a student government committee. Unfortunately, the
committee has developed a very powerful logic of meaning and action that
assigns her a role that is not respected. When she makes suggestions, they
are dismissed because she is a "foreigner" and a "newcomer" to the commit-
tee.She knows the logic of meaning and action all too well but finds that it
does not permit her to act in the ways that she cares to. What should Elsa
do? Is it possible for her to act in such a way to change the logical force?
Should she resign from the committee? Should she try to reform it? Should
she give in?
Eduardo has a friend whose life is out of control. His friend is abusing
drugs, is committing misdemeanors, is in danger of losing his job, and has
alienated his family. Eduardo wants to help his friend but is not sure what
to do. His friend's life is so confused that there does not seem to be a
sufficiently strong logical force such that anything Eduardo does would have
a helpful effect. What should Eduardo do? Can he do anything? If he tries,
is he likely to make things worse rather than better?
In class. Form groups of three or four people. Simulate conversations

that follow some of the scripts that you have identified (or the ones provided
here). Practice using game playing and game mastery. Note the range of
things that you can do and the kinds of effects they have.
7. Competence in Ambiguous, Unstable Situations
It is easier, I think,to act competently in stable and clear situations than in

the opposite. Think of some unstable and ambiguous situations, for example,
when you go through a major life transition (wedding, first child, or leaving
home), when you have suffered a traumatic experience (bereavement, diag-
nosed with a major illness, loss of sight or hearing), or when your whole
social world falls apart (midlife crisis, successful political revolution, invasion
from outer space, ecological crisis, or culture shock).
Work in groups and select one unstable and ambiguous situation in
which you are interested. First, work together to give a rich description of
the situation, remembering to resist the temptation to make it too neat and
orderly. Next, talk through what game playing and game mastery would look
like in such a situation. Next, prepare a list of possible things you could do
and evaluate them as a group in terms of the competence they demonstrate

or require. Finally, discuss the practicality of doing these things. How difficult
—
would they be if you were really in the situation to think of and to —
implement?
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w
Motifs
[An understanding of how our social worlds are made

produces] a rather paradoxical phenomenon ... an
oppressive sense of bondage and a liberating feel-
. . .
ing that the social world is far more tenuous than

had previously seemed to be the case. This paradox is
only a superficial one. The liberating feeling comes
from the valid insight that the social world is an artificial
universe, whose laws are conventions, rules of the game
that have been agreed upon but that can also be broken
and against which one can cheat. The sense of bond-
age comes from the equally valid insight that society
not only encompasses us about but penetrates
within us, that we are ourselves products and play-
things of society, irrevocably social in our innermost
being. The one insight uncovers the fictitiousness of
society, the other its oppression.
Peter L. Berger, The Precarious Vision. Garden City: Doubleday,

1961, p. 16.
CHAPTER
3 Speech Acts
... everyday life, words do not in themselves have

in
a meaning, but a use, and furthermore, a use only
in a context; they are best thought of, not as having
already determined meanings, but as means, as
tools, or as instruments for us in the "making" of mean-
ings. . . . For, like tools in a tool-box, the significance of
our words remains open, vague, ambiguous, until they
are used in different particular ways in different par-
ticular circumstances.
Shorter 1991, p. 200

KEYWORDS
arrative After reading this Some terms that will help

chapter, you should be you understand this
What Are Speech Acts? able to chapter include
How Speech Acts Exercise greater the conversational

Are Made choice in making triplet, speech,
Oral Speech Is the Me- and blocking the nonverbal
dium for Interpersonal performance of
communication, logics
Communication speech acts
of message design,
Competence in Making Identify and use active listening,
Speech Acts nonverbal cues in conversational
A Final Word: Empow- making speech acts
implicature, and
erment in Speech Acts Identify structures empowerment
and sources of
power in the process
of making speech acts
axis
1 Making Speech Acts

2. Nonverbal Commu-
nication in Making
Speech Acts
3. Power and
Speech Acts
104 Chapter 3 Speech Acts
Niarrative
Carl: Turn left at the next light.

Tom: O.K.
Carl: Be sure to stay in your lane. Many accidents happen on this corner.
Tom: O.K.
Carl: Get ready, the light is about to change.
Tom: (turns left; pulls over to the side of the road and stops) Get out.
Carl: What!?
Tom: I said, Get out! You are my brother, not my driving instructor! I
won't have you constantly nagging me about my driving.
Carl: I was not nagging, I was just trying to be helpful. What's the
matter with you!
Are Carl and Tom communicating well? At one level, they certainly
are. Neither has any trouble understanding the content of what the other is
saying. The terms "left," "the light," and even "get out" are fully compre-
hended. However, at another level, they are having great difficulty coordinat-
ing their actions within a working definition of the situation. The problem
focuses on their strikingly different ideas about what is being done in this
conversation. The fight that is about to take place can be seen as a form of
negotiation about the speech acts that Carl performed. Were they "providing
help" or were they "nagging"?
Other than a brotherly brawl, how might Carl and Tom determine
who is right about what speech acts were performed? Whose fault is this
communication problem, anyway: is it Carl's, Tom's, or both?
This chapter focuses on the social construction of speech acts. Although
the term speech acts is not often used in ordinary conversation, it is very
familiar to social theorists in several fields, and you will find it useful in
understanding interpersonal communication.
The concept is not at all mysterious. Speech acts are actions that we
perform by speaking. They include compliments, insults, promises, threats,
assertions, and questions.
Suppose that you were asked to describe a conversation that you over-
heard. If you were a trained court stenographer or a journalist, you might
quote, word-for-word, what the conversants said. More likely, however, you
would give a paraphrase (putting what they said in your own words) or
describe what they did by what they said. For example, you might describe
a very long argument by saying that she insulted him, he threatened her, she
argued her case, he apologized, and she complimented him on his ability to
back down from an untenable position, he offered to take her to dinner as a
way of making reparations, and she accepted.
The thought experiment in the preceding paragraph was designed to

show you that you already know a great deal about speech acts. If pressed,
you could generate a long list of speech acts; without thinking much about
it, you can perceive the speech acts in the conversations in which you commu-
nicate. You naturally modulate your voice, your face, your word choice, and
particularly, the direction of your gaze to participate in the construction of
certain speech acts (paying attention, challenging, politely deferring) and to
avoid performing others. It matters greatly to you whether the conversation
inwhich you are participating produced the speech act "insult" or "compli-
ment"; you are keenly alert to subtle cues that differentiate "criticism" from
"helpfulness."
This chapter will move you beyond the ability to recognize and perform
speech acts and beyond the common-sense understanding of what they are.
By asking how speech acts are made (that is, applying the "Heyerdahl solu-
tion"), you will discover that speech acts are far more complex than they
appear, and that this complexity contains opportunities for increasing our
communication competence.
What Are Speech Acts?
Social theorists have two ways of thinking about speech acts. One may be
characterized as the basic building blocks approach; the other as the unfinished
creative process approach.
The difference starts in the grammatical ambiguity of the term speech
acts itself. Some theorists read the phrase as a brief but complete sentence
in which "speech" is a noun and "acts" is the verb. That portrays speech
is, it
as a way of making and doing things. Speech acts in the same way that bees
fly and bells ring.
Other theorists read "speech acts" as a name for the smallest unit of
analysis in communication. Speech acts are the component parts of larger
communication patterns. These theorists read the phrase as a noun ("acts")
modified by the adjective "speech." For example, they identify compliments,
insults, promises, assertions, and questions as a few of the many speech acts
that comprise the events and objects of our social worlds.
The difference between these approaches can be illustrated by an anal-
ogy. Think of a white-water river cascading down a steep slope with furious
rapids and foaming shoals. There are two types of things in the river that can
be confused because their names have the same grammatical form. On one
hand, there are rocks, water, and banks. These are objects that have the same
chemical properties whether they are in the river or not. On the other hand,
there are eddies, whirlpools, and currents. These are configurations or pat-
terns. They have no chemical properties; if the river were to dry up, they
would cease to exist.
There are two kinds of

things in this picture: ob-
jects and configura-
tions.Objects include
water, rocks,and banks;
configurations include
eddies, whirlpools, and
currents. Speech acts
are not things; they are
configurations.
Are speech acts more

like rocks or eddies? Are they objects or configura-
tions? Or is dichotomy? Should we distinguish among them for

this a false
different purposes, just as we remember whether we are taking a first- or

third-person perspective on conversation? Let's start by taking a brief look
at the intellectual traditions that look at speech acts as one or the other.
The "Basic Building Block" Approach to Speech Acts

J. L. Austin (1965) popularized the study of speech acts when he noted
an important difference among the various utterances that we make. Some

utterances (he called them "constatives") are usefully treated as "true" or
"false."For example, if I say, "it is snowing outside," you might look out
the window and conclude that my utterance" is factually correct or not. Other
utterances (Austin called them "performatives"), are largely irrelevant to the
criterion of "true" or "false." Rather, they are ways of doing things. If a
minister says, "I pronounce you husband and wife," or if a judge says, "I
sentence you to 50 days in the County Jail," it makes little sense to say,
"That's true" or "That's false." The minister and the judge make things
happen by saying what they did. Instead of true or false, we say that the act
occurred or did not occur. We might add the evaluation of whether they did
the act well or not.
Austin noted that simply saying something does not make it happen;
it has to happen in a certain context (he said that certain "felicity conditions"
must be met). If your best friend (who is neither a judge nor a minister)
says, "I pronounce you husband and wife," the act does not happen (at least
in the eyes of the legal profession); only people with appropriate credentials
can "bring off" certain speech acts.
work was extended by John Searle (1969, p. 4), who started
Austin's
out to say some philosophically interesting things about language and has
developed this into a "philosophy of mind," based on an analysis of all
possible forms of speech acts. He argued that
. . . there are five and only five basic things we can do with proposi-
tions: We tell people how things are (assertives), we try to get them
to do things (directives), we commit ourselves to doing things (com-
missives), our feelings and attitudes (expressives), and we
we express
bring about changes in the world so that the world matches the
proposition just in virtue of the utterance (declarations). This is a
strong claim in the sense that it is not just an empirical sociolinguistic
claim about this or that speech community, but is intended to delimit
the possibilities of human communication in speech acts. (Searle,
1990, p. 410)
By identifying all possible speech acts, Searle thinks that he has discovered
the basic building blocks of our social worlds.
Although it is not his analogy, Searle's way of dealing with speech acts
might be compared to a chemist who has identified all the elements in the
universe and has each stored in a sealed container. The periodic table of the
elements summarizes all their properties. If I read him correctly, I imagine
that Searle would be delighted if his analyses progressed to the point where
he could construct something like the periodic table of the elements for
speech acts.
you extend this analogy to the point of absurdity, we could say that
If
your ability as a communicator depended on such factors as the array of
speech acts that you know how to produce, your knowledge of the various
ways they can be performed, and your sense of how various speech acts fit
when put into sequences of other speech acts. That is, a good day is when
you perform three "assertives" and two "commissives" without making a
mistake.
Certainly, this view of speech acts as the basic building blocks of social
interaction seems to underlie some very common conversational patterns.
For example:
Harry:Why did you do that?

Rhonda: Do what?
Harry: Put me down in front of your parents!
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Rhonda is producing
some very specific non-
verbal cues. Do they
comprise the speech act
"putting Harry down"?
What else would you
need to know to deter-
mine what speech act is
being performed?
Rhonda: I did no such thing! What's the matter with you?

Harry: You did too! You rolled your eyes and made faces when I was
telling them about my plans for getting a job after graduation.
Rhonda: You're seeing things that just are not there!
Did Rhonda "put Harry down"? Perhaps so; Harry is certainly treating
certain movements that she made as if they constituted one of Searle's speech
acts, probably an "assertive." If speech acts are the basic building blocks of
the social world, the act of "putting Harry down" either happened or it did
not, and Harry and Rhonda ought to be able to decide whether it did. On
the other hand, if speech acts are an unfinished creative process, then the
meaning of what Rhonda did is inherently negotiable and still open; in
addition to arguing about what actually happened in a specific, completed
instant of time, Rhonda and Harry can participate in the continuing construc-
tion of the meaning of what is still in the process of happening.
The "Unfinished Creative Process" Approach to

Speech Acts
Wittgenstein used the term "language games" (or, more precisely, he used a
German phrase that might more accurately be translated as "speech playing")
rather than "speech acts" as part of his project of clarifying the ways that
our language gets us into muddles. Although he was particularly interested
in helping philosophers avoid repeating the mistakes built into the grammar
they used, his insights are very useful for understanding interpersonal commu-
nication wherever it occurs.
Wittgenstein was frustrated because successive generations of philoso-
phers seemed trapped within the same problems.
People say again and again that philosophy doesn't really progress,
that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as
were the Greeks. But the people who say this don't understand why
it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same
and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as
there continues to be a verb "to be" that looks as if it functions in
the same way as "to eat" and "to drink," as long as we still have
the adjectives "identical, " "true, " "false, " "possible, " as long as we
continue of a river of time or an expanse of space, etc.
to talk etc.,
people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and
find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems
capable of clearing up. (Wittgenstein 1984, p. 15e)
Wittgenstein accepted the task of developing a method for exposing the

clouds of philosophy that are inherent in drops of grammar. Part of this
method consists of treating utterances in terms of their uses rather than
assuming that they have any inherent meaning.
We do the most various things with our sentences. Think of exclama-

tions alone, with their completely different functions.
Water!
Away!
Ow!
Help!
Fine!
No!
Are you inclined still to call these words "names of objects"? (Witt-
genstein 1958, p. 12e)
Wittgenstein noted that we use language in various contexts (that is,

in "language games") in which the meaning of what we say is determined
by how it fits into the game. Consider the statement "I do." You can identify
a language game in which saying this joins you in holy matrimony for better
or for worse, in sickness and in health, and so on. But there is another
language game that you can readily identify in which saying "I do" makes
you subject to the penalties for perjury if you tell a lie. In yet another language
game, to say "I do" means that you are the one who has the key to the
house in your pocket, that you know the answer to a teacher's question, or
that you know how to play the saxophone.
So what is the meaning of the phrase, "I do"? Well, it depends. Specifi-
depends on what language game you are playing when you utter it.
cally, it
The phrase is not tied to some objective event or object in the world such
that every time you use it, you point to that object; rather, it is tied to the
way it is used in particular instances.
A Comparison of the Two Approaches

To this point, the differences between Austin/Searle's and Wittgenstein's
approaches do not seem very great. Both refer to utterances as ways of doing
things rather than talking about them. However, certain features in the way
they approach speech acts have very different implications for interpersonal
communication. Depending on which approach you take, you will treat speech
acts as if they were substances (like rocks or water) or configurations of a
process (like eddies or currents).
How many speech acts are there? Austin (1965, p. 150) was a bit
daunted by this question and guessed that there might be between 1 and
10,000, grouped in a rather smaller set of "families." For Searle, this is an
important question and he argues very cleverly to defend his claim that there
are only five and can be no more (Searle 1990).
For Wittgenstein, this is not an important question, and Searle's answer
is clearly wrong, because our social worlds are much more fluid than Searle
thinks. Wittgenstein ( 1958, p. 1 le) said that there are "countless kinds. . . .
And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types
of language, new language -games, as we may say, come into existence, and
others become obsolete and get forgotten."
Counterpoint 3.
Are new speech acts invented? Do old ones die? Do different cultures
have different speech acts?
Ithink some important things hang on the answers we give to these
questions. If there is a finite set of speech acts and they have all been
invented, then our lives consist of various ways of performing the same
acts, or perhaps of working our way into one array of speech acts and out
of another. On the other hand, if the set of possible speech acts is "open,"
then we might find ourselves living very different lives than anyone
else ever has.
If the set of possible speech acts is relatively small and all cultures
simply enact the same acts in different manners, then all human
—
cultures are at the level of speech acts if not at the level of their perfor-
—
mance — interchangeable. We should expect to understand other cul-

tures ifwe can see past the surface level of how they perform speech
acts, and we should not worry too much some cultures disappear because
if
they really did not have anything substantially different from all other
cultures.
On the set of possible speech acts is larger than can
the other hand, if
be performed by any single culture, or if different cultures invent and

practice speech acts unknown (and unknowable?) by other cultures, then
the array of human is a tremendous resource for human
cultures
creativity. We should prize exotic cultures because they show us alterna-
tive ways of being human.
But how shall we answer these questions?
Raymond Gozzi Jr. (1990/1991) selected an interesting source of data
that sheds some light on these questions. Twelve thousand new words
were introduced to the English language in the 26 years between 1961
and 1986. (i.e., the folks who publish the Merriam-Webster listed these
12,000 as a supplement to their Webster's Third, Unabridged Dictionary
published in 1961.) Of these, 75 were "new speech act verbs."
Noting that these 25 years were times of "turmoil and ferment in the
United States," Gozzi suggested that changes in our language are a
"cultural indicator" of what is going on in society. These 12,000 words are
those that have "caught on" well enough "to find their way into print,
more than once, over a period of time. . ..The very fact of its presence
in a dictionary certifies, to some extent, that the new word has been
more than a passing fancy, and many people have paid attention to it
enough to remember it, use it, and perpetuate it" (Gozzi 1990/1991, pp.
449-450).
Gozzi (1990/1991, p. 450) coded 40 of the new terms of speech acts as
"negative." These terms "implied that deceptive or inaccurate com-
munication was occurring, information was decreasing, and/or negative
emotions occurred." Further, he divided them into six categories:
1. Deception-mystification, including "come on," "do a number on,"

"downplay," "hype," and "stonewall"
2. Combat-war, including "blow away," "overrespond," and "trash"
3. Social pressure, including "blow one's cool," "hassle," "lean on," and
"put the make on"
4. Competition, including "bad-mouth," "choke," "blindside," and "put
down"
5. Drug experiences, including "blow one's mind," and "freak out"
6. Unfaithfulness, including "fink out" and "cop out"
He found 25 words that seemed to him to be "positive"; that is, "they

implied that open communication was occurring, information was increasing,
and/or positive emotions occurred" (Gozzi 1990/1991, p. 450). The largest
category was "psychobabble," including "hang loose," "let it all hang
out," "pick up on," and "psych up." Other categories included
1. Terms deriving from drug experiences, including "groove" and "turn

on"
2. Terms coming from ethnic and social minorities, including "rap,"

"come out," and "play the dozens"
3. Terms coming from technology, including "hook up," "interface," and
"plug into"
4. Terms coming from competition, such as "shoot from the hip"
5. Terms coming from social pressure, such as "go public"
How seriously should we take the appearance of new words for speech
acts? Are they just new labels for old acts, or does our culture really
invent new things to do as well as new names for things? How should
we think about the number of new acts? Is 75 new acts in 25 years
a lot? (Hmm . . . That translates into three new speech acts per year.) Is
75 out of 12,000 surprisingly few? (Hmm . . .That means that speech
acts comprise only six tenths of one per cent of the linguistic creativity
of our culture.)
Michelle Rosaldo (1980; 1990) approached the topic in a different way.
An ethnographer, she studied the culture of the llongot, a head-hunt-
ing tribe in a remote part of Southeast Asia. She claimed that the llongot
practiced speech acts not known in European/North American culture.
Communication theorist Donal Carbaugh (1990) published a symposium
in which John Searle (1990) strongly contested Rosaldo's claim, and
Del Hymes (1990) commented on the controversy.

Marga Kreckel (1981) started with the question Where do speech acts
come from, anyway? She studied family communication patterns to see how
infants learned speech acts by insinuating themselves into the game-like
patterns of social interactions in which they found themselves. Her
data showed that families differ in the ways various speech acts are
performed; what would be recognized as a successful accomplish-
ment of, for example, "warning" in one family simply would not be heard
the same way in another. Further, she found that there are differences
among the members of the same family in what actions comprise what
speech acts.
At the very least, Kreckel's data locate speech acts within the actual
practices of social life rather than an abstract list. Even if we do not
create new speech acts, we are always involved in the negotiation of
how we will perform the speech acts in which we live.
What is the relation between speech acts and contexts? For Austin
and Searle, speech acts are made when utterances occur that fit into the
existing contexts in appropriate ways. Much of their work consists of identi-
fying the "felicity conditions" that must be met if speech acts such as "prom-
ise" are to be performed.
For Wittgenstein, the contexts themselves are fluid. Language games
come and go; thev are created, modified, and eliminated as life goes on. As
a consequence, an utterance that meets all the criteria for performing a speech
act today might not have done so at another point in the past and may not
at some point in the future. As a result, Wittgenstein's ideas focused social

theorists' attention on the continuous, reflexive process by which speech acts
make the contexts that give them meaning and contexts make the speech
acts that occur in them.
Counterpoint 3.2
You are familiar with the notion that the meaning of any act depends on
the context in which it occurs. But where do contexts come from?
If we accept the notion that contexts are made, then the answer to the
question is clear: contexts are made by specific actions. At the same

time, specific actions derive their meaning from the contexts in which
they occur.
In my description of Wittgenstein's theory of speech acts,
described I
a fully reflexive relationship between contexts and the acts that occur
in them. The circular causal link that relates actions and contexts is neither
paradoxical nor simple minded. Rather, it depicts a temporal process

of coevolution, in which acts occur that simultaneously are in existing
contexts and call into being the contexts that exist subsequently.
This coevolutionary process is the site of human agency or power to
bring about changes in our social worlds. If contexts were fixed, unaffected
by our actions, then our social worlds would be unresponsive to our
actions. At best, we might move around within our social worlds, but we
could not change them. However, if contexts coevolve, then our actions
do not simply have to fit into predetermined molds, they can be
creative, calling into being contexts that did not exist previously into
which we can act.
This creative, empowering ability can be illustrated by a true story.
Chicago is a violent city; almost 1,000 homicides occurred in the city during
1992. Most of the victims were young African-American men, many were
killed in gang-related violence, and many of these were by-standers
not involved in the gangs.
After one particularly awful event in which an elementary school stu-
dent was shot while walking to school, the leaders of several of the
gangs in Chicago announced that they weredeclaring a "truce." Imme-
diately, there were calls on the Mayor to respond appropriately, but
opinions differed about what that response should be. The discussion
focused around the question of what the gang leaders meant when
they announced the truce. Specifically, people heatedly debated whether
the gangs were sincere.
"It does not matter," one rather radical voice claimed. "What matters
is what the collective 'we' do about the truce. The gang leaders do
not get to decide by themselves what their 'truce' means. We can help
all
to make it mean whatever it will mean."

This suggestion reflects the creative power of speech acts. Rather than
focusing on the intrapsychic states of the gang leaders (i.e., what they meant),
this approach looks for ways of positioning their behavior within co-
constructed speech acts that serve what may be better purposes than
the gang leaders intended.
In the conversation given earlier, did Rhonda "put down" Harry? Who
gets to decide if that is what she did or not? How can she plausibly argue
that Harry should not feel "put down"? One way
deny having
that she can
"put him down" is to describe a context in which her actions mean something
else. For example, she might say, "Harry! Quit jumping to conclusions. You
know that I have been having trouble with my contact lenses!"

Recall the argument between Carl and Tom. Which came first, the
relationship in which Carl's comments counted as the speech acts "nagging"
or the speech acts of nagging that constructed this relationship? The Austin/
Searle approach would not pose the question this way, and their ways of
working focus on the context as the pre-existing reality in which utterances
occur. This is a very appropriate way of posing the question from a Wittgen-
steinian perspective, and the answer is that there is no a priori answer; it
could be either, and you would have to investigate each particular instance
to see what was going on.
When are speech acts completed? Again, this is not the way the ques-
tion would be proposed from the Austin/Searle perspective, but their way
of working indicates a kind of "yes/no" orientation to speech acts. That is,
it either occurs or it does not. For example, Taylor and Cameron (1987, p.
43) suggested that conversations can be analyzed "as a series of discrete acts,
sequentially organized." In this task, "our main preoccupation will be with
matters of taxonomy and identification of acts in conversation" (p. 43), that
is, with making lists of all possible forms of speech acts and defining how to
identify them.
From the Wittgensteinian approach, speech acts are never completed.
Rather, they are part of an ongoing process in which they both fit into
contexts and create the contexts in which they fit, and in which they are a
part of a continuing sequence of actions, each of which has the potential to
reinterpret those that came before them.
Among other things, the "incompleteness" of speech acts implies that
the meanings of our social worlds are not fully determined. A certain openness
in the meanings of what we say and do is not just the result of our lack of
precision but because of the nature of speech acts themselves. As Shotter
(1991, p. 202) said
Everyday human activities do not just appear vague and indefinite

because we are still as yet ignorant of their true underlying nature,
but they are really vague . . . the fact is, there is no order, no already
determined order, just . . . an order of possible orderings which it
is up to us to make as we see fit. And this, of course is exactly . . .
what we require of language as a means of communication: we

require the words of our language to give rise to vague, but not
wholly unspecified "tendencies" which permit a degree of further
specification according to the circumstances of their use, thus to
allow the "making" ofprecise and particular meanings appropriate
to those circumstances.
This is the mostand important difference between the two

striking
approaches, and the nature of the difference can be shown by an analogy.
The sports section of most newspapers carry box scores of baseball and
football games. These box scores present a summary of what happened by
categories. For example, a baseball game will be summarized in terms of how
many runs each team scored, how many hits they got, and how many errors
were committed by each team.
The information you get from a box score differs very much from a
game or, better, what it feels like to be in the
play-by-play broadcast of the
game The box score cannot be computed until the game is
as a participant.
over, but when you are standing at the plate, waiting on the two and two
pitch, you do not know whether you will knock in the winning run, strike
out, or be knocked down by a wild pitch. The meaning of the two and two
pitch in the sixth inningis determined by what happens next, and in the next
.inning, and even by games later in the season.

The Wittgensteinian approach takes the play-by-play perspective; it lo-
cates us in the actual process of producing speech acts rather than an after-
the-fact process of summarizing what was and was not done. As such, it is
far more useful for our understanding of interpersonal communication.
How Speech Acts Are Made

Traffic in London is really terrible, particularly during the weekend. A group
of therapists and workers had gathered on a Saturday for an all -day
social
workshop on communication theory; I was the guest "expert" charged with
planning the activities of the day. We were taking a break for lunch, and one
of the participants asked another
Anne: Would anyone mind if I left early so I can miss the traffic?
Tom: When did you first decide that you needed to ask permission to
leave this class?
Anne: Right.
What speech act was Anne performing when she said, "Would anyone
mind . .
."? Was it a request for information? Was it an announcement of
How Speech Acts Are Made 117
fflBttiatft'.
/f speech acts are dis-
All you need crete, complete units of
is a dollar mm the social world, as
Searle thinks, then an
analysis of a conversa-
tion can resemble a
"box-score" summary
of a baseball game. On
the other hand, if, as
Wittgenstein believes,
speech acts are inher-
ently unfinished and co-
constructed, then an
analysis of a conversa-
tion must include the
perspective of a player
* • while the game is still
going on. That is, it is not
clear to the batter in the
M i 4*
sixth inning with
and two out how
game
fact,
will turn out. In
the outcome of the
game depends on what
two on
the
^ jff
the pitcher does
and how
.
the batter re-

sponds to the pitch
.
.
.
. .
Ihi •^
and how the fielder re-
sponds to the ball that
he hits .and so on in
. .
an ongoing sequence.
Li
i k
r
^B,;
KlM i
her intention? Was it an account offered to make her subsequent early depar-
ture less rude than it might otherwise have seemed? Was she subtly suggesting
that Tom leave with her? Was she asking Tom for a ride?
Her action alone provides too little information for you to decide. In
fact,any such action is incomplete; it provides an opening for any number
of subsequent acts, each of which adds to the meaning of the act.
What else might Tom have said? Note how each of his potential re
sponses helps "make" the meaning of Anne's statement. He might have said,
"Yes, we would all be very offended." This response would have "made"
her question a request for information. He might have said, "Now that you
mention need to leave early as well. May I ride with you?"
it, I
His actual answer was even more interesting. How do you interpret
what he said? My own understanding is that he did something very like the
exercise in escaping linguistic tyranny. That is, he recognized that Anne's
question was based on an underlying assumption: "My behavior depends on
the evaluations of other people." He was confronted by a paradox: he wanted
(I suppose) to challenge that assumption, but if he said, "You should not
decide what to do based on what other people tell you," he would have told
her what to do! Anne could not "obey" this instruction without "disobeying"
it. As a way of achieving his objective without placing Anne in a paradox, he
posed a question about when she decided to let others make her decisions
for her. This is, I way for Tom to call into
believe, a remarkably sophisticated
question her original assumption and to say, "Anne, make up your own mind
and accept the responsibility for your decision." (Of course, he might also
be saying, "No, Anne, I will not go away with you for the weekend.")
Note that Anne's answer had nothing to do with the semantic content
of the question; that is, she did not cite a time or date when she first decided
to let other people's opinions control her actions. Rather, she acknowledged
what he did rather than pay any attention to what he said. (By the way, she
stayed until the very end of the workshop.)
Counterpoint 3.3
The meaning of any utterance is never completed, but each subsequent

act becomes part of the context from which its meaning derives. In
the conversation between Anne and Tom, Anne's initial utterance (like
most utterances) was sufficiently polysemic that it could mean many things,
depending on how Tom responded. For example:
Anne said Tom might have said
"Would anyone mind if I left early? "May ride with you?"
I
"Of course, not."

"It would be very rude . .
."
"When did you start asking for

permission?"
What speech act would Anne's utterance become depending on Tom's

response? Assume that Anne had a very particular speech act in mind, how
could she "control" the meaning of her utterance?
Of course, neither you nor I really know what act was performed
in this conversation. Was it "therapy" successfully accomplished? An unsuc-
cessful attempt to lure Tom
away for carnal purposes? A bungled attempt
to ask for a ride home? An exchange of national security secrets in a
private code known only to Tom and Anne? Of such complexities are all
our conversations made!
The Co-Construction of Speech Acts

No speech of a single action. You simply cannot perform a speech
act consists
act alone. The act is as much given by the responses of other
you perform
people as it is taken by your own acts.
Speech acts are not things; they are configurations in the logic of mean-
ing and action of conversations, and these configurations are co-constructed.
You cannot be a "victim" unless there is a "victimizer." Perhaps this explains
why so many people seem to enjoy the role of being a victim: it is a passive-
aggressive way of accusing others of acting in a brutish manner. You cannot
be an expert unless there are people who are less knowledgeable than you,
or a leader unless there are people to be led. Perhaps this is why so many
people resent those who offer themselves as experts or leaders: they do not
want to do what is necessary to "complete" the speech acts of "expertise"
or "leadership."
The term co-construction is a bit awkward; when you say it, you sound
likeyou are stuttering. However, some social theorists have taken to using
it way of reminding themselves that the events and objects of our social
as a
worlds are made by the collective us, working together. As noted in Chapter
2, the speech acts that we co-construct do not necessarily resemble any of
the individual actions that we perform and may be something that we did
not intend to produce, but whatever they are comes from the connections
or combinations of your act followed by my act followed by your act yet again.
That is, speech acts are configurations in the logic of meaning and action,
something like a whirlpool or eddie is a configuration in the movement of
a river.
The co-construction of speech acts is the point of an activity that I
enjoy when I teach interpersonal communication. After giving an arid lecture
^7^r> fr.***^
on the co-constructed nature of speech acts, I make an erroneous and ridicu-
'*c*
lous claim to the effect that /can control their speech acts. Specifically, I tell
J #f go -
£ t*>Mii<
them that they cannot insult me. "Do you know how to do the speech act
'insult'?" I ask. Of course they do. "How good are you at insulting other
people?" Usually someone brags about his or her expertise or is identified
by other members of the class as particularly good at insulting people. "O.K.,
Try to insult me. You can't do it!" Getting into the spirit of the game, "Come
on," I urge, "take your best shot! This is your one chance to insult a tenured
full professor and get away with it!" After a few moments of hesitation ("Is
he serious?"), there are plenty of highly motivated volunteers.

"Your mother dresses you runny!" One will say.

I reply, "Thank you! That's a good one, because college professors
£& 'O^S-fe^rtOAJ are notorious for being poorly dressed. Next?"

"That's the ugliest, most out- of- fashion tie I have ever seen."
"My wife gave it to me for Christmas. I'll relay your comments to
her. Next?"
"Your book is boring!"
"Oh, good!" I answer, "you've read it! I wondered if anyone had!"
"You scum-sucking worm!"
"What?"
"I said, you scum-sucking worm!"
"That sounds disgusting, but I don't know what it means. Can
anvone do better?"
And so on. After a while, the class gets frustrated because the things they
are saying —which meet all of Austin's "felicity conditions" for being an
insult — are not working as insults. Clearly something unusual is going on
here, but what?
To challenge and provoke my students, I interpret this exercise as show-
ing that / can control the meaning of what they say. In fact, that is precisely
what it does not demonstrate. Again, this exercise does n ot demonstrate that
one of us controls the process by which both or all of us co-construct speech
acts!
There's a trick in what I did, and the structure of the trick illustrates
the point I want to make. The exercise really shows that speech acts are co-
constructed; they are the result of the interaction of two or more actions.
No single person — neither / nor they —exerts absolute control over what
occurs. However, the sequence of acts is important.
The trick in the "You Can't Insult Me" exercise depends on who starts
the sequence of actions (i.e., it is like the strategy in playing the game "tic-
tac-toe" or "naughts and crosses": if the person who makes the first move
does it correctly, she or he will win or tie but never lose.) The conversation
does not start with the insult; it starts with my request that they insult me,
and this makes an important difference. Given the request, any ostensibly
insulting phrase,no matter how grotesque or vile, is in fact complying with
what I asked them to do. All their efforts to think of something to say or
do that would offend me has been co-opted into a collaboration with me in
the conjoint production of a classroom exercise. The conversations go like
this:
Prof: I request that my students insult me.

Students: They make statements that in other contexts would be
insulting.
Prof: I thank them for complying with my request.
Note that for this sequence to work as a demonstration,

I must "complete"
it by treating were "compliance with my request" rather

their "insult" as if it
than an "insult." If I say or do something that makes them think that I have
been insulted, the exercise tails— and we co-construct an insult rather than
a class exercise.
As they grasp the point of the game, my students scrutinize my perfor-

mance with disconcerting intensity. If my voice quivers, my face gets red, I
hesitate in making my customary snappy reply, or in any other way I fail to
treat their "insult" as "compliance," they know that they have successfully
performed the speech act insult. Nothing that I can say or do will convince
them otherwise.
I am, of course, insultable, but in this context the
most grievous insult
is for a student to say, simply,
"no," that is, to refuse to participate in the
activity. Anything else can be, if I keep my wits about me, incorporated into
the exercise —
that is, I can "complete" their actions in such a manner that
it becomes the speech act "classroom demonstration" rather than "insult."
OfrThe Conversational Triplet vfc

Communication theorist Changsheng Xi (1991) proposed the notion of a
conversational triplet as the basic structure for the performance of a speech
act. The triplet consists of at least three actions in which the speech act to
be identified is the second, or middle action. It can be modeled like this:
Anne says:
Tom says:
Anne says:
If you want to know what act Tom performed, you must look at it in the
context of what was done before and after.
Counterpoint 3.4
The structure of the "conversational triplet" is closely related to the ser-

pentine model of conversation shown in Figure 1.4. Speech acts are
configurations in the logic of meaning and action of a conversation. To
identify what speech acts in any given conversation, in somewhat the same
way as you would identify the currents or eddies in a white-water river,
you can take these steps:
1. Record the whole conversation, using the structure of the serpentine

model.
2. Now superimpose the conversational triplet on the first three acts: this
is the structure of thefirst speech act.
3. Now superimpose the conversational triplet on the second, third, and

fourth acts; this is the structure of the second speech act.
Note: as you move through the conversation, the "triplet" alternates

from a shape with two left- and one right-column acts to a shape with one
left- and two right-column acts. This is of no matter because "left" and
"right" are purely arbitrary ways of representing an oral (in which

there is no "left" or "right") conversation visually (in which you must use
the left-right dimension).
Note: the fluidity of conversations is indicated by the fact that each
statement participates in more than one speech act. Note the third
statement in the conversation: it will be in the last place in the first
conversational triplet; the middle place in the second triplet; and the
first place in the third triplet. This is one of the reasons why it is impossible
to say what this statement means in a simple, declarative sentence; except

in the most unusual circumstances, our social worlds are just too compli-
cated for such clarity.
Continue the process of identifying speech acts by moving the triplet

structure along the serpentine model. This will give you the kind of
"action description" of a conversation that we often want to understand
what occurred in a conversation. For example:
"What did she say?"

"
"She said, 'O.K.'
"Yes, but did she promise to do it?"
"
"Her exact words were don't mind doing
'I that.'
"But is that a promise to do it?"
The conversational triplet is the minimal structure in the performance

of speech acts, of course. Like any analytical device, the conversational triplet
conceals as well as reveals what it is designed to illuminate. In real life, speech
acts can be much more complex than the examples I can give in a few lines
ripped from the fabric of people's lives. For example, we are seldom so simple-
minded as to refer only to the immediately preceding statement.
1. "Where is Billy?"
2. "Who wants to know?"
3. "This is mother. His father
his is sick and we need him to come
home right away."
4. "He's away from the office. I expect him back in about an
hour."
Statement #2 combines with #1 to make a challenge. Statement #3 combines

with #2 to discredit that speech act. Statement #4 responds to #1 in a standard

question-and-answer pattern.
In principle, speech acts are never completed; they are always evolving,
open to reconstruction based on what you or other people do, and not
necessarily in the immediately following event.
The unfinished creative nature of speech acts seems easy enough to
defend, but what implications does it have for how you communicate? Com-
munication theorist John Shotter and I were talking about this issue once,
and he offered some very interesting advice that I propose calling the "Shotter
strategy."
Assume that you are talking about something important to you, and
someone asks, "What does that mean?" Shotter suggested that you should
reply, "I'm not completely sure yet; we have not finished our conversation."
The Shotter strategy' will draw curious comments from your interlocu-
tors, but think it through. If the meaning of whatever we do now is incomplete,
and if our action is moved toward completion by being joined to the actions
of other people, then you or I really cannot know what our statement meant
until we know how our interlocutors respond to it.
In the common sense of contemporary American society, the question
What does that mean? normally elicits a description of the speaker's cognitive
state. It is a way of asking, What were you thinking of or What did you have
in mind? Such descriptions are notoriously self-serving and unreliable; your

reconstruction of your cognitive state in this moment is affected by the
subsequent history of the conversation, including the challenge to explain
moment, you have a first-person perspective on what you
yourself. In this
are saying now, but a third-person perspective on what you said then. In
effect,your description of your cognitive state then is a fabrication (literally,
"something made") in the present from a different person perspective and
within a different context than whatever happened then. No wonder these
reports are so unreliable.
The Shotter strategy is a deliberate attempt to transcend common sense
and act within a more informed understanding of how interpersonal commu-
nication works. Like the American pragmatists and Wittgenstein, it focuses
attention on what is done in ongoing, co-constructed conversations rather
than what is thought by one of the conversants at a particular moment in the
process.
As Shotter worded his advice, it works well as a reminder of the co-
constructed nature of speech acts for those of us who have already thought
about these things and need to be prevented from slipping back into the
comfortable patterns of common sense. As a formula that might be used for
people have not been emancipated from common-sense notions of
who
communication, it needs a bit of work. Try these as ways of answering the
question What does that mean?
'I intended that you would respond by doing

"What I hoped you would hear me say is . .

."
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Are these consistent with the principle that speech acts are unfinished and
with the emphasis on the co-construction of speech acts? (I think the first
two are; the third is not).
Counterpoint 3.5
Have you ever been in a conversation where the meaning of what you
saidchanged because of something that happened ten minutes, ten
days, or ten years later?
The unfinished nature of speech acts is particularly apparent in the
speech acts "promises" and "predictions." These are overtly open-
ended. Consider the traditional wedding vows: "to have and to hold, in
sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, so long as you both shall live."
—
What speech act are you performing when you say right there in front
—
of God and everybody these words? How long will it take for this
speech act to be completed?
Not only promises and predictions cast shadows into the future.
Sometimes the meaning of what you do is "completed" by events that
seem to be, but were not in fact, responses to what you do. Let me
tell you a true story of a speech act that almost happened and would
have been tragic if it had.

A professor in a major state university was appalled by what he perceived
as the political apathy of his students. Rather than just complain about
—
the sorry state of affairs, he decided to do something about it something
sufficiently spectacular that would at least put the question of political activ-
it
ism on the agenda of classroom and coffee-house conversation.

He wrote a sensationalistic call for political action. Deliberately in the
style of Thomas Paine's writings that encouraged the American Revolution,
he urged students to take to the streets, to act both within and outside
of conventional political structures to oppose injustice, to make gov-
ernment responsive to the people, and so on.
He printed thousands of leaflets containing this "Activist Manifesto."
Since he was a pilot who owned hisown airplane he planned to strafe
the campus on a particular Friday and drop the pamphlets on the students
as they were going from one class to another.
Confiding his plans to some friends, he was distressed to learn that
they did not share his opinion that this was a totally good idea. After
several beers and a good bit of talk, he decided not to distribute the
leaflets, and they remained bundled in his garage.
Competely unrelated to this professor's plans, a nationally publicized
event occurred over the weekend that excited political passions. On
Oral Speech Is the Medium for Interpersonal Communication 125
—
Saturday the day after he planned to bomb the campus with leaflets
urging students to rise against "the establishment"— a group of stu-
dents organized a demonstration on campus protesting the government's
actions in the event that was dominating the headlines. The campus police,
followed by the state police, over-reacted; the demonstration spilled off
campus, and before it was over, many people had been arrested, some had
been injured, many downtown businesses had been vandalized, and a
full-scale investigation was launched to determine who was at fault for insti-
gating what was being officially called a riot.
The professor who did not bomb the campus with radical calls for
students to rise in protest against the system was, of course, not a
target of the investigation. (And,suspect, the bundles of pamphlets in
I
his garage were kept safely locked away!) But what if he had gone ahead
with his plans? Would his spectacular distribution of incendiary pamphlets
have caused the riot? Of course not; the riot happened anyway. But
if he had distributed them and then the riot had occurred, would the
investigating committee have concluded that he performed the speech act

"incitement to riot"? Yep!
Imagine the conversation as he was brought before the University
President and the Circuit Judge, accused of inciting to riot.
Prosecutor: Did you distribute these pamphlets on Friday?

Defendent: Yes, but . . .
Prosecutor: Just answer the questions ask. Did a riot occur on Saturday?
I
Defendent: Yes, but . . .
Prosecutor: Your Honor, whatever the defendent intended to do when

he illegally littered the campus with these salacious pamphlets,
when combined with the actions of the students this weekend, it is
clear that the defendent is guilty of inciting to riot. The prosecution
rests its case.
Quite shaken by the turn of events, the professor vividly imagined some-
thing like the conversation above. "No jury in the country would have
believed me," he said. "I would have spent the rest of my life as a janitor
at Cowpasture State College!"
Oral Speech Is the Medium for Interpersonal

Communication
Have you wondered why common sense seems to be such a poor source
for understanding interpersonal communication? I think that there are two
reasons.
The first is that we are in the middle of a series of cultural revolutions.
By its very nature, common sense does not fare well in revolutionary times,
and we have had such a series of profound revisions in our forms of life and
ways of thinking that common sense simply has not been able to keep up.
These revolutions have converged from many directions, including sci

ence and technology, philosophy, social science, literature and art, and the
media of communication. The impact of communication media on the contin-
uing series of revolutions that have comprised the twentieth century is hard
to exaggerate. For example, the telegraph changed the relationship of distance-
to community. In the 1800s, Americans were busily trying to conquer the
distance that separated them. Until the 1840s, information as well as raw
materials and manufactured products, "could move only as fast as a human
being could carry it; to be precise, only as fast as a train could travel, which,
to be even more meant about 35 miles per hour" (Postman 1985,
precise,
p. 64). In the middle of the nineteenth century, America was more a composite
of regions, each with its own interests, loosely linked by relatively inefficient
means of communication and transportation than it was, in the proud words
of the "Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag," "one nation, under God, indivisible,
and with liberty and justice for all."
Samuel F. B. Morse's invention of the telegraph eliminated distance as
a practical barrier to (a certain form of) communication. Morse prophesied
that the telegraph would make "one neighborhood of the whole country."
In his book Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1957, p. 36) wondered if Texas
and Maine had much to say to each other.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine

to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important
to communicate. . . . We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic
and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance
the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping Ameri-
can ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
—
Thoreau was right: the telegraph and each new medium of communication
that has been developed since —
has not only permitted but insisted on the
development of conversations among previously isolated groups of people,
and at the same time, it has altered the structure of that conversation because
of its properties as a medium of communication.
Communication media are the enabling infrastructures of the game-
like patterns of communication. They do not determine what kinds of commu-
nication occur, but at the same time they are far from neutral. They have the
same relationship to patterns of communication that the chessboard does to
the game of chess, the gridiron to the game of football, and the court to the
game of tennis. The chessboard, gridiron, and court, do not determine what
game will be played or who will win, but they define what movements are
significant and what strategies will be effective, and they shape the actions
that are possible to perform. If the football field is made wider or more
narrow, the game itself will change; if a tennis court is made longer or wider,
or if the net is raised by an additional three feet, whole new strategies for
play will develop, previously champion players will become mediocre, and
Counterpoint 3.6
Who first thought about the relationship between patterns of social inter-
action and the medium in which communication occurs? We tend to think
that "media studies" are very recent developments, and that the so-called
mass media are the only ones to have a major impact on society. Not so,
on both accounts.
Walter Ong's (1982) study of the development and use of writing, partic-
ularly in print, shows that this was the first "communication revolution." As
I get the impression the effect of print was greater at
read his work, I
—
least —
so far than that of the current communication revolution
brought on by the development of electronic media.
By the same token, the idea that "forms of media favor particular kinds
of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture"
is not a new one. Neil Postman (1985, p. 9) said that the earliest record
of this idea is in the Decalogue, or "Ten Commandments." The second com-
mandment says: "Thoumake unto thee any graven image, any
shalt not
likeness of any thing that heaven above, or that is in the earth
is in
beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth."

Why all the fuss about pictures and statues? Postman says that it is a
strange injunction "unless its author assumed a connection between
forms of human communication and the quality of a culture." The God
of the Hebrews, Postman observes, was different in kind from the
gods of those in neighboring cultures. Specifically, the worship of their
God required "the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus be-
came blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture" (Post-
man 1985, p. 9).
Perhaps Postman is guilty of reading too much into the second com-
mandment, but if so, then why the ban on icons? What difference, if any,
does it make that most forms of the Christian Church have quietly ex-
empted themselves from this commandment, while Muslims have
submitted to it with commendable integrity? Is the quality of religious
experience different? Is the form of worship or theology affected by the
medium in which it occurs?
Walter Ong (1982, p. 179) notes that the orality-literacy polarity is partic-
ularly acute in Christianity.
For in Christian teaching the Second Person of the One Godhead, who
redeemed mankind from sin, is known not only as the Son but also as the
Word of God. In this teaching, God the Father utters or speaks His
Word, his Son. He does not inscribe him. The very Person of the
Son is constituted as the Word of the Father. Yet Christian teaching
also presents at its core the written word of God, the Bible, which,
back of human authors, has God as author as no other writing
its does.
In what way are the two senses of God's "word" related to one
another and to human beings in history?
vice versa. In thesame way, the media of communication structure the game -
like patterns of communication.
The second reason why common sense is such a poor guide to interper-
sonal communication is specific to the media of communication. Common
sense is always grounded in the past, and the recent past in the United States
was framed by the medium of print. From its beginning to sometime in the
twentieth century, the United States was distinguished among the nations
of the world by its literacy. In this sense, literacy means not only the percent
of its population that can read but also the percent that does in fact read and
the extent to which the public discourse is structured by print as the medium
of communication (Postman 1985, Chapter 3).
The common sense we inherited is a poor guide for understanding
interpersonal communication because conversations are oral, and common
sense, that of my generation at least, reflects a mentality structured around
print.
Abraham Lincoln and
In his analysis of the famous debates between
Stephen Douglas in 1858, Postman (1985, pp. 44-49) noted that both spoke
for hours at a time, used complex sentences, convoluted arguments, and
sophisticated vocabulary.
For all of the hoopla and socializing surrounding the event, the
speakers had little to offer, and audiences little to expect, but lan-
guage. And the language that was offered was clearly modeled on
the style of the written word. . [Their] language was pure print.
. .
That the occasion required it to be spoken aloud cannot obscure that

fact. And that the audience was able to process it through the ear
is remarkable only to people whose culture no longer resonates power-
fully with the printed word. (Postman 1985, pp. 48, 49).
To the extent that our common sense is based on print, it creates a

particular set of habits of mind that Postman (1985, p. 63) called
"exposition."
Exposition a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means

is
of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with

mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strong-
est possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think
conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of rea-
son and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for
delayed response.
All of these features are quite different from the bias of oral speech.
In his analysis of orality, Walter Ong ( 1982, pp. 8-9) noted that people
in nonliterate cultures think and converse differently than do literates. Further,
he argued that they think differently because they converse differently. Finally,
people who are primarily oral learn differently than literates; in fact they do
not "study" at all!
All thought . . . is to some degree analytic: it breaks its materials

into various components. But abstractly sequential, classificatory,
explanatory examination ofphenomena or ofstated truths is impossi-
ble without writing and reading. Human beings in primary oral
cultures, those untouched by writing in any form, learn a great deal

and possess and practice great wisdom, but they do not "study."
They learn by apprenticeship —hunting with experienced hunt-
ers, for example —by discipleship, which is a kind of apprenticeship,
by listening, by repeating what they hear, by mastering proverbs and
ways of combining and recombining them, by assimilating other
formulatory materials, by participating in a kind of corporate retro-
spection —not by study in the strict sense.
To understand interpersonal communication, and particularly to under-

stand speech acts, we need to understand the characteristics of oral speech
as the medium of conversation. That is not always easy; our literateness (or
our orientation to the electronic media) is so deeply engrained that we see
through it rather than seeing it. "We —readers of books such as this —are so
literate that it is very difficult for us to conceive of an oral universe of
communication or thought except as a variant of a literate universe" (Ong
1982, p. 4).
you know people who speak print? Or who re-enact films in their
Do
conversations? Or whose conversations are oral translations of a computer
electronic mail? These translations from one medium into another are curious
and perhaps important objects in our social worlds, but let's look now at the
characteristic of the oral medium of communication as such.
Presentness
Oral communication is characterized by presentness. A word disappears even
as it is spoken. The first part of a word or utterance must become silent so
that the second can be heard. A written page captures words, preserves them,
and displays them, much mounted in a museum. You can
like butterflies are
turn back a page to reread what you missed when your attention lapsed, or
you can turn forward a few pages to see "who done it" or where the argument
is going. You cannot do that in oral speech; you must hear what is said now;
the speaker controls the pace of the conversation; and you must attend to it
as it happens.
Counterpoint 3.7
In the "Narrative" section, I said: "The common sense we inherited is a

poor guide to understanding interpersonal communication because
conversations are oral and that common sense, that of my generation,
at least, reflects a mentality structured around print."
think that can argue convincingly that a common sense based on
I I
print is a poor guide for understanding interpersonal communication.

For example, the Austin/Searle approach to speech acts is a careful ar-
ticulation of a thoroughly literate, or print-based way of understanding speech
acts. Their literateness goes far beyond the examples they use, of course,
but it is evidenced by the fact that Austin and Searle seldom distin-
guish between a printed sentence on a page and a spoken utterance in
a conversation. In fact, in Searle's later work, he seems to focus on
sentences far more than speech.
But is it accurate to characterize contemporary common sense as liter-
ate? Common sense changes (although it does not usually represent itself
as changing), and the series of revolutions in which we live are having
—
a major impact on what seems "normal" to us that is, to our common sense.
With incredible rapidity, contemporary United States society is chang-
ing from one that uses print as its medium of choice for a broad range of
communication events to one that uses a cluster of electronic media,
including television, audio and video tape, computers, and new tech-
nologies not yet on the shelf, even in the specialty stores. My generation
was clearly literate (in the sense of having its consciousness shaped
by print media). believe that the current generation of 18- to 25-year-
I
olds is mixed: while some are "literate" (in this specific sense), an
increasing percentage are not. do not mean that this group cannot read;
I
Imean that their consciousness is shaped by film, television, audio re-

cordings, electronic bulletin boards, ham radio, photography, and
virtual reality rather than by print. Even the use of written language is
different now than it was 50 years ago. Is word processing on a computer
the same as writing by hand or printing a pamphlet or book? Is your
ability to do desk-top publishing for a club newsletter or your term
paper the same activity as what HarperCollins does when it publishes a
book? think they are clearly different and that no one knows just
I
what is the extent and significance of the differences.

As far as know, there is no good way to" measure oral, literate, and
I
(shall we say) electronically shaped consciousness, and thus cannot offer I
empirical proof that common sense is changing. What can do is note

I
that perceive myself more and more in intercultural communication

I
when talk with people 25 years younger than am. This does not mean
I I
that we cannot understand each other or have a good time; it does

mean that we have to recognize that our consciousnesses are differently
shaped.
If any of this is true, then it creates a truely amusing spectacle. Here I
am, a literate person, writing (!) for people, many of whose consciousness
have been shaped by the electronic media, about oral communication!
Such is life in periods of cultural revolution.
Even if common sense is changing because it is based on electronic
media of communication rather than print, this does not invalidate
my original claim. I'm not sure just what might be the content of a common
sense fashioned on the enabling infrastructure of the electronic media,
but it will surely be different than that based on oral speech. For that
reason, it will continue to be a poor guide to understanding interper-
sonal communication, although perhaps for different reasons than those
that make a print-based common sense is a poor guide.
Personalness
Oral communication is characterized by personalness. That is,the whole self
of the conversants is involved. When I write this book, all you have of me
are the words I used. You do not hear the sound of my voice, see the
expressions on my face, watch the changes in my posture —you do not even
see my handwriting because all of this is set in very clear typeface by people
neither of us know. When you read this book, you can do so alone in your
room with your feet propped up, chewing gum, and listening to radio —
form of behavior that I would find rude if you and I were engaged in oral
conversation. Interpersonal communication involves far more of us as persons
than any other form of communication.
Responsiveness
Oral communication is characterized by responsiveness. One of my chief frus-
book is that it consists of an incredibly long communica-
trations in writing this
tive "turn" that unbroken by your response. This book would be very
is
different if you could say or show that you did not understand the discussion
on polysemy (I would then try to clarify) or that you immediately grasped
the structure of the "Serpentine model" of conversation (I would then have
moved on more quickly) or that you have an experience that enriches the
discussion of "scripts" (I might even shut up and listen).
Walter Ong (1982) noted that the development of the printing press
made possible a significant social change. When manuscripts were rare and
expensive and not very many people could read, the repositories of knowledge
and information in any society were specific people the elders or priests. If —
you wanted to learn what your society knew, you had to consult them.
Further, you had to do so in a personal, responsive, real-time conversation
with them. Notice how this social structure fosters conservatism: the elders
not only controlled what information was disseminated by choosing what to
tell whom but thev were also necessarily involved in the conversations in
which would-be radicals, innovators, and change agents learned what they
needed to know. When literacy became common and books relatively cheap,
libraries and bookstores became the repositories of our culture's knowledge.
You can take a book to a private place and there learn from, argue with, or
even make fun of authors without having to engage in conversational triplets
with them. This greatly increases your freedom to think independently.
Multichannelled
Oral communication is multichannelled. The human voice is a marvelous
instrument. When you speak, you do far more than simply pronounce words.
The quality of your voice, the rate of your speech, the accent with which you
pronounce words, and the inflections of your voice all comprise messages that
constitute interpersonal communication. In addition, your facial expressions,
body posture, gestures, even the extent to which you touch or do not touch
your interlocutor is part of the conversation. Communication theorists Mark
Knapp and Judith Hall (1992, p. 4) noted that "(1) while we are in the
presence of another person, we are constantly giving signals about our atti-
tudes, feelings, and personality; and (2) others may become particularly adept
at sensing and interpreting these signals."
A greatdeal of research has been done on nonverbal communication,
most of which exploits a thoroughly literate form of consciousness that first
divides words or verbal communication from nonverbal channels or cues of
communication. For example, Judy Burgoon (1980, p. 184) first separated
verbal and nonverbal channels of communication and then differentiated
visual and vocal cues in the nonverbal channels. Reviewing the research, she
concluded that "the nonverbal channels carry more information and are
believed more than the verbal band, and that visual cues generally carry more
weight than vocal ones."
Such separations can be done using various research procedures, such
as band-pass filters of aural recordings, and they function to demonstrate the
importance of voice, face, posture, and the like, but are these separate from
verbal communication? Well, on a printed page, perhaps so. The words are
all in a neat row and figures and margins surround them. But in oral speech,
there can be no words without voice, and voice is not separated from the
face, posture, and gesture of the speaker. Knapp and Hall (1992, p. 38)
advised, "Nonverbal communication should not be studied as an isolated
phenomenon, but as an inseparable part of the total communication process."
They repeated a comment attributed to Ray Birdwhistell, a pioneer in this
research tradition: "studying nonverbal communication is like studying non-
cardiac physiology" (Knapp and Hall 1992, p. 5).
The multiple channels of oral speech include at least six distinguishable
aspects.These include 1 ) the communication environment or setting, includ-
ing the use of objects; 2) the communicators' physical appearance, including
clothing, make-up, scars, and insignia; 3) the use of social and personal space
(technically, proxemics); 4) body movements or gestures (technically, kine-

5) nonverbal properties of the voice (technically, paralanguage); and 6)
sics);
the use of time, including turn taking in conversation and punctuality and
tardiness in keeping appointments.
Michael Argyle (1988) said that nonverbal
British social psychologist
communication serves four functions: expressing emotion, conveying inter-
personal attitudes (like/dislike, dominance/submission), presenting one's
personality to others, and accompanying speech for the purposes of managing
such elements as turn taking, feedback, and attention.
Nonverbal communication is particularly important in evoking and
responding to definitions of identity and relationship. The eyes, someone
once said, are the windows of the soul. If so, then the voice is, ah, so to
speak, the voice of the soul and the face is the face of the soul. Because
interpersonal communication is oral, one of its distinctive features is the
importance of vocal and facial cues. A glance, a tone of voice or an inflection
can completely change the meaning of what is said.
Hundreds of studies have been done that describe particular aspects
of nonverbal communication. For example, middle-class white Americans
generally do not look each other in the eyes when they converse; instead,
they look at each other's face somewhere near the eyes. Direct eye-to-eye
gaze occurs in highly intimate relationships, in episodes in which dominance
is being asserted, and in episodes in which one or both is being aggressive
(Scheflen 1973, p. 65). But we also know
of these nonverbal
that almost all
patterns varies across cultures and that there are many exceptions to each
generalization that is offered.
Rather than memorize long lists of what generally happens, your ability
as a communicator is better served if you develop a keen sensitivity to the
multiple channels of communication in interpersonal communication. Do
some people watching and single out each of the five categories of nonverbal
communication listed above. Practice focusing on each of them in turn until
you get to the point where you can look at them as they fit together into
patterns.
Interactive
More so than any other medium, oral communication is interactive. In conver-
sation, the interlocutors exchange the roles of speaker and listener. Ong
(1982, p. 176) said
To speak, you have to address another or others. People in their right

minds do not stray through the woods just talking at random to
nobody. Even to talk to yourself you have to pretend that you are
two people. The reason is that what I say depends on what reality or
fancy I feel I am talking into, that is, on what possible responses I
might anticipate. To speak, I have to be somehow already in
. . .
communication with the mind I am to address before I start speak-

ing. . Human communication is never one-way. Always, it not
. .
only calls for response but is shaped in its very form and content by
anticipated response.
Even in more one-sided oral communication situations, such as public

speaking, the very presence and activity of the audience affects all but the most
stilted speakers. In public events, the restlessness of the audience (expressed in
the buzz of conversation, the frequency and pattern of coughing, and the
shuffling of feet and shifting of position) creates a continual feedback channel
that becomes part of the speaker's consciousness and shapes the speech.
Conversants are never silent; even when they are not talking, they are produc-
ing messages that are part of the conversation. Research has shown that we
make very subtle facial expressions without being aware of doing so, and that
we respond to those facial expressions made by others, again without being
aware that we have done so, and on this basis, we judge that the other is
fascinated or bored by what we are saying, that the other understands or is
confused, that the other is listening or daydreaming judgments which —
greatly affect the way the conversation continues.
Competence in Making Speech Acts
/Speech That means that we are always involved as a

acts are co-constructed.
\ which we live. The most exciting
participant in constructing the speech acts in
Ximplication of this is that we always have some power to shape, change, or
sdirect the development of those speech acts. To be sure, we cannot control
/them unilaterally, but neither are we helpless. In this section, I hope to help
you discover openings in the conversations in which you participate; by acting
into these openings, you can exercise power in the shaping of the events and
objects of your social worlds.
In Chapter 2, you learned to distingish two forms of competence: game
playing and game mastery. Using this distinction, we can identify the skills
we need to discern the logics of meaning and action in the process by which
speech acts are co-constructed. Some of these are the skills required to move
effectively within the game-like patterns of social interaction in which you
find yourself. However, sometimes you encounter a stacked deck, a rigged
game, a logic of meaning and action in which you cannot "win." In these
situations, you need to exercise game mastery.
Game Playing: Co-Constructing Speech Acts within

Logics of Meaning and Action
It is important to remember that there is no final list of all the speech acts
that can be performed, and no authoritative list of how to perform them.
Competence performing speech

in acts is more a matter of negotiating or
dancing with your interlocutors than it is looking up a definition in a dictionary
for how to spell a word, or consulting a rule book to see how to play baseball.
All people who engage in conversations participate in the performance
of speech acts. They differ, however, in many ways.
People vary in the range of speech acts that they can, or normally do,
perform. Some know how to perform "apology"; some
people just do not
people cannot allow themselves to be "complimented."
People vary in the gracefulness and variety with which they perform particu-
lar speech acts. Some people know how to say "I love you" in a thousand
ways, each more delicateand subtle than the single way that others have of
blurting out a profession of affection.
People vary in their sensitivity to other's initiatives and resistences in the
performance of particular speech acts. A skillful therapist or negotiator senses
the act that a conversant wants to avoid performing; successful salespersons
learn to maneuver their interlocutors into positions where they want to
perform precisely the speech act that enhances the salesperson's commission.
Other people seem resolutely oblivious to the possibilities in particular interac-
tions, or to the intentions of those with whom they communicate.
People vary in the specific "rules" they know for how to perform particular
speech That is, some people would perform a "promise" by swearing
acts.
by would find such an oath evidence that the other is insincere.

a diety; others
People differ in their openness to new information and to variation in the
ways in which specific speech acts can be performed. For some people, there
is one way to do an apology and nothing else counts; others are far more
adaptable.
Awareness of language. A certain kind of mindfulness or awareness of

the uses of language increases your competence in performing speech acts.
Reflecting the old adage that fish are the last to discover the existence of
water because they are always surrounded by it, children are nurtured in a
social womb of conversation, and
must learn to be mindful of it. In her book,
Children's Minds, Margaret Donaldson (1988, p. 90) said
. . . the normal child comes to school with well-established skills as

a thinker. But his thinking is directed outwards on to the real,
meaningful, shifting, distracting world. What isgoing to be required
for success in our educational system is that he should learn to turn
language and thought in upon themselves. He must become . . .
able not just to talk but to choose what he will say, not just to interpret
but to weigh possible interpretations. . . . Now the principal sym-
bolic system to which the preschool child has access is oral language.
So the first step is of conceptualizing language becoming
the step
—
aware of it as a separate structure, freeing it from its embeddedness
in events.
This awareness of language can be accomplished in many ways, including

playing word games with children or by teaching them to read. However
acquired, "It is clear that being aware of language as a distinct system is
relevant to the business of separating what
is said from what is done or from
what is somehow salient in a situation" (Donaldson, 1988, p. 95).

Awareness of the uses of language as a distinct system for doing things
is the first step in increasing one's competence in performing speech acts.
The second step is to develop a sensitivity to the multiple layers of each

speech act. Every action in a speech act has multiple potential meanings; as
the communication triplet is completed, many of these meanings are elimi-
nated, and others are made real by the interaction. The most skilled conversa-
tionalists are sensitive to the array of potential meanings they create by
performing specific actions and how that array differs from that created by
other actions that they chose not to perform.
Logics of message design. Barbara O'Keefe ( 1988) differentiated three

ways in which people invent the next message in the co-construction of a
speech act. She called them "logics of message design" and labeled them
"expressive," "conventional," and "rhetorical."
Assume that you are participating in a conversation. It is your turn to
speak, and you have a conflict between saying one thing that will satisfy your
personal goals and saying another that will be considerate and polite to others.
If you of designing your messages, the

are following an expressive system
appropriate maxim is "be tactful." You
what will get what you want
will say
while at the same time editing your message a bit or distorting the truth
somewhat so as to avoid unnecessary rudeness.
If you are following a conventional system, the appropriate maxim is "be
polite." You will likely use apologies, compliments, hedges, or excuses in the
statement you make so as to avoid rudeness.
you
If are following a rhetorical system, the appropriate maxim is "be
someone else." sense of what you wanted, you may
You may change your
cast yourself in a different role in which there is no conflict between your
wants and the other's feelings, or you may urge the other people to change
their definitions of the situation so that you don't hurt their feelings.
O'Keefe believes that these three logics of message design comprise a

natural developmental progression, at least in contemporary society. That is,
she believes that children are naturally expressive. As they grow older and
learn more about communication and about other people, they shift into
a conventional mode of relating to other people and participating in the
construction of speech acts. Finally, if they learn still more, they change again
into rhetorical logics. However, she allows for the fact that not everyone goes
through this sequence.
Refrain 3.
O'Keefe's theory of three "logics of message design:"

The expressive logic of message design:
Views communication as only a way to express one's thoughts
Values clarity of expression
Is oriented to the past
Focuses on editing what is said as the way of making the message

more effective
The conventional logic of message design:

Views communication as a cooperative, rule-governed game
Values "fitting-in" and doing what is appropriate
Is oriented to the present
Focuses on the management of personal relations as the means of
making the message more effective
The rhetorical logic of message design:
Views communication as a creative process in which selves and situa-
tions are negotiated
Values flexibility and sophistication
Is oriented to the future
Focuses on redefining the context as a way of making messages more

effective
Adapted from O'Keefe (1988, p. 85)
Because "social environments can differ systematically in their represen-

tation of particular message design logics, and this will have consequences
for individual development communication is not necessarily a uniform
. . .
process" (O'Keefe 1988, That is, in some social groups, the rhetorical
p. 89).
logic of message design will appear slippery and unethical, whereas in others
it will appear sophisticated and functional. In groups of college-aged adults,
all three logics can be found in conversations. It is likely that individual
communicators shift among these logics as they move from one situation to
another.
Conversational implicature and indirect speech acts. Participating in

the co-construction of speech acts requires the ability to hear what is not
said and to take note of what is not done. Conversants seldom say all that
they expect to be heard as having said, and they sometimes say something
quite different from what they expect to be heard as having said. The remark-
Counterpoint 3.8
O'Keefe (1988) found that college-aged adults differ in the logic of mes-
sage design that they use in conversations. She believes that the
social worlds into which children are enmeshed are not all alike, and that
some social worlds favor the development of expressive, some con-
ventional, and some rhetorical logics of message design.
In a study of 97 students an introductory speech communication
in
course at a large midwestern state university, she found that women were
more likely than men to use rhetorical message design. Does this suggest
that the social worlds of midwestern Americans are gender inflected
in such a way that men are taught, encouraged, or allowed to be more
expressive or conventional and women taught, encouraged, or al-

lowed to be more rhetorical in their conversational styles? Two important
recent books have documented differences in the cognitive and com-
municative styles of adult men and women: Carol Gilligan's (1982) In a
Different Voice and Deborah Tannen's (1990) You Just Don't Under-
stand. If we link O'Keefe's description of these logics of message design
to the Heyerdahl solution, has she given us a plausible account of
the process by which these differences are made?
O'Keefe also found that these college-aged students differed in "cogni-
tive complexity," or the number of categories that they use in their perception
of their social worlds. (Recall the activity in the Praxis section of Chapter
2, in which you divided your social worlds into stacks of index cards, each
naming a conversation. "Cognitive complexity" is something like the
number of different stacks of cards needed to sort out these conversations.)
She found that both men and women who were highest on her measure
of cognitive complexity were more likely to use the rhetorical logic of message
design; those who scored lower were more likely to use expressive and
conventional logics.
What conclusion should we draw from this finding? O'Keefe suggested
that young adults who live in more complex social worlds tend to use the
rhetorical logic more than those whose social worlds are less complex.
But what implications does this have? If we assume that a highly
industrialized, urban, media-saturated social environment is more com-
plex than a bucolic, rural, less informationally saturated environment, is
the rhetorical logic of message design correlated with a particular social
structure? Does it mean that changing social structures imply changes
in the forms of conversations? Are some patterns of social prejudice and
difficulty in understanding each other the result of conversants who

use (and appreciate) different logics of message design, and are those
differences the appropriate result of social structures? Or is this line
of reasoning getting too close to a social determinism? Is it the individ-
ual's responsibility to develop his or her own logics of message design
regardless of the social context in which he or she lives?
able thing about all of this is that the conversations usually turn out all right
because we know how to perform some speech and how to
acts indirectly
hear what is implied (i.e., the conversational implicature) but not stated in a
conversation.
G Bill: Are you going to the party tonight?

I Jane: Is the Pope Catholic?
yBill: I'll pick you up about 8.
What has the Pope's religion to do with the party? You probably have no
difficulty in discerning that the speech act Jane (and Bill) performed was an
answer (although it has the grammatical form of a question), and that it was
a strongly affirmative answer.
Indirect speech acts are those performed by doing something other

than what we say we are doing. We understand them because we engage in
conversational implicature. The speech act answer is performed indirectly in
the conversational excerpt above by what has the grammatical form of a
question. The question "Is the Pope Catholic?" is such an inquiry that it
signals that something special is going on; specifically, the answer to the
question is such an obvious "Yes! Of course!" that the question itself is heard
as an emphatic answer to the inquiry about Jane and the party.
If I ask you for directions to the store, you will probably give me as
much information as I need, but no more. You will make judgments about
how much background information I have and rely on me to combine that
information with what you tell me. For example, you might say, "It's at
Wabash and Chicago, one block east of State," leaving me to figure out that
to get there, I have to go north, then west; that Wabash and Chicago are
streets; that they intersect at right angles; and that Wabash Street is the East/
West divider in Chicago. You also leave me to figure out on which corner
of Wabash and Chicago Loyola University's new library is located. You do
this because you assume that both of us are trying to be cooperative, and
that I am reasonably knowledgeable about Chicago and normally competent

to find my way around. My task is to perform conversational implicature by
adding all the necessary information that you did not present. If all this goes
well, we have successfully enacted the speech act "giving directions."
However, you can perform some other kind of speech act if you present
me with too little information. "What is 'Wabash and Chicago?' " I might
ask, telling you that I cannot perform the necessary conversational imp'.icature.
We might call this speech act "mystification"; perhaps it is a subtle form of
putting by displaying my ignorance. By forcing me to ask the
me down
question "What is 'Wabash and Chicago?' " you reveal me as an outsider.
Another kind of speech act can be performed indirectly if you give me
too much information. For example, if you begin your directions like this,
"Well, 'Wabash' and 'Chicago' are streets in Chicago. They run perpendicular
to each other ..." I am likely to be offended. By not expecting that I will
do normal conversational implicative, I take it that you are treating me as
ignorant, needing the verbal equivalent of someone holding my hand while

crossing the street.
Conversations can also go astray ifyou supply the wrong information.
In her book, The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan (1991) describes a scene in
which a Chinese-American woman brought her Anglo-American boyfriend
to her parents' house for dinner. Her mother, who prided herself for her
cooking ability, prepared her "special" dish. Following the family custom,
however, when she served the food she complained that the dish was not well
cooked. This was the cue for the family to taste and exclaim how wonderful it
was, persuading the mother that she had actually excelled even her own
high standards. Unfortunately, Rich did not understand this ritual. When his
mother apologized for her poor cooking, he tasted it and gra-
girlfriend's
ciously suggested that it would not be too bad if liberally seasoned with soy
—
sauce which he proceeded to pour onto his serving. Although well-intended,
the speech act that he actually performed was a tremendous insult.
Active listening. Sometimes we think that listening is passive, that all we

have to do to listen is to pay attention. It is more useful to distinguish mere
hearing from listening, and to view listening as a very active process.
Conversational implicatureis one form of the activity involved in lis-
tening. Because speakers seldom say everything they expect to be heard as

having said, we have to supply the missing information. We can do this by
conversational implicature, cognitively "completing" or supplementing what
we heard; we can also do it conversationally, asking for the relevant informa-
tion that we need. The fact that listening is inherendy active, however, means
that if we want to, we can misunderstand any speaker, no matter how hard
he or she tries to be clear.

Here are three forms of active listening that produce misunderstanding.
1. We can simply be too frugal with our conversational implicature.

That is, we do not work hard enough to supply missing information.
When told where the store is, we do not ask for or supply the
information that would make what the speaker said an adequate
instruction.
2. We can obsfucate. That is, we can supply the wrong information,
or we can ask questions that lead to information unrelated to what
we need to know in order to follow the instructions given us.
3. We can filter what we hear through a defensive perceptual climate.
If we have already decided that the other person is "out to get us"
somehow, then we will perceive threats no matter what is said. If
we distrust the other, anything they say or do including promises —
to be trustworthy — will appear sinister There is a self-
and insincere.
fulfilling prophecy in this, of course, because by responding to the
other as untrustworthy or hostile, we can make them into what we
perceive them to be. Paranoids are often correct: other people don't
like them and are hostile toward them. The question is whether the
paranoid correctly perceived a state of affairs or called it into being.
Part of active listening consists of asking questions that lead the speaker
to supply the information that you want or need. Such questions are not
always easily framed; it takes a certain skill in posing questions that are precisely
targeted to get the information you want and encourage the other person
to speak openly. For example, "Huh?" is not a very sophisticated way of
saying, "I do not understand; could you repeat what you said?" "Where's
that?" is than "I know where Wabash Street is; is Chicago north
less precise
or south of the river?" "That's interesting! Is it near the Water Tower?" is

more likely to invite fuller descriptions than "Can't vou be more precise than
that?"
Another aspect of active listening consists of calling your own percep-
tions into question. To what extent are you projecting rather than perceiving
what is being said? To what extent are you involved in the co-construction
of what you hear? Simply by posing these questions, you open yourself up
to a healthy curiosity that will improve your ability to listen.
Game Mastery: Going Outside the Logics of Meaning

and Action in the Co-Construction of Speech Acts
As a conversation goes on, the logic of meaning and action often seems to
become more restrictive. You often feel that you must act in a particular way,
even if you do not want to and doing so will frustrate accomplishing your
goals.
Refrain 3.2
Communication theorists say that speech acts are "intentional"; that is,
they refer to something "beyond" themselves. More precisely, each
act within a conversational triplet occurs in the context of the triplet as
a whole.
Or so it seems. In fact, the "first" act in the triplet assumes, more or
less explicitly, what the second and third will be and thus acts into a
context that does not (yet) exist. In the same way, the "second" act in
the triplet charts a trajectory of intentions between the first and the second
and presumes that the "third" act will "complete" this trajectory.
Shifting to the first person perspective, competence of the "game play-
ing" sort consists of being able to identify the logic that connects the three
acts and the ability to perform the appropriate act appropriately. This sort
of competence is usually easiest when performing the "third" act in a se-
quence, because you have two other acts on which to base your percep-
tion of what is happening. It is more difficult in the "second" place,
and, paradoxically, most difficult in the "first" act of the sequence. When
you are performing the "first" act, you have too many degrees of freedom;
you have to act in such a way that your interlocutor can discern the
pattern and respond appropriately.
Competence of the "game mastery" sort consists of being able to iden-
tify the logic that connects the three acts and the ability to perform
an inappropriate act (that is, one that does not "f it into" this logic) appro-
priately (that is, so that it makes sense, but a different kind of sense).
The of meaning and action is part of the

ability to discern this logic
skill necessary for the kind of competence described as game playing. If you
cannot discern and follow the rules, then you cannot participate in the coher-
ent production of normal conversations.
However, there are times when you should select or change the games
being played, not just act as others expect you to. In these situations, you
need the ability to engage in game mastery.

In the co-construction of speech acts, game mastery means performing
an action that fits into the emerging logic of meaning and action well enough
that it is treated as a part of what is being done, but sufficiently different
from that logic so that it transforms the act from one thing to another. If
the act that you do is too different, it will stop the conversation and bewilder
the other conversants. On the other hand, if the act is not different enough,
it will be subsumed into the logic, perpetuating what you were trying to
change.
Two concepts that you are already familiar with help in the discussion
of game mastery: the conversational triplet (page 121) and the atomic model
of communication (Figure 1.5). If we put them together, we get a schematic
for thinking about the possible connections among the actions in a speech
act. That is, the first act in the conversational triplet is simultaneously a
statement about the speaker and a request for the other conversant to take
complimentary positions on each of the elements of the atomic model: the
episode they are enacting, their relationship, their identities, and their cultures.
The ruleof thumb for game mastery is to take the complimentary position
on at least one of these elements and to take noncomplimentary positions
on at least one other. Following this rule of thumb, the competent communi-
cator will make a statement in the second position in the conversational triplet
that for example, responds within the logic of meaning and action with respect
to their relationship but sharply breaks that logic with respect to the episode
that they are enacting.
Bill says, "Jane, you don't understand physics; let me help you with
vour homework." This action simultaneously
Comprises the speech act "offer to help"

Defines Bill's identity as responsible and competent
Defines Jane's identity as incompetent, needing help
Defines the episode as one of helping
Defines their relationship as asymmetrical, with Bill as the caretaker
and Jane as the cared for
Defines the task as preparing for a physics exam
This action is not complete until it is joined by Jane's response. She may
need the help but not want to accept the definition of herself or of their
relationship that Bill offered. As a result, she may
Swallow her pride and say, "Thanks. do need the help," thus
I really
participating in the co-construction of an unwanted identity and
relationship
Stiffen her resolve and say,"No way, buddy. I am not your inferior.
I will take responsibility for my own performance in physics."
Use a more sophisticated technique that allows her to accept some but
not all of his definition of the conversation, such as saying "Thanks, I
do need help in physics, but I will let you help me only

you will if
let me help you in your history assignment, where you need a lot of
assistance."
Here is another example of game mastery in co-constructing speech

acts.
Juan: Would you like to buy a beautiful present for your wife?
Carlos: No! If I did, she would think that I had done something wrong
and was trying to apologize.
Juan: But I have these beautiful pearl necklaces at a great price.
Carlos: Yeah, I wish I could help you out, buddy, but it would ruin my
marriage if I did. You understand, huh? Better luck next time.
In this conversation, Carlos successfully avoids participating in the per-

formance of a sales presentation. Carlos' "trick" or game mastery is very — —
obvious, but let us use it as an example for thinking through the ways Carlos
discerns what is going on and selects his response.
Using Figure 3.1, imagine a series of lines connecting Juan's first state-
ment to Carlos's response. Each line represents one of the many meanings
of the utterance "Would you like to buy ." This utterance is located in
. .
the context of the episode that Juan and Carlos are engaged in; in the relation-
ship between Juan and Carlos (Are they strangers on the street, old friends,
business associates?); in the relationships between Juan and everyone else he
knows (does he have a wife? If so, has he bought a necklace for her? Why is
he trying to sell them instead of giving them to his wife?); in Juan's identity
1 —
1 44 Chapter 3 Speech Acts
Figure 3.
An integration of the
conversational triplet
and the atomic model.
(Is he normally a salesperson?); in Juan's perception of Carlos' identity; and

in the social/cultural context (and perhaps in other conversations as well
this is an open-ended list). Each of these multiple meanings presents an
opening, or opportunity for game mastery.
Are of these meanings consistent with each other? If not, Carlos might
all
exploit the conflicts among them. For example, he might choose to misunder-
—
stand what he is being asked to do perhaps he might take the question to
be a philosophical inquiry ("Ah, that is the question, is it not? How more
beautiful to give than to receive .") or an insult ("What do you think I
. .
am, a brute? Of course .").

. .
Not all of these meanings are of equal importance. Carlos might guess
which are most salient to Juan and deliberately respond to one of the least
important.
A Final Word: Empowerment in Speech Acts 145
Juan may have defined his relationship to Carlos as "salesmen -client."

In the context of this relationship, he disguised his motive of separating
Carlos from his money by cloaking
appearance of a friend being
it in the
helpful. Carlos thwarted Juan's attempt by selecting the (pretended) friend-
ship and treating it as if it were the most important context. Within this
context, Carlos argued, purchasing the expensive gift would be a terrible
thing, one that his friend Juan would not like to see. Thus, Carlos claimed,
he had to keep his money in his pocket in order to spare Juan the burden
of seeing his friend Carlos's marriage destroyed.
A Final Word: Empowerment in Speech Acts

Throughout history, men and women have struggled for power. Usually,
they have committed what I would like to call the objectivist fallacy. That is,
they have confused power with the possession of various objects, such as
money, guns, muscle, or votes. By stressing communication, we view these
things in terms of the production of speech acts, and we are repeatedly
brought back to the realization that speech acts are co-constructed. Money
equals power only when other people allow it to sway them, guns can kill
but not coerce people unafraid to die, and votes only count when people
choose to count them.
The "reality" of power is not these external trappings of inequitable
J
access to cultural resources, but the positions in the moral order into which/
we are cast. The mechanism by which power is exercised consists of our being\
excluded from participation in the speech acts that define our lives or of our/
being compelled to participate in speech acts that injure or offend us.
The fact that we are all involved in the co-construction of the speech
acts that constitute our social worlds has far-reaching implications. For one,
itmeans that we have sources of power that are often obscured. If we are
competent enough to do game mastery, we can exert far more influence on
the acts that involve us than we might expect. Another implication has to do
with the attribution of praise or blame. We tend to identify individuals as the
proper recipients of criticism or valorization. Instead, we should see that
heroes as well as villains are a part of complicated social dances in which the
speech acts they perform are co-constructed with others. Rather than making
us incapable of praising or blaming, this insight should focus us on social
systems and on patterns of interaction rather than on single individuals or
single actions. Finally, aware of our involvement in co-constructing the speech
acts within which we live, we should have heightened sensitivity to the moral
orders that restrict or compel our participation in the performance of particu-
lar speech acts.
The net effect of these three implications is to suggest a source of

empowerment. We are full-fledged participants in the creation of the universes
in which we live. No one else has exacdy the same position within these social
worlds as we do, and that confers on us both power and opportunity.
1 46 Chapter 3 Speech Acts
Praxis
1. Making Speech Acts
Speech acts are made when the actions of two or more people combine in
certain ways. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of your ability
to affect what speech acts are made in your conversations. Literally, the quality
of your life consists of the speech acts in which you participate. The purpose
of this exercise is to give you some practice in taking an active, assertive role
in making speech acts.
You will experience crucial when it is absolutely
moments in your life
necessary that one speech act and not another is made. The activities suggested
here deal with less stressful speech acts, but they should develop a sense of
how to assert yourself that you can use in other occasions when more is at
stake.
Doing the Same Thing in Different Ways

Many speech acts are routine; you and your conversant can coordinate your
actions by following a cultural script. For example, the speech act "greeting"
can be performed without much thought if two conversants enact this
conversation:
"Good morning!"
"Hi! How are you?"
"Fine, and you?"
"Good, thanks."
(Note: there are two conversational triplets in this conversation.)
One of the nice things about these fully scripted, conventional routines
for performing speech acts is that they permit artistic embellishments! That
is, you can say things that are not part of the routine that will be heard as
part of the routine with the addition of your own personality or a bit of
cheery cleverness. For example,
"Good morning."
"It is, and so am I!"
"Well, how am I?"
"You are doing very well! Congratulations!"
Before class. of common, routine speech acts. You might

Make a list
start with promise, insult, compliment, warn, and inform.

/;; class. Form groups of two persons. With your partner, practice per-
forming these speech acts. First perform them following the routine sequence
1. Making Speech Acts 147
of statements, then begin to embellish them with unconventional ways of

doing the same thing. Have fun! Be inventive! Help each other out bv
responding to statements, no matter how oudandish, in ways that "make"
them into the speech act you are intending to produce. Record or remember
your best ways of doing these things and demonstrate them to other groups.
Making a Speech Act without Cooperation

Sometimes you will want to produce a speech act that is different from the
one that someone else wants to make, or you will want to prevent someone
from making a speech act in which you do not want to participate. A man
is walking down a dark alley late at night. Well-dressed, he is carrying a
briefcaseand looks prosperous. Suddenly an unshaven thug with a gun jumps
out of the shadows and savs:
"Your money or your life!"
"No, no, no! You are doing it all wrong! Look at you, hunched
over and speaking in a pinched voice. You must relax and speak
more Now, repeat what you said."
authoritatively.
"I said, your money or your life!"
"Right. You are putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Say
it this way: 'your money or your life!' It sounds more menacing
that way. And relax! Lower your shoulders and use that nice bass
voice to full advantage. Now, back to the shadows and good luck!"
(Note: I offer as an example for classroom discussion, not as advice about

how to handle this situation.) The well-dressed man successfully blocked the
attempt to make the speech act "robbery" by transforming it into "instruc-
tion." When the would-be robber said "Your money or your
second life" the
time, it was
form of "practice."
a
In class. Work in groups of three or four people. Take the same list of
speech acts that you used before, and practice performing them again. This
time, however, instead of cooperating with each other, try to prevent each
other from producing the speech act that your partner wants. Again, be
playful and have fun. Here are some variations that you might want to use.
King of the Mountain

One conversant announces the speech act that she or he wants to produce
and makes a statement; another conversant replies in a way that attempts to
prevent that speech act from occurring; the first completes the conversational
triplet with a statement that tries to bring the announced speech act into
being. The other members of the group decide whether the speech act was
brought off or not. (Do you find that there are some kinds of statements
that are more powerful than others in blocking the successful accomplishment
)
of a speech act? Are some speech acts more difficult to accomplish without
cooperation than others? Does your experience confirm the old adage that
it takes two to make peace but only one to make war?
Head-to-Head Competition
One member of your group announces the speech act that she or he wants
member announces a different speech act. These two
to produce; another
people have a conversation in which they compete to see which speech act
they can make. Again, the other members of your group act as scorekeepers.
Vary the speech acts that you attempt to perform so that you can get
a strategic sense of what kinds of speech acts are more robust than others;
that is, in head-to-head competition, which is easier to make than the others?
Make a list of the speech acts that tend to be winners and those that usually
lose in the competition. Compare these lists with those of other groups. Does
this suggest anything to you about the robustness of various speech acts?
What conclusions, if any, do you draw?
Be observant about the kinds of statements that succeed or fail in
producing the desired speech acts. Compare these and see if you note any
similarities and differences. Give particular attention to "metacommunica-
tion'" that is, statements that describe the context in which they occur. For
example, these are metacommunicative statements: "I know that you are
trying to make me say but I won't," and "This is a hostile, aggressive
. . . ,
response using obscene language that indicates my unwillingness to help you

in any way."
Strangers in the Night

This variation is the same as number two above except that the conversants
do not tell each other what language game they are trying to make. Each
conversant selects a speech on a card, and turns it face down.
act, writes it
They have a conversation, and the other members of the group announce
what speech acts they think have been made in the conversation. The conver-
sants then display what they have written on their cards.
This variation creates the opportunity for misdirection. Give particular
attention to the form of the first statements in the conversational triplets.
What kinds of statements give an advantage" to the speaker?

After playing this game several times, where do you think the greatest
power lies in the conversational triplet? In the first, second, or third position?
2. Nonverbal Communication in Making Speech Acts
The first activity focused on the content of statements in making speech acts,
although I suspect that you also took advantage of the multiple channels of
3. Power and Speech Acts 1 49
oral communication, particularly in the "Strangers in the Night" variation,

where you tried to conceal your motives or deceive your partner. In this
second activity, focus more specifically on the nonverbal aspects of oral speech.
Actor Vincent Price once gave a demonstration of how to make a horror
film;he said that the key to provoking "horror" was a matter of subtle
eyebrow, and a slight brandishing of props. To
inflections, timing, a raised
prove his point, he and an actress played the same scene twice. The lines
were identical, but the first portrayal was of a pleasant dinner party; the other
was of an ominous, frightening dinner. As Price predicted, the culmination
of hundreds of tiny, virtually unnoticeable nonverbal cues made the second
scene somber and menacing. His line, "Have some more of this soup. I think
you will find it . . . unusual" was delivered first as a warm act of courtesy
and second as a sinister act of evil.
In the "Narrative" section of this chapter, I wrote the text for several
conversations in which the conversants were not clear about just what speech
acts had been made. Use them like Price used the dinner scene.
Working in groups of three or four people, take turns as performers
and observers. Practice performing these conversations orally. When you read
them aloud, you will find that you cannot be as neutral as a printed text; the
medium of speech will not allow you that distance.
Can you perform the conversation between Carl and Tom so that Carl
is clearly, beyond shadow of reasonable doubt, nagging? Can you perform it
so that Carl is just as clearly being helpful? Do you find that you need help
from the person who is reading Tom's lines to make these speech acts?
The conversation between Anne and Tom is delightfully ambiguous.
Practice reading it aloud so that you can bring out several of the possible
meanings.
Take turns being conversants in this activity. When you are not one of
the conversants, pay close attention to what the conversants are doing. Make
a list of the six categories of nonverbal cues described in the "Narrative"
section, and note what each conversant is doing in each category. Between
conversations, act as coaches, advising the next pair of conversants what they
might do ineach category of cues to bring off the desired speech act.
You will probably exhaust the conversations written in this chapter fairly
soon. When you do, improvise new conversations or use cuttings from a play
as the texts.
3. Power and Speech Acts

If power is defined as your ability to perform certain speech acts, then it is
clear that none of us have absolute power, but that some of us have more
power than perform certain

others. Children, for example, are not allowed to
speech acts; they are prevented from entering into legally binding financial
contracts, from marrying, from holding jobs, and in most cases —
from mak- —
ing important career and other life-changing decisions, such as whether to

move to another state. Convicted felons are not allowed to perform the
speech acts of voting, having a driver's license, or, while incarcerated, going
to a shopping mall.
The difference between citizens of democraciesand subjects in mon-
archies has to do with what speech acts are permitted and enabled. The
difference between a free press and a controlled press is determined by what
speech acts journalists are allowed and enabled to do.
In recent years, politics in the United States has focused on the "rights"
of various groups. To my knowledge, none of the political debates has used
the language game of speech acts to discuss these rights. Perhaps they should,
or at least, perhaps it is worth a try.
Form groups of four to seven people. Talk about the issue of human
rights; specifically, identify categories of people you think have not been
treated as if they had the full complement of human rights. These categories
might include racial groups, genders, age groups, people with specific traits
(handicaps or disabilities), or people with different economic resources (socio-
economic class). At this point, do not get into the question of whether these
groups should have more or fewer rights, confine yourself to the question of
whether they have more or fewer rights.
Now, identify some of the specific speech acts that members of this
group are not allowed to perform. For example, someone from a low socioeco-
nomic class is not able to perform the speech act "buying on credit."
Next, describe just how these people are prevented from performing
these speech acts. For example, bankers and retail merchants require anyone
buying on credit to show that they have adequate collateral.
Finally, using the skills that you developed in the first and second
activities, describe how members of these groups could be empowered to
participate in the speech acts that are currently denied them. Remembering
that speech acts are co-constructed, you should direct your attention both
to what they can do and to what their conversants can do.
References
Argyle, Michael. Bodily Communication, 2nd ed. London: Methuen, 1988.
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Burgoon, Judy K. "Nonverbal Communication Research in the 1970s." In Communi-
cation Yearbook 4, edited by Dan Nimmo. New Brunswick: Transaction Press,
1980.
Carbaugh, Donal. Cultural Communication and Intercultural Contact. Hillsdale:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990.
Donaldson, Margaret. Children's Minds. New York: Norton, 1988.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Gozzi, Raymond, Jr. "New Speech Act Verbs in American English." Research on
Language and Social Interaction 24 (1990/1991): 449^59.

References 151
Hymes, Del. "Epilogue to 'The Things We Do With Words.' " In Cultural Communi-
cation and Intercultural Contact, edited by Dona] Carbaugh, 4 19^*30. Hillsdale:
Lawrence Erl'oaum, 1990.
Knapp, Mark L., and Hall, Judith A. Nonverbal Communication in Human Interac-
tion, 3rd ed. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1992.
Kreckel, Marga. Communicative Acts and Shared Knowledge in Natural Discourse.

New York: Academic Press, 1981.
O'Keefe, Barbara J. "The Logic of Message Design: Individual Differences in Reason-
About Communication." Communication Monographs 55 (1988): 80-103.

ing
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing ofthe Word. London: Routledge,
1982.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show
Business. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Rosaldo, Michelle. Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Rosaldo, Michelle. "The Things We Do With Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech
Act Theory in Philosophy." In Cultural Communication and Intercultural Con-
tact, edited by Donal Carbaugh, 373^108. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990.
Scheflen, Albert E. How Behavior Means. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1973.
Searle, John. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy ofLanguage. New York: Cambridge
Searle, John. "Epilogue to the Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts." In Cultural Commu-
and Intercultural Contact, edited by Donal Carbaugh, 409-418. Hills-
nication
dale:Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990.
Shotter, John. "Wittgenstein and Psychology: On Our 'Hook Up' to Reality." In
The Wittgenstein Centenary Lectures, edited by A. Phillips-Griffiths, 193-208.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: Putnam, 1991.
Tannen, Deborah. Ton Just Don't Understand! Women and Men in Conversation.
New York: Morrow, 1990.
Taylor, Talbot J., and Cameron, Deborah. Analyzing Conversation: Rules and Units
in the Structure of Talk. New York: Pergamon, 1987.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1984.
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and Self-Interest Talk in Social Action from the CMM
Perspective." Ph.D. disser-
tation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1991.
CHAPTER
4 Episodes
. . . when individuals attend to any current situation,

they face the question: "What is it that's going on
here? " Whether asked explicitly, as in times of confu-
sion and doubt, or tacitly, during occasions of usual
certitude, the question is put and the answer to it is
presumed by the way the individuals then proceed
to get on with the affairs at hand.
Goffman 1974, p. 8
[Episodes are] communicative routines which [conver-

sants] view as distinct wholes, separate from other
types of discourse, characterized by special rules of
speech and nonverbal behavior and often distin-
guished by clearly recognizable opening or closing
sequences.
Gumperz 1972, p. 17
KEY WORDS

Characteristics of able to chapter include
Episodes
Perceive wider arrays punctuation, frame
The Episodic Structure of options in your analysis, interaction
of Social Worlds punctuation of analysis, keying, scripts,
How Episodes episodes
goals, rules,
Are Made Use disclaimers, metacommunication,
Juggling Scripts, Goals, excuses, and accounts, and contexts
and Contingency contextual
A Word: How Do
Final reconstruction
our Social Worlds Ap- more skillfully
pear "Real" to Us? Juggle scripts, goals,

and interactional
contingencies with
greater facility
Praxis
Identify and perhaps
1 Coordinating the avoid unwanted
Meaning of Acts in repetitive patterns
Episodes in conversations
2. Identifying Cues Understand how

Used to Punctuate conversations are
Episodes co-constructed by the
way actions mesh
3. An Exercise in
into patterns
Coordination
4. Unwanted Repeti-
tive Patterns
—
154 Chapter 4 Episodes
Narrative
Walking along the sidewalk, you hear a single statement.
Unidentified woman's voice: . . . don't do that again.
What more do you need to know if you are to understand what is going on
in the conversation onto which you have stumbled? Obviously, you need to
know the context in which the statement was made.
But what context? The "atomic model" in Figure 1.5 names five types
of contexts: speech acts, episodes, relationships, selves, and cultures. Further,
the model depicts these as overlapping at the point of each action, but not
necessarily aligning with each other. That is, this statement —
like all others
is polysemic; it is simultaneously a part of many aspects of your social worlds.
Episodes are one answer we give to the questions What is going on

here? or What are we doing to each other? The vocabulary for such answers
includes "watching a movie with a friend," "having dinner with my family,"
"studying for a test," and "just goofing off."
The fragment of conversation you heard might be part of any number
of episodes. You can fit it into any of these: a mother trying to teach her
daughter not to run out into the street, a wife arguing with her husband, a
doctor admonishing her patient to be more careful to take his medicine, or
a friend describing the dialogue from a favorite movie or soap opera. Signifi-
cantiy, the meaning of what you heard depends on which of these contexts
it occurred in and on its placement within that context.
Characteristics of Episodes
Formal definitions of the term episode can be misleading because episodes

themselves are made and are constantly in the process of being made. The
best way of defining them is as a category of events and objects in our social
worlds. They function as frames that define some things as "inside and
during" the episode and others as "outside and before or after" the episode.
Episodes have an internal structure. Whether rigid or flexible, they are per-
ceived as a pattern. Episodes are made by a process called pun ctuation^ in
which conversants impose a set of distinctions on the ongoing stream of
events, thus setting some off as bounded wholes. These wholes are episodes.
It is useful to treat episodes as if they were organized in terms of time,
boundaries, and structure. In this discussion, please note that episodes are
made by being punctuated by conversants. Duration, boundaries, and struc-
ture are not "found things" but the result of the activity of conversants.
Characteristics of Episodes 1 55
Counterpoint 4.
When we are in we are always playing the guessing game

conversations,
What episode are wedoing? We interpret the meaning of what people say
in terms of the episode we think we are enacting. Often we guess correctly;
sometimes we work hard to clarify and define just what the episode
is, using props (e.g., desks, contracts, or wine and soft music) as well as
explicit statements ("This isn't what it seems . ."); and sometimes we mis-
.
judge, following the wrong For example:

scripts.
Little Johnny interrupted his father's reading of the Sunday newspaper
by asking, "Dad, where did come from?" Having anticipated the

I
question with considerable dread for a long time, his father launched into
the standard lecture about the birds and bees, comparative anatomy
of men and women, sexual practices and the circumstances under which
they were desirable, a brief history of matrimony, and a discussion
—
complete with visual aids of the practices of safe sex. Exhausted, he
paused for a moment and noticed that his son looked more bored than
enlightened. "Well, Johnny," he asked, "do you have any more ques-
tions?" "No," Johnny replied cautiously, "Billy said that he was from Toledo
and just wondered where came from."
I I
Whether we guess correctly or not, our behavior is powerfully influ-

enced by what we perceive as the context in which we act. In fact, social
scientists who followed J.B. Watson's advice to take an unremitting third-
person orientation to their "subjects" were surprised to find just how
important were those subjects' subjective perceptions of the situations
in which they found themselves. Three classic studies make the point.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1974) found that 65% of randomly se-

lectedAmerican citizens would give near-fatal electric shocks to an-
other person if ordered to do so by a scientific researcher. They were
persuaded, apparently against their best judgment, simply by being told that
"this is a scientific experiment."
Psychologist P. G. Zimbardo (1973) assigned college students to play

the roles of prisoners and prison guards. Those assigned to be guards acted
in such a tyrannical way toward those assigned to be prisoners that the
experiment had to be halted.

Michael Argyle and B. Beit-Hallahmi (1975) studied religious sects. They
found that people who were quite normal in their social and business contexts
engaged in quite extraordinary activities on their holy days. They spoke
in unknown languages, held poisonous snakes as a way of proving
their faith, and reported near-psychotic experiences. The story of Jim

Jones, who led hundreds of people in mass suicide, emphasizes the
extent to which people get caught up in the situation in which they are
acting.
1 56 Chapter 4 Episodes
Time
Episodes arc punctuated as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. There
was a time before the episode started and will be a time after it is over. During
the episode, the sequence of events is significant; it makes a difference, for
example, whether you compliment the chef on the deliciousness of the meal
before or after you taste it.
Let me call your attention to some of the things you already know
about episodes. If you were invited to a friend's apartment for dinner, how
much time do you expect to spend there? If you were invited to leave after
15 minutes, would seem too soon? Would a 15-minute dinner be "a
this
dinner" or would you something else?
call it
Take the time span you think is appropriate for "dinner with a friend"
and see what happens if you lengthen or shorten it. If it is 15 minutes more
or less, does that change the nature of what is being done? If it is an hour
more or less? Three hours?
Assume that you arrived late for an appointment to see your professor
to talk about your exam scores. If you were one minute late, it probably
would not require an apology, nor would it change the nature of the episode.
At what point would you feel that you should make an apology? Five minutes?
Ten? At what point would you feel that no apology would suffice to sustain
the meaning of the episode?
Your sense that the flow of events is bracketed into meaningful spans
of time is part of your knowledge about episodes. McHugh (1968, p. 3)
noted that social situations or episodes are made when you transform physical
space and chronological time into meaningful units of action, that is, "into
social space and social time."
Boundaries
Episodes are punctuated so that they have boundaries between what is "in-
side" and thus a part of them and what is "outside" and thus not a part of
them.
The existence of these boundaries is sometimes quite and other
clear
times less so. Scheflen (1973) noted that people who have identified them-
selves as together orient their bodies in such a way as to suggest the outlines
of a closed shape that includes them but excludes other people. (Sheflen
called this "quasi-courtship behavior" but noted that it occurs in a wide
variety of social situations.) This physical orientation is a visual form of other,
less tangible forms of marking boundaries around episodes.
Structure
Episodes have an internal structure or pattern such that the relationship

among events that occur is significant. This is the aspect that most researchers
Characteristics of Episodes 157
This illustrates a quasi-

courtship. Notice how
the conversants mirror
each other's posture.
Further, they use their
shoulders, arms, and
legs to define bound-
aries that enclose a pri-
vate, common space
between them.
have focused on. For example, Forgas (1979, p. 15) defined episodes solely
in terms of "cognitive representations of stereotypical interaction sequences,
which are representative of a given cultural environment."
The internal structure of episodes must be important. If the episode
we are cocreating is "having dinner with your friend's family," there are
certain acts that must occur (e.g., food must be served, and you must eat it);
that must not occur (this is probably not the time for a wrestling match);
and that must occur in particular sequences.
But we should not grow comfortable saying what must and must not
occur because the logics of episodes are "local," or specific to particular
families and friendships. There is no reason to assume that any such rule is
universal; on the other hand, there is every reason to assume the universal
existence of such rules, the content of which may vary enormously. Two
stories indicate both the importance of internal structure and the way it varies
in the way people from different cultures perform the "same" episode.
Edward T. Hall (1977) told of an event that got out of hand because
the conversants had different notions of the appropriate sequence of acts in
Counterpoint 4.2
How rigid are How permeable are they?

the boundaries of an episode?
You what is "inside" and "outside" of a particular
will rightly insist that
episode does not have to be where it is, that it could be other than
it is. Right, but if the boundaries were moved, it would be a different
episode. If you are having an important conversation with your best friend
and a casual acquaintance joins the conversation, you and your friend
are confronted with a decision about what boundaries to make. If you expand
the boundaries to include the casual acquaintance, you will change the
quality of the conversation; if you maintain the quality of the conversa-
tion, you will exclude the casual acquaintance one way or another.
my
judgment, many social scientists have tried to accomplish the
In
impossible: they seek to discover (not "invent") the pattern (not a

pattern or many patterns) underlying episodes (and the rest of our social
worlds). Some have tried to write the rules for "games"; others focus
on "roles"; still others on the material conditions (e.g., geography, climate,
or economy) in which people live. For example, if you do not take
his single-simple-explanation-for-everything too seriously, Marvin Har-
ris's (1989) Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches is a delightful romp through
cultural anthropology that reduces the rich array of human cultures to

varied consequences of their economies. am more in sympathy with
I
Erving Goffman (1974, p. 5), who scoffed at those of his colleagues who
thought they could find a finite set of "informing, constitutive rules of every-
day behavior." They were trying to perform "the sociologist's alchemy,"
he chuckled: "the transmutation of any patch of ordinary social activity
into an illuminating publication."
If we take seriously the claim that our social worlds are made in conver-
sations, then we are free to discover and describe the many varied
ways that episodes are structured. As a way of sensitizing ourselves to
the possibilities, join me in listing some possible organizing structures:
1. A stochastic sequence of speech acts in which one act must follow

another, which followed by a third, and so on.
is
2. Harmony, in which the roles of the participants must stand in harmoni-

ous relationship at each point in the unfolding of the episode, no matter
what speech act is performed.
3. Plot, in which different stages in the development of the episode have
a particular relationship to each other; the specific speech acts do
not matter as long as the structure of the plot is sustained.
4. Negotiation, in which the episode is less dependent on the product
than on the process by which it is brought into being. That is,
primary attention is given to the speech acts of negotiation, less to
the identities, roles, and relationships arrived at as a result of the negotia-
tions. For example, Lawrence Rosen (1984, p. 4) described the social
worlds of the residents of Sefrou, Morocco, as "open texts." Struck
by "the astonishing malleability of social relations and the supple yet

distinctshape of their conceptual surround," he suggested that
"Reality for the Moroccan is the distribution of ties that he or she
possesses to others. And that reality is achieved through a process of
negotiating the meaning of the terms and relationships of which it is
composed."
Are there other possible patterns of organization?
an episode. A young man had a grievance against the local government. He

armed himself, went to the City Hall, took hostages, and threatened to harm
them if the government did not comply with his demands. The local governor
called out the troops and pledged that there would be no negotiations as long
as the young man was threatening hostages. As Hall recounts the situation, the
young man was in fact fully prepared to negotiate but envisioned a sequence
in which he took dramatic actions that showed how serious he was and then
participated in negotiations. The governor, on the other hand, envisioned a
sequence in which negotiations come first and more dramatic actions are
reserved until a last resort. When the young man took hostages, the governor
interpreted him as desperate and not likely to be reasonable in negotiations;
when the governor refused to negotiate, the young man interpreted him as
unreasonable and unwilling to negotiate.
Paul Watzlawick ( 1974, pp. 63-64) described another situation in which
communication problems occurred because of different notions of the proper
sequences of events. Literally hundreds of thousands of American soldiers
were stationed in Great Britain during World War II. Many of these young
men met and courted British women. Interestingly enough, both the Ameri-
can men and British women accused each other of being sexually forward.
Those who study such things concluded that the sequence of events in a
courtship consists of about 30 steps, and that both American men and British
women agreed quite closely on what those steps were. However, they differed
in what they considered the appropriate sequence of events. For the American
men, kissing is positioned relatively early in the sequence (say, about step 5).
However, the British women interpreted kissing as highly erotic behavior
that occurs quite late in the sequence (say, about step 25 ). Watzlawick recounts
the experience, repeated thousands of times, in this way:
So when the U.S. soldier somehow felt that the time was right for a
harmless not only did the girl feel cheated out of twenty steps
kiss,
of what for her would have been proper behavior on his part, she
also felt she had to make a quick decision: break off the relationship
and run, or get ready for intercourse. If she chose the latter, the
soldier was confronted with behavior that according to his cultural
rules could only be called shameless at this early stage of the

relationship.
said that we are always confronted by the question of What

Goffman
is it going on here? and he is right if you remember that this is a
that's
question growing out of praxis, not theoria. When you are communicating,
you are required to act in the now of each moment, not to think or give a
report about what act might be (or might have been) appropriate. That is,
you get your sense of bearings in your social world by interpreting what is
going on, and your actions, of course, enter into the process by which that
social world is continually being made.
Without such a sense of our place and orientation within the social
world, we suffer from vertigo: we do not know what we should do; we do
not know how to go on. As a result, we collectively work quite hard to create
a social navigation system so that we do not get lost.
Punctuation
Communication researchers have found the term punctuation (and its verb
form, to punctuate) useful in describing how episodes are made. The term
refers to the act of imposing a set of distinctions on the stuff of your social
worlds, perceiving this as "inside" and that as "outside" a particular episode.
In terms of the temporal dimension, punctuation is the act of deciding
when an episode began and when of boundaries, it is the

it is over. In terms
act of deciding what is "inside" and what is "outside" the episode. In terms
of structure, it is the act of deciding what fits the pattern of the episode and
what does not.
In the preceding paragraph, I used the phrase "the act of deciding"
almost as a mantra. I did this to emphasize the fact that episodes are made,
and that their characteristics are the result of the act of punctuation. And,
of course, the act of punctuation is co- constructed. All the participants in a
conversation are involved in the act of punctuation; often, they manage
to coordinate their acts into a consensual punctuation, but sometimes the
punctuation itself is the object of the conversation.
When you and I converse, part of our task is to decide (collectively)
what episode we are enacting. This process open to distortion,
is sufficiendy
misunderstanding, and misrepresentation that site of some prettyit can be the
ugly things. Sexual harrassment at work consists of an immoral and illegal
blurring of the lines between the episodes of romantic relationships and
employer-employee relationships. Television advertisers deliberately try to
dull your sensitivities to the episode of watching a program they sponsor or
watching their commercial. They distract you with entertainment in the hopes
that you will purchase their product.
One instance of a faulty coordination about what episode we were in
stands out in my memory. A salesman came by my office in the late morning.
-
Counterpoint 4.3
Just how much certainty do we want or need? How much ambiguity

can we tolerate? How much ambiguity do we need? Informed opinion
differs. For example, Rom Harre (1980, p. 194) writes as if we long
for a completely structured social environment. He said,
... we create and maintain such structures and endow them with
meaning as a kind of permanent or semi-permanent bill-board or
hoarding upon which certain socially important messages can be 'writ-
ten.' The very fact of order, when recognized by human beings, is,
in itself, the source of a message that all is well. Orderliness of the
physical environment broadcasts a kind of continuous social Musak

whose message is reasssurance.
On the other hand, Erving Goffman (1974, p. 2) seems to relish the
openendedness of episodes — at least some of the time. "There are
occasions," he wrote, "when we must wait until things are almost over
before discovering what has been occurring and occasions of our
own activity when we can considerably put off deciding what to claim
we have been doing."
discussed this topic with Harre, and he suggested that there is a
I
cultural difference. He noted that British and continental social theo-

rists (like himself) live in a different historical and social condition than
American social theorists (like Goffman and myself). The preference for order,
stability, and certainty, he said, is deeply rooted in European thought,
while an affinity for disorder, ambiguity, and innovation are distinc-
tively American.
think that there is much to what Harre said, but there is an additional
I
factor. The series of social and intellectual revolutions that are upon
us have undercut the historical and theoretical rationales on which a
preference for order is based. The current buzzword for these developments
is "postmodernism," and to the extent that we live in a "postmodern"
world, the willingness to impose order on the world (Harre's social

"Musak") is pathological. At least, think so. This is the subject of my
I
book Communication and the Human Condition (Pearce 1989); you will en-
ounter some of Harre's more recent thinking in Chapter 6, "Self."
i
I indicated that I was not interested in making a purchase. He relaxed and
began telling me of the hard life of how

a traveling salesman, particularly,
lonesome it was to be on the road. I interpreted this as marking the end of

the "sales" episode and the beginning of a "personal conversation" episode,
and I could easily understand what it meant to be in a different, strange city
every day. I invited him to join me for lunch and he accepted. As soon as
we were and had order our lunch, he resumed his "salesman's tone
settled
1
'
of voice and said, "Now, about our new line of products ."I suspect that
. .
you have had similar experiences in which someone invites you to participate in
one episode and then, when you have started the conversation, suddenlv
attempts to switch it to another.
To communicate effectively, we must be alert to what episodes we are
participating in and we must be able to construct the episodes that we want
and need. If we lose our place or err too often in the guessing game of What's
this episode? we will suffer vertigo, but if we develop sufficient phronesis,
we can use our ability to move in and out of episodes as a way of structuring
our social worlds to our advantage.
The next section of this chapter, "The Episodic Structures of Social
Worlds," reviews some of the things we have learned about episodes from
researchers who take a third-person orientation. The following section, "How
Episodes Are Made," looks at some of the work done by researchers who
take a first-person perspective. The section after that, "Juggling Scripts, Goals,
and Contingency," focuses directiyon some of the ways in which you can
move effectively among the episodes in your social worlds.
The Episodic Structure of Social Worlds
Your social worlds are too large and too complex to perceive as a whole; you
think of them, describe them, and perceive them in smaller, more manageable
chunks. This process of "chunking" is well known to researchers, who have
discovered that most adults can deal only with about seven (plus or minus
two) units of information at any one time (Miller 1967).
For example, telephone numbers are strings of seven digits, but most
telephone directories punctuate them into two groups of three and four
digits. Listen carefully when people tell you their telephone numbers: many
times they will chunk them even further by saying "eight hundred" (one
unit) rather than "eight-zero-zero" (three units) or "nineteen forty-nine"
(two units) rather than "one-nine-four-nine" (four units). (There are other
mnemonic devices, of course, including memorizing a singsong pattern or
remembering the numerical progression of the digits).
If we focus only on the temporal dimension of our social worlds, life
can be seen as an unpunctuated sequence of acts or as an incessant stream
of behavior. The point is, of course, that we cannot and do not perceive it
this way. We impose punctuations so that our social worlds are clusters of
episodes.
From a third-person perspective, conversations are game-like patterns
of social interaction comprised of sequences of acts, each of which evokes and
responds to the acts of other persons. Taking this perspective, it makes sense to
ask questions like these:
What episodes exist in the social worlds of particular conversants?

What are the relationships among these episodes? That is, are some
episodes interchangeable with others? Are some episodes mutually
exclusive?
What are the patterns in episodes?
In this section of the chapter, I review three approaches that researchers have
taken that cast light on episodes from a third-person perspective.
Interaction Analysis
The impetus for this line of research is belief that the sequence of statements
or of speech acts is the most important feature in the structure of episodes.
This belief was most poetically expressed by the novelist Ursula Le Guin
(1972, 34-25), when she had her protagonist Sparrowhawk offer this advice
to a younger man:
Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made.
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the
life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each
deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences,
and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you
come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you
may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
But how do acts "bind you" to themselves and their consequences?

How does one act make you act again (Figure 4.1 )? Make a comment about
this system. Into which category would you place that statement? Can you
say or do anything that is not included in one of these categories? What is
lost when the actual statement you made is discarded and treated only as an
instance of one of these categories?
The strategy used by interaction analysts is straightforward. First they
devised a set of categories so that they could reduce the infinite variety of
statements people make to some manageable number. One of the most
frequently used category systems is the "interpersonal process analysis"
scheme devised by Bales (1950). This is a scheme that suggests that all
statements that can be made in a conversation can be fitted into one of twelve
categories (see Figure 4.1). That is, the "raw data" consist of what was
actually said and done in a conversation (or a transcript of it). These raw data
are translated into these categories, a process that reduces the complexity of
what is said so that a researcher can deal with it.
The next phase procedure depends on what the research-

in this research
ers are trying to do. In some instances, they will look to see if there are
differences in the frequency of various types of statements between conversa-
1

^+
ft*o*i&
.*«*
**
Figure 4. Shows solidarity
Bales's categories for Shows tension release
"interaction process Agrees
*#> .*"£**
f analysis. " jfr Gives suggestions
Gives opinion if*
Gives orientation
Asks for orientation
Asks for opinion
Asks for suggestion
Disagrees
,r
if
<* >H
C _,,('" Shows tension
Shows antagonism
o^
tions; in others, they will look to see if there are differences between the
kinds of statements made by the participants in a single conversation; and in
yet others, they will look to see if there is a greater frequency of certain types
of statements at different stages of the conversation.
For our purposes, let's focus on the research that seeks to determine
the stochastic probability of particular sequences of statements. (Stochastic
probability means the statistical probability that one thing follows another.)
That is, these researchers ask, What is the statistical probability that one type
of statement, for example, "shows solidarity," will be followed by other types
of statements, for example, "shows solidarity," "shows tension release," or
"agrees"? By computing the correlations between each set of adjacent state-
ments in a conversation (actually, over many conversations), the researcher
can develop a precise mathematical description of which sequences are most
likely and which are most unlikely.
Not for the first time, this very rigorous research program is more useful
for what it did not show rather than what it found. The researchers had great
difficulty in coming up with category schemes for utterances in conversations,
as you might expect, having read about the co-construction of speech acts
in Chapter 3. Speech acts simply do not sit still overnight, waiting to be
counted and measured by a communication researcher. In addition, their
calculations produced very little of the only thing these researchers value:
predictability. Based on the best of this research, you still could not predict
what utterances were going to occur with much more accuracy than you
would have gotten by chance. These negative results combine to provide a
strong reason for believing that whatever is going on in conversation, it is
far more complicated than what the stochastic modeling of sequences of
observer-coded utterances can come to grips with, so let's look at some more
complex, richer approaches.
Counterpoint 4.4
My description of the research protocol of "interaction analysis" is sim-

plistic. did not describe many of the sophisticated innovations in that re-
I
search, including the use of more subtle categories for coding statements,
rigorous procedures for testing the reliability and validity of the pro-
cess for assigning statements into particular categories, and statistical
processes for computing the stochastic relationships in sequences of
statements.
This research tradition is one corner of a much larger project that
attempts to model the way human beings think and act as if we were
digital computers. That is, this research operates from the assumption
(which the researchers may well not believe, but treat as an assump-
tion) that conversants compute stochastic probabilities and thus "know"
that if they "ask for opinion," there is a two-to-one chance that the next
statement by the other conversant will be "gives opinion" rather than
"shows antagonism."
Even if this statistical relationship occurs with sufficient
is true (i.e., it
generality in many us anything about how

conversations), does it tell
conversants actually perceive episodes? There is reason to believe that

it does not. Gardner (1985) gives a very useful summary of the whole move-
ment that tried to model human behavior on the digital computer and
concludes that the primary "finding" of this project points to how
different human beings are from computers.
I think Aristotle had it right when he differentiated the domains in which
things have to be what they are from those in which things may be
different from what they are. That is, believe that conversants perceive
I
episodes as a matter of praxis, not theoria. Let me make the point by means
of a thought experiment and a story.
If I told in my
opinion the stochastic probability of the sequence
you that
"gives opinion" followed by "agrees" was so high that it approached
certainty (i.e., the correlation was 0.99), how would you respond? If you
have anything of game mastery in your repertoire, you would recog-
nize that what had done was to "give an opinion" and you would
I
respond with any kind of statement other than "agreement." That is, you
might say, "I'm so relieved to hear that! have been wondering about I
that for years! —

Thank you!" which is "shows tension release," not
"agreement." In that way, you have made a coherent speech act that
denies my opinion without appearing to do so because you wanted
to make something other than the usual episodic sequence. Although
telling this little experience makes it seem academic and dry, were
we to actually engage in it, we both could share a chuckle at your clever
wordplay.
In his novel Nice Work, David Lodge (1988) subtly makes the point that
writers (and presumably normal human beings) are not like computers.
Lodge tells of an author whose work has been analyzed by a computer.

To the author's absolute amazement, there are some highly significant
statistical patterns in his writing having to do with plural nouns, active
verbs, and feminine pronouns. This information came as quite an
illumination, but, unfortunately, after learning this, he was completely
unable to write anything ever again. No computer would be so af-
fected by learning of its tendencies.
The Factorial Structure of Episodes

Just as interaction analysis was around the statistics
a research tradition built
of correlation coefficients, studies of the structure of episodes were based on
a cluster of statistical procedures called factor analysis and multidimensional
scaling.
The basic idea is simple: if our social worlds are too complex for us to
perceive them all at once, then we chunk them into smaller units called
episodes. But how do we array those episodes? Is the geography of our social
worlds one dimensional, like a string? Or is it two dimensional, like a map?
Or three dimensional, like a globe? Or four dimensional, like space and time?
Or does it have even more dimensions?
Researchers in this tradition have close affinities with their colleagues
in the natural sciences and in mathematics, and they are very aware of the
importance of specifying the dimensionality of the objects they study. The
most amusing and intriguing treatment of this topic is Abbott's (1991)
Flatland, in which a three-dimensional object (a sphere) suddenly appears
in a two-dimensional world ("Flatland," of course). As the sphere moves up
and down (these are dimensions invisible to the inhabitants of Flatland), it
appears to them to change its size and shape, which is, of course, obscene.
The Flatland police cannot apprehend the sphere because it disappears in a
direction they cannot imagine, much less pursue, so they arrest the Flatlander
who reported the disturbing event and throw him in jail where, in a fit of
social vertigo, he writes the book!
In much the same way, you perceive your social worlds in, say, three
if
dimensions, and I am trying to understand you (as a researcher or as your

friend,academic advisor, or therapist), I cannot use a one- or two-dimensional
"map." If I do, I will find that your conversations often go in directions
that I cannot anticipate or follow. Our attempts to coordinate our working
definitions of the situation will have predictable problems because some of
your episodes go at right angles to mine; from my perspective, they appear
to change shape at awkward moments. Like the poor Flatlanders trying to
comprehend a sphere, I might find your episodes disturbing or obscene
simply because I have no way to place them in my map of your world.
The best research in this tradition uses a version of the statistical proce-
dure called INDSCAL, which permits the researcher to describe the number
of dimensions that a given individual or group uses in their perception of

their socialworlds (Forgas 1979). The research protocol is both simple and
familiar to you because I used an approximation of it in the Praxis sections
of Chapters 1 and 2. First, subjects keep a diary of the episodes in which
they participate during a period of time. Second, subjects complete a question-
naire in which they describe each episode on the same list of bipolar scales.
The scales ask for various perceptions, including how well you liked what
you were doing, felt in control of what you were doing, and felt that what
you were doing was important. Finally, the researcher uses INDSCAL (or
some similar statistical procedure) to compute the factors or dimensions that
account for most of the variance in your ratings. That is, by analyzing all the
correlations, a series of lines are constructed in n-dimensional space that come
the closest to fitting the ratings you gave. If only one line accounts for most
of the variance in your ratings, then you have a one-dimensional structure
of episodes in your social worlds; if two lines are necessary, then you have a
two-dimensional structure, and so on. Figure 4.2 shows the results of one
such study.
Figure 4.2 Researchers "map" our social worlds. Most studies suggest four
dimensions like those shown here (adapted from Forgas, 1983, p. 43). Imagine
that each dimension is at right angles ("orthogonal") to all of the others. For
example, the meaning of "dinner with your fiance's parents" is determined
by its location in this four-dimensional space: it might be an unpleasant,
highly involving, very serious event in which you feel low self-confidence.
Self-confident;
know how to behave
Uninvolved; Superficial;
not intimate not serious
Unpleasant; Pleasant;
unfriendly friendly
Intense Involved;
serious intimate
Self-conscious;
don't know how to behave
In a review of the research in this tradition, Michael Cody and Margaret

McLaughlin (1985, p. 287) concluded that six factors recur in the study of
how people structure their episodes. That some people use only one and
is,
very few use and the following list

all six, names all of the dimensions of our
social worlds that have been uncovered by this research project: the degree
of 1) intimacy involved in the situation, 2) friendliness, 3) pleasantness, 4)
apprehension, 5) involvement, and 6) dominance.
^ Frame Analysis
Something bothers me about Figure 4.2. Although I think the notion of
dimensionality of our social worlds is important, I am uneasy with representa-
tions of episodes as a single point within multidimensional space. There is no
wit, play, or poetry — —
to say nothing of polysemy about episodes portrayed in
this manner. At the very least, we need to supplement these descriptions with
more complex approaches. The "frame analysis" of Gregory Bateson (1972)
and Erving Goffman serves nicely.
Bateson suggested that we punctuate social episodes by placing what
we are doing within "frames." As Bateson developed the concept, "frames"
have some of the properties of picture frames and some of the properties of
mathematical "sets." When we impose a frame, we stipulate not only that
what is inside is set off from what is outside, but also that what is inside the
frame derives is meaning from the frame itself. That is, to use another of
Bateson's most helpful terms, the frame is a metacommunication about how
we should interpret what we say and do "in" the episode.
The classic exposition of Bateson's ideas about metacommunication
and frames for episodes comes from his observations of animals at play.
Bateson noted that the more advanced animals, including human beings, do
not react automatically to the mood signals of others. Rather, they recognize
the behaviors of others as symbols that can be distrusted, falsified, denied,
amplified, corrected, and so on. To determine some of these things we do
with the symbols we exchange, Bateson distinguished the signals we exchange
(e.g., grunts, calls, statements, scholarly tomes) from "metalanguage" and
from "metacommunication."
In metalanguage, the subject of thought and discourse is the language
of that discourse itself. In the sentence "Think of the word, 'cat'," the word
"cat" is used in a metalanguage. Unlike the animal that it names, the word
"cat" has no fur and cannot scratch, and unlike the word that names it, the
animal does not have three letters. Bateson uses this distinction to call our
attention to the fact that the words and things that we do in conversation
are not all alike, and to warn us that we can get into trouble if we use the
same language game for talking about both the word and the animal.
In metacommunication, the subject of discourse is the relationship
among the speakers, the activity in which they are engaged, or both. That
is, the vocabulary of metacommunication includes the names of episodes.
Refrain 4.
Bateson differentiated between "language," "metalanguage," and "meta-

communication." The difference is between actually saying something
and saying something about what you are saying.
In metalanguage, the subject of thought and discourse is the language
of that discourse itself.
metacommunication, the subject of thought and discourse is the

In
relationship between the speakers and/or the activity in which they are
engaged.
If say that intended this Refrain to be helpful to you, am engaging
I I I
in metacommunication. If told you that this Refrain is written in English,

I I
am engaging in metalanguage.
Of course, many utterances are combinations of two or more of these
types of communication. For example, .he following statement contains lan-
guage, metalanguage, and metacommunication: "in this Refrain, am I
using very precise language because am a teacher and you are a student."
I
When we answer the question What is it we are doing here? we are engaging
in metacommunication.
Bateson said that he realized that we have to distinguish between lan-
guage, metalanguage, and metacommunication while watching monkeys at
the Fleishhacker San Francisco. The monkeys were playing; that is,
Zoo in
they were engaged in an episode in which the actions were those of combat.
However, it was obvious from Bateson's third-person perspective that the
combat-like acts were framed as "play." What he was seeing was not combat
and, more, that the monkeys knew that was not combat. "Now, this phe-
it
nomenon, play, could only occur if the participant organisms were capable
of some degree of metacommunication, i.e., of exchanging signals which
would carry the message, 'this is play.' " (Bateson 1972, p. 179).
In the frame "play," a monkey
means something other than it does
bite
in the frame "fight." Monkeys, like human beings, must play the game
"Guess the Episode" if they are to know whether to interpret a grow as a I
warning or as an invitation to romp. Once an action is placed within a frame,

its meaning derives from that frame.
Bateson believes that this ability to metacommunicate makes it possible

for our social worlds to have multiple layers of meaning in each episode, not
just multiple dimensions of meaning along which episodes are arrayed. Much
of the humanness of our worlds includes such frames as mystery, fantasy,

horror, irony, and play. For example, Bateson points out that the image of
the monster in a horror film does not denote what it seems to; that is, it is
not a documentary that says "monsters exist." Rather— if you can follow
Bateson's expression — the

image denotes what would be denoted by the
monster if is, if the horror movie works, we are
the monster existed; that
terrified even though we know that the monster is not real.
All of this is a bit more than "let's pretend." Bateson notes that human
beings take this kind of multiple layers of frames very seriously.
In the dim region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap,
human beings have evolved the "metaphor that is meant," the flag
which men will die to save, and the sacrament that is felt to be more
than "an outward and stable sign, given unto us." (Bateson 1972,
p. 183)
Erving Goffman borrowed the concept of frames from Bateson. For

Goffman, a frame is a "rendering." I think he uses the term rendering in the
sense of the verb to rend, or to tear apart, into pieces. This is a very vivid
notion of how we take the undivided whole of our social worlds and tear it
into pieces, each of which is the frame for particular patterns of actions.
Frames function to make "what would otherwise be a meaningless
aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful" (Goffman 1974, p.
21). The events within the frame are arrayed according to a framework that
gives them a meaningful structure. These frameworks vary; some are rigid
and explicit, others are flexible and "appear to have no apparent articulated
shape, providing only a lore of understanding, an approach, a perspective."
In any case, however, the framework "allows its user to locate, perceive,
identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences defined
in its terms."
Goffman's concept of frames seems most useful in answering the ques-
tion How do we recognize episodes when we
them again? Suppose you
see
have had a disastrous romantic relationship, and some time later, you find
yourself beginning another relationship. How do you know whether it is
different this time? How accurately can you
whether the pattern of your
tell
episodes are repetitions of what happened previously or whether they are

something different?
The question is similar to the old playground joke. "Do you know
what this is?" he asked, waving his hand in the air. "No, what is it?" came
the reply. "I don't know either," he said gleefully, "but," waving his hand
in the air again, "here it comes again!" If you will pardon the sophomoric
humor, that joke captures our situation quite well. How do we know if this
episode that we are enacting today with Tony has the same pattern as that
episode we enacted last week or last year with Rudy?
Goffman suggests that there are many answers to the question of how
we recognize episodes, but that they all have in common the phenomenon
known as pattern recognition. He suggests that certain elements function as
"keys" to our recognition of patterns. Like the key in music, this characteristic
Counterpoint 4.5
I'm struck by the differences between the ways Bateson and Forgas think
about social worlds. Both believe that our social worlds are complex
and that episodes (or "frames," in Bateson's vocabulary) are multidimen-
sional. However, Forgas locates each episode as a single, unique point
within multidimensional space, arguing that its meaning derives from (or
can be expressed as) its coordinates within that space. Bateson, on
the other hand, notes that each episode has multiple dimensions, includ-
ing the signals themselves that are produced, the metalanguage in which
some of these signals refer to themselves or to other signals, and meta-
communication, in which some signals refer to the frame in which they occur.
Bateson's concept is much more consistent with the notions of heter-
glossia and polysemy. Compared to Forgas's, his is a much more complex
model of our social worlds, filled with things that do not denote what
they seem to denote and that refer to themselves. Such willful com-
plexity disturbs some people.
Earlier in this century, C. P. Snow (1959) declared that he had discovered
"two cultures" among his contemporaries, equivalent in education, income,

and nationality, but virtually opaque to each other. These cultures were
those of the scientists (with whom Snow worked during the day) and
humanists (with whom Snow socialized at night). suspect that the former
I
would find Forgas's work compelling and the latter would find Bateson far
more illuminating.
I suspect that the differences between these cultures are not nearly as
sharp at century's end as they were in the middle. For one thing, we
have come to understand the workings of fantasy much better than we
did (see, for example, Le Guin's 1979 essay that addresses the ques-
tion "Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?"); for another, the discover-
ies in science have made mystics of many of us who thought of
ourselves as hard-nosed realists. We now think of the physical universe
as a much more dangerous and interesting, but less predictable, thing than
was supposed only a few years ago.
If we take seriously Bateson's view of multilayered (as well as multidi-
mensioned) social worlds, how can we put the concept to use? One suggestion
is that we see each act as within multiple hierarchial layers of context,
each of which functions as a frame, and each of which may or may not
correspond to the others. That is, at one level we know that the monster
in the movie is not real, but at another level we react as if it is, and
our ability to move among these levels is a fact of our experience even
if it would take ten pages of turgid prose to describe it.
The atomic model of communication in Figure 1.5 is one way of describ-

ing each act as multiply contexted, in which episodes are just one of the
layers. For a more sustained attempt to work with this phenomenon, see
Pearce et al. (1979) and Cronen et al. (1982; 1985).
of the pattern is a metacommunication about how to perceive itself and the

episode of which it is a part (Goffman 1974, pp. 43-45).
Interactional "Ladders"
Social psychologists E. E. Jones and H. B. Gerard (1967) developed a very

useful device for describing the extent to which conversants attend to the
contingency of their interaction. Figure 4.3 starts with the familiar anatomy
of a conversation: two persons produce a sequence of actions, each of which
evokes and responds to the others. In Figure 4.3, lines connecting the commu-
nicative turns represent these "evocative and responsive" relationships. But
does a particular act respond to the other conversant's acts, or to his or her
own acts? That is, is the conversation a dialogue in which each conversant takes
the other into account or is it a pseudoconversation, actually a monologue in
which someone else speaks but is not taken into consideration?
This question is posed in Jones and Gerard's interactional ladders by
having two sets of lines. One of lines zig-zags between the sequential
set
turns of both interlocutors; another set of lines moves vertically down the
figure connecting the sequential turns of each interlocutor. In the figure,
dark, solid lines indicate a close connection between sequential communica-
tion turns, and light, broken lines indicate a weak connection between turns.
These simple diagrams allow us to differentiate among conversations.
Jones and Gerard suggest that what is said and done in conversation may be
driven by some combination of three factors: 1) each conversant's own pur-
poses and motives (indicated by heavy vertical lines in Fig. 4.3); 2) the
evocative force of the other conversant's previous act (indicated by heavy
oblique lines in Fig. 4.3); or 3) a combination of each conversant's motives
and his or her responsiveness to each other. The possible combinations pro-
duce four types of conversations.
Pseudocontingency is a conversation in which the interlocutors take turns

in their roles as speakers but do not respond to each other. If both are
really
reading from a script or simply following cultural norms, they can give the
appearance of conversing without listening to or responding to each other.
Long-married couples sometimes carry on dual monologues while exchang-
ing speaking turns.
Asymmetrical contingency is which one conversant follows
a conversation in
the lead of the other, but the other does not reciprocate. When you apply
for a loan or if you are audited by the Internal Revenue Service, you will
find yourself in what might appear to be a conversation. In fact, the interviewer
is reading a series of questions from a predetermined protocol and simply
recording your answers. Your statements have to respond to the questions

asked, but the next question comes from the interview schedule rather than
being evoked by what you said.
Reactive contingency is a conversation in which each person responds to
fi e A B
"S R
R
Time
\ R
N<
R
'
i
R \ R
v*
Psuedo- Asymmetrical Reactive Mutual

contingency contingency contingency contingency
Figure 4.3 A model of four types of conversation. The differences among

these conversations derive from the manner in which each act is contingent
on the ones preceding it. In the figure, solid lines indicate strong contingency
and broken lines indicate weak contingency. In the pseudocontingent conver-
sation, the conversants take turns speaking, but what they say is more related
to their own previous statement than to what their interlocutor said. That is,
they are both engaged in a monologue although they appear to be taking
turns. In the reactive contingency conversation, there is little coherence to
the sequence of things that each person says; both are responding to what
the other just said in a kind of mutual free association. (Reprinted by permis-
sion of John Wiley and Sons.)
the most recent comment made by the other. You and a friend are lying on
a beach, tired from a long snorkling adventure, and you have nothing that
you have to do for the rest of the day. He comments that the water was very
warm; you reply by describing how thirsts' you were when hiking in the
desert; he tells you of his favorite desserts; and so on. There is no unifying
theme to the conversation; both of you are responding to the other with a
free association to some word or topic mentioned by the other.
Mutual contingency is a conversation in which each conversant is pursuing
his or her own goals and simultaneously responding to the moves made by
the other. Neither is "in charge" or "in control" of the conversation, but
both affect its form and direction by their behavior.
These distinctions are useful for some purposes. For example, the defini-
tions of communication from both first- and third-person perspectives apply
best to mutual contingency, and pseudocontingency and asymmetrical contin-
gency are good descriptions of various kinds of monologue. Dialogue must
involve mutual contingency, although not all mutually contingent conversa-
tions are dialogic. In addition, the device of the interactional ladders sharpens
our sensitivity to the differences between sequences of messages that are
driven by the conversant's own purposes and those that are driven by the
interaction between them.
How Episodes Are Made

The third-person perspective is useful and for describ-
for identifying episodes
ing how they fit within the social worlds of conversants. However, they tell
us very little about how episodes are made. For this, we have to turn to the
first-person perspective, and here we find a rich array of research and theory.
From a first-person perspective, conversations are a process of coordinat-
ing actions within a working definition of a situation. Taking this perspective,
it makes sense to ask questions like these:
How do conversants coordinate their actions?

How do conversants construct working definitionsof the episodes
inwhich they are communicating?
What happens when conversants have different definitions of the
episode that they are co-constructing?
What happens when conversants realize that they are co-constructing
an episode that they did not want or expect?
What happens when conversants run into difficulties coordinating
their actions?
Conversants employ three things as they put together smooth and

rewarding enactments of episodes: scripts, goals, and interactional contingen-
cies. I believe that all three parts are always involved in every performance
of an episode, although not necessarily to the same extent.
First, the conversants may focus on what are variously called the scripts
for enacting particular episodes. If so, their task is to see to it that their
actions conform to the expectations for the event. Here, the focus of attention
is on the objective social world in general; what "everybody" knows or
expects.
Second, the conversants may focus on their purpose or goal for the episode.
In this case, their task is to do whatever is needed to bring about the outcome
they desire. Here the focus of attention is on one's own purposes or goals
in an imagined future.
Third, the conversants may focus on rules for the contingent interaction
forwhat they and their interlocutors do. That is, they attend to how what
they do evokes and responds to what their interlocutors do, and vice versa.
Here, the focus of attention is on the unfolding pattern of a specific interaction
with another person.
In this section, we will look at each of these — scripts, goals, and rules
in turn. In the following section, "Juggling Scripts, Goals, and Contingency,"
we will look at how conversants put them together in the co-construction
of episodes.
Scripts
Scripts are standardized punctuations of episodes. They are what people think
that other people think goes on in these episodes. As a performer in the
theater has a script that tells him or her when to move, what to say, and
how to dress, so these usually unwritten but widely known scripts provide
instructions on what to say and do in specified social situations.
There are scripts for how to act at elegant restaurants and for how to
queue up McDonald's. Often, we have learned these scripts so well that
at
we we learned them; we think that everybody already
have forgotten that
knows how to act and we are deeply offended if someone does not. However,
to take just one example, when McDonald's opened its Moscow restaurant,
the management found that they had to be far more explicit than they
expected in teaching their staff to smile when serving customers (not a
Refrain 4.2
Communicators have three types of materials to use as they make

episodes:
1. Scripts are standard sequences of actions; they are what "everybody

knows" about how to do certain things, such as ordering a dinner at an
elegant restaurant.
2. Goals are the imagination of what does not exist coupled with the
determination to bring it into existence.
3. Rules of interactional contingencies are logics of "oughtness" that
organize sequences of actions in terms of what should follow and
precede what.
Moscow custom) and in teaching their customers that they could line up in
front of any of the registers (also a novelty in Moscovian culture). That is,
neither the Moscovite staff nor the customers knew the McDonald script.
Etiquette books and protocol officers in the State Department are

textbook examples of scripts for the enactment of episodes and of those who
enforce them. I have often been in situations in which my interlocutors have
come from very different cultural, social, and There
religious backgrounds.
is a kind of excitement in noticing the cultural differences and in exploring
personal idiosyncracies in such settings. However, sometimes and often —
when your attention really needs to be on more pressing matters — it is a
great comfort to have someone whisper in your ear the rules of etiquette.
By following such rules, you can avoid being offensive unless you choose to
be, and you spend your energy trying to figure out, for example, what plots
these nice folk are hatching rather than worrying about whether to eat with
your fingers or use chop sticks, or whether you should refrain from ordering
pork, or beef, or meat of any kind.
Some institutions in our society are fully scripted. For example, courts
of law have elaborate procedures for determining what speech by what persons
in what order will be allowed to occur, and if you speak out of turn or in an
inappropriate manner, you may be sent to jail for contempt of court. Churches
have liturgies that guide the performance of the episode "worship."
Some social scientists have suggested that, far more than we commonly
realize, there are unwritten scripts underlying what seems to be spontaneous
conversations. Those who observe us closely can describe small rituals and
major regularities in our behavior that we recognize but are not aware of
performing.
O'Keefe et al. (1980, p. 27) described the "interpretive schemes" with
which we perceive our social worlds as providing the scripts we follow in
conversations. We perceive our interactions with others in ways that guide
the way that we and they can coordinate our behavior.
In a certain law school, future trial attornies are taught that if they have
the facts on their side, they should address the jury, and if they have legal
technicalities on their side, they should address the judge. The expected
question is always asked: What if I have neither the facts nor the law on my
side? "Then pound on your desk and shout," they are told.
This tired joke describes three interpretive schemes: one is structured
by the facts, one by the law, and the third by the speaker's ability to intimidate
the jury. As Wittgenstein said about ways of doing speech acts (discussed in
Chapter coundess number of such schemes. However, in
2), there are a
practice, individuals tend to use the same schemes over and over; families
tend to "specialize" in particular schemes, and as a result have communication
styles that differ from other families.
Do not push the concept of interpretive schemes too far; I think you
strain language if you were to say that "Jack did what he did because he used
Counterpoint 4.6
The scripts that we follow are often invisible to us; theârejustjhe natural
thjngsjojdo. But, as Robert Burns noted in his famous poem "To a Louse,"
if we could see ourselves as others see us, it would make a difference
in
our lives. Ethnographers make their living by inscribing such scripts and
making them available to us.
Sometimes they do it for more doubtful motivations. For example,
ethnographer Renato Rosaldo (1989, pp. 46-47) entertained the family
of his fiancee by giving them a description of their ritualized behavior at
the breakfast table.
After falling head over heels

in love, I paid a ceremonial visit, during
the summer of 1983, to the "family cottage" on the shores of Lake
Huron in western Ontario. Much as one would expect (unless one was,
as I was, too much in the thick of things), my prospective parents-in-law
treated me, their prospective son-in-law, with reserve and suspicion.
Such occasions are rarely easy, and this one was no exception. Not
unlike other rites of passage, my mid-life courtship was a blend of
conventional form and unique personal experience.
My peculiar position, literally surrounded by potential in-laws, nour-
ished a project that unfolded over a two-week period in barely conscious
daydreams. The family breakfast started turning in my mind into a
ritual described in the distanced normalizing mode of a classic ethnography.
On the morning of my departure, while we were eating breakfast, I
revealed my feelings of tender malice by telling my potential in-
laws the "true" ethnography of their family breakfast: "Every morning
the reigning patriarch, as if just in from the hunt, shouts from the kitchen,
'How many people would like a poached egg?' Women and children
take turns saying yes or no.
"In the meantime, the women talk among themselves and designate
one among them the toast maker. As the eggs near readiness, the
reigning patriarch calls out to the designated toast maker, 'The eggs
are about ready.Is there enough toast?'
" 'Yes,' the deferential reply. 'The last two pieces are about
comes
to pop up. The reigning patriarch then proudly enters bearing a
'
plate of poached eggs before him.

Throughout the course of the meal, the women and children, includ-
ing the designated toast maker, perform the obligatory ritual praise song,
saying, 'These sure are great eggs, Dad.'
According to Rosaldo's account, the family was greatly amused and

even found his telling of their scripts useful. Perhaps, but would think that
I
this is a risky business for a prospective son-in-law.
J
this interpretive scheme." It is more accurate to use terms relating to how

the episode was achieved. "Jack did this by using this interpretivescheme"
ismore consistent with the Heyerdahl solution and the emphasis on communi-
cation as a way of making social worlds.
That caution having been made, the notion of interpretive schemes is
a very powerful tool for seeing how conversants respond to, and evoke
responses from, others. It is as if conversants had models of the communica-
tion triplet in mind, as if they said, "hmm, she just did this, so if I respond
in this way, she will reply by doing that. Good!," and then set themselves to
act appropriately.
The most interesting account of underlying scripts is psychologist James
AverilFs (1982, 1992) theory of emotion. We usually think of emotion as a
physiological or intrapsychic state that happens to us. Averill says that it is
no accident that we think this because this theory of emotion is embedded

in the grammar of our language games. However, he believes that emotions
are in fact roles that we play. These roles do not last very long (he calls them
transitory roles); they require supporting casts (i.e., they are transitory social
roles); and they are enacted as episodes (i.e., they have beginnings and ends,
internal patterns, and we know when and where to engage in them).
For example, we usually frame "anger" as a natural event. We think of
ourselves as "overcome" by anger; it is something that happens to us, not
something that we do; and when in a state of anger, we have diminished
responsibility for what we do. All this, Averill argues, is prefigured in the
grammar of our ordinary language about emotions.
Closer inspection shows that there are recognizable episodic sequences
of actions that occur when we are angry, that these episodic sequences are
at least in part volitional, that these episodic sequences are learned, not innate,
that these episodic sequences differ among cultures, and that these sequences
fulfill the social purposes of the angry person with suspicious regularity.
Counterpoint 4.7
The strongest support for Averill's theory that emotions are transitory
social roles that we learn comes from the work of Randy Cornelius
(1981) and Catherine Lutz (1988; 1990). Lutz studied a small (fewer than
500 people) community on an island in the south Pacific. The people
distinguish at least five kinds of anger, one of which, song or "justifiable
anger," very different from the others. Song is morally approved,
is
while the others are not; the others are thought to stem from selfish
motives, while song is rooted in the public moral order: "The claim to be
'justifiably angry,' ... is taken seriously as a moral assertion; by identi-
fying song in oneself or in others, the speaker advertises himself or herself
These are faces of angry people. Are these expressions natural or learned? Is anger something that
"comes over us" or is it something that we learn to perform?
as someone with a finely tuned and mature sense of island values." (Lutz
1990, pp. 206-207)
To claim song isnot to describe an internal state or emotional arousal;
it is to initiate a specific episodic sequence in which 1 there is a rule or value
)
violation, 2) it is pointed out by someone, 3) the person claiming song

calls forthe act to be condemned, 4) the perpetrator reacts in fear to the
anger, and 5) amends his or her ways. Lutz (1990, p. 204) concludes that
"this emotion does not simply occur as a form of reflection on experi-
ence, but emerges as people justify and negotiate both cultural values
and the perogatives of power that some members of this society
currently hold."
i
Cornelius studied weeping among men. In this sense, weeping involves

shedding tears when in an intense emotional state; it is not the same
as crying because of pain. He asked a large number of men to describe
an episode in which they wept and to answer a series of questions about it.
He found that the men followed the grammar of our language games
about emotions when asked to give an account of their weeping. That
is, they described weeping as something outside of their control, as some-
thing that happened to them, and certainly not something deliberate or inten-
tional. However, when Cornelius asked the men to each act in sequence
in the episode, he found —
and most of them realized, to their surprise that —
they knew full well what the result of their weeping would be in terms
of their interlocutors' response, that the weeping occurred in the most
strategic place possible in the development of the episode, and that they
did not weep in other places in the episode, although their emotions were
equally intense.
These studies indicate that there are probably far more scripts under-
we are aware of, and that one way that we
lying our behavior than
coordinate our actions with others is to orient toward these scripts.
Goals
Throughout this book, I have argued that we are in our social worlds, not
somewhere outside them, acting on them to serve to purposes that emerge
from somewhere else. Without retracting an inch from that position, I want
to acknowledge that we are not simply the reflections of our social worlds.
As Harre says, human beings are "powerful particulars" who act as agents
within our social worlds. Among other things, "we create structures in
thought, anticipating the forms we will realize in public social activity. We
do not yet fully understand the principles which control our acts of creation.
But we do know that our conceptions are only partly in imitation of the
forms we experience in the world around us." (Harre, 1980, p. 6)
As human beings, we have the ability to imagine what does not exist,
to set ourselves on a course of action designed to bring that state of affairs
into existence, to monitor our progress toward those goals, and to decide
when and whether to declare them accomplished, unobtainable, or deferred.
The imagination of these goals is a magnet that drives our performance of
episodes. We sometimes deliberately invoke or violate a cultural script in
will
order to increase our chances of accomplishing those objectives; we will

sometimes deliberately act in a conformist or outrageous manner in order to
reach our goals.
The language games of all societies include grammars of agency, such
that we attribute our actions to our choices and make those choices on the
basis of imagination of future states of affairs, some of which we desire and
others we want to avoid. The

practical syllogism, introduced in Chapter 1,
is a formal reconstruction
of these grammars.
"Why did you do that?" I might ask, referring on an episode in which
you participated. "Because I wanted to," you reply, or perhaps, "because it
suited my purposes to do so." If I treat you as a competent moral agent, I
have to accept these statements as rational, legitimate reasons for doing what
you did.
Rules
The third way that we coordinate our actions with others is to follow rules
that prescribe patterns of contingent actions among conversants. But where
do these rules come from? How do they have force? There are two sets of
answers to these questions; call them conversational principles and logics of
meaning and action.
Conversational principles. This approach locates rules in the characteris-

ticsof conversation itself. That is, there are just some things that you have
to do if you are to participate in the activity.
Starting with the observation that "our talk exchanges do not consist
of a succession of disconnected remarks and would not be rational if they
did," Grice (1975, p. 45) reasoned from the fact that rational coordination
does occur to the necessity that rational coordination requires conversants
who committed to cooperate with each other. All conversants, he pro-
are
claimed, can and must follow the "cooperative principle."
The cooperative principle means that conversants act as if they were
obeying this command: "Make your conversational contribution such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction

of the task exchanges in which you are engaged." Grice said that the coopera-
tive principle can be further elaborated into four "maxims":
Maxim of quantity. Make your contribution as informative as is re-
quired, but give no more information than is required.

Maxim of quality. Try to make your contribution one that is true.
That is, do not say anything you believe to be false or lack adequate
evidence for.
Maxim of relevance. Make your contribution relevant to the aims of

the ongoing conversation.
Maxim of manner. Be clear. Try to avoid obscurity, ambiguity, wordi-
ness, and disorderliness in your use of language.
If you follow these maxims, you will talk like an eminent British Univer-
sity Professor. Such people, of course, comprised the social worlds in which
Grice lived and worked.
J
The maxims have proved more useful than their

rigor of these formal
specific content. Many people have used them as a standard against which
to analyze specific conversations. The general opinion is that if you treat
Grice's maxims as very abstract, they are correct but not very useful. For
example, how much information is "required"? What are the standards for
believing something is "true"? Who decides what is "relevant" to the conver-
sation? If these criteria vary from one conversation to another, then of course
Grice is right, but he has not provided the most interesting information.
However, enterprising researchers have taken advantage of this ambigu-
ity and used it as the basis for studying particular cultures and language
games. That is, they ask a particular speech community how much information
is required when enacting a particular episode. These criteria differ signifi-
cantly. For example, ethnographer Elaine Keenan ( 1975) studied the Malaga-
say and found that they treated information as a resource not to be given
away. By the standards of Grice's social worlds, the Malagasay speak in circum-
locutions; by their own standards, they give just as much information as is
required.
In fact, the Malagasay differed from Grice's ideal in ways that go far
beyond the quantity of information: Grice's maxims presume that the purpose
of conversation is to accomplish a task as quickly and efficiendy as possible.
Keenan's studies showed that the Malagasay used oral speech for many pur-
poses, and that they have aesthetic as well as functional criteria for evaluating
speakers.
Logics of meaning and action. One of the most vigorous areas of com-
munication research in the last 20 years has been the study of communication
rules (Shimanoff 1980). The concept of a "rule" was developed as an alterna-
tive to the notion that something "causes" conversants to act the way they
do. As such, they focused on intentions, on what conversants know, and on
mutable patterns (i.e., things that could be something other than what they
are) of conversation.
McLaughlin (1984, p. 14) said that conversants know far more than
they realize. Only in special cases do we "retrieve" the information that we
normally use to guide our actions. But what is the nature of this information?
Much of the work of rules theorists has been to clarify the form of this
knowledge. The general opinion is that rules are best "written" by researchers
as contingent statements of deontic logic, something like, "in a formal job
interview, if my potential employer asks if I can work late several times a
week, I [must, may, may not] say 'yes,' so that I can get the job."
This formula serves the purposes of communication researchers, but
does it have anything to do with the way normal people act? Many researchers
believe that it does. Conversants act as if these descriptions have moral force;
that is, the rules are not just descriptions of what people usually do, they are
prescriptions for what people should do. However, these prescriptions are not
law s of the universe; people can break rules and negotiate new rules.
Researchers have described the rules followed by conversants in a wide

varietyof situations. However, these rules tend to be local, idiosyncratic, and
temporary. The primary contribution of this line of research has been to
demonstrate that episodes have the characteristics of rule-following behavior
rather than to result in a set of well-written specific rules.
Combine the notion of rules with Goffman's idea that frames are pat-
terns. Goffman inadequately described the substance of these patterns. The
rules perspective suggests that they are patterns of "felt moral obligation,"
that is, of deontic and practical logics.
Sometimes seems as if individual communicators have formulated
it
rules for themselves and set themselves to follow them. For example, in our
study of unwanted repetitive patterns, the conversants' behavior was rigidly
predictable, and most of them could articulate the sequence of contingent
behavior (Cronen et al. 1979). To the extent that the conversants call these
rules to their conscious attention, they can gain an insight into the predictable
patterns of conversation that they get themselves into. In fact, several of the
participants in our study of unwanted repetitive behaviors told us that the
interview led them to illuminating discoveries of their own rules for meaning
and action.
However, most of the time, whatever it is that we know that enables
us to coordinate our actions with our conversants, it is not a long list of rules
for meaning and action. More likely, it is a more flexible configuration of
patterns of deontic and practical logics.
Some of these patterns are rigid —these can be described by precisely
worded rules of the form: "If Jack is late, I will wait five minutes but no
more." Other patterns are much more flexible and can be enacted in a wide
variety of ways. A strike in baseball happens 1) if the batter swings, regardless
of where the ball is pitched, 2) if the pitch is in the strike zone, regardless
of whether the batter swings, and 3) if the ball is hit but goes outside the
foul lines (unless the batter has two strikes already). In the same way, a fight
can occur in a wide variety of ways. Communicators know the pattern
"fight," but there may be an infinite number of specific ways in which this
pattern can occur.
The rules perspective insists that the substance of our social worlds is
moral; that is, it involves our sense of felt moral obligation. It offers a formula-
tion for writing specific rules in instances in which the logic of meaning and
action is sufficiently rigid and suggests more pliant forms of deontic and
practical logics as ways of describing more elastic episodes.
Juggling Scripts, Goals, and Contingency
Conversants have to juggle several things as they work to achieve coordinated

enactments of episodes. Among these are the cultural or social scripts that
describe or prescribe how certain things should be done, their ownôa/jfor
what episodes they want to achieve or want to prevent from occurring, and
the rules that prescibe patterns of contingency between their acts and those
of their interlocutors.
A good juggler can keep all the balls in the air at once; conversants
sometimes have to choose which of these aspects are most important. The
most interesting and challenging communication situations occur when the
acts required by cultural scripts are incompatible with those required by the
personal goals of the conversant or the contingency developed by the flow
of the conversation. In these situations, how does the conversant respond?
Conversants do not always respond the same way, of course, nor do all
conversants respond alike. Remembering to distrust simple categories, it is
useful to use O'Keefe's (1988) description of three logics of message design
(described in Chapter 3) to sensitize ourselves to some of the ways people
handle these conflicting imperatives for their actions.
Conversants using a conventional logic would normally adhere to the cul-

and expect others to do the same. Predictable problems in produc-
tural script
ing coordinated episodes would arise when a conventional person is talking
with a person using an expressive or rhetorical logic. We expect conventional
people to offer accounts that justify their behavior by conforming to norms
(e.g., "I had to do that because in [situation] that's just what you are supposed
to do."). Conventional communicators would criticize others for not acting
as expected and blame them for actions that deviate from the norms. Lutz's
description of the emotion song seems a perfect example of how conventional
conversants call each other to account and thus maintain the social order.
Conversants using expressive logics normally adhere to their own goals,
dismissing cultural norms and the interaction contingency as
as irrelevant
unimportant in their virtuous expression of their own identity. Predictable
problems emerge in conversations with interlocutors using conventional or
rhetorical logics of message design. If the conversants have difficult)- cooordi-
nating their enactment of the episode, we would expect to hear accounts
justifying the expressive interlocutors' behavior by linking their actions to
the self. "I had to do that," we might be told, "because that is the way I
think; anything else would have been dishonest. You wouldn't want me to
be dishonest, would you?" Expressives will be sharply critical of interlocutors
who appear "slippery" (i.e., those who use rhetorical tactics to facilitate the
coordination of the interlocutors' lines olfaction) or who appear unduly
respectful of traditional ways of action.
Conversants using a rhetorical logic of message design respond primarily
to the contingencies of the interaction, looking for ways to make the episode
compatible with cultural scripts and personal goals. They predict problems
when dealing with conventional or expressive interlocutors and use a wide
array of devices to get past those problems. These conversants may account
for their behavior by saving "I had to do that because it made it possible for
us to work together without fighting all the time."
Adapting to the contingencies of the interaction seems the most difficult

of the three "balls" that conversants must juggle. Both scripts and goals are
somehow outside of "real time." Scripts exist before any given conversation,
and the conversant's task is to be a part of an episode that fits the pattern;
goals exist in the imagination located in a future time, and the conversant's
task is to be a part of an episode that causes that goal to occur. Responding
to the contingency is done in the now of action; it responds to the immediate
present and future. More than pattern matching, contingency calls for contin-
ual adaptation, a sense of the evolution of the logics of meaning and action,
and an ability to steer a process that we can only influence, not control.
Responding to the contingency of an interaction requires good judg-
ment and an assessment of the "openings," or opportunities, in the situation,
not simply using well-rehearsed lines from other occasions. Here are four
types of things that conversants do to facilitate their coordination with others.
Punctuate the Sequence of Events

Every culture develops signals that conversants use to tell each other that
they want to end what they are doing, start something new, or change what
is going on. Most of these signals are conventional; that is, some other signal
could serve as well. They are meaningful only if they help the conversants
coordinate. Let me call some
these signals to your attention by describing
research on three categories of them: greetings, turn taking, and leave taking.
The first five minutes of a conversation are the site of some important
decisions, including the decision about whether to continue the conversation
(Krivonos and Knapp 1975; Goffman 1971). Most conversations last for
fewer than five minutes; however, if a conversation goes past the five-minute
mark, it is go much longer. These five minutes feature a ritualistic
likely to
exchange of information and greetings; the nonverbal manner as well as the
content of this information subtly cues other conversants as to whether the
speaker wants to continue to talk or to end the conversation. For example,
if I want to talk longer, I might answer the ritual question How are you?
with something other than one of the usual responses; this gives my conversant
the opportunity to ignore my unconventional response and end the conversa-
tion or to respond to it and open a space for a longer conversation.
Turn taking refers to the process by which we exchange the roles and
responsibilities of speakers and listeners in conversations. There are compli-
cated patterns of signals that allow us, for the most part, to have our chance
to speak and to allow our interlocutors the same privilege (Duncan 1985).
Nofsinger (1975) coined the term demand ticket for conversational
devices that people use to get a chance to speak. These include complex
patterns of gaze, clearing one's throat, subtle shifts in posture (generally
leaning forward), and facial expressions that others recognize as preparing
to speak.
The opposite of a demand ticket is a turn-yielding device. These devices
consist of cues that speakers use to signal that they are about finished speaking
and would appreciate someone else taking a turn. Turn-yielding cues include
rapid eye movements or a series of dysfluencies (such as "uh") with a slowing
rate of speech.
more than two people, a speaker sometimes just
In a conversation with
gives up, allowing the others to compete for the next speaking turn. On
other occasions, however, speakers designate the next speaker. One way of
doing this is by direct address: after making a statement, the speaker adds,
"Don't you agree, Tom?" Another turn-selection device is third-person refer-
ence. After making a statement, the speaker addresses Mary but says, "and
I'm quite sure of this because Tom agrees with me." These turn-selection
devices are surprisingly powerful. Those conversants who ignore them are
treated as if they have violated the deontic logic of conversation; that is, they
have done something that they ought not to have done.
Coordinating the end of a conversation, or the end of an episode within
an ongoing conversation, often requires a skillful performance. In a study of
"The Rhetoric of Goodbye," Knapp et al. (1973) found that conversants try
to accomplish three things when they end a conversation. First, they summa-
rize the conversation, saying what has been done ("Well! We sure had fun!
Thanks for the good company!"). Second, they signal the impending de-
creased access between them ("I guess I won't see you again until next
week."). Third, they signal supportiveness ("See you later!" "I'll give you a
call thisweekend!" or simply, "Good-bye!").

Like the research on rules discussed earlier, the most significant contri-
bution of these studies is to show that we use a wide array of both subtle
and blatant cues as a way of coordinating our punctuations of episodes. The
specific array of cues used differ among cultures, generations, and social and
occupational groups. You are best advised to use the research described here
as a way to sensitize you to the cues used by the people with whom you
communicate rather than as a list of what particular cues mean. Of course,
the meaning of these cues is in how they are used, and uses vary and change.
Give Accounts
In Chapter 1, we used "accounts" as a way of describing the moral orders
of our social worlds. They are also effective tools for negotiating what episode
is occurring and for negotiating the meaningôf particular acts within episodes.
As Buttny (1990, p. 219) put it,
An account is an explanation offered to an accuser which attempts

to change the potentially pejorative meanings of action. What is
interesting about this is how a bit of talk in just the right place can
transform what was initially seen as reproachable to something seen
now as justifiable or at least understandable.
Disclaimers. Some accounts are offered before performing an act that

might create a coordination problem (Hewitt and Stokes 1975). These are
called disclaimers, and there are several tvpes of disclaimers.
Hedging: "I'm not sure about this, but ." "That surprises me, and I
. .
haven't given it much thought, but my first reaction would be ." Hedging . .
is an explicit statement that what follows is tentative. It signals others that
the speaker is not willing to defend what follows; it offers a blatant opening
for the other to persuade, inform, or disagree.
Giving credentials:"Don't get me wrong, I think your hair is lovely, but
. .
." "I'm not prejudiced, some of my best friends are ." Giving creden- . .
tials is a way of softening an anticipated negative reaction to what the speaker

is about to say.
Sin licenser. "I know its not 'politically correct' to say this, but . . .""You
will find this offensive, but . .
." Sin licenses are statements that acknowledge
that what is about to be said violates the script for appropriate behavior. By
acknowledging that, the speaker answers the anticipated question, Don't you
know any better than to say that? and claims that there must be substantial
reasons for him or her to make the statement. If they work, sin licenses focus
attention on the statement itself rather than on the speaker's propriety in
making the statement.

Cognitive accounts: "I know this sounds crazy, but ..." "You may think
this silly, but . .
." Cognitive accounts give an answer to the anticipated
challenge of whether the speaker has lost her or his mind. By showing that
the speaker at least knows that the statement he or she about to makeis
strains the boundaries of rationality, the speaker hopes to be perceived as

rational.
."
Appeal for suspended judgment. "Hear me out before you get angry . .
"Will you listen to me first and then tell me I'm crazy?" These appeals for
suspended judgment ask for an opportunity to explain the statement that is
about to be made before being required to defend oneself or the statement
from attack.
Excuses. Accounts given after an act that threatens the ability to coordi-
nate activities were summarized by Semin and Manstead 1983). They called (
these after-the-fact accounts excuses.
Accidents: Speakers deny their intention to threaten the coordinated epi-

sode ("I didn't mean to do it!")
Mistakes: Speakers deny volition by saying that others made them do the
act ("I was coerced!"), that they were temporarily insane ("I just lost my
head!"), or that they did not have the authority or power to do what needed
to be done ("I but failed!").
tried,
Evasion: Speakers deny agency by saying that it was not they who did the
dreadful deed, that they have amnesia ("I cannot recall having done that"),
or that they did not act alone ("Others are equally guilty as I; since we cannot
all be punished equally, I should not be punished at all").
Appeals for sympathy: Speakers appeal to mitigating circumstances ("It
seemed like a good idea at the time" "I've had a rough life what do you —
expect from me?").
Appeals for absolution: Speakers appeal to moral principles ("Yes, I did it,
but was in revenge for what he had done to me" "It was in self-defense"
it
"If I had not spiked the tree, the logging company would have done a greater
evil by cutting down the forest").
Standing alone, outside the flow of conversation, all of these accounts

and excuses seem pretty lame. In the situations in which they occur, they
may also seem disingenuous and self-serving, or they may work quite well
to keep the coordinated production of the episode on track.
Metacommunicate
As Bateson defined it, metacommunication is the use of statements that
comprise the relationship between the speakers. We can easily expand that
definition to include explicit reference to the episode, orwhat the speakers
aredoing to and with each other.
The following account of an actual event illustrates both the need for,
and difficulty we sometimes have in, achieving metacommunication. In some
places, school teachers are legally required to report suspected child abuse.
Social workers are then assigned to visit the home of the child and discuss
the charge with the parents. If they determine that abuse is occurring, they
are required to institute legal proceedings. One social worker realized, to her
dismay, that she was assigned to investigate her best friend, with whom she
often talked about their children. As friends, they had a well-developed script
for talking about their families; as a social worker, she had a well -developed
script forconducting an investigative interview for potential child abuse. Not
surprisingly, the two scripts did not match. What was she to do?
When she arrived at the door, the social worker was welcomed. When
she said, "I'm here to talk about your children," this was heard as the
beginning of an episode in which friends
about their families. It took
talk
her several attempts before her statement was.heard as a metacommunication
that explained that the episode that they would follow today would follow
a very different script. Needless to say, the warmth of the initial welcome
faded quickly.
Reconstruct the Context

Sometimes the problem in coordinating an episode goes beyond simply ad-
justing the conversants' lines of action so that they do not trip over each
A Final Word: How Do our Social Worlds Appear "Real" to Us? 189
other. You may

find yourself in an episode in which you do not want to
participate.Whatever is happening, you do not want to be involved. For
example, people are sometimes cruel. If a group of people are taunting a
self-conscious teenager, they may offer you a part in their script that you do
not want. How do you avoid participating in the unwanted episode?
Exiting the situation: One way to avoid participating in an unwanted epi-

sode is to leave it. ("Do what you will, but as for me, leave me out!")
Blocking the performance of the episode: Another way to avoid participating
in an unwanted episode is to prevent it from occurring ("Anyone who wants
to continue will do so over my dead body!").
Reframing: Refraining means the construction of a different episode. Recall
the distinction between "stories told" and "stories lived" that was made
in Chapter 1. Employing this distinction, we can discern two strategies of
reframing.
Changing the story you tell yourself about the episode is one way of
reframing. If you reframe the issue, you may find that you are not obligated
to participate, or that the episode is not nearly as distasteful as you had
thought. For example, how should you participate in episodes in which race
relations are central? If you frame race relations as a question of who will
exploit whom and punctuate the present moment as the extension of thou-
sands of years of exploitation, then a battle to the finish is the only episode
you can imagine. But if you reframe the issue as how we in the present can
collectively achieve a nonexploitative relationship, then you have many more
choices.
You have to change the pattern of coordinated action itself you are
if
to reframe stories lived (Branham and Pearce 1985). To do this,you have

to perform an act that meets three conditions. First, the act must fit the
existing, unfolding logic of meaning and action sufficiently well to be relevant.
That is, the interlocutors have to take it into account. Second, it must differ
from the existing, unfolding logic of meaning and action to such an extent
that it necessitates a change in the frame. To use Goffman's terms, it introduces
a new "kev" for the interpretation of what is in the frame, what are the most
important elements in the frame, and what the elements in the frame mean.
Third, it must initiate asequence of subsequent acts that make those changes
in the frame real. Thar is, the new frame is "made" in the continued enactment
of the episode.
A Final Word: How Do our Social Worlds Appear "Real"

to Us?
The transmission model of communication would have us believe that the real
world exists before and outside our social worlds. In this view, communication
works by representing the objects of that world that include both an outer
realm of things and raw happenings and an inner world of thoughts and
mental images.
The social constructionist position sharply disagrees. Philosopher Rich-
ard Rorty( 1989, p. 21) claimed that "we have no prelinguistic consciousness
to which language needs to be adequate, no deep sense of how things are

which it is the duty of philosophers to spell out in language. What is described
as such a consciousness is simply a disposition to use the language of our
ancestors, to worship the corpses of their metaphors." If we take Rorty at
face value, he urges us to acknowledge our freedom to adopt new metaphors,
and to live in them rather than try to look through them to some more basic
level of reality.
Yeah, but .if our lives are only the metaphors we use and the stories
. .
we tell, why do we die when we get sick, and how is it that we get so caught
up in our stories about who we are and what is right and beautiful that we
will fight and suffer for them? I think Rorty overstates his case because he
still thinks in terms of a dualism, with raw happenings on one side and mental
stuff on the other. At least this passage is written as if one had to choose
between stories and objects.
The social constructionist perspective does not make the dualistic as-
sumption that you have to choose between mental and physical elements.
To the contrary, when we tell a story, we are performing an action. That
action is itself as much a part of the universe as a rock. Unlike a rock, actions
are done in language and have properties that uninterpreted objects do not.
When we call something by name, the calling and the name itself is part of
reality, not simply a representation of it.
This perspective enables us to understand how the stories we tell enmesh

us so deeply. Communication theorist John Shotter (1986, p. 213) started
with the now-familiar observation that language is a means for doing things,
for coordinating actions and for living a life, not an instrument that pictures
some nonlinguistic world. He then noted that "people's everyday practical
activities can be seen as constituting or creating in the course of their own
conduct 'organized settings' for their own appropriate continuation." That
is, every act that we do points toward an episode in which
it has meaning.
That episode, in turn, constrains the choice of our next act. The unfolding
sequence of coordinated acts in a conversation "to imply, posit, or intimate
in their execution a realm of next possible actions, a world of opportunities
and barriers, of enabling-constraints, relative to the activity's continuation."
(Shotter 1986, p. 213)
These contexts seem objectively real to us in part because they are
created by the combination of our actions and those of our interlocutors.
The context made real often does not resemble what any of us had in mind.
Because it differs from our individual wishes and desires, the social world
both is and appears to us to be objective, a reality "out there" that we have
to take into account. "As a result," Shotter said, "in their everyday practical
1. Coordinating the Meaning of Acts in Episodes 191
rather than acting out of any 'ideas,' 'scripts,' 'plans,' or 'inner

activities,
mental representation,' people can act in a seemingly thoughtless, 'natural,'

or spontaneous way into settings that they themselves, all unaware, have to
an extent themselves created." (Shotter 1986, p. 213)
Praxis
1. Coordinating the Meaning of Acts in Episodes
This activity requires you to make the distinction between game playing and
game mastery two forms of competence. If you need to, review the discus-
as
sion of this distinction in Chapters 2 and 3.
If the only form of competence that we had was game playing, we
would be stymied as soon as we encountered a problem coordinating our
definitions of episodes with other conversants. However, game mastery sug-
gests that we have the potential to go outside our scripts, rules, and interpre-
tive schemas to find ways of coordinating with others. We can detect the
differences between "our" rules and "their" rules for how to perform an
episode, and we can do something about it.
But do what? As discussed in the "Narrative" section, we can 1 ) punctu-
ate the episode, 2) give accounts, 3) metacommunicate, or 4) reconstruct
the context. Review these concepts so that you can do these things in class
and recognize them when others do them.
In the "Narrative" section, I described two cases of coordination prob-
lems in the enactment of episodes. One involved American servicemen and
British women during World War II, the other, a young man who wanted
to discuss some things with the Mayor.
Before working alone. Write the script of a conversation between
class,
a serviceman anda British woman as it might have happened if both communi-

cated at the game playing level of competence. Now write the script of a
conversation between the Mayor and the young man, again representing each
as game playing within their own rules.
Write at least two variations of each script in which you portray the
conversants using accounts, metacommunication, and reconstruction of the
context as ways of coordinating the episode.
In class, working in groups. Simulate the conversations you wrote that
include the game mastery strategies. Take turns trying out different punctua-
forms of metacommunication, and differ-
tions, different accounts, different
ent ways of reconstructing the context. Be playful and creative, but as you
run through a series of these conversations, discuss which seem to work and
which do not, or what conditions must obtain if certain strategies are to

work.
2. Identifying Cues Used to Punctuate Episodes
Station yourself where you can observe some naturally occurring conversa-
tions. A lounge or dining area on campus works well; any public place, such
as a park or shopping mall, will serve.
Carefully attend to the first five minutes of conversations. What kinds
of information gets talked about? How careful are speakers in exchanging
turns? What are the differences between conversations that stop at or before
the "five-minute barrier" and those that continue past it?
Make a list of turn-taking cues. Separate them into "demand tickets,"
"turn-yielding cues," and "turn-selecting devices." Pay particular attention
to cues that do not resemble those described in the "Narrative." Can you
identify different patternsof cues used by people from different cultures,
occupations, genders, or socioeconomic status? What happens when someone
refuses to honor one of these cues? Is this a violation of a logic of felt moral
obligation? How are such violations dealt with?
Listen carefully for "accounts." What accounts are offered, demanded,
and accepted? How are these accounts used to coordinate communication?
How do people end conversations? Give particular attention to ritualistic
forms of speech and manner that signal that the conversation is over. Do
these fit the pattern suggested in the "Narrative" section about the three
things that people try to do when they say goodbye?
Before class. By making the observations suggested in the paragraphs
above, you have been acting as a communication researcher. You have proba-
bly noted a lot of things, some of which reconfirmed your expectations and
some of which surprised you. Prepare a brief report that you will present to
the class. Describe what surprised you most and what surprised you least
in your observations. (I suggest that you look at interactions, using the
conversational triplet as your unit of observation.)

In class. Make your report and compare your findings with those of
—
other people. Did you notice and were you surprised by the same things —
as other people? If not, what does this tell you about yourself and the other
people in your class? Discuss this with them.
3. An Exercise in Coordination
Coordinating our actions with others is difficult, in part, because the others
are trying to coordinate their actions with us! I was part of a group that went
to a Central American country to work with some colleagues. Our first
meeting ended in a great deal of laughter. We North Americans came to the
3. An Exercise in Coordination 193
meeting a few minutes late, with no set agenda, and were very "laid back."
The Central Americans came to the meeting early, had a detailed agenda,
and started the meeting by getting to work immediately. It became obvious
to both groups that each of us had expended considerable effort to adapt to
the working style of the other, so much so that we reproduced the familiar
coordination problems experienced by "Gringos" and "Latinos" because we
reversed the usual "scripts" for how the episode might unfold!
The interactional contingency in conversations consists of just this sort
of "zigging" when the other is "zagging." To get a feel for how this works,
the game coordination was developed (Pearce and Cronen 1980). It simulates
interactional contingency in a sufficiently restricted setting so that some
characteristics of the process can be made more obviously visible.
The game coordination uses a simple artificial language consisting of
four "messages": circle, star, triangle, and square. In this language, any
sequence that contains all four messages within six turns is considered elo-
quent, any sequence that continues for more than six turns without using all
four messages is considered defective and boring, and those who produce
such sequences are considered conversationally impaired. There are three
additional "metarules" for using this language:
1. All conversations must begin with "circle."

2. Conversants must produce a message when it is their turn (i.e., you
may not not communicate).
3. Anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden (i.e., conversants must
follow the rules exacdy).
Figure 4.4 contains the rules for three persons, Pat, Mike, and Ellswood.
This exercise works best you divide into groups. Assign one person
if
to write the conversation (on a chalkboard?) and assign two others to be

"Pat" or "Mike" or "Ellswood." (As you go along, rotate assignments so
that everyone gets a chance to participate in several positions).
Following the rules listed above, simulate a conversation between Pat
and Mike in which Pat speaks first (by saying "circle" of course). Remember
that your goal is to produce a sequence in which all four messages are
contained in no more than six turns. Look at the conversation that Mike and
Pat make. Is it elegant? How do Pat and Mike feel about each other? Look
at the rules that Pat and Mike have to follow: are they complex, sophisticated
communicators? What does this tell you about the relationship between the
conversation and the abilities of each conversant viewed as an individual?
Now simulate a conversation between Pat and Ellswood, in which Pat
speaks first (by saying "circle," of course). Compare this conversation with
that between Pat and Mike. Which is more eloquent? for the What accounts
difference? Because Pat is the same in both conversations, is Mike or Ellswood
the more competent communicator? How useful is it to talk about how
competent individuals are?
"
1. Allconversations must begin with
2. Each speaker must respond to the other;
3. Everything not explicitly permitted is forbidden;
4. For Pat:
if the other says: then Pat must say:

O or^ or A
*A O or a or it
O or or it or a
5. For Mike:
if the other says: then Mike must say:
O
it or or a
*A O or a or n
O or or *
6. For ElIs wood:
if the other says: then ElIs wood must say:

O O
O
•A A
Figure 4.4 The game "coordination." This game allows you to experience
the logic of meaning and action of a conversation from a first-person
perspective.
Next, have a conversation between Mike and Ellswood in which Mike

speaks first (saying "circle," of course). Compare this conversation to the
others. What accounts for the difference?
Finally, have a conversation between Pat and Mike in which Mike speaks
first (saying "circle," of course). Compare this conversation to the others.
Note how much difference so simple a thing as who speaks first can make
in a conversation.
The conversations producedif you follow these directions are very
different.As you probably noticed, the rules contain some tricks so that you
could feel the frustrations and facilitations of interactional contingencies.
Some of the conversations probably went very well, and others were frustrat-
ing. Notice that the problems you had in the "failed" episodes were not the
problems of any of the individuals: all three are capable of participating in a
coordinated enactment of the desired episode. Notice that the problems were
not a simple function of the complexity of the rules or the amount of freedom
of choice the conversants had: the "sophisticated" Pat and Mike were not
always able to achieve their goals, and the "simple-minded" Ellswood was
sometimes able to do quite well. When Pat and Mike were communicating,
4. Unwanted Repetitive Patterns 195
their ability to produce the desired outcome hinged on something as simple

as who spoke when Ellswood was communicating with Pat or Mike,
first;
their ability to produce the desired outcome hinged on the particular ways
that their rules "meshed" once a line of action was started.
Actual conversations differ from this simulation, of course, in that thev
use much more complicated languages, the rules the conversants follow are
much more and conversants do not always follow the rules. That
varied,
having been noted, can you use the concept of interactional contingency to
account for the way some conversations seem to go smoothly and others
seem so frustrating?
Who do we thank or blame when things happen in conversation? Usu-
ally, when things go well we tend to take the credit; when things go badly,
we blame other people. If you did not know the rules that Pat, Mike, or
Ellswood were following and could base your perception of them only on
their performance in the conversation, what would you think? Remember
the conversation in which Pat and Mike could not produce the desired
conversation but each could communicate "eloquently" with Ellswood. Pat
is likely to perceive Mike as conversationally impaired and blame him for
their failure, and vice versa, whereas each is likely to think, erroneously, that
Ellswood is quite a sophisticated guy.
4. Unwanted Repetitive Patterns
How much control do people have over the episodes in which they participate?
To what extent can they change episodes that are not going as they want?
How successful are they in avoiding episodes they do not like and in finding
ways of getting into those they prefer?

These questions open up some basic issues, among them autonomy,
persuasion, and power. From this communication perspective, power can be
defined in terms of your ability to involve yourself in desired episodes and
to avoid involvement in unwanted episodes. The anatomy of oppression and
exploitation, it seems to me, can be written in terms of those unwanted
episodes in which you are compelled to participate and those desired episodes
to which you have no access.
Do a self-inventory of your own power. To what episodes are you denied

access? How is this access denied— is it that you do not have the required
entry fee (e.g., there are restaurants at which I cannot eat because I simply
cannot afford to) or ability- (I cannot play basketball in the NBA because I
cannot shoot or rebound sufficiently well). Or are you denied access on the
basis of some personal characteristic, such as race, sex, age, or religion? What
resources can you draw on to gain admittance to episodes in which you want
to participate? Note that some episodes are fragile: you can force yourself in
but only by doing such violence that the episode is not what you wanted it to
be. For example, you cannot buy friendship or force yourself into a voluntary-
association. What communication strategies might you use to gain access to

\> previously blocked episodes?
From this perspective, persuasion is the process of getting an interlocu-
tor to align his or her actions so that they coordinate with your own preferred
line of action.
Autonomy refers to the extent to which you
pushed and pulled by
are
events as opposed to deciding and choosing for yourself what you will do.
Psychologists have made a living arguing about whether we are autonomous
agents who live and move as expressions of our "true selves" or whether our
behavior is controlled by reinforcement schedules. The truth is probably a
little of both, but one line of research disclosed a fascinating pattern of social
interaction that we call unwanted repetitive patterns or "URPs" (Cronen et

al. 1979). In an unwanted repetitive pattern, an autonomous agent acts as
if she or he were controlled by the interaction contingency.
CTwo We
loud fights.
persons with
took
whom
this as
I worked were all-too-predictable in having
an opportunity for research and found that these
people sincerely did not want to fight with each other but found themselves
"compelled" to ways that they knew would provoke and continue the
act in
fight. "When he said what he did," each reported, "I had no choice. I had
to respond as I did." "What did you think that he would do next?" "Oh, I
knew that we were getting into it again, but there was nothing else I could
do."
As a matter of fact, there were many things that they could have done,
but we interpreted their statement as a valid description of their perceptions
even though was not an accurate representation of their options. That is,
it
they had become so enmeshed in the unfolding logic of the interactional

contingency that they really could not think of anything else to do, or if they
could think of it, doing anything else would have seemed a moral betrayal.
We interviewed a large number of other persons, and found that virtually
all had particular relationships in which unwanted repetitive patterns occurred
^K. Do you recognize yourself in this picture? Describe the circumstances in

>^ which you engage in repetitive patterns. Give particular attention to the
feeling of being trapped or enmeshed in the interactional contingency. Who
v/ should you blame for being trapped in these unwanted repetitive patterns.
Before class. Choose at least one of the terms discussed above: autonomy,
v persuasion, and power. Describe some episode in your life in which you feel
that you have an unusual amount or lack of autonomy, persuasiveness, or
power. Write the script for this episode, and analyze it according to the
Heyerdahl solution. How is this episode made} Use the concepts that you have
ding the .conversational triplet and the notion of interactional
contingency. Write a short (one- or two-page) description of the episode
and explanation of how you come to have so much or so little autonomy,
persuasiveness, or power.
In class. Compare your report with those of other people. Look for
common and unusual elements. Focus on the accounts given in the "explana-
References 1 97
tions." Do they focus on individuals or do they describe interactive patterns}

Which type of explanation do you find most convincing?
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CHAPTER
5 Relationships
People's lives are fabricated in and by their relation-

ships with other people. Our greatest moments of joy and
sorrow are found in relationships.
Duck 1985, p. 655
[Relationships are the primary topic of language. The

great evolutionary step in human communication was]
the discovery of how to be specific about something
other than relationships.
Bateson 1972, p. 367
We have an impoverished language of relatedness. We

cannot ask whether a relationship hopes, fears, or wishes,
nor can we understand how it is that a relationship
could determine Bob's feelings and Sarah's thoughts
rather than vice versa. It is as if we have thousands of
terms to describe the individual pieces in a game of
chess, and virtually none by which we can articulate
the game itself.
Gergen 1991, p. 160

KEY WORDS

Relationships and able to chapter include
Interpersonal
Communication Identify and deal reflexivity,
with confusion in dialectical and
Language Games and relationships more ecological processes,
Relationships competently
relational stages,
Some Things We Know Be sensitive to patterns of
About Interpersonal
changes and stability communication,
Communication in
in relationships
Relationships
and gender and
Understand communication
A Word: A
Final
relationships as the
Language Game for
context in which
Relationships
selves are shaped
Be able to use
Praxis the techniques of
"circular
1. Conflict and Confu- questioning"

sion in Multiple
Relationships
2. Dealing with Confu-

sion Competently
3. Stages in Relation-
ship Development
4. Circular
Questioning
1
202 Chapter 5 Relationships
Narrative
To be human means to live a life immersed in social relationships. The first
words that we speak name particular relationships, probably "Mama" or
"Daddy." One of the first things we learned about our social worlds is that
adults are differentiated by relationships. We have to learn that not all adult
women are "mommies" and that conversational rules differ depending on
whether your conversant is a member of the family. Ethnographers treat
complex patterns of kinship relations as one of the very few "cultural univer-
sals." No matter how "advanced" or "primitive," all societies have elaborate,
well-defined patterns of who is related to whom in what ways, each with its
own implications for the kinds of conversations that can, must, and should
occur.
Some strands of the common sense in our society treat relationships as
if they were formed voluntarily by fully functioning, consenting adults. The
shape and duration of these relationships are treated as if they are matters of
volition; as long as all the participants in those relationships agree, then —so
this perspective suggests —anything goes.
Counterpoint 5.
Colin Turnbull's The Human Cycle (1983) is a fascinating comparison of

the structure of relationships at five stages of life (childhood, adolescence,
youth, adulthood, and old age) in three cultures (upper-class British, hunt-
er-gatherer Mbuti, and orthodox Hindu). While insisting that "Nowhere is the
world richer, more exciting, or more beautiful than it is in our own lives"
(p. 15) and that, in one sense at least, "the very obvious differences
between the diversity of cultures we have touched on are only skin-deep"
(p. 266), Turnbull describes "the much more subtle and vital differences in
our concepts of both self and society" (p. 267) that each institutionalizes.
In my book, Communication and the Human Condition (1989), took I
this argument one step further, claiming that those who live in different
cultures experience fundamentally different -ways of being human
because they engage forms of communication. Turnbull's
in different
description of three cultures shows "alternative social systems at
work, how
other societies handle the business of living together, facing
conflict and resolving it, ordering interpersonal and intergroup rela-
tionships into a comprehensible system that achieves the maximum ad-
vantages for the society as a whole while allowing the maximum possible
freedom for each individual to develop his own way and make his own
unique contribution to society." (p. 268)
1
Are our relationships "social contracts'
freely entered into by fully
functioning adults? Clearly, such relationships are possible. But is this the
appropriate model for thinking about relationships? No, because such social
contracts are the exception, not the norm.
Being in relationships is — to adopt the vocabulary of the new automo-
bile showroom — a "standard feature" for human beings; it is not "optional
equipment." Genetically and psychologically, human beings cannot not be
in relationships with other people. The question is not whether we will have
relations, but what kind, with whom, and with what understanding of what
we are about in those relationships. We first enter into relationships before
we are born; physically, we depend for on the umbilical connec-
our very lives
tion to our mothers. Immediately after birth, we
way into a complex
find our
set of relationships that we did not choose and on which we depend for
physical, emotional, and social sustenance.
If I were to declare that there is little connection between interpersonal
relationships and interpersonal communication, that statement would contra-
dict every communication theorist who has ever lived as well as common
sense. But having noted the obvious, that there is a close connection between
conversations and relationships, the more difficult task is to determine just
what that relationship is.
Relationships and Interpersonal Communication

Reflexivity is the technical term for the connection between conversations
and relationships. This term requires a careful definition.
Let conversations be understood as forms of conjoint actions, that is,

as makings and doings. (This should be a comfortable definition; it glosses
over the difference between the and third-person definitions offered in
first-
Chapter 1 because here I just want to emphasize that conversations are

something that is done.)
By relationships, I mean a whole series of hyphenated things, such as
father-son, sister-brother, teacher-student, salesperson-customer, and aunt-

nephew. However, for present purposes, I must insist on a rather unusual
definition of what these familiar things are. Let relationships be understood
as a set of patterned linkages in which two or more objects are constituted.
(The reason for this unusual definition is discussed in the following section,
"Language Games and Relationships.")
Reflexivity describes a pattern in which one thing affects another which
then, in turn, affects the first. In this definition, conversations are forms of
action that affect relationships, and those relationships in turn affect
conversation.
To describe this process, you must think of spirals and circles, not
straight lines. Although reflexivity has an inherent whiff of paradox about it,
and hard-eyed prose is not necessarily the best medium for depicting it, there
1
Refrain 5.
Reflexivity describes a pattern in which one thing affects another which

then, in turn, affects the first.
Think of the image of a snake biting its tail or, in a more mammalian
image, a puppy chasing its tail. The faster the puppy moves in pursuit, the
faster the tail moves in "flight."
There are two notions of reflexivity in communication theory. One en-

tered through cybernetics and is based on the image of a mirror: the
person who is looking at the reflection is also the person reflected. The
other concept entered through Wittgenstein's analysis of language and is
based on the grammatical concept of reflexivity: an act performed hy a
person also acts upon the person who performed it
This second, grammatical, notion of reflexivity is the one most relevant
to the study of relationships and interpersonal communication.
is really nothing mysterious about it — it simply requires being careful about

what language game you are using.
If Arthur and Seymour are fighting, Arthur may ask either linear or
reflexive questions. Each is a part of a very different language game.
Linear questions: In this fight, how can I defeat Seymour? How much will
it cost me to defeat him? What resources do I have available to me? Is it in
my best interest to risk these resources in order to beat him?

Reflexive questions: What kind of person will I become if I win this fight
i
with Seymour? Regardless of who wins, what kind of social world are we
creating by fighting? What will it cost me if I defeat him? What will I miss
most when the fight is over?
We can pull out three different aspects of this reflexive connection; all
three combine to describe the reflexive connection.
Relationships Are Made in Conversations

Relationships are an important part of our social worlds, and like all other
events and objects in our social worlds, are made in conversations. This means
that we should apply the Heyerdahl solution if we want to understand a
particular relationship. That you want to understand your relationship

is, if
with your favorite uncle from a communication perspective, you would look
at how it is made in conversations.
Having looked at the characteristics of speech acts and episodes, how-
c\ or, you can think about some of the implications of applying the Heyerdahl
Figure 5.
"Drawing Hands" by
M.C. Escher. (C 1948
M.C. Escher Founda-
tion —Baarn Holland. All
rights reserved.)
Counterpoint 5.2
Many people find that the etchings of M. C. Escher capture something

important about reflexive social processes. Figure 5.1 shows a famous
print of one hand drawing another hand, but that hand is drawing the
first. The best way thatI know to explain the statement that the con-
versations in which we make our relationships are also made by those
relationships is to point to this picture and say that the patterns of
connections are like that!
Remember the discussion of monologue and dialogue as two forms
of communication. I believe that both forms of communication are
reflexive, but whereas monologue shields itself from a recognition of
reflexive effects, dialogue places them in the foreground.
solution. It is not just that relationships are made in conversations; it is that

relationships bear in them the consequences of being made in a process having
the specific characteristics of conversation. That is, the structural features of
conversation are projected onto the relationships they make.
For instance, speech acts are inherently unfinished; their meaning
emerges in the continuing sequence of actions. What implications does this
unfinished process have in the construction on relationships? Again, episodes
of interaction in which neither conversant
are transpersonal, durative processes
has total control over what is happening. What can we understand about
relationships if we attend to this feature of the process by which they are
made?
Relationships Are Made of Clusters of Conversations

Except in the most unusual circumstances, a single conversation does not
comprise a relationship. Again, except in the most unusual circumstances, no
relationship includes all of the conversations in which a person engages.
If we take the statements in the preceding paragraph as anchors, then
the questions we must address include which conversations are "in" and
which "outside oP' a relationship, and by what process this punctuation is
made.
A story is told of a traveler who stopped where a group of men were
working. "What are you doing?" She asked the first man who walked by.
"I'm carrying a lot of very heavy stones from one place to another!" he
replied, complaining. Undeterred, she asked the next man, who was carrying
load similar to that of the first man. "What are you doing?" "I'm building
a magnificent temple!" he boasted.
This story focuses on punctuation, and the fact that it can serve equally
well for understanding the meaning of episodes and for understanding rela-
tionships shows that the activity of punctuation is common to both. As an
episode, the question is whether the workmen punctuated the act of earning
a lot of heavy stones as a part of "building a magnificent temple" or not. In
much the same way, we have conversations that weigh as much as a ten-ton
rock (although their weights are calibrated on different scales) and the ques-
tion is, of which relationships are these a part? If they are part of relationships
that are as lofty to the spirit as building a temple, then the conversation
means something very different than if it is part of a relationship in which
the workman is exploited or finds meaningless.
We are not always free to punctuate conversations into or out of relation-
ships as we see fit. Let's distinguish three types of relationships. Some relation-
ships are genetic: your parents' child and always will be. Other
you are
relationships are conventional, defined by law or custom. For example, mar-
riages are conventional, as are partnerships and, to some extent, relationships
among employees and employers. Finally, other relationships are purely volun-
tary, the result of the free choice of the participants.
These voluntary relationships are usefully described by the "social con-

tract" concept with which I began this chapter. For example, when you
same-sex friendship, you do not have to call your parents and friends
initiate a
and make a formal announcement, you seldom rent a church or meeting

room and host a celebratory party, and you probably do not receive unsolicited
advice from distant aunts and uncles about how to be a "good friend."
Instead, your friendship may develop without any particular fanfare and may
have characteristics that are unlike those of other friendships (Wright 1978).
One reason why such friendships seem free, comfortable, and spontaneous
is that they are comprised only by those conversations that
you punctuate as
"in" them. You do not have to explain to your friend where you were last
—
night and why you did not call last week unless you have specifically included
such conversations in your friendship.
Conventional relationships, on the other hand, have imposed punctua-
tions of what is if you marry, there are
included and excluded. For example,
some legally required conversations that you must punctuate within your
relationship. These include sexual activities within the marriage and the neces-
sity to account to your mate for any sexual activities that occur (or are thought
to occur) outside the marriage. These conversations also include teamwork

in confronting the Internal Revenue Service and shared responsibilities for
the debts you accrue.
One of the reasons why conventional relationships sometimes seem
difficult or oppressive is that the conversations punctuated as the boundary
of the relationship are not comfortable. Bill knows that as a good husband,
he should stay home with his wife more often and go to fewer sports events
with the guys, but he does not want to. Mary knows that as a good wife,
she should go to more sports events with Bill but she just does not enjoy
them.
Counterpoint 5.3
By keeping in mind what is and what is outside of the boundaries

inside
that we make by punctuation, we
can understand a great deal about our
social worlds. The meaning of what we see depends on our perspect ve,
;
that is, whether we see if from the inside or from the outside. For example,
from the outside, the walls around a set of conversations punctuated as
the boundaries of a relationship may seem restrictive and confining; from
the inside of that relationship, however, those same boundaries may
seem comforting and liberating.
As a thought exercise, imagine what geometry would be like if our only
perspective was from inside the figures that we study. Clearly, geome-
try is almost always performed from outside the triangles, squares, and
trapezoids that preoccupy the attention of geometers. Can you imag-

ine what kind of knowledge geometers would develop if they could only
see those shapes from inside them?
At the beginning of her novel The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin (1974,
pp. 1-2) makes some highly relevant observations about a wall. As
you read this passage, think of the boundaries around relationships as
viewed from both sides.
There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks
roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could
climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it
degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea
was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been noth-
ing in the world more important than that wall.
Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and
what was outside it depended on which side of it you were on.
Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren 60-acre field
called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry
cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormi-
tory. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the
. . .
landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the
men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest
of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.
Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole
planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and
other men, in quarantine.
If it is possible to describe a relationship as the cluster of conversations

that are punctuated as in it and if it is possible to determine what conversations
people would add or subtract from it, we can get an interesting picture
like to
of social worlds. The meaning of a particular relationship is determined by

just those conversations that occur in it. For example, Bill and Mary may
have a wonderful marriage that does not include a category of conversations
involving spectator sports. John and Tonia may have just as good a marriage
that involves both spectator and participant athletics but does not include a
category of conversations invoking entertaining friends that is a central fea-
ture of Bill and Mary's relationship. On the other hand, John and Tonia may
have some real problems because John wants to compete in the national
skydiving contest and Tonia not only refuses to participate but argues that
needlessly risking his life is a failure to accept his responsibilities as husband
and father.
Genetic relationships are those about which we have no choice. As the
old adage says, "Home is where, when you have to go, they have to let you
in!" Cultures differ, however, in the extent to which genetics is an important
structuring device for relationships. In some societies, there is more opportu-
nity for voluntary and conventional relationships; in others, genetic relation-

ships are more important.
Relationships Are a Category of Contexts

for Conversations
The reflexive connection occurs because the relationships made in conversa-

tion are simultaneously the context in which those conversations take place.
As conversants, we act into contexts as well as out of them, and the contexts
that we imagine, perceive, or invent structure the way we communicate.
Relationships are a part of our social worlds; they are embedded in the
logics of meaning and action that govern the way we think and act. Well-
established contexts function as reasons for our actions; we say that we bad
to act as we did because of our relationship.
As you have become tuned to hear accounts, you probably have heard
relationships cited as the purposes or reasons for unusual acts. For example,
you should have little difficulty putting whole conversations around these
phrases: "Because she's my friend!" "So that I can be her friend!" "That's
what fathers do!" "Because I'm your father!" "Not as long as you put your
feet under my dinner table, you don't!" Each of these statements is a specific
point in the powerful deontic and practical logics that constitute the substance
of the speaker's social worlds.
Language Games and Relationships
Ironically, the harder social scientists have tried to develop a theory about
relationships, the farther they have gotten from what they are studying. The
reason for this progressive distancing has to do with the language games in
which social scientists do research and theory building. To compound the
irony, many social scientists recognized that their problem lay in their lan-
guage, but the corrective steps they took were in precisely the wrong direction.
Following the lead of nineteenth century physicists (and frankly, envious
of the successes those physicists enjoyed), social scientists assumed that ordi-
narv language is slippery and ambiguous, a poor vehicle for describing objec-
tive, precise reality. As they studied interpersonal relationships, they believed
that their firstlanguage of relationships was slippery and must be made more
rigid, clear, and noncontradictory so that it could describe the objective world
of raw happenings.
But what if the real world of raw happenings is itself slippery and
ambiguous? If relationships are made in conversations and if conversations
are made bv the imperfect conjoint enactment of episodes and the unfinished
performance of speech acts, then it seems reasonable to say that relationships
are polysemic, polyphonic, and mutable themselves. If so, an overly precise
language game is bound to distort them; what is needed is a sufficiently
Counterpoint 5.4
My up language so that it can

criticism of the project that tried to clean
more accurately describe an is based on my
allegedly perfect world
belief that there is absolutely no reason to assume that the world is
anything other than messy, shape changing, and heteroglossic. Certainly, if
we want to describe our social worlds, we have to use a language suffi-

ciently flexible and complex to keep up with all of the devious, mysteri-
ous things that we do.
Duncan (1962, pp. 380, 384) discussed irony, not only as a figure of
speech but as a form of action.
Irony holds belief, the tragic moment of truth, open to doubt. It exposes
motives which the actors do not know or seek to hide. Roles shift
and change. . . . The ironic actor withdraws from action to become
an audience to other actors, and even to himself. He comments on
the action in asides, or in soliloquy which audiences are allowed to
overhear. . . .
There is where we say one thing, but

a kind of double-talk in irony
reallymean another. This is not simply an artistic trick, for when
we act, we act before several audiences, and sometimes we must act
before all of them at the same time.
polyphonic language game to catch the many nuances of relationships. As

Wheelwright ( 1962, 128) put it, "If reality is largely fluid and half paradoxi-
p.
cal, then steel nets are not the best things with which to take samples of it."
Unfortunately, some committed themselves to the task of
social scientists
repairing their steel nets bymaking them even more steely.
Other social theorists have identified the problem of our language for
relationships more accurately. The problem stems from the fact that ou r
jlapgiiagp U overly precise, linear anrl staric; when used to describe events
'a nd objects that are uncertain. unfinished, and mutable within a heteroglossic.
polysemic, and polyphonic social world, this language distorts by making
relationships seem as if they are more stable than they are.
The remainder of this section describes four attempts to deal with the
problem of language for relationships.
Schutz's Concept of Interpersonal Needs

Schutz 1958) suggested that human beings have three "interpersonal needs"
(
that must be met, just as the needs for food, air, and water must be met.
These needs are for inclusion (i.e., to be a part of social groups), affection
(i.e., to have someone to love), and control (i.e., to be able to affect other
people). Although there are many ways to name and explain the ways in
which we relate to others, this one has some merits.
Think of the need for inclusion. To be a part of a group provides a
kind of comfort and certainty that enables us to function better. Certainly
loneliness —
an emotion prompted by the insufficient quantity or quality of
relationships— has prompted as many life-changing decisions in as many lives
as any other emotion. In many societies, to be expelled from the community
is equivalent to being dead and is used instead of capital punishment. For
many young people mobile society such as ours, loneliness is a

in a highly
frightening possibility and one of the factors taken into consideration when
choosing where to go to school, what job to take, and what forms of interper-
sonal relationships in which to participate. Members of urban gangs exhibit
a pathological need for inclusion that is apparently not being met elsewhere.
They are willing to perform criminal acts; they wear "colors" to identify
themselves to each other; they fight and die in order to belong. The military
services of all nations use the same motivations to build morale, particularly
in elite units.
Think of the need for affection. Most of us find it hard to deal with
being hated or disliked by persons whom we meet daily. One way that we
deal with being hated is to hate back; there are well-known patterns in which
we "demonize" the person who will not love us as a way of justifying to
ourselves why we spend so much time and energy hating them. If Randy says
that Bob is crazy, an immoral monster who fiendishly schemes to destroy all
that is good and beautiful, you should explore the hypothesis that Bob does
not like Randy, and that Randy perceives Bob in a manner that makes that
dislike tolerable. (Of course, Randy obviously does not like Bob, and Bob
will very probably perceive Randy as some sort of villain or fool . . . and so
the pattern will escalate. This spiral of reciprocal protection from being dis-
liked is at least one of the ways in which feuds and wars are made.)
Perhaps we can stand not being loved, but it is even harder for us
not to have something to love. Deprive a human being of all loving social
relationships and she or he will love a boat, a dress, an animal, a house, or
something else. Far greater than our need to be loved is our need to love,
and understanding this explains a great deal of human behavior.
The need for control is not necessarily a manipulative one. It refers to
an ability to affect those with whom we are in relation, to be taken into
account. We do not want to be invisible; even persecution or outright hatred
ismore acceptable than simply disappearing. People who are in wheelchairs
or on crutches often report that they become "invisible" to others who
simply ignore them. Members of discriminated groups are invisible as long
as they are in their roles (generally, menial workers or servants) and embar-
rassingly visible when they are not (e.g., when walking through an upper-
class neighborhood after dark), and this is one of the forms of violence
inflicted by economic and social class structures and racial discrimination.

The well-known syndrome called the "malevolent transformation" indi-
cates that what people need most is to be in relationship; this need is greater
than the needs for love, affection, and inclusion (or whatever other specific
needs might be listed).
a pattern in which a person acts

Malevolent transformation describes
in what seems to be and opposite manner to that which would
a self-defeating
satisfy his or her unmet interpersonal needs. Groucho Marx summarized
the transformation most succinctly when, after having his application for
membership in an exclusive country club rejected, he said, "Ha! I'd never
join a club that would have me for a member!" On another occasion, he
threatened, "Fm going to join a club and hit you with it!"
Hmm . . . What is a (country) club that it can be used to "hit"
someone? In the context of the malevolent transformation, Marx makes sense.
That might be reason to worry!
More conventional examples of the malevolent transformation include
the delinquency of Little Johnny, who needed to be included in a group but
was shunned. Johnny responded by acting in ways that will forever prevent
him from being included. He burned down the group's playhouse. Ten years
later, if Big John needs to love and be loved but is treated as if he is a social
leper, he may act in the most unlovable and unloving manner possible by
being the quintessential male chauvinist pig.
This transformation of the interpersonal needs suggests that the "oppo-
site" of each need is not its antonym (that is, "hate" rather than "love")
but apathy (literally, "without emotion"); being ignored. That is, it is better
to be hated than ignored because hate is a relationship, even if it is not the
desired relationship. The most intolerable thing of all is to be made irrelevant
or invisible, that is, to be treated as if other people's conversations are not
contingent on your actions.
Buber's Implicit Theory of Reflexivity
In Chapter 2, you learned Martin Buber's 1988) between mono-

( distinction
logue and dialogue. Buber's sensitivity to these distinctions grew out of his
concept of relationships as (although this is not quite his way of putting it)
a set of connections in which two or more entities are constituted.
Recall Buber's statement that the "I" of "I-it" is not the same "I" as
the "I" of "I-thou." If a running back limps back to the huddle, the quarter-
back may ask, "How's the leg?" This is an "Tit" relationship; the quarterback
means, "Can you do your part in the next play? If not, get off the field and
I'll bring on someone who can." After the game, the quarterback may ask,
"How's the leg?" In this instance, this is an "I-thou" relationship; the quarter-
back means "I know it's painful; do you want some help or some companion-
ship?" Any conversational analyst could see that the running back is being
given a different place in the moral orders of these interactions; it took
someone with Buber's intuitive sense for reflexivity to call our attention to
the fact that the quarterback also inhabits a very different place in the moral
order of these conversations. The "I" of "I-thou" is not the same as the "I"
of"I-it."
Buber's aphorism captures the notion that the entity "I" (as well as
the other entities involved) is not separate from the others, and that the
relationship is not between autonomous entities. Rather, the relationship is a

matrix of connections and the entities "I," "it," and "thou" are constituted
by being in the matrix. This is hard to say in ordinary language, so let me
use some special symbols.
Our common-sense notion of a relationship
it is between two or
is that
more autonomous entities. We could symbolize
concept with a hyphen.
this
For example, the relationship between a father and son would be written like
this: "father [-] son." To the contrary, Buber suggests that the entities "fa-
ther" and "son" themselves are in the relationship. That is, we should write
the relationship like this: [father-son].
Notice that I generalized Buber's insight from pronouns to nouns. It
makes sense: how can there be a "son" unless there is a "father"? A "leader"
unless there are "followers"? A "lover" unless there is a "loved one"? In all
these cases, what stands on one side of the hyphen is an impossible entity
unless there corresponding entity on the other. Relationships are nonmath-
is a
ematical equations in which every entity is constituted in a set of connections
that contains the other.
Buber's insight can be generalized to include verbs For example, as well.
the typical way of thinking about relational verbs is that they are between
people: "I [love] you"; "I [hate] you." However, this way of thinking does
not acknowledge the reflexivity of relationships. "Hate" and "love" are part
of the set of connections in which "I" and "you" are constituted. We should
punctuate these emotions like this: [I hate you] or [I love you]. Said another
way, I cannot hate or love without feeling the consequences myself. Love
and hate are not something an autonomous "I" does to "you"; it is a
relationship in which "I" "you" are constituted. The worst thing
as well as
about hateful people is that they enmesh me (and you) in hateful relationships,
thus constituting us as "haters."
Counterpoint 5.5
Reflexivity the antidote to reciprocity. Many of the moral codes that

is
people use are variations on the formula for reciprocity that might
be summarized as "to others as from others." (This formula is my way
of lumping together the wide range of moral codes bounded by "an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" on the one hand and "do unto others
before they do unto you" on the other.)
^
If reflexivity into a moral code, it might be phrased some-

were worked
thing "To others as you would want to be." (This is not quite the
like this:
same as the "Golden Rule" that specifies "do unto others as you would
have them do unto you.")
The rationale for a reflexive relational ethic goes something like this.
Ifyou think of yourself as outside your relationships, you confer love
or hate on the basis of the characteristics of the other person. That is,
you hate hateful people and love loveable people. From this perspective,
notions of unmerited love, altruism, or compassion seem very strange.
On the other hand, if you think of yourself as inside the relationship, your
decisions about loving and hating are at least in part determined by the
kind of person you want to be and your calculations of the effects of
your acts on yourself. From this perspective, the person who can love
only loveable persons and feels duty bound to hate hateful persons has little
autonomy; she or he is being controlled by the characteristics of other
people.
Rawlins's Dialectical Perspective
Rawlins (1992, p. 7) suggested that relationships are shaped by a dialectical

process between "antagonistic yet interdependent aspects of communica-
tion." To capture the dynamic nature of relationships, we cannot use any
single term. He proposed using pairs of antonyms. For example, the dialectics
of contexts can be expressed in the pairs "public" and "private," and "ideal"
and "real."
In the movie "When Harry Met Sally," the young people were riding
in a car together, talking. If you had to use a single set of terms to describe
the context in which their conversation took place, you would say "private"
and "real." And yet Sally's boyfriend and Harry's girlfriend (who was also a
friend of Sally's)were part of the conversation even though they were not
in the car. Not only were
they part of what Sally and Harry talked about,
but this conversation would soon be a part of those relationships. So the
context is both "private" and "public."
Rawlins said that the "interactional dialectics" of actual conversations
could be expressed in four pairs of antonyms: "dependence" and "indepen-
dence;" "affection" and "instrumentality," ^'judgment" and "acceptance,"
and "expressiveness" and "protectiveness." That is, the unfolding pattern of
each conversation can best be described using all four of these pairs of terms.
I think that Rawlins's notion of complementary terms and a dialectical
process has much to commend it. They are a constant reminder that relation-
ships are fluid and polysemous. They provide an alternative to single words
that are too precise and too linear descriptions of the process of communica-
tion that are too simplistic. I return to Rawlins's work later in this chapter.
Refrain 5.2
Rawlins believes that relationships are inherently dialectical. As such,

they cannot be captured within any single description; they consist
of an ongoing, irreducible tension among opposite characteristics.
The four antonyms that he suggested as descriptions of relationships
are
dependence vs. independence

affection vs. instrumentality
judgment vs. acceptance
expressiveness vs. protectiveness
As understand it, relationships do not do well if they are fully described

I
by any of the terms on one side of the antonym. That is, to keep a relation-
ship healthy, the tensions between dependence and independence, e.g.,
must be accepted. The relationship is a continuing process of moving among
these antithetical aspects.
Bateson's Ecological Analysis of Relationships

The notions of system and process are among the most important discoveries
of the twentieth century. In virtually every discipline, from physics to psychol-
ogy, theorists have had to replace notions of entities with systems, of linear
relations with complex processes, and of temporally static models with those
that move time to the foreground.
In the field of communication, Gregory Bateson (1972; 1980) is one
of the people who focused most precisely on this task. In essence, Bateson
argued that communication should be thought of in a language game more
closely resembling that of biology (particularly evolutionary theory) rather
than physics (particularly Newtonian mechanics). That is, instead of thinking
of communication as objects and forces that are causally related, we should

think of it as a system, but then, not just any kind of system. If we adopt
the language game of biology, communication should not be thought of
in terms used for physiology, organized around the terms "structure" and
"function." Rather, we should employ terms like those used in evolutionary
theory, such as variability, selective pressures, and adaptedness (Tou\m'\n 1982,
p. 207) and ecology, such as coevolution, synergy, and systemic patterns.
In Bateson's hands, this shift in language games directs our attention
to a whole set of phenomena that would likely seem irrelevant or unimportant
in other vocabularies. For example, Bateson observed that human beings are
mammals, and that for us —as for all mammals—relationships are our primary
form of existence. If you look at all the creatures that run, crawl, and fly on
this planet, you notice that there are important differences among them.
Generally speaking, reptiles do not have the same form of family life as
mammals. This is not an ethical difference, in that neither you nor an alligator
chose to be what you are, but it is a moral difference in that you live in a
moral world very different from that of, for example, an alligator.
Alligators regularly eat their young, but this cannot be considered the
crime of infanticide. Alligators simply do not have the instincts and nervous
systems capable of recognizing maternal or paternal relationships. Human
beings, on the other hand, could not live without a kind of parental relation-
ship unknown among reptiles, and this biological fact intrudes into the social
—
worlds that we create in interpersonal communication including the inven-
tion of "laws" that define some actions as "crimes."
Bateson spent many years observing the communication patterns of
animals. He concluded that the "discourse" of "preverbal mammals" is
"primarily about the rules and the contingencies of relationship" (1972, pp.
366-367). Bateson offered as an example the behavior of a cat who is telling
you to feed it. The cat will meow and rub itself against your leg, particularly
if you are standing in front of the refrigerator. Bateson cautions against
anthropomorphizing; the cat is »o£ saying "feed me" or "milk!" because cats
have no such language. What cats and all other mammals have is a complex
language whose content is solely about relationships. What the cat is really
saying, in Bateson's guess, is something equivalent to "Mama!" or, more
articulately, "Dependency! dependency!"
The great evolutionary step in language, Bateson (1972, p. 367) argues,
is the "discovery of how to be specific about something other than relation-
ship." And even here, we have not abandoned the language of relationships;
we have simply permeated it with ways of talking about other things as well.
If your friend says, "I have to be at the dentist at three o'clock," this clearly
articulates something other than relationship but simultaneously may have
all sorts of relational meanings, which are your job to figure out and respond
to. Is it the equivalent of the cat's meow? Is your friend saying "dependency!"
and asking you to drive her to the dentist? Is it a way of saying "poor me"
and asking you to engage in a relationship of care taking? Is it an excuse for
not paying attention to what you are saying? Is it an indirect way of saying
"Don't expect to see me at our usual place later today"?
The same ability that enables us to talk about events and objects reduces
our ability to talk about relationship. Bateson ( 1972, p. 372) wryly concludes
that animals such as cats "communicate about things, when they must" by
using signals that are part of a language devoted entirely to relationships;
"human beings use language, which is primarily oriented toward things, to
discuss relationships."
Watzlawick et al. (1967) built on Bateson's thinking. They argued that
all human communication occurs on two levels simultaneously, content and
relationship (see Figure 5.2). For example, when Harry tells Sally that men
Wife: Honey, you really watch While the content addresses a specific Figure 5.2
too much TV. behavior, the relationship is saying: I "Content" and "rela-
wish you didn't have so many things tionship" meanings in
which take time and attention away a conversation. (From
from me. TV is only one minor example Knapp and Vangelisti,
which happened to strike me at the © 1992, pp. 4-5)
moment.
Husband: I do not. The relationship message has been
ignored completely and the husband
prepares himself for the impending
battle over TV watching.
Wife: C'mon, honey you do The wife feels obligated to defend her
too. initial She cannot or will not
statement.
verbalize the major problem with the
relationship, but tries not to be too
argumentative at this point. She is still
hoping her husband will respond to her
cues that reveal the relationship
—
message sitting on the arm of his
chair with her arm around his
shoulders.
Husband: All right, then. I won't He is still trying to win on the content
watch any TV for a whole week, level. His kick-me-while-Tm-down
damn it! strategy is clever because if she
agrees, she is really a bitch —knowing
what a sacrificewould be. (The
it
"damn it" dramatized the sacrifice.)

Besides, if she agrees, he will still "win"
because she will feel guilty for having
caused him to be one-down which, —
of course, puts him one-up.
Wife: Oh, just forget it. Do what The wife sees the trap her husband
you want. has prepared on the content level. She
gives up on the possibility of positive
communication on the relationship
level and removes herself from his
chair and starts to leave the scene.
Husband: Forget How can

it! I He realizes he has "won" on the
forget it? You come in here and content level and finally tunes in the
make a big deal out of my TV relationship level —only to find
habits.Then, to satisfy you, I negative cues. As if enjoying a
agree to cut it out completely and relationship where he dominates, he
you say, "forget it"! What's wrong tries to prolong his "winning" streak by
with you, anyway? urging continued argument —never
realizing he is also prolonging his
counterpart's losing streak.
217
cannot be friends with women, he is really communicating two tilings. The

first is an opinion, suitable for being written as a thesis for debate. The other
has something to do with their relationship. Just what this means is not so
clear, but it suggests that Harry is interested only in a romantic relationship
with Sally.
Second, Watzlawick et al. argued that the relationship level is the context
for the content level of meaning. That is, the meaning of the opinion that
Harry offered Sally, apparently as a topic for a debate, derives its meaning
from the relationship level of the statement. In other words, Sally would be
very foolish if she treated Harry's statement only as a dispassionate topic for
content analysis; she should be on her guard and try to discern what relational
meaning is being expressed.
If Watzlawick et al. (1987) are right, then content and relationship
levels of meaning are present in every conversation and many of the problems
we have in conversations stem from the conflicts between these levels.
Knapp and Vangelisti (1992) analyzed a short, troubling conversation
in terms of the content and relationship levels. Their analysis shows that the
statements we make in conversations often mean far more than the words
say. (See Figure 5.2)
Finally, et al. suggested that the two levels of content use
Watzlawick
different types of codes. The content level of statements uses a "digital"
code, in which the statement either says something or it does not. Digital
codes are "on" or "off," with nothing in the middle. The relational level of
statements uses an^»ffl/^>mHp in which there are endless shades of mean-
1
ing. Returning to Sally and Harry driving through the night, Sally should
not expect to be able to identify precisely what Harry is saying at the relation-
ship level. There is probably something of his male ego, something of his
ideal concept of romantic relationships, and something of his immediate state
of physical arousal all wrapped up in a statement that must be polysemic.
Counterpoint 5.6
Watzlawick et al.'s (1967) application of Bateson's ideas to interpersonal

communication shaped a great deal of communication theory and
research for 20 years. However, we now can identify some of the limita-
tions of their thought. For example, we now believe that they erred
by limiting the polysemy of statements to two levels. There are surely
far more levels of context than just these two. In addition, the relation-
ship among the levels of hierarchical contexts is variable. That is, con-
tent affects the relationship as well as vice versa; the various levels of
meaning are fully reflexive. Using more complex models of the hierar-
chical relationsamong actors' meanings, researchers have been endlessly

entertained by the complex, shifting, and often paradoxical patterns
they have found (Cronen et al. 1982).
Bateson's key idea is something has gone wrong in the evolution
that
of our species' language. Like any mammal's, our language is one of
relationships, but we have forgotten that and started treating it as if its
primary function was to represent the objects of a preverbal world.
This idea agrees with Wittgenstein's about what is wrong with our use
of language (i.e., that we think it works by representing the objects of a
nonlinguistic world) but differs in a very interesting way about how lan-
guage actually works. Bateson locates language within the evolution-
ary patterns of homo sapiens and sees it as an incomplete and, in some
ways at least, dysfunctional evolution from a complex system for
expressing relationships; Wittgenstein locates language within the com-
plex patterns of conjoint activities in which people engage, identifying
it with the way it is used in those language games.
These are not incommensurate perspectives, and both lead to some

interesting conclusions. Bateson explained that he was outraged by
the confounded patterns created by the "false epistemology" that results
when we forget that we are in an ecological system.
Ifyou put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you
have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically
and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around
you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around
you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consider-
ation. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit
will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of
other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetable.
If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an
advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a

snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your
own hate, or, simply, of over-population and overgrazing. The raw
materials of the world are finite (Bateson 1972, p. 462).
Wittgenstein had a similar "therapeutic" objective. Convinced that our

misuse of language gets us into trouble, his project was to develop a method
for making clear what we mean by what we say so that we could avoid
the troubles that are built into our language.
The Missing Social Constructionist Alternative

The process of developing a language game that works well tor understanding
interpersonal communication in social relationships is tar from finished. The
approaches reviewed have some important strengths that commend

earlier all
them, and most of them can be extended far beyond where they arc now.
I titled this "The Missing Social Constructionist Alternative"

subsection
because I some very important work remains to be done in this
believe that
area. There has been a great deal of work from the social constructionist
perspective on episodes, selves, and cultures. For some reason, the social
construction of relationships has been neglected.
Some Things We Know About interpersonal

Communication in Relationships
The "things we know" about interpersonal communication in relationships,

or anything else for that matter, are "constructed." Remember Prigogine's
comment about science being a conversation with nature. Nature, he said,
always answers our questions but only in the terms in which we posed them.
When researchers have looked at relationships, what they found is struc-
tured by the language games they used to observe, describe, and report the
phenomenon and by the language games of the conversations in which these
findings have become a part. For example, a researcher who wants to publish
some advice about relationships in a popular magazine must use a different
language game than is required by scholarly journals. This process is particu-
larly important when social scientists are dealing with aspects of experience
that are familiar to us all. It is unlikely that any research project will disclose
something that we did not already know. More common is the experience
of bringing an aspect of common knowledge to the collective attention of a
group of scholars who engage in sometimes heated debate in an attempt to
determine its implications. That is, they negotiate about what language game
is most useful for thinking about this part of our social worlds. In what
episodes should we deal with this bit of information? How shall we punctuate
this study?
Counterpoint 5.7
In the discussion of "what we know" about interpersonal communication,

or anything else, I am referring to the fact that knowledge is socially
constructed in processes of conversation, and that the content of knowl-
edge is structured by the frames of those conversations. That is, one set of
questions has to do with the "findings" of a particular research project.
These questions will focus on the methodology used: were the mea-
surements or observations reliable? Were they valid? How powerful were
the statistical tests?
However, these questions all arise within a punctuated frame. (The
technical name for such a frame in science is paradigm). We know
Some Things We Know About Interpersonal Communication in Relationships 221
that such frames are far from neutral. Whatever frame (or paradigm)
comprises the social worlds in which "what we know" exists imposes its
own biases. With the tools we have developed for conversational analysis,
we can ask questions about the frame itself. Who is included and who ex-
cluded from these conversations? What language games are required
(e.g., those that use terms like reliability and validity)? Which permitted, or
forbidden (e.g., those in which the scientist says, "I have a hunch ." . .
or "Your data are ugly")? What are the conversational triplets in which
"findings" are made?
These questions are taken seriously within the scientific community.
For example, if attend a professional convention and report some
I
of my activities during the previous year, what is the process that deter-
mines whether that report is casual conversation of interest only to my friends,
a classic blunder that reduces the sum total of human knowledge by
some appreciable amount, or a finding that all other researchers will
have to take into account for years to come? LaTour and Woolgar (1986)
found that the routine conversational practices in scientific labora-
tories construct some things as "knowledge" and other things as just
markings on a piece of paper.
What does it take to be a communication theorist, sociologist, psycholo-
gist, historian, art critic, or anything else? Among other things, it means
talking likecommunication theorists (or art historians or economists) do.
That is, adopting their language games is part of the process by which
you are initiated into membership of the club. But you know that language
games are not neutral with respect to social power or to questions about
what exists and what is the significance of what exists. A whole new
subdiscipline has developed called the "rhetoric of science." It de-
scribes and critiques the language games of particular branches of sci-
ence, pointing out what is useful and what is mystifying about the
ways that, for example, economists talk like economists (Nelson et al.
1987).
In this section, I have punctuated "what we know" about interpersonal

communication in relationships in three categories.
First, a good deal of research has posed the question What types of
relationships are there? The results of these studies comprise taxonomies, or
a set of categories into which all relationships can be indexed.
Second, many researchers have been motivated by the fact that relation-
ships do not stand still. Not only is there something like a life-cycle of
relationships, but there is a life-cycle of people in relationships. They ask Are
there regular features in the changes that occur in relationships over time?
Are these correlated with developmental changes in the human life cycle?
This research focused on development stages.
Third, some researchers focus on communication them-
patterns of
selves, wondering what are the relationships between certain kinds of conver-
sationsand the relationships in which they occur. These researchers ask What
are some of the interesting patterns of communication that occur? In what
kinds of relationships do they occur? What do they do to those relationships?
Types of Relationships
Are there underlying dimensions of interpersonal relationships? Boxes,
houses, and bodies can be described precisely using the dimensions of height,
width, depth, and weight; are there comparable dimensions for describing
interpersonal relationships? Can we talk about relationships in the same way
that we can talk about the size of a car or linebacker? Perhaps.
Let us first note that the scales for describing interpersonal relationships
are not nearly as precise as those for measuring height. Instead of carefully
and uniform measures, the best way of characterizing relation-
calibrated scales
ships derivesfrom ordinary language. We have a rich array of vocabulary; we
distinguish between loving someone, liking them, disliking them, hating
them, and hardly knowing them. We expect each other to recognize and use
subtle distinctions between "just friends," "friends," "boyfriends/girl-
friends," "lovers," and people about whom we are "serious." Important
conversations hinge on establishing just these differences, but ordinary lan-
guage is notoriously imprecise. As we know, people use language in a wide
variety of ways. If Tom is your friend and Bill is your friend, are your relation-
ships to them you to
the same? Clearly not, and a persistent attempt to get
describe the differences among them with mathematical precision will make
you very frustrated because ordinary language just does not work that way.
But how can ordinary language be improved?
For about 20 years, a group of researchers tried to discern the underlying
dimensions on which differences in interpersonal relationships were judged.
The two most important factors emerging from these studies (as shown in
Figure 5.3) are a continuum running from "friendly" to "hostile" relations,
and a continuum from "dominant" to "submissive" behavior. These continu-
ums are unrelated to each other, and thus can be represented as coordinates
on a graph. That is, a relationship can be described by identifying the location
Figure 5.3 Dominant

Two-dimensional model
of interpersonal rela-
tionships. (From Knapp
and Vangelisti © 1992 Hostile Friendly
Allyn and Bacon.)
Submissive
of each person. Bill and Sally may have a relationship identified as "friendly-
dominant" and "friendly-submissive"; Jane and Glen a relationship as "hos
tile-dominant" and "hostile-dominant." As you would expect, Glen and Jane
fight a lot (struggling over who is the dominant person in the relationship),
but Sally and Bill get along well, having "agreed" that they are friendly and
that Sally is the dominant person in the relationship.
Social psychologist Robert Carson (1969) noted that the dynamics of
these two continuums are different. If we take each location in the matrix as
simultaneously expressing a definition of the relationship and requesting the
other to respond appropriately, then the rules are to respond with an equal
degree of friendliness or hostility and an opposite degree of dominance and
submissiveness.
Complementary relationships are stable because the participants "agree"

about both dimensions of their complementary
relationship. Conversants in
relationships should be able to co-construct speech acts and episodes without
great difficulty because they draw on compatible understandings of their
relationship. In the same way, the conversations they produce are likely to
reproduce the relationship in pretty much the same form as it was before
their conversation. Using this system for description, there are two forms of
complementary relations:
Hostile-dominant-hostile-submissive
Friendly-dominant-friendly-submissive
Noncomplementary relationships are unstable because the participants

"agree" about one dimension of their relationship but not about the other.
Conversants in noncomplementary relations are likely to have difficulty co-
constructing speech acts and episodes consistent with their preferred lines
of action; whatever is the ostensible content of the conversations, they are
continuing to negotiate about the non-agreed-on dimension of their relation-
ship. There are six forms of noncomplementary relationships:
Hostile-dominant-hostile-dominant
Hostile-submissive-hostile-submissive
Friendly-dominant-friendly-dominant
Friendly- submissive-friendly- submissive
Hostile-dominant-friendly-submissive
Friendly-dominant-hostile-submissive
If the conversants disagree about both dimensions of their relationship,

the relationship is anticomplementary. These relationships are extremely un-
stable; there is hardly enough agreement to permit the participants to con-
verse. They will have extreme difficulty in co-constructing coherent speech
.
acts or episodes. There are only two forms of anticomplementary

relationships:
Friendly-dominant-hostile-dominant
Friendly-submissive-hostile-submissive
Carson's two-dimensional model of relationships provides us with a

vocabulary that seems more precise than ordinary language. To use the model
to its fullest advantage, however, we have to remember the notions of continu-
ums and find a way of including time.
The use of continuums in this model reminds us that there are distinc-
tions in the amount of hostility and dominance being expressed. Perhaps
most of our relational concerns are not whether our relationship falls in the
"friendly" quadrant but what extent or what type of friendliness is involved.
When you love asks if the two of you can be friends, this appears
the person
a comfortable, complementary relationship in the "friendly" end of the con-
tinuum, but it can break your heart.
This same issue reminds us of the importance of time. Relationships
never stand still; sometimes they are reproduced in stable forms, but they
are always in the process of being made. You can use Carson's matrix to map
the changes in a relationship. Carson illustrated this use of the model by
describing an exploitative episode that Eric Berne (1964) called, with new-
wave explicitness, "Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch!" (Berne used
the acronym NIGYSOB as an abbreviation [Figure 5.4].)
As the conversation begins, Joe acts friendly, slighdy submissive; Gene
responds appropriately: friendly, slighdy dominant. A series of moves occur
in which Joe acts increasingly submissive, "inviting" Gene to become more
and more dominant, until finally Gene is acting in an untenably dominant
manner. Joe then jumps to the hostile dominant quadrant, issuing an unan-
swerable challenge to Gene's dominance, forcing Gene to withdraw. Joe can
then shout the name of the game. The conversation might go like this:
1 Joe: Can you help me choose a tie to go with this suit?
2. Gene: Sure, how about the blue one?

3. Joe: Really? Boy, I would not have picked that one.
4. Gene: Yes, well, my girlfriend says that I have good taste in color
combinations.
5. Joe: I think color combinations are the most difficult part of men's
fashions.
6. Gene: Not you know something about physics, you know
really. If
that there are only a few primary colors, and if you stick with them
you won't get lost in all the funny shades that designers come up
with. Trust me on this.
7. Joe: No, I don't think I will. I'm writing an article for Gentleman's
Quarterly, you see, and I don't think the editor would be satisfied
Dominant
Submissive
Figure 5.4 Putting time into the two-dimensional model. This is a diagram
of the episode NIGYSOB. The conversation itself is in the Narrative. Joe takes
turns 7, 3, 5, and 7; Gene takes turns 2, 4, and 6. If the game is well played,
Gene is left with no choice; the logic of meaning and action compels him to
make a statement in turn #8 that will be diagrammed in the "hostile-submis-
sive" quadrant.
with such simple-minded advice as "stick to the primary colors."

Do you think your girlfriend is trying to be polite when she compli-
ments your fashion taste, or is she as dumb as you are?
I never said that Joe was a nice guy, but the structure of this episode is
perhaps all too common. A similar structure can be imposed on the "friendly-
hostile" continuum, showing how someone can invite another person to
become increasingly friendly (or hostile ) until they take an untenable position,
then thefirst jumps to the other side, exposing the other to ridicule.
Other researchers have found a four-dimensional model underlying

judgments of relationships. Perhaps the most respected of these is the study
by Wish et al. (1976). It requires the ability to visualize in four-dimensional
space. That's easy for computers to do, but very difficult to write about in
words, which stand in straight lines and move from left to right one space
at a time. Imagine four continuums, joined at the middle, each at right angles
to all of the others. The continuums are:
Cooperative-friendly-competitive-hostile
Equal-unequal
Intense-superficial
Socioemotional-informal-task-oriented-formal
Wish model does not contradict Carson's simpler two-

et al.'s four-factor
factor model but adds some further distinctions. Their data indicate that
most of the differentiations that human beings make in their perceptions
of relationships can be accounted for by arraying them along these four
dimensions.
How many distinctions are enough? If we shift from a third-person

perspective (i.e., asking What accounts for most of the variance in the way
they perceive their relationships?) to a first-person perspective (i.e., asking
How can I best understand the relationship in which
we I am now acting?),
may get no single answer to the question of the optimal number of categories.
In one situation, I may need only one dimension of judgment to know that
my best relational move is "away, fast." In others, I may need all the subtlety
I can get.
Developmental Stages in Relationships
In an introduction to one of his films, Woody Allen says that "Relationships

are like sharks; they must keep moving or die." In his lectures about inter-
personal communication, Jim Applegate notes that Allen is a poor guide to
ichthyology. Biologists have found that, according to this criterion, not even
sharks are like sharks: at least some sharks rest comfortably without moving.
Relationships are always in the process of being remade, but one of the
remarkable things about relationships is that they are so stable. Allen's com-
ment notwithstanding, the most difficult task that we sometimes face is to
introduce change in relationships.
This is not to say that change does not occur. It is to note that change
is the exception rather than the rule, and that change, when it occurs, is likely
to follow well-worn paths rather than generate something unique. In the

next paragraphs, want to focus on some of the normal phases of relational
I
change. To further limit the

discussion, I will focus on voluntary relationships,
simply noting here that genetic and social relationships change, too.
In contemporary Western culture, one of the most pressing tasks for
young adults is to develop a voluntary relationship that will be the basis of
their family. (In other cultures and at other times, this task did not exist:
parents would arrange marriages; the young adults' task was simply to show-
up and make the best of it.) The difficulty of this task is evidenced by the
amount of energy it consumes and the amount of money that is devoted to
it. (Think it through: how much time and money is spent on learning the
mate, being at the right spot to

social skills necessary to impress a future
meet him or about and planning for the relationship, listening
her, fantasizing
to love songs, watching romantic movies, reading magazines, and all the
rest?)
Knapp and model of interaction
Vangelisti (1992) developed a general
stages in relationships (Figure 5.5). This model divides the process into two
halves, "coming together" and "coming apart." Each of these halves is
further divided into five "stages," which are the reciprocals of each other.
That is, the first stage of "coming together" is "initiating" and the last stage
of "coming apart" is "terminating." This follows the rule that the first thing
that you do in a relationship is the last thing that you undo.
The crucial parts of the model are in the middle stages. Assume that
Figure 5.5
Process Stage Representative Dialogue
A model of interactional
Initiating "Hi, how ya doin'?" stages. (From Knapp
"Fine. You?" and Vangelisti, 1992,
Experimenting p. 33)
"Oh, so you so do I."
like to ski . . .
"You do?! Great. Where do you go?"

Coming Intensifying "I ... I think I love you."
Together "I love you too."
Integrating "I feel so much a part of you."
"Yeah, we one person. What
are like
happens to you happens to me."

Bonding "I want to be with you always."
"Let's get married."
Differentiating "I just don't like big social gatherings."

"Sometimes don't understand you. This
I is
one area where I'm certainly not like you at

all."
Circumscribing "Did you have a good time on your trip?"

"What time will dinner be ready?"
Stagnating "What's there to talk about?"
Coming
"Right. know what you're going to say and
I
Apart
you know what I'm going to say."
Avoiding "I'm so busy. just don't know when
I be I'll
able to see you."

"If I'm not around when you try, you'll
understand."
Terminating "I'm leaving you . . . and don't bother trying
to contact me."
"Don't worry."
you have formed a relationship. Some important skills are required to deter-
mine the extent to which you achieve and maintain "integration" and "bond-
ing." A continual negotiation during the course of the relationship will
construct a logic of interaction that constitutes "integrating" on one hand
and "circumscribing" on the other; that constitutes "bonding" on one hand
and "differentiating" on the other.
Knapp and Vangelisti take care to warn that this model of interaction
stages does not assume a mechanical progression. They recognize that the
—
process is not necessarily linear that is, a one-way movement through the
stages —
although it may be. Sometimes people skip stages, as in a "one-night
stand" of sexual intimacy with someone in whose life you are not at all
"integrated." However, Knapp and Vangelisti 1992, p. 53) believe that most
(
people develop relationships in something like the sequence described in the

model. Further, they believe that things are done in each stage that prepare
for the next. "Skipping steps gamble," they say, because the relational
is a
partners do not have the information they need to take the next step or to
decide whether they want to take the next step. "Some social norms even
help to inhibit skipping steps" (1992, p. 53).
Although relationships are "never at rest, continually moving and in
flux" (1992, p. 52), Knapp and Vangelisti insist that the development of
relationships is irreversible. "Once something has been worked through,"
they said (p. 55), "it is different. Once communicators have achieved a certain
level of interaction, they can never go back to 'the way we were.' " Even if
they move "backward" to a previous stage of the relationship, it will be
colored by their history; even if they stay within a particular stage (Knapp
and Vangelisti say "stagnate"), to continue a relationship of a certain sort is
not the same as to achieve that stage in a relationship. In the curious physics
of interpersonal relationships, even the perceived lack of change can be the
"cause" of change in relationships.
Knapp and Vangelisti did not distinguish among men and women in
their description of relational patterns. However, there is quite a bit of work
showing that men and women communicate differently (we have already
explored that topic in Chapter 1 ), and that men and women have different
relational styles at various points in their lives.
Earlier in this chapter, you were introduced to Rawlins's (1992) work
on friendship. Recall that he treated friendship (and conversation itself) as
shaped by a dialectical tension between opposing forces (e.g., the public and
the private). Rawlins is particularly sensitive to the human life cycle, noting
that although friendships are important at all stages of life, some of the
dialectical tensions are more pressing in some stages than in others.
The "young adult" stage consists of the ages from the late teens to the
early 30s. This is "a pivotal stage for exploring the roles that friendships will
play in adult life, constrained by the demands of work, love relationships, and/
or family. Friends may provide crucial input regarding one's self-conceptions,
career options, mate selection, community involvement, and recreational
activities" (Rawlins, 1992, p. 103). Often, these years involve physical separa-
tion from one's family of origin and a change in the network of one's peers
as a result of leaving high school for college or work. As a result, despite the
fact that they typically have more opportunity to meet people than any other
age group, young adults report more loneliness than any other age group.
There are some clear differences between the way young adult men
andwomen form friendships. These differences explain some reasons why
men and women misunderstand each other so often.
Young adult women tend to form same-sex friendships that mix the
dialectic between affection and instrumentality; in these friendships, care and
utility are interwoven in complex relationships. These relationships are marked
by their volatility: some are uplifting and functional, whereas others are
emotionally draining and burdensome. Young adult women's same-sex friend-
ships often feature considerable psychological flux as well as transformational

potential.
Onthe other hand, young adult men tend to stress instrumental values
in their same-sex friendships. These relationships are built around shared
activities rather than expressions of intimacy or affection. Compared with
women's same-sex friendships, men's are stable and within a restricted array
of feelings. Women, more than men, are likely to confront their same-sex
friends about things they do not like about them or problems in their relation-
ships; —
men either because they are more accepting of their friends or simply
—
because their friendships are more shallow are less likely to discuss or con-
front problematic issues in their relationships. "Female friendships manifest
considerable expressiveness; male friendships exhibit much more protec-
tiveness . . .women tend to confront their friends, even at the risk of severing
the bond, whereas men are inclined to skirt threatening issues. In addition,
women share more emotional concerns, personal feelings, and values, and
support for the other" (Rawlins 1992, pp. 109-110).
Counterpoint 5.8
Gender is one of the "hot topics" in interpersonal communication, and I
think research about it has already provided information that helps us under-
stand recurring difficulties in communication between men and women
and that helps us understand women and men as inhabiting distinct "places"
in the moral orders of our society. That having been said, think more I
remains to be learned. Specifically, as a male, find the descriptions of gender-

I
inflected styles a bit foreign. It is as if the male style of same-sex friendship,

for example, is being described as "lacking" something in comparison
with the female style.
Of course, this is just what many women have been saying all along
about research on communication style, personality, and organiza-
tional behavior! They rightly point out that women were described as
being just like men, only lacking something or not acting like a man
well enough! Their observation is certainly correct, and "feminist" re-
search (whether done by women or men) is a long-overdue corrective. How-
ever, in the belief that two wrongs do not make a right, let me plunge
ahead.
My own experience is that male same-sex friendships include a co-
ordinated support of each other's autonomy and competence. Much
of what is described as the shallowness or lack of self-disclosure or inti-
macy in male friendship is, in my judgment, interpretable as a compe-
tence-giving collaboration.
If this interpretation is correct, and admit that have only my own
I I
experience and non-systematic observations to vouch for it, then

certain features of cross-sex friendships are interpretable. Women often

act in ways showing intimacy and support (in Knapp
that they interpret as
and Vangelisti's terms, "integrating" and "bonding"), but their male part-
ners interpret these actions as intrusive, controlling, and nagging.
Men often act in ways that they interpret as giving sufficient space for
autonomous acts within the confines of a supportive relationship
(where is this in Knapp and Vangelisti's model?), but their female partners
interpret these actions as withdrawing, unsupportive, uncommunica-
tive, and uncaring (in Knapp and Vangelisti's terms, "differentiating" and
"stagnating").
This interpretation can be placed over the familiar "nag-withdraw"
syndrome so familiar to family therapists. In addition to different
who does what "because" the other did whatever first,
punctuations of
men and women may interpret what is being done differently. In the most
common and stereotypical pattern, "he" thinks that he is collaborating
with her in a way autonomy and "she"
that respects both of their
thinks that she is maintaining the intimacy and caring upon which their
relationship is built. However, "he" thinks that she is intruding, threatening
his autonomy, trying to live his life for him. At the same time, "she" thinks
that he is cold, callous, his work or the Monday
and uncaring, treating
Night Football game as more important than their relationship.
At least, think so. Rethinking descriptions of what is going on in our
I
social worlds is an important game that any number can play! Try
your hand at explaining the different communication and friendship pat-
terns of men and women. You might start by giving an alternative
interpretation of the conversation in Figure 5.2.
Young adult men and women differ in their patterns of cross-sex friend-
ships as well. Men sharply distinguish between same- and cross-sex friendships
but make few distinctions among their relationships with women. Few of
young adult men's same-sex friendships are particularly intimate or involving
on the basis of care. Cross-sex friendships offer the opportunity for self-
disclosure, intimacy, and emotional involvement, and these are all seen as
precursors for romance. "Males, experiencing limited intimacy with other
males, may therefore look to females as potentially loyal, caring and supportive
partners. But, informed by the socially conditioned alternatives of either
friendship or romance, they often enact their cross-sex friendships as incipient
love affairs" (Rawlins 1992, p. 111).
Young women, on the other hand, do not distinguish so sharply
adult
between male and female friends but do make more distinctions among
their
their cross-sex friends. "They are able to form close relationships with females
and males. And they clearly distinguish between males they consider friends
,,
and those they regard romantically (Rawlins, 1992, p. 111).
Significant Patterns of Communication

Knapp and Vangelisti 1992) described( of "potentially destructive"
a long list
patterns of communication. These lead to rapid movements into and through

the "coming apart" stages of a relationship. Although no pattern of communi -
cation is necessarily, in all cases, unconditionally bad or harmful, some are

dangerous. When they occur, you should raise a "red flag" of warning. Here
are two of these patterns.
Helpful-critical patterns. What looks like an attempt to be helpful or to

offer constructive criticism can be done in a manner that undercuts the rights
—
and duties that is, the personhood of the other. —
Mind reading occurs when one person predicts or describes what an-
other person is feeling or thinking, how he or she will react, or what his or
her motivations are. In the best of situations, mind reading indicates an
empathic sensitivity; in the worst cases, it is done inappropriately or incorrectly.
If inappropriate, Mary speaks for Bill, embarrassing him or not allowing him
the right to decide what and how to present his thinking. If incorrect, the mind
reader disqualifies Bill's rejection by attributing a perverse or pathological
motivation.
Mary: Oh, thanks anyway, but Bill does not like to go sailing.
Bill: Yes I do, I just don't get a chance to do much of it.

Mary: Now, Bill, these are our friends. You do not have to pretend to
be "macho" with them. It's O.K. if you are afraid of large bodies
of water.
Bill: But I like sailing!
Mary: I just don't know what to say. This isn't like you.
A fallacious or unsuccessfully enacted offer of help is destructive of a

relationship. The episodic sequence might go like this: 1 ) Joan presents herself
be helpful; 2) Tomas asks her to discuss a personal problem and
as willing to
help him decide what to do; 3) Joan agrees, assuring Tomas of her support;
4) Tomas describes his problem; 5) Joan recoils, expresses her shock and
condemns Tomas; 6) Tomas reacts angrily, his self-confidence shattered; 7)
Joan condemns Tomas for his anger, justifying herself as "trying to help" a
person incapable of gratitude.
Critical comments may destroy relationships if they are too critical or
too frequent. The most dangerous types of critical statements are those that
undercut the other's rights and duties as a person, particularly the right to
make statements, own feelings, and make choices. The long history of racial
and sexual politics is replete with examples of this type of criticism, in which
no idea is good if it comes from a woman or person of an oppressed minority.
Supply your own examples of racist and sexist talk; you will encounter many
of them without looking too far.
Confusing patterns. Confusion is not always bad, but there arc times
and types of confusion that pose great dangers to relationships. One pattern
forms a conversational triplet like this: 1 ) person A makes a statement that
has two inconsistent meanings (e.g different meanings at the content and
,
relational level or a verbal message that might be an innocent comment or

a sexually explicit remark); 2) person B responds to one part of person A's
statement, ignoring the other; and 3) person A criticizes person B for not
noticing or responding to the other part of the message.
For example, if Jack says that he and Eloise should think about their
work while nonverbally suggesting that they become more physically intimate,
he has given an inconsistent message. No matter how Eloise responds — by
becoming more physically intimate or by attending to their work —she is
vulnerable to a kind of attack that is very dangerous. Jack can act offended,
criticize her, and claim moral justification for acting atrociously by citing the
part of the message to which she did not respond.
A well-known tactic is to position oneself as deserving special attention
while defining anything that the other does as insufficient. "Go ahead, have
a good Don't let the fact that I am staying here, miserable and alone,
time.
,,
keep you from having a good time. I want you to have a good time! Now:
how do you respond to that in such a way that it co-constructs a speech act
that you can live with?
Yet another destructively confusing tactic is to get into a "who's
the most sensitive" competition. If Robyn claims that she is offended
because Ron said something offensive, she has cast Ron into the role of
insensitive brute in such a way that he cannot extricate himself. This
pattern constructs a conversational triplet in which the first turn is Robyn 's
accusation (perhaps enacted with a slight sob or gasp at the brutishness
of her interlocutor). The second turn is Ron's "defense." However,
whatever he says will be capable of being interpreted in either of two
ways, both of which show him to be guilty as charged. If he denies that
his previous actions are brutish, he thereby displays that he is so insensitive
that he cannot even understand the offensiveness of his actions. On the
other hand, if he acknowledges his guilt, he has confessed to the crime.
In the third turn in this triplet, Robyn can select one of these interpretations
and use it as a club with which to beat Ron.
(No conversations occur out of context, of course, and the interesting
thing about the "who's more sensitive" contest is that it works only with
interlocutors whose logicsof meaning and action make them feel that they
ought to be sensitive. For real insensitive brutes, this game does not work at
all!)
Many people used to believe that relational confusion was always danger-
ous, that paradoxes produced psychopathologies. We now know better: even
the most healthy relationships contain confusion. The difference between
healthy and pathological relationships is not so much the presence of confusion
as it is the way people in those relationships deal with it.
Paul Watzlawick (1976, pp. 18-19) described four types of confusion

in interpersonal relationships.
1. A person in a high-power position (e.g., parent or employer) pun-

ishes those in lower- power positions (e.g., children or employees) for
correctly perceiving the outside world or themselves. For example, an
alcoholic father demands that his children perceive him as gentle
and loving even though he frequently comes home drunk and abuses
them violently. Such children or employees are likely to distrust their
own perceptions, spending an inordinate amount of time trying to
figure out how they "should" perceive reality. Seen out of the con-
text of the relationship, this behavior looks like schizophrenia.
2. The significant others of a particular individual expect him or her
to have feelings different from those he or she actually experiences.
This person is likely to feel guilty for being unable to feel what he
or she "ought" to feel. Completing the reflexive loop, this guilt
itself can then become one of the feelings that the person ought not
to experience. For example, if a woman's parents have sacrificed in

order for her to have a particular career, and she finds that she does
not like that career, she may feel guilty for disliking her job, which
is, of course, much worse than just disliking her job. Seen out of the
context of this relationship, her behavior may seem like depression.
3. A person may receive simultaneous, contradictory injunctions by a
significant other.These injunctions may compel the person both to
act and not act. The prototypical paradox is conveyed in different
channels, one of which is verbal and the other behavioral. For exam-
ple, parents may tell their children: "Do what I tell you to do, not
what I really want you to do" if they repeatedly say "Be careful"
but reward daredevilish behavior. Another example is the parent or
employer who says both "Win at any cost" and "Always act ethi-
Examined out of the context of this relationship, the person
cally."
may act in ways that would be considered "delinquent" or
"criminal."
4. There is of injunctions that are paradoxical because there is
a class
no way to fulfill them without simultaneously failing to fulfill them.

For example, it is very possible to act spontaneously but not by
complying with the command "Be spontaneous!" A wife may tell
her husband that she is disappointed that he did not bring her
flowers. The next day, he arrives with a beautiful bouquet of roses,
only to discover that they do not "count" as a valid gift because he
did not bring them spontaneously. Clearly, once his wife says "Bring
me flowers" he cannot bring them without having been instructed
to do so. Considered outside the context of this relationship, para-
doxical messages like these lead to behaviors that appear paralyzed
and incompetent.
One of the most interesting effects of Watzlawick's analysis is thai it
locates confusion in the relationship, not the person. In later paragraphs, I
use the term "the confused person." Note that I am not describing some
intrapsychic, mental state of the person as "confused"; rather, 1 am describing
the person as located in a confused relationship. To say that "he is confused'
1
normally implies that "he" — an autonomous person — has some trait or is in
some state that is disoriented. From the communication perspective, however,

to say that "he is confused" is to refer to his location in relation to other
people. The significance of this difference lies in the moral order invoked by
the phrase "he is confused." In the first instance, it is a moral order of sickness
or blame of an individual; in the second, it is a moral order that describes
patterns of relationships.
Among other things, the focus on patterns of relationships helps individ-
uals cope with the circumstances in which they find themselves. If we use a
language game that defines persons as confused, our grammar points us in
the direction of treating the confused persons as lacking something necessary
to orient themselves to the world; with the best of intentions, we advise them
to subordinate their own judgment to that of some "expert." On the other
hand, if we use a language game that defines relationships as often confused,
and individuals as usually acting appropriately in those relationships, our
grammar helps us to respond with empathy rather than blame. We are naturally
led to advise the confused person to act confidendy as a game master in
extricating himself or herself from the situation or changing that situation.
Watzlawick described how these forms of confusion can produce unfor-
tunate patterns of behavior in those who are competent as game players. He
suggested rather dire consequences: schizophrenia, depression, delinquency,
and behavioral paralysis. However, confusion is not always bad. In fact, there
are certain benefits to confusion:
After the initial shock, confusion triggers off an immediate search

for meaning or order to reduce the anxiety inherent in any uncertain
situation. The result is an unusual increase in attention, coupled
with a readiness to assume causal connections even where such connec-
tions may appear to he quite nonsensical. While the search can be
extended to include such small details or such remote possibilities
that it leads to further confusion, it can equally well lead to fresh
and creative ways of conceptualizing reality. " (Watzlawick 1976,
pp. 27-28)
The interactional view. A

group of therapists at the Mental Research
Institute in Palo Alto, California, worked out some of the implications of
Bateson's theory of communication. They integrated two of Bateson's as-
sumptions. First, they took seriously Bateson's suggestion that our first lan-
guage is relational, and we have superimposed a content language on top of
it. They treated every utterance as if it had both content and relational
meanings and that the relational meaning functioned as a context for the
content meaning. Thinking of relational meanings in terms of power that —
is, the meaning of each relational message has to do with dominance they —
employed a vocabulary for relational messages that included three terms.
Always with respect to the person addressed in the message, "one-up" mes-
sages expressed a high-power, dominating position;"one-down" messages
expressed a low-power, subordinate position; and "one-across" messages
expressed a neutral or medium-power, egalitarian position.
The second of Bateson's assumptions that the Palo Altogroup incorpo-
rated the notion that all communicative acts occur in
is contexts of relation-
ships. That is, they adopted Bateson's social ecological frame for thinking
about any particular act, person, episode, or relationship.
When these two ideas were integrated, it quickly became clear that the
meaning of any message had to be determined from its place in a cluster of
messages. The Palo Alto group focused on two-turn sequences, or "interac-
tions." A one-up message, for example, means something very different if it
follows another one-up message than it does if it follows a one-down message.
The sequence
one-up;
one -down;
one-up
is "complementary;" whereas the sequence
one-up;
one-up;
one-up
is"symmetrical" (Sluzki and Beavin 1977). Complementary relationships
tend to be stable; symmetrical relationships tend to be unstable. In fact,
symmetrical relationships tend to "escalate," with each successive act being
more "up" than the previous, until one person cannot sustain the escalation
any more. That is, people tend to fight until one backs down.
As therapists, the Palo Alto group were particularly interested in com-
munication patterns that caused problems. Both complementary and symmet-
rical patterns can cause problems, of course, but recognizing which pattern
troubles the family gives the therapists direction for their intervention. If the
problem was a symmetrical escalation, then any attempt by the therapists to
force them to do anything — that is, if the therapist performs a one-up act
simply adds energy to the pattern. For example:
John: Mary, do what I say!

Mary: No, John, you do what I say!
Therapist: Let me tell you both what to do!
The family might tell the therapist, "Welcome to the family!" In this case
the therapist is acting, in Italian systemic therapist Gianfranco Cecchin's

terms, as "Dr. Homeostat." The symmetri

therapist's behavior reinforces the
cal pattern, which now has three participants, not just two.
However, the therapist could have offered a complimentary response:
Therapist: I'm impressed! Both of you know exactly what the other
should do. I'm not so sure, myself. There are some things that
trouble me. Can you help me?
Will this solve John and Mary's problem? Probably not, but it does give them
an invitation to participate in a conversational pattern that has a different
(complementary) structure — and this tactic may open up some opportunities
for them to deal with each other differently.
Another opportunity for the therapists is to engage in a paradoxical
injunction. These interventions do not oppose or contradict the pattern
occurring in the family. To the contrary,and extends that pattern
it joins with
to the point at which it is no longer For example, a client who
functional.
suffers from insomnia will be told to stay awake for a week. When the week
is over, the client will be asked how she or he did. When the reply, "I fell
asleep," is given, the therapist expresses sympathetic disappointment and

sends the client off with the injunction "try harder to stay awake." After
awhile, so it is reported, the problem of insomnia goes away. In the case of
John and Mary, who are locked in a symmetrical escalation, the therapist
might instruct them to tell each other what to do and how to do it in every
area of their life; they should give detailed instructions for such tasks as
brushing teeth, combing hair, and dressing. This takes the symmetrical pat-
tern, extends it by prescribing the symptom, and in so doing reduces it to
an absurdity', thereby provoking a behavioral change.
Circular questioning. Gregory Bateson's "systemic" theory of communi-

cation was brilliantly articulated as a set of practices for family therapists by
Mara Silvini-Palazzoli et 1978; 1980). Because their Center for the Study
al. (
of the Family is located Milan, Italy, they have become known as the Milan
group and their work is referred to as the Milan approach in systemic therapy.
Perhaps their most important contribution is "circular questioning," a re-
markably powerful and adaptable way of moving around in relationships
(Tomm 1985). Although designed for therapists as an interview protocol,
circular questioning can be used as a means x>f thinking through your own
relationships, as a research strategy for discerning the social structures around
you (although you ask the questions to other people, those structures will
if
very likely change), and as a means of communicating very effectively with

those with whom you are in relationship.
This form of conversation is "circular" in several ways. First, it explores
circular rather than linear connections within relationships. Second, the ques-
tioning itself, as practiced in clinical settings, circulates around all the people
in the group. The therapists ask first one and then another person for their
Counterpoint 5.9
Bateson noted that human communication is a very special kind of thing

because it exists in a world of information, not of energy or substance.
Communication, he said, is a matter of "difference."
But what is a difference? A difference is a very peculiar and obscure

concept. It is certainly not a thing or an event. This piece of paper
is different from the wood of this lectern. But if we start to ask . . .
about the localization of those differences, we get into trouble.

Obviously the difference between the paper and the wood is not in the
paper; it is obviously not in the wood; it is obviously not in the space
between them, and it is obviously not in the time between them. . . .
A difference, then, is an abstract matter.

In the hard sciences, effects are, in general, caused by rather concrete
—
conditions or events impacts, forces, and so forth. But when you enter
the world of communication you leave behind that whole world
. . .
in which effects are brought about by forces and impacts and energy
exchange. You enter a world in which "effects" and I am not sure one —
should still use the same word are brought about by —
differences. . . .
In the world of mind, nothing that which is not can be a cause. In —

the hard sciences, we ask for causes and we expect them to exist
and be "real. " But remember that zero is different from one, and be-
cause zero is different from one, zero can be a cause in the psycho-
logical world, the world of communication. The letter which you do
not write can get an angry reply; and the income tax form which
you do not fill in can trigger the Internal Revenue boys into energetic
action . . . (Bateson 1972, p. 452)
perspective on the same issue. Finally, the questioning often seeks to produce
"gossiping in the presence of the other." One person is asked how a second
person thinks about a third; this line of questioning makes visible the circular
connections among relationships.
The Milan group focused on Bateson's observation that human commu-
nication occurs in a domain of information, not energy, and that information
is based on the perception of "difference." Circular questions target percep-
tions of difference, not "facts." For example, if John describes Father as
impatient, these questions focus on "difference":
When did he become so impatient? (asking John to compare "then"

and "now")
Other than Father, who is the next most impatient member of your
family? Who is the least impatient? (asking John to compare Father

and others)
Bateson's social ecological concepts led the Milan group to insist that
whole families come to therapy sessions. Using the Milan style, therapists ask
one person in a family to comment, in the presence of the others, about how
a second perceives a third. They usually start with the youngest member of
the family or the least powerful person in a group. If the family came to
therapy because the oldest daughter is bulimic, the therapist might ask each
member of the family in turn, starting with the youngest:
Who was the first to notice Sister's bulimia? Who was the last? (differ-
entiating among relationships with Sister, from the perspective of the
respondent)
Who suffers most because Sister has bulimia?
To whom does Sister show her condition most? To whom does she
show it least?
How does your Mother explain Sister's condition to your Father?

How does your Father explain Sister's condition to your Brother?
In your family, who blames whom the most for Sister's condition?
Communication systems are structured by reflexive loops rather than

linear causal sequences; they evolve as wholes rather than just one part affect-
ing another. Circular questioning seeks to discover some of the ways these
evolutionary loops are perceived by the members of the group. Because this
is all in the realm of information, the Milan group found ways of cleverly
implanting suggestions about alternative ways of punctuating these loops.
For example,
To whom does Mother show her depression? (suggesting that "depression"

is something "shown" in the interpersonal world of episodes rather than
something "possessed by" or that "happens to" a person)
If Mother were no longer depressed, who would miss it the most? Who
would miss it the least? (suggesting that Mother's depression, whatever else
it is and does, serves certain evolutionary functions within the system)
How depressed will Mother get before she starts to be more happy? (sug-
gesting that depression is in process and that there will be a "bottom point"
and recovery?)
Who will be the first to notice when Mother is no longer depressed? Who
will be the last to notice? (suggesting that others in the family bear some
role in the social construction of depression)
When Mother no longer depressed and you all look back on this time,
is
what will Mother miss most about being depressed? (suggesting that there
willbe a time when the problem is history and showing that Mother can
view her depression from perspectives other than that of a victim).
Milan group were well aware that interviews are not neutral.
Finally, the
In fact, they view themselves as joining with the family in cocreating the
episode of therapy. As such, they cannot act as neutral "experts" dispensing
advice because they tend to cocreate their clients in the shape of their own
hypotheses about them; nor can they be analysts making evaluative judgments
because they are participants in the process of enacting the interviews. Boscolo
and Cecchin (Boscolo et al. 1987) have adapted what is called "second-order
cybernetics" —that is, the analysis of systems that make observations —into
circular questioning. The system includes the interviewer as well as the person
or family interviewed. Instead of believing that the system creates the problem
that brings the family to therapy (and hence that the system must be changed),
the Milan approach suggests that the problem creates the system, which includes
the family and the therapist.
One corollary to this observation is that anything the therapist does
is likely to function homeostatically (i.e., reproducing the existing pattern
in the system). If the family comes to the therapist for a diagnosis, any
diagnosis that the therapist gives is likely to reinforce just those problems
they are meant to change. "As soon as a treating professional agrees that
—
something is wrong as soon as he or she even agrees to let a family in
—
the door even more of the family's energies are apt to get sidetracked
into forms of protection, often called resistance by the clinician" (Boscolo
etal. 1987, p. 15).
In practice, this means that circular questioning never criticizes or even
agrees that there is a problem. In fact, the Milan group is famous for giving
"positive connotations" to their clients, such as praising them for being such
a strong family to have developed such complex problems! In addition,
circular questioning never offers an expert diagnosis. To the contrary, the
questioning is driven by curiosity rather than by expert knowledge. There
are very few w% questions asked or implicitly answered; most of the questions
have in them (remember the Heyerdahl solution) the issue of how things
happen.
If you were to drop out of school, how would your Mother's relation
to your Father change? (among other things, focusing on the pattern of
adjustments brought about by the threatened act)

How does your Mother show depression? In what situations does she
show depression? To whom? (By eliciting descriptions of episodes, the
focus is on how depression is made in conversations rather than treating
it as a thing).
Circular questioning can be distinguished by four characteristics: 1 ) its

focus on discovering the differences in the information within a system, 2)
its delight in exploring and
its focus on individuals in relation to others, 3)
posing alternatives to the evolutionary loops within a system, and 4) its
preoccupation with how things are made in social interaction.

A Final Word: A Language Game for Relationships
If relationships were between people, then they would be relatively easy to

understand within the powerful language games that are used to measure
objects. —
However, because relationships are reflexive that is, sets of connec-
tions in —
which entities are constituted then we must use a language game
capable of describing complex loops within mutable patterns of actions.
In my judgment, such a language game has not yet been developed.
Relationships continue to mystify us because we frame them in language
games that do not fit. One of the places where communication scholars need
to make significant advances is right here.
In the meantime, what we know about interpersonal communication
in relationships is very helpful in sensitizing us to some of the dynamics of
relationships and in providing us with some ways of joining in patterns of
communication.
Praxis
1. Conflict and Confusion in Multiple Relationships
Before class. Make a list of some of the important voluntary relationships that
you have (or want to have). Use your own names for these relationships; my
list would include "friends," "coauthors," "sailing partners," and "basketball
teammates." Now articulate the most important rights and duties that stem
from each relationship. Remember to include the rights you extend to the
other as well as those you claim for yourself, and the duties for each. (These
are not exotic: my "duty" to "acquaintances" is to speak to them if I encoun-
ter them on the street; failing to do so sends a "relational message" that
denies our acquaintance.)
In class. Compare the you have made with those of other people
lists
in your class. First, note whether you and the others have the same names
for relationships.More important than the labels themselves, check whether
you make the same number of distinctions among relationships. It is possible
that you differentiate two or three types of friendship where someone else
does not.
Now compare your list of duties and obligations that stem from particu-
lar relationships with those made by the others. Are there differences?
To lists of
get a feel for the implications of these differences, use these
"rights and duties" as if they were the rules for the simulated conversation in
Figure 5.2. Improvise conversations with your classmates who listed different
2. Dealing with Confusion Competently 241
"rights and duties" for particular relationships. What kinds of conversations

are made when your rules mesh with theirs?
After doing several improvisations, discuss with others in your group
what specific rules or rights and duties that you claim or offer to others are
particularlydangerous or difficult. What rules are particularly helpful?
Using the concepts of punctuation, accounts, metacommunication, and
reconstructing the context discussed in Chapter 4, what "repairs" can you
suggest that would make the conversations better?
2. Dealing with Confusion Competently
In the "Narrative" section, Watzlawick's work summarizing four types of

confusion was described. In each case, Watzlawick suggested that a person
who followed the rules of that kind of situation —that is, whose competence
is in game playing —would appear to have significant psychological problems.
How would persons whose competence is mgame mastery fare? How might
they act so as to avoid the negative consequences of confused relationships
and achieve what Watzlawick called tne "benefits of confusion"?
Working in groups in class.
1 Take each of Watzlawick's examples of confused relationships de-

scribed in the Narrative. Write two scripts of an episode that might
be produced in each of the examples. In one script, portray the
confused person acting as a game player, behaving in ways appropri-
ately described as schizophrenic, depressed, delinquent, and para-
lyzed. In the other script, portray the confused person acting as a
game master, behaving in ways that allow him or her to be perceived
as sane, responsible, and effective.
2. Try your hand as a playwright again. Take the first set of scripts that
you wrote for #1 (in which the confused person acted as a game
player rather than a game master). It is unfair to blame the victim
for being placed in a confusing relationship, and unfair to expect
the victim to do all the work in untangling such relationships. Write
another variation of each episode, this time changing the behavior
of the higher-powered person: what can she or he do to minimize
or dispel the confusion?
3. In a final role as author, introduce a compassionate, skillful third
party to the episode. This third party might be a friend, a family
member, or a professional therapist. What might such an intervener
do that would dispel the confusion or enable the confused person
to act with game-mastery competence? What does this third party
have to know? What are some of the useful and some of the danger-
ous things this person might do?
3. Stages in Relationship Development

How "general" is the model of interactional stages developed by Knapp and
Vangelisti shown in Figure 5.5? Note that it is a descriptive model, not a
prescriptive one; that is, it claims only that these are the stages that relationships
go through, not that these are the stages that relationships should go through.
So let's evaluate the model on its own terms: which relationships among what
persons go through these stages?
I have a hunch that this model is most accurate in describing romantic
relationships among adolescents and young adults in contemporary Western

societies or those influenced by Western societies.
Test the model by seeing if it fits other kinds of relationships.
Working in pairs or small groups, take turns interviewing each other about
your nonvoluntary, nonromantic relationships, such as with your parents or
siblings. Do these relationships follow the model? Is the model limited to
romantic relationships?
Working alone or in small groups, interview people from cultures other
than Western or eurocentric about their romantic relationships. For example,
compare the experience of Native Americans, Africans, Far East Asians, and
West Asians. Be sure to include people from different religious traditions,
including Christianity, Islam, ludaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Shinto. To
what extent do these relationships resemble each other? Do they follow the
model? Is the model limited to Western eurocentric culture?
I think Knapp and Vangelisti's model is interesting and useful, but I

do not think that it is universally applicable. If it is not universal, what should
we think or do? Does that make it useless? Of course not; it simply means
that we must specify those relationships for which it is useful. Should we
develop other models for other relationships? Perhaps. Should we develop a
healthy skepticism about any such model? Certainly.
Part of this healthy skepticism is a willingness to be playful. If the model
is limited to romantic relationships, perhaps we should inquire about the
defining characteristic of these relationships. Let me offer as a modest sugges-
tion that we rethink the whole basis of romantic relationships: "love."
The romantic notion is that love is something that happens to a person
and that it is located inside an individual. But what if "love" is co-constructed
in the same way as "anger"; that is, as Averill described anger, what if love
is a transitory social role that is enacted in episodes?
If love is a transitory social role rather than some "thing" inside the
afflicted party, then we should explain love by looking at the interactional
contingencies in the episodes co-constructed by interlocutors rather than, on
the one hand, identifying the loveable attributes of the beloved or the person-
ality of the lover. What would be the practical effect of this reconceptualiza-
tion? Would we love more wisely? Would we be better lovers?
References 243
For the minute, assume that love is a transitory social role. Bring to
class the lyrics of one of your favorite romantic songs or romantic poems.
Working in small groups, rewrite the lyrics or poetry to make it consistent
with Averill's concept of love as a transitory social role.
When you finish, you probably will find the product not nearly as
romantic as the original. But before you throw your new lyric or poem away,
compare what is and what is gained in your revision.
lost
Also bring to class some nonromantic writings about love. For example,
in the Christian Bible, First Corinthians Chapter 13 describes love. You can
find other texts that talk about love for a family member or love of one's
country. In the same small group, rewrite these texts in ways that incorporate
Averill's notion of love as a transitory* social role and the notion of reflexivity
that you learned in this chapter. Incorporate as much as possible of the other
concepts about interpersonal communication that you have learned.
4. Circular Questioning
Working in groups of four, practice posing circular questions. Let two people
simulate a relationship (e.g., friends, family, or thief or victim). Let the other
two work as a team, using circular questions. Each interviewer should help
the other pose the questions in proper form. Switch roles and continue until
you have a good feel for asking questions in this manner.
Now wide variety of
practice using this interviewing technique in a
contexts. What would be gained and were to use circular
lost if journalists
questioning in interviewing politicians? What would you discover if you were

to pose circular questions to yourself about the reasons why you took this
course (When did you first get the idea that this course would be a good
one to take? To whom do you show your interest in this course? How do
you show your involvement in this course? Who would be the first to notice
if you were not really interested in this course?) Would your relationships
with your friends and family change if you were to participate in circular
questioning of each other? In what way? How would these changes take
place?
References
Bateson, Gregory. Steps an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.
to
Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam, 1980.
Berne, Eric. Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. New York:
Grove, 1964.
Boscolo, Luigi, Cecchin, Gianfranco, Hoffman, Lynn, and Penn, Peggy. Milan Sys-
temic Family Therapy: Conversations in Theory and Practice. New York: Basic
Books, 1987.
Buber, Martin. / and Thou. New York: Macmillan, 1988.
Carson, Robert. Interaction Concepts of Personality. Chicago: Aldinc, 1969.

Cronen, Vernon E., Johnson, Kenneth, and Lannamann, John VV. "Paradoxes, Dou-
ble-binds, and Reflexive Loops: An Alternative Theoretical Perspective." Family
Process20 (1982): 91-112.
Duck, Steve. "Social and Personal Relationships." In Handbook of Interpersonal Com-
munication, edited by Mark L. Knapp and Gerald R. Miller, 655-686. Beverly-
Hills: Sage, 1985.
Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Communication and Social Order. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1962.
Gergen, Kenneth. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.
Knapp, Mark L., and Vangelisti, Anita L. Interpersonal Communication and Human
Relationships, 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1992.
LaTour, Bruno, and Woolgar, Steve. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific
Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
LeGuin, Ursula. The Dispossessed. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
Nelson, John McGill, Allan, and McCloskey, Donald N. The Rhetoric of the Human
S.,
Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs. Madison:

University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Pearce, W. Barnett. Communication and the Human Condition. Carbondale: Unix er-
sitv of Southern Illinois Press, 1989.
Rawlins, Bill. Friendship Matters. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1992.
Schutz, W. C. FIRO: A
Three-Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958.
Silvini-Palazzoli, Mara, Prata, Guiliana, Boscolo, Luigi, and Cecchin, Gianfranco.
Paradox and Counterparadox: A New Model in the Therapy of the Family in
Schizophrenic Transaction. New York: Jason Aronson, 1978.
Silvini-Palazzoli, Mara, Prata, Guiliana, Boscolo, Luigi, and Cecchin, Gianfranco.
"Hypothesizing-Circularity-Neutrality: Three Guidelines for the Conductor of
the Session." Family Process 19 (1980): 2-13.
Sluzki, Carlos, and Beavin, Janet. "Symmetry and Complementarity: An Operational
Definition and Typology of Dyads." In The Interactional View, edited by Paul
Watzlawick and John Weakland, 71-87. New York: Norton, 1977.
Tomm, Carl. "Circular Interviewing: A Multifaceted Clinical Tool." In Applications
of Systemic Family Therapy, edited by Roz Draper and David Campbell. London:
Grune and Statton, 1985.
Toulmin, Stephen. The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of
Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Turnbull, Colin. The Human Cycle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.
Watzlawick, Paul. How Real is Real? An Anecdotal Introduction to Communication
Theory. New York: Vintage, 1976.
Watzlawick, Paul, Beavin, Janet, and Jackson, Don. Pragmatics of Human Communi-
cation. New York: Norton, 1967.
Wheelwright, Philip. Metaphor and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
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Wish, M., Deutsch, M., and Kaplan, S. J. "Perceived Dimensions of Interpersonal
Relations." Journal of Personality Social Psychology 33 (1976): 409^20.
and
Wright, Paul H. "Toward Theory of Friendship Based on a Conception of Self."
a
Human Communication Research 18 (1978): 196-207.
CHAPTER
6 Self
Know thyself.
The Oracle at Delphi
I am what am and
I that's all that I am.
Popeye
Traditional assumptions about the nature of identity

are now jeopardy. It is not simply that the present
in
turn of events has altered the emphasis placed on ratio-
nality, the emotions, and the like, or that it adds new con-
cepts to the traditional vernacular. Rather the very . . .
—
idea of individual selves in possession of mental
qualities —
is now threatened with eradication.
Gergen 1991, p. x
KEY WORDS
After reading this Some terms that will help

Self as a Part of Your able to chapter include

Social Worlds
m Understand the ways languages of self, self as
Multiple Languages in which people are moral agent and as
of Self empowered and moral-physical entity,
Some Concepts for disempowered in
multiphrenia,
Making Sense of Self conversation
enlightenment and
The Self in Interper- Analyze the "identity postmodernity
sonal Communication crisis" and other
A Word: Second
Final psychological
Thoughts About a maladies as social
Postmodern Sensibility constructions
Differentiate
between the self as
a physical-moral
entity and as a
moral agent
1. Power, Oppression,
and Liberation Understand popular
culture and the
2. The Identity Crisis
fashion industry
3. The Spiraling Cycle as partof
of Enfeeblement postmodernity
4. Popular Culture Take a more
and Fashion deliberate role in
5. Constructing socially constructing
Your Self in your own self
Conversations
:=
248 Chapter 6 Self
Naarrative
Bill sat staring into space.
1
"What's wrong?' Jane asked.
"Nothing, really, but ." Bill replied. "Sometimes I just don't under-
. .
stand myself. I worked hard to get to college, and I'm working two part-
time jobs to pay for it, and now that I'm here, I'm not sure that I should
be."
"Are you having trouble with your studies?"
"No, that's not it. I'm doing well in my courses, and I'm very interested
in learning, but I feel myself changing. I'm not the same person who left
home two years ago. The person who made the decision to come to college
seems naive and uninformed to me now, and I don't know if I should remain
committed to the decisions that person made. I don't know if I like the
person I am becoming — frankly, it scares me sometimes. Who am I? Who
will I be from now? Right now, I want to major in physics. Five
five years
years from now, will I want to be a physicist or will I want to write poetry?
How can I plan for my future if my self is so volatile? I love you but . . .
what happens to our relationship if I change? Do I have to hope that you

change, too? And that you change in the same directions and at the same
rate that I do? Is that fair? Would you love a penniless poet as much as a
world-famous physicist?"
How should we think about Bill? How should Jane reply to him? Should
she circumscribe their relationship so that she does not get hurt by Bill's
ambivalence and hesitance? Or should she bond with him in this episode of
exploration and growth? Her response, like ours, depends on what we think
about the self and how it is related to interpersonal communication.
If Bill has a self, and that self is an object that can be known and
described, then we are likely to be short-tempered with him. He fails what
might be called the "Popeye test" of clear-minded identity. Bill does not
know what he is and probably is pretending to be something other than what
he is.
From Popeye's perspective, we ask What's wrong with Bill? He has a

problem, and the possibilities are exhausted by two alternatives: either he
does not know who he is or he knows but cannot express it. If he does not
know his self, then he is confused or has defective analytical powers; if he
cannot express his self, incompetent in basic communication skills.
then he is
If Jane thinks like Popeye, she might drop Bill for a more clear-minded
boyfriend.
On the other hand if Bill is a self, and if that self is constructed in
patterns of conversations, then we are likely to congratulate him on his
perceptiveness. That is, Bill has passed what we might call the "Gergen test"
of self-reflective vacillation.
From Gergen's perspective, we note that Bill lives in a society- in which
there are many incommensurate language games for identity, and that he is
Self as a Part of Your Social Worlds 249
Does Bill flunk the "Pop-

eye test" of clear-
minded self-awareness?
Or is Bill experiencing
the kind of situation that
Gergen described? Does
Billhave a self that he
simply does not know?
Or is Bill a self who is
sufficiently self-aware
that he can detect
changes and alterna-
tives? How should Jane
feel about being in a re-
lationship with Bill?
aware of how his experiences with them affect him. Rather than a sign of his
inarticulateness, if Jane thinks like Gergen, she might see Bill's stammering
as a way of doing something, not attempt to describe something.
as a failed
But what might Bill be doing in this kind of soliloquy? Well, he might
be trying on various languages for being a self in contemporary society and
deciding which ones fit.
When we are searching for ways to express "who we are" and are
finding the process to be difficult, it is not [necessarily] because we
are having trouble expressing the real identity within. Rather, we
are in the process of developing the ability to identify ourselves under
particular conditions. It is part of the process of learning to have
an identity —-further specifying and changing it. The stumbling
efforts we all at times make when we are trying to say who we are
seem to us as more akin to a child's fumbling efforts to throw a ball
than a process of representing mental phenomena in language.
to
(Cronen and Pearce 1991/1992, p. 58)
Bill has made an important discovery: his "self" is not a natural object,
immutable and outside the hurly-burly processes of communication. In fact,
—
the self like episodes and relationships —
both shape and are shaped by the
conversations in which \vc make our social worlds.
Contemporary society contains many language games for personal iden-
tity, and there are some important contradictions between, and ambiguities
within, these language games. If you use some of the concepts presented in
250 Chapter 6 Self
this chapter, you will be better able to identify and move among these language
games for identity. After reading this chapter, you should be better equipped
to handle the questions of identity that contemporary society poses.
Self as a Part of Your Social Worlds
William James described our sensations (i.e., the raw stimulations of our
nervous system) as a "big, buzzing, booming confusion." Of course, we do
not perceive our social worlds this way; we pick out clusters of the flood of
stimulations that inundate us, perceive them as meaningful units, and then
organize them into our social worlds. Every normal human being identifies
a portion of their social worlds as "myself"; we all learn to use various personal
pronouns that punctuate differences between me/my/I and you/yours.
"The terms available for making our personalities intelligible terms of emo- —
tion, motivation, thought, values, opinions, and the like place important —
constraints over our forms of action" (Gergen 1991, p. 5 Romantic relation- ).
ships depend on particular vocabularies of identity and emotion that differen-

tiate a cad from a former lover. Jurisprudence requires a well-developed
vocabulary of intentions and extenuating circumstances that differentiate a

felon from a victim of tragic circumstance. Democracy itself derives from
certain vocabularies of personal rights, abilities, and responsibilities.
As physical entities, we live in a world of "raw happenings" that do not
come prepackaged and labeled for our use. The collective "we" all of us, —
—
conversing as a society have both the right and the obligation to transmute
these raw happenings into events. We use the alchemy of naming to label
and thus locate within our social worlds the nameless objects that we bump
up against as we live. In addition, because we are powerful parts of the
physical world, we produce raw happenings ourselves by moving around and
making things. In both of these ways, we are participants in the continuing
creation of the universe at the level of entities with temporal and spacial
dimensions.
However, the situation somewhat
different from our perspective of
is
ourselves as moral persons. Each of us born into a pre-existing moral world

is
in which the raw happenings of life are prepackaged and prelabeled for our
use by other people. In fact, our selves are "given" to us by our society. We
are assigned a name, a Social Security number, and a place in the economic
structure; we are expected to act within a cluster of rights and responsibilities
deriving from our parents' position within the social structure, the community
in which we live, and the pattern of conversations in which we are able or
required to participate.
This social process of conferring an identity as moral persons is so
powerful that it is usually invisible. However, those of us who study such
things for a living have come to believe that this is a far more complicated
and fateful process than it seems.
Viewed from a communication perspective, our selves are part of the
Counterpoint 6.
Wittgenstein frequently engaged in imaginative exercises in which he

envisioned societies that never existed. For example, what language
games would develop in a society in which people lacked the sense
all its
of hearing or seeing? Wittgenstein said that these would be very different

forms of than the ones that
life we know, and there is good reason to
believe that he was correct.
The study of the deaf shows us that much of what is distinctively human
in —
us our capacities for language, for thought, for communication, and
—
culture do not develop automatically in us, are not just biological
functions, but are, equally, social and historical in origin; that they are a
gift the most wonderful of gifts — from one generation to another
The existence of a visual language, sign, and of the striking enhance-
ments of perception and go with its acquisi-
visual intelligence that
tion, shows us that the brain is rich in potentials we would scarcely
have guessed of, shows us the almost unlimited plasticity and resource of
the nervous system, the human when it is faced with the
organism,
new and must adapt. If shows us the vulnerabilities, the ways
this subject
in which (often unwittingly) we may harm ourselves, it shows us,
equally, our unknown and unexpected strengths, the infinite resources
for survival and transcendence which Nature and Culture, together,
have- given us (Sacks 1991, p. xiii).
In much same way, Davies and Harre (1990) envisioned a society

the
that did not have (and that had no memory of or experience with) the personal
pronouns "I" and "me." The "selves" in that society, they suggested,
would be very different from those that we take for granted. Can "I" be
"myself" only if the language and conversational structures of my society
provide "places" or "resources" for "me"?
One of the earliest science fiction books explored just this idea. Zimiatin
(1924) envisioned a society that tried to stamp out individualism by elimi-
nating the first person singular pronoun "I". Any self-reference in the
language had to use "we."
Listen carefully to the discourse around you for the use of personal
pronouns. Who would be the first to notice if you did not use the first
person singular "I"? In what conversations would you be most helped
or hindered if you had no concept of "me"?
process by which we make our of conversations with

social worlds. Patterns
our parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and classmates, and government
officials produce the "self" that we know ourselves to be. That self has a
name ("Barnett"), it js defined in contrast with other selves ("intelligent,

kind, tall . . ."), it has a history ("I went camping in the White Mountains")
252 Chapter 6 Self
and abilities ("I can sew but cannot weave"). This self then shapes our
participation in conversations ("A person like me must . . .") and thus is a
causal factor in the making of our social worlds as well as being a product
of those social worlds.
If we are looking to explain how particular conversations occur, we

must include an account of our identities. People will often say that they
acted in a certain way because that was the only thing "a person like me"
could do. In fact, studies of unwanted repetitive patterns (Cronen et
1979) al.
have found that self-concept is one of the primary reasons subjects performed
actions that they did not like and knew would lead to unwanted consequences.
They had to act as they did, so they told us, because "a person like me"
could not act otherwise.
In addition, people often act as they do to become the self that they
want to be. The dynamics of peer pressure among adolescents and young
adults often prominently feature identity. People do things that they know
are not right or pleasant to sustain a particular social identity or to avoid an
unwanted identity. They feel great pressure to act in certain ways to avoid
being and so on. (If these terms seem out
classified as nerds, geeks, jocks,
of date, that simply attests to the rapidity with which elaborate vocabularies
of types of persons are developed and changed. Because I am no longer a
native in the culture of adolescents, I may be an adequate guide to the
existence of such vocabularies but a poor guide to their content.)
Counterpoint 6.2
If you read the discussion of unwanted repetitive patterns carefully, you

should be able to discern the deontic logic and practical syllogism as
the unmentioned structure of the explanation of how "self" causes people
to do things that they do not want to do and know will turn out badly. This
sentence is typical of what our subjects told us: "In a situation like that,
when he does what he did, a person like me has to act like act, regardless I
of the consequences."
Pull the sentence apart like this:
"a situation like that" refers to the episode

"he does what he did" refers to the preceding act in a conversational
triplet
"a person like me" refers to the self
"regardless of the consequences" may refer to the subsequent act in
a conversational triplet or to how the completed episode will be punctuated.
We found that "felt enmeshment" in unwanted repetitive patterns oc-

curred when subjects perceived a strong obligatory connection between their
actions and their perception of the episode, the preceding act in the
conversational triplet, and their self-concept, and a strong "irrelevant" con-
nection between their actions and the consequences. That is, unwanted
repetitive patterns occur when there is a certain, very strong configuration
of the deontic logic of meaning and action and an absence of reasoning
following the structure of the practical syllogism.
This model of deontic logic provides some tools for your imagination.
What kinds of episodes occur when there are other configurations of deontic
logic? What other What happens if there is
configurations are possible?
a strong "obligatory" relationship between self and a particular act, but an
equally strong "prohibitive" relationship between episode and the same
act?
Some Events Make Us Mindful of Our Selves
Most of the time, most of us are more like Popeye than we are like Kenneth
Gergen or Bill. That is, we are quite confident that we know who and what
we are. We find that the Delphic Oracle's advice makes good sense but is
unnecessary —we already know ourselves!
( 1960) found
In his studies of persuasion, psychologist Milton Rokeach
that our beliefs about our identity were the more resistant to change than
beliefs about anything else. Ordinary persuasive attempts simply cannot touch
our knowledge about who we are and what we are like. But events do happen
that call into question our basic beliefs of who we are.
Normally, the self is reconstructed in conversations as if the self that

we are is "natural"; the self usually functions as an invisible "frame" within
which we act normally. However, things happen that make this frame visible.
Sometimes these things make us ask, as an existential question, Who am I?
We become a little less like Popeye and a little more like Gergen when
traumatic events threaten our sense of who we

These events may be
are.
either "positive" or "negative." When you graduate from school and become
a professional, your identity changes. For example, the "self of a Doctor
making life-and-death decisions about your patients is not quite the same as
the "self" of a medical student cramming for an anatomy exam; when you
marry and have a child, your "self" as parent is not the same as your "self"
as single young adult or even as newlywed. An athlete suffering a career-
ending injury, a family whose home is destroyed by war or tornado, a factory
production worker whose job is eliminated by the automation of the factory,
an elderly person who is moved into a foreign culture and a strange place:
all of these people are likely to lose some of the Popeye-ish confidence in
their identity. What events can you imagine that would have this kind of
effect on you?
The near- mandatory "identity crises" of young adulthood and the "midlife
254 Chapter 6 Self
crises" experienced by middle-aged adults are periods when the question

Who am I? suddenly seems both relevant and fascinating. There arc any
number of movies, and short stories as well as social scientific research
plays,
about these experiences. In what vocabularies are the answers to the question
Who am I? offered? What vocabulary would you think is the best for ad-
dressing such questions?
People who have any of the wide range of characteristics that are treated
as stigmas have a lifelong project of managing their identities. Some people
are born with the sexual characteristics of both males and females ("in-
tersexed") but have to live in a society that differentiates between "males"
and "females." What resources does our society provide for developing a
coherent identity for those who do not fit the conventional categories? Geertz
(1983, p. 81) says that "Intersexuality is more than an empirical surprise; it
is a cultural challenge,"and describes strikingly different ways in which three

societies deal with it. How do you think of yourself and present yourself to
others if you are HIV positive? Would you raise questions about your identity
if you had a child with a prominent birth-defect? Whatever your race, religion,
or national origin, there is some place on earth where you would be part of
a minority and considered "inferior" or "strange." If you were to live in
such a place, would your awareness of your self be increased? How would
you handle the daily perceptions that others think of you in terms of an
unwanted or unrespected category?
Sometimes we meet a stranger whose world is so different from ours that
we begin to question our own. When we engage in dialogue with someone
from another culture or economic class, we can get a glimpse of what our
culture, class, or our selves look like from the perspective of that other person.
This is always a humbling experience; it shows that many of the things we
have taken for granted are arbitrary and that others have consequences that
we never realized. When this happens, two types of changes occur. The
"inward" change is to call into question our concept of self; the "outward"
change is to restructure our political beliefs and practices.
Counterpoint 6.3
In the discussion of experiences that our "selves" into question, am

call I
made in processes of conversation

trying to express the concept of the self as
and avoid talking as if your self was a thing, buried somewhere in your
mind. Perhaps the effort of my struggle with language shows!
You have heard people use expressions like "part of me wants to go
to the party tonight, but another part of me realizes that need to I
study." It is not hard to discern what is meant by statements like this,

but they contain a grammar that can cause us problems.

Not only
does this grammar questions about "what parts are those,
invite the silly
pray tell?" and "which of those parts is the larger, wonder?", but it I
creates an interesting philosophical problem. Who is this speaker who

divides "me" up? Is the "I" who speaks in a coalition with one part of "me"
against the other?
Clifford Geertz wrestled with the same problem in his studies of what
it means to be a person in various cultures. He warned that he was
never going to discern "persons" per se; he could only see, hear, touch,
and smell what persons do. But even that is not enough, because he
was always going to perceive something different from what the people
he was studying perceived. "The trick is not to get yourself into some inner
correspondence of spirit with your informants. . . . The trick is to figure
out what the devil they think they are up to" (Geertz 1983, p. 58). And
even this is at a distance. In our natural state, we use "experience-near"
concepts for our own experience. We use them
spontaneously, unself-consciously, as it were colloquially; [we] do not,

except fleetingly and on occasion, recognize that there are any
"concepts" involved at all. That is what "experience-near" means —
that ideas and the realities they inform are naturally and indissolubly
bound up together. What else could you call a hippopotamus? Of course
the gods are powerful, why else would we fear them? The ethnographer
does not . perceive what his informants perceive. What he perceives,
. .
and that uncertainly enough, is what they perceive "with" or "by —

means of," or "through ..." (Geertz 1983, p. 58, emphasis added).
What Geertz said about ethnographers is true about Bill's own reflec-
tions about himself. When we start wondering Who am I? we will
never find an "object" that we can describe. What we can achieve and —
it is a very important achievement —
is a discovery of what we perceive
ourselves "with" or "by means of" or "through." That is, we can place
the languages of identity in the foreground of our thoughts and in
so doing discover not only who we are but also what options we have.
Concepts of Self Develop Historically

The concept of self in your common sense has not always been treated as
the norm, and in all probability, there will come a time when it is no longer
taken as a norm. That is, you should locate your concept of what a self is
within the history of ideas.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term self'was first used
in English in 1595. Based on his analysis of diaries and travelogues, John
Lyons (1978) said that the modern concept of self was "invented" in the
—
eighteenth century with tongue firmly in cheek, he suggested the year 1750.
Will some future edition of the Oxford English Dictionary describe the term
256 Chapter 6 Self
"self" as first used in English in 1595, last used in 2156? What kind of events
might lead to this term's growing old and dying?
Concepts of Self Develop Culturally

Just as you "historicized" your eoncept of self, locate it within a particular
culture. Geertz characterized the dominant Western concept of self this way:
a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cogni-

a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment,
tive universe,
and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively

both against other such wholes and against a social and natural
background. (Geertz 1975, p. 48)
In this language game, striving for self actualization and turning to one's
inner self for strength, definition, and guidance in dealing with others makes
sense. This language game also encourages you to differentiate your inner,
or private, self from the public self you present to other people, to quantify
the amount of this inner self that you disclose to others, and to ask if what
you disclose is consistent with your inner self.
This concept, which seems natural to people in industrialized nations

with European heritages, seems unnatural to people in other forms of life
and with different cultural traditions. In traditional, non-Western cultures,

Bill Gudykunst and Stella Ting-Toomey (1988, p. 82) noted, the "self" is
not differentiated from the nexus of social relationships in which the individual
participates. Were this textbook written by a Chinese scholar for Chinese
students, there would probably not be a chapter on the self, and if such a
textbook did have a section on self, it would likely use a language game that
stresses contextual appropriateness rather than transcontextual consistency
(Chang 1987). That is, it would focus on the extent to which one responds
appropriately or dutifully in the relationships that define the self rather than,
like Shakespeare, on urging one to be "true" to one's inner self.
Counterpoint 6.4
I make no apology for asking you to think about yourself as enculturated

and differentiatingyour culture from others. There are two reasons
for my insistence on this point.
First, the social, economic, and environmental realities of contemporary
society require us to be aware of other cultures. What we do affects

and is affected by them whether we are conscious of it or not, and it
makes sense to be alert to the larger conversations of which we are a part.
Second, my purpose is to call to your attention the materials by, with,

or through which you perceive your self, and the best way of doing this is
by comparison and contrast. The concepts of self in various cultures differ
markedly, and you can gain an appreciation for what you take for granted
by exploring what other cultures use to understand themselves.
There is something very important in the perspective that comes from
being aware of the materials (e.g., conversations, language, social
structures, array of accounts) that your culture provides. It is hard to
say just what is so important, however. Geertz (1983, p. 16) called it "a
fugitive truth" and said
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others

as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is
from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst
others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case
among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, with-
out which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.
Communication Donal Carbaugh (1990, p. 127) contrasted

theorist
the contemporary American concept of self ("individualistic, self- reflexive,
and loquacious") with those of several other cultures that have different
notions of the relationship between speech and self. Some think of the self
more than a speaker of opinion. Others view self as a player
as a silent thinker
of public roles which individuality and uniqueness is foreign, or as a
in
purveyor of harmonious relations in which self is downplayed or depreciated.

In other cultures, self is identified with social rank; only some social ranks
are allowed to engage in significant speech. Each of these cultural concepts

structures different ways of thinking about the self and envisions whole
different vocabularies in which to answer the question Who am I?
Multiple Languages of Self
In the preceding section, you located your concept of self as, first, within a
matrix ofyour own experience; second, within a continuing process of histori-
caldevelopment; and third, within a particular cultural tradition. In those
I sometimes wrote as if there was only one concept of seisin the
discussions,
contemporary world. Of course, that's not true; there are many. The present
section will help you identify some of the major languages of self in contempo-
rary American culture.
Englightenment and Poststructural Languages of Self

Davies and Harre (1991/1992, p. 2) noted that people in contemporary
society have "access to many ways of talking about oneself and one's activi-
1
258 Chapter 6 Self
tics." One of these "ways of talking," they said, is an inheritance from the
"Enlightenment" (i.e, the philosophical and scientific tradition that flowered
between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and the United
States). This "E-model" of the self "presents as an ideal a rational person
leading a rational life in a rational universe in which contradictions must
always be eliminated" (Daviesand Harre 1991/1992, p. 6). To be considered
fully functioning adults, people must show how their activities are consistent
across time and across situations.

This "way of talking" about the self sharply contrasts with a "post-
structural" discourse (or "P-model"). Poststructuralism names a cluster of
intellectual developments that presume that the social world is produced
through talk; it uses the method of deconstruction to expose how various
structures in the social world were made. The P-model of the self "presents
a human individual as caught in a number of discursive nets" (Davies and
Harre 1991/1992, p. 7). That is, the normal condition of human beings is
to live in contradictions. Righdy understood, a self that understands itself
within the P-model can say "with enthusiasm, 'so this is how I get to be all
of these things. And having understood this I now see how I can begin to
change them' " (Davies and Harre 1991/1992, p. 9).
There is an intransitive relationship between these two ways of talking
vv about self. The P-model says that one of the many inconsistent languages of
the self is the E-model. Further, from the P-model, the E-model seems
curiously circumscribed because it denies the validity of any other way of
,>JVJ
talking about the self. On the other hand, the way of talking about the self
^P\>
Refrain 6.
Davies and Harre differentiate the "enlightenment" and "poststructural"

models of self. (They call these the "E-model" and "P-model" of the
self.)
These models are seldom formally stated, of course. They do, however,
comprise the background assumptions that we use when we take "who I
am" and "who you are" into account as we converse.

According to the E-model of self, persons are rational agents in a ratio-
nal world; their personalities are (or, more to the point, should be)
consistent and coherent; and they should be capable of giving explana-
tions for their actions.
According to the P-model of self, persons are moral agents in a world
comprised of multiple, sometimes contradictory discourses; their
personalities are always plural and mutable; they are (or, more to the
point, should be) inconsistent and flexible, adapting to changing
circumstances.
identified as the E-model recognizes the existence of other ways of talking I P\^G f^^
but thinks that they are immature or fallacious. ^- '
"
Bill's musings about his self, described at the beginning of this chapter,
j
'
appear very different depending on whether one understands him as speaking /ik/> r\l [\rUJv\0-
.
^ A
in an E- or P-model of self.
"
MWllilPL ' V"] £,
Romantic, Modernist and Postmodern Languages

nrtril^
iw*,,
pw&f\i i
(S
M/ZZ^^
U ,w/
U
1
^
of Self
Gergen's book, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary ^yT<- L „ ^[1^0^ . .
Life (1991), presents a major study of the languages of self in a society |U(/jJ^ '
.
structured by the new technologies of communication. Gergen found three ^ flA %/>*/ A
,
M
major languages of self, romantic, modernist, and postmodern, intertwined
in contemporary society. Each of these languages is grounded in particular
Ij^.op
historical moments and prefigures certain kinds of conversations.
/V\/W \Pfi\.
The of sen
1 ne romanticist language or self attriDutes each person cnaractenstics
attributes to eacn s> *' Wis'
characteristics TfijlM- lul^ ~
*t 11
r (\\C \ j
1
,
of personal depth: passion, soul, creativity, and moral fiber. The modernist \ aI/j(Y iYIAJ '
' '
l'
language of self focuses on our ability to reason: it emphasizes beliefs, opin- WUj^vi
ions, and conscious intentions, and it values predictability, honesty, and sincer
ity. The postmodern language constructs a "multiphrenic" self in which W 1-r -"
\bk^
values and reason are compromised and in which the self is increasingly
portrayed as inadequate.
The romantic vocabulary of self. Originating in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, the romantic view of the self may be seen as a protest
against blind faith in human reason — or, more precisely, against the reduction
of human worth and experience to rational values (i.e., it is at least in part
a reaction against the E-model of the self identified by Davies and Harre).
Romanticism uses a vocabulary of passion, purpose, and personal depths
that can never be fiilly plumbed. It puts love at the forefront of human
endeavors; those who abandon merely functional or useful activities for the
purposes of passion, style, or even a beautiful gesture are praiseworthy. "For
manv, the loss of such a vocabulary would essentially be the collapse of
anything meaningful in life. If love as intimate communion, intrinsic worth,
moral values, and passionate expression were all scratched
creative inspiration,
from our vocabularies, life for many would be a pallid affair indeed" (Gergen
1991, p. 27).
This language of self is, like the others, sufficiently rich that those who
live within it of dignity and honor. It is sufficiently robust that
can craft a life
they can answer relevant questions efficiently and confidently. And yet it
looks thoroughly wrong-headed to those whose self is constructed in the
language of modernity.
The modernist language of self. Languages do not "die"; they just

simply pass out of popular usage. And they are usually not discarded totally
260 Chapter 6 Self
or everywhere or all at once; other vocabularies simply start being used for
important functions. This what happened to the romanticist vocabulary.
is
It has not gone away: splendor on the soap operas, in movies, in

it lives in
testimonials to perfumes and credit cards, and in a hundred other places.

However, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the modernist lan-
guage of the self has usurped many of the functions that might otherwise
have used the romantic language.
In the modernist language, the self is constituted as a fixed and knowable
entity. Instead of celebrating the mysterious, passionate, never fully finished
identity created in the romanticist vocabulary, those using the modernist
language prize people who are open and consistent. Modernist literature
discloses how persons come to be the individuals that they truly are, or probes
past the trappings of an ostensibly positive identity to discern the discreditable
character really lurking behind the facade. In this vocabulary, precise measure-
ments of self are possible. A whole industry has developed around personality
"inventories," measures of "self-esteem," and even scholastic aptitude and
achievement.
In the modernist vocabulary, the self is produced from experience. This
perception contrasts with the romanticist emphasis on genetics, in which
genius, inspiration, and passion were considered inherent to the individual.
For modernists, human beings are something like machines, capable of func-
tioning well but susceptible to damage by the environment. As a result,
modernists look to behavioral modification as the way to solve problems and
to modifications of the environment as a way to avoid their occurrence.
Autonomy and reliability are equated with health in the modernist
vocabulary of self. lust as a well-designed machine resists deterioration, so a
properly molded self is "self-directing," "solid," "trustworthy," and "consis-
tent." "The modernist man is genuine rather than phony, principled rather
than craven, and stable rather than wavering" (Gergen 1991, p. 44).
In summary, although the romantic individual was forever a mystery,
the modernist self is
knowable, present in the here and now, just slightly below the surface
ofhis actions. He is not likely to be transported by sudden inspiration,
be smitten by some great passion, or give way to a rush of suicidal
urges. Rather, he is reliable and trustworthy. His work today is good
tomorrow and the next. The modernist self is not likely to have his
reason clouded by intense emotional dramas; his reasons guide his
actions and his voice is clear and honest. And we must not await
the arrival of some naturally gifted, inspired, or insightful man to
lead our nation or our institutions. Everyone is created equal, and
it is up to us as parents and good citizens to mold the young. With
proper molding, and the help of science, we create the future of our
dreams. (Gergen 1991, p. 47)
This description of the selves constructed in the modernist language bears a

striking resemblance to the profile of a good worker in a factory, a good

soldier, and a good citizen. This correlation is no accident.
The multiple languages of self in postmodern society. Since World

War I, and accelerating in the second half of the twentieth century, intellectual
and social movements have exposed the foundations of many systems of
beliefs, forms of practice, and social institutions. The tools of analysis, criti-
Refrain 6.2
Like Davies and Harre, Gergen believes that there are several, different
concepts of self in contemporary society. Also like Davies and Harre,
he identifies them with particular historical periods.
Unlike Davies and Harre, Gergen locates these concepts of self in spe-
cific "vocabularies" that we speak.
(In doing this, is Gergen expressing an E-model or a P-model of self?
Hmm. I think it is a clear P-model.)

The romantic vocabulary of self focuses on passion, purpose, and mys-
tery. Persons cannot ever be fully known; what counts most are actions
done on the basis of strong, pure emotions; mere logic is a pale substitute
for feeling. Who you are is determined by your "inner nature."
The modernist vocabulary of self envisions the self as a fixed and
knowable entity. Actions that are open, honest, consistent, and de-
pendable are prized; passion and emotions are threats to clear thinking
and responsible performance. Healthy persons are autonomous and clearly
known to themselves. Who you are is determined by the experience that
you have had.
The contemporary, "postmodern" period contains multiple languages
of the self. In this context, contemporary selves are characterized by
multiphrenia, in which there is:
A vertigo of the valued: the disorientation of what is good and important;

The expansion of inadequacy: a pervasive feeling that you fail to measure
up to some standard; and,
Rationality in recession: an inability to depend on reason because there
are so many potential interlocutors who do not share the same standards
for rationality.
(Gergen's characterization of "multiphrenia" is, of course, from a particu-

lar perspective. In which language, romantic or modernist, does he
describe "multiphrenia"? think he uses the modernist vocabulary
I
which prizes rationality, takes "inadequacy" seriously, locates values

outside the individual, and treats the self as shaped by experiences rather
—
than its own "inner nature" to describe the postmodern condition. Do you
agree?)
262 Chapter 6 Self
cism, and inquiry developed by these movements are sufficiently powerful

to "deconstruct" virtually any certitude, tradition, or social structure. Perhaps
the clearest description of the result of these movements is the principle that
there is no grand narrative for society, that no such overarching story can be
developed, and further, that the attempt to construct such a totalizing and
inclusive frame is morally wrong as well as practically misguided.
Postmodernity has profound implications for self. "Under postmodern
conditions," Gergen ( 199 1 pp. 5-6)
,
said, "persons exist in a state of continu-
ous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that

can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning,
irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality. The center
fails to hold." He called this condition multiphrenia.
There is no postmodern language of the self;
single vocabulary in the
instead, there are multiple vocabularies including the romantic and the mod-
ern. Consistent with Davies and Harre's notion of the P-model of the self,
the defining characteristic of the postmodern language is that whatever vocab-
ulary is used, there are other, contradictory vocabularies that are simultane-
ously relevant.
Gergen ( 1 99 1 , p. 6 ) attributes this condition to the new communication
technologies that have "saturated" us. The strength of Gergen's analysis lies
in what he means by saturation. He is not referring to information overload

caused by too many stimuli. Rather, he clearly has in mind too many "connec-
tions" within the webs of relations. To get a sense of what he means, picture
the atomic model of communication (Fig. 1.5). Now imagine a conversational
triplet at the nexus of 50 or 100 contexts.
The new media of communication are the infrastructure for a qualitative

change in the social worlds in which we live. They make possible such a
radical increase in the number of conversations possible that they create a
different ecology in which the self is constituted. By altering the meaning of
time and distance and by creating the possibility for a vastly increased number
of conversations, even those people struggling to hold onto a romantic or
modern concept of self find themselves at the nexus of a vastly increased
number of conversations, with access to people all over the world by tele-
phone, electronic mail, or jet airplane. In those conversations, we are expected
to know current events fromaround the world because we have access to
all
multichannel, round-the-clock news sources, and, if we are "good" people,

we will react responsibly to the famines, floods, wars, and shipwrecks around
the world.
If we think of ourselves at a particular point within our social worlds,
the new media of communication have increased the density of the social
structures in which we live. Our abilities have far outstripped our capabilities.
That is, the array of conversations in which we might participate is far greater
than the number in which we can actually participate. How many people do
you know well enough to call on the telephone and have a conversation? Surely
far more than you have time to call. How many channels of "information" can
Counterpoint 6.5
I agree with Gergen's description that the postmodern language of the

self is really not a language. It is best described as a motley of lan-
guages, a cacophony of disparate voices, and a heteroglossia.
This is not to say that the postmodern language of the self is chaotic.
If you snatch it from lived experience and view it everywhere all at once as
if it were a timeless text, it would appear without form and void. However,
selves are not constructed in timeless space; they are found in specific in-
stances of conversation with particular interlocutors within episodes
whose framing is mutable but not infinitely so. The apparent chaos of postmo-
dernity lies within stories told; when we remember that we are inextricably
enmeshed in stories lived, we have nonarbitrary limits on the array of selves
that we can be.
Like the languages of morality, the languages of self
in our discourse are many, and they have remarkably diverse historical
origins, but they do not float in free air, and their name is not chaos.
They are embedded in specific social practices and institutions — reli-
gious, political, economic, and so on. We

artistic, scientific, athletic,
need many different moral concepts because there are many different
linguistic threads woven into any fabric of practices and institutions
as rich as ours. It is a motley; not a building in need of new foundations
but a coat of many colors, one constantly in need of mending and
patching, sometimes even recutting and restyling. (Stout 1988, pp.
291-292)
But Bakhtin (1986) said that heteroglossia is the first and natural state
of human society.he is right, and believe that he is, what then is
If I
unique about postmodernity?

Postmodernity has two unique features. First, the enabling infrastruc-
—
ture of communication that is, the media —
have undergone unprecedented
changes. None of us has a morally valid excuse not to be in conversation
with (or at least knowledgeable about) anyone else on earth. If the
Kurds are being attacked by the Iraqis, the Somalis are starving, or a
shipwrecked freighter is leaking oil in the North Atlantic, we have no
moral reason for not caring, being informed, and taking appropriate action
because the enabling infrastructure is in place. To put it succinctly: maybe
the world has always been heteroglossic, but we never had the infrastruc-
ture in place before so that we could and in some ways have to deal
with all of it, all at once, and all of the time.
Second, the postmodern period is unique because there is no grand
narrative. In the Soviet Union during Bakhtin's life, Marxist-Leninism provided
the grand narrative that organized all of the other language games. Of
course, many people resisted, did not believe in, or hardly paid atten-
tion to the official state dogma, but they were defined in relationship to
that dogma. In the contemporary period, there are many dogmas that
264 Chapter 6 Self
give guidance and sustaining structure to people, but none of these has
the status of a grand narrative such that the others are defined in relationship
to it. To put it bluntly, we are all heretics now because there is no orthodoxy
(Lyotard 1979; Berger 1979).
I do not believe that this situation can or will long continue. I think that
a new language must be developed, and that it will in many
of the self
ways be unlike those that it replaces, not just a cacophony of them.
Chapters 9 and 10 of Communication and the Human Condition
(Pearce 1989) devoted to an exploration of some of the characteristics
is
of such a language. When it comes, believe that it will be the result of

I
"bricolage," a process of picking up bits and pieces of leftover languages

and integrating them into a new language. Technically, a new language
developed in this way is called a Creole, and believe that a postmodern I
language of the self, when it is developed, will be such a Creole.
Our task, like Thomas Jefferson's, or Martin Luther

Thomas Aquinas's,
King's, is to take the many parts
of a complicated social and concep-
tual inheritance and stitch them together into a pattern that meets the
needs of the moment. It has never been otherwise. The creative intellectual
task of every generation, in other words, involves moral bricolage. It
is no accident that Aquinas, Jefferson, and King were as eclectic
as they were in using moral languages and no shame either. (Stout —

1988, p. 292)
you get on your television? Far more than you can possibly watch. Because
we are overfilled with conversational opportunities, we have a
multiplicity of incoherent and unrelated languages of the self. For

everything we "know to be true" about ourselves, other voices within
respond with doubt and even derision. This fragmentation of self-
conceptions corresponds to a multiplicity of incoherent and discon-
nected relationships. These relationships pull us in myriad directions,
inviting us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of
an "authentic self" with knowable characteristics recedes from view.
(Gergen 1991, pp. 6-7)
Not everyone submits willingly to this postmodern condition, of course.

For many, this kind of life seems immoral, crazy, and unrelated to their daily
concerns of raising a family, paying the bills, and striving to achieve their
goals without being overtaken by those who would ensnare them in unwanted
obligations. To counteract these effects of the new communication media,
some people become very selective users of the media; they watch some
televisionshows and not others; they become very adept in their travels and
use of telephone and computer services so that they avoid conversations that
would challenge their vocabularies of self. Others deliberately embrace a
particular vocabularyof self that contradicts Gergen's description of postmo-

dernity. Some are determined modernists, others romantics, and still others
use a vocabulary from a religious, ethnic, or philosophical tradition.
Of course, the fact that different people select among all these ways of
coping with the new communication media, and that the new communication
media provide common places, such as newspapers or television programs,
in which these people can meet or learn of each other, simply increases the
heteroglossia in which we live.
Multiphrenia
However, the multiple languages of the self in postmodern society prefigures
the development of a condition that Gergen called "multiphrenia." If schizo-
phrenia means having multiple personalities; multiphrenia must mean the
same thing except that it is perceived as "normal," perhaps even "laudable."
Multiphrenia has three distinctive features.
Vertigo of the valued. Vertigo of the valued is the ironic result of being
of too many restrictions and presented with too many opportunities.
relieved
—
The new media of communication including transportation allow us to —
overcome time and space, the factors that have traditionally restricted the
development of relationships. With the restrictions gone, we are "free" to
make commitments and then discover that each commitment exacts its costs.
If two persons become close friends, for example, each acquires certain
rights, duties, and privileges. Most relationships of any significance
carry with them a range of obligations —-for communication, joint
activities, preparing for the other's pleasure, rendering appropriate
congratulations, and so on. Thus, as relations accumulate and ex-
pand over time, there is a steadily increasing range of phone calls
to make and answer, greeting cards to address, visits or activities to

arrange, meals to prepare, preparations to be made, clothes to buy,
makeup to apply. . . . Liberation becomes a swirling vertigo of

demands. (Gergen 1991, p. 75)
The multiphrenic self thus invents ways to avoid conversations and relation-
ships with others. Some use their telephone answering machines as ways to
discover who is calling before deciding whether to answer; others prize long
walks and solitary hobbies. Relationships become shallower; people begin to
resent the "demands" of what should be joyous occasions and relation-
ships.
The expansion of inadequacy. The expansion of inadequacy refers to
the feeling that one is not measuring up to the expectations of others. The
problem is not necessarily with the one being measured; in the new age of
266 Chapter 6 Self
telecommunications, the standards against which one is measured have be-

—
come much more diverse to the point where no one can possibly feci "okay."
The mass media expose us to a concentrated barrage of standards for
self-evaluation. Are you sufficiently ciean, deodorized, adventurous, well trav-
eled, well read, low in cholesterol, slim, fit, skilled in cooking, groomed,
insured, and protected from car trouble by using the rightmotor oil? These
comparisons are driven by the force of the marketplace; those who seek to
make you feel inadequate really want to take money out of your pocket in a
capitalist drama of sin and redemption. Nonetheless, a steady diet of well
produced messages setting up standards for self-assessment leads to a "seeping
of self-doubt into everyday consciousness, a subtle feeling of inadequacy
that smothers one's activities with an uneasy sense of impending emptiness"
(Gergen 1991, p. 76).
In addition to the mass media, interpersonal relations can set up an
impossible standard for self-evaluation. The new communication media make
it possible to expand the array of our friends, to maintain relationships started
at very different points of our lives, and to sustain relationships with people
who live in very different material circumstances. Each of these relationships

sets up a standard: Are you as physically fit as your friend from Ohio? As
relaxed and content as your friend the beach bum in southern California? As
Contemporary society
treats identity as some-
thing of a problem. Evi-
dence of our fascination
withwho we are (and
who we might be) can
be found all around us.
What does this tell us
about ourselves?
industrious as your friend who works 12 hours a day in Chicago? As spiritual

as your friend the Zen monk in New York? As well traveled and cosmopolitan
as your friend the international news correspondent now stationed in Cairo
(or is it Delhi?)?
All the voices at odds with one's current conduct thus stand as
internal critics, scolding, ridiculing, and robbing action of its poten-
tialforfulfillment. One settles in front ofthe television for enjoyment,
,,
and the chorus begins: "twelve-year-old, "couch potato," "lazy"
"irresponsible". . . . One sits down with a good book, and again,
"sedentary," "antisocial," "inefficient," "fantasist". . . . Join
friends for a game of tennis and "skin cancer," "shirker of household
duties," "underexercised," "overly competitive" come up. Work late
and it is "workaholic," "heart attack prone," "overly ambitious,"
"irresponsiblefamily member." Each moment is enveloped in the
guilt born of all that was possible but now foreclosed. (Gergen 1991,
p. 77)
Counterpoint 6.6
Gergen's claim about the "expansion of inadequacy" seems a little thin.

If the situation is defined as multiple languages of the self, then "the
chorus" that begins whenever you do something ought to contain as

many phrases of praise as it does of criticism. That is, if you work
late, you should hear the cheers: industrious, good provider for your
family, and serious-minded.

Unfortunately, it does not quite work out that way. In the last century,
numerous new words have been invented that describe the self; virtu-
ally all are terms of "mental deficit." For example, here are some words
that have come into common usage: low self-esteem, depressed, stressed,
obsessive-compulsive, sadomasochistic, identity crisis, self-alienated, au-
thoritarian, repressed, paranoid, bulimic, midlife crisis, anxious, ano-
retic, kleptomaniac, and homophobic. "These words discredit the
individual, drawing attention to problems, shortcomings, or incapacit-

ies. To put it more broadly, the vocabulary of human deficit has undergone
enormous expansion within the present century. We have countless ways of

locating faults within ourselves and others that were unavailable to even
our great-grandfathers." (Gergen 1991, pp. 13-14)
Gergen describes a "spiraling cycle of enfeeblement" that is far from
neutral politically or economically. The spiral is set into motion by
the invention by the scientific establishment of a new term for some
human dysfunction or failure. The cycle goes like this:
1. Physicians or psychologists invent a new term that labels an unhealthy
condition or pattern of undesirable behavior. This labeling is often
268 Chapter 6 Self
driven by the needs of the health profession to provide specific diagno-

ses so that insurance companies can determine whether and for how much
medical costs the patient is covered. The dynamic of this process is
a tension between the medical profession's desire to expand the
number and severity of treatable problems, and the insurance indus-
try's desire to reduce the number of problems for which they will
pay and the cost of the treatments.
2. These new labels (and descriptions of the symptoms) are disseminated
to the general public. For example, the films of Alfred Hitchcock
and Woody Allen have popularized psychoanalytic vocabulary until it
has become part of common sense.
3. As people learn the new vocabulary, they come to see themselves and
others in these terms. The terms are not only labels, of course, but part
of logics of meaning and action. "How much can you trust an addictive
personality, how much devotion does a manic-depressive merit, should
you hire a bulimic, can you cherish a hysteric?" (Gergen 1991, p. 15).
4. The public begins to believe that professionals are essential for a
"cure" for these problems. Seeing a therapist is considered the appropriate
answer for life's problems; a doctor's opinion is necessary for making
life choices.
5. As more and more people come to professionals with a wider array
of symptoms and complaints, the professional community tries to
meet their needs by developing a still larger, more differentiated vocab-
ulary, which starts the cycle all over again.
Rationality in recession. Rationality in recession refers to the problem

of thinking, arguing, and deciding within a wider sphere. Rationality is a
description of a way of thinking or
talking; it is used when one acts
community. However, the new media of
consistently with the beliefs of a
—
communication by reducing the impediments of time and space have —
enlarged the array of others who have to be taken into account and thus
included people who do not share the same judgments of what is rational
and what is not.
Conversations in contemporary society often include statements from
very different vocabularies of self. For example:
Bill: The figures are clear. If we want to preserve our profits we must
lay off half of the workers at the Akron plant.
Marsha: No. would simply be too
It heartless to do that to our employ-
ees. I'm not going to do it.
Bill's statement is framed in the seems power-

vocabulary of modernity, and it
fully from
rational framed
that perspective. Marsha's statement in the is
vocabulary of romanticism. From the perspective of modernity, Marsha seems

irrational, an irritating impediment to progress. From the perspective of

romanticism, however, Marsha's statement is clearly rational and praiseworthy,
whereas Bill's is a leaden-eyed bean counter's way of working.
From our perspective as an observer, it is clear that there are two
rationalities at work here. But what is it like from Bill and Marsha's perspective?
Specifically, what do they feel after they have gone through some hundreds
of repetitions of conversations like this? Let's assume that each is aware that
the other is using a different rationality. Does this plurality of rationalities
make rational choices easier or more difficult? Gergen (1991, p. 79) fears
the worst: "as social saturation steadily expands the population of the self
... we approach a condition in which the very idea of 'rational choice'
becomes meaningless."
Some Concepts for Making Sense of Self
Gergen's description of the multiphrenic However,

self sounds pretty horrible.
even Gergen believes that the prospects for selves contemporary society
in
are not as bad as they might seem. We find ourselves in a period between
stable eras; the old languages of the self have not gone away, but none has
established itself as a grand narrative. Like Lyotard (1979), I do not believe
that a new grand narrative is going to develop. The new language of the
self will be something different, a Creole created within a radically altered
infrastructure for social worlds.
In the meantime, however, until the new language of self is developed,
there are some concepts that will serve us well in sorting through the questions
of identity, community, and morality that confront us.
First- and Third-Person Perspectives

Earlier in this book, you learned to distinguish these perspectives. We will
use them again in the following section, this time in combination with some
other ideas, but I want to add the idea that person perspectives are associated
with different rights and responsibilities.
The moral order in which we are located as selves consists of clusters
of rights and responsibilities. If we think of this moral order as a terrain, it
is not a level plain; a somewhat of rights and responsibilities are

different set
attached to each specific location. For each self, performing some speech acts
is easy; they roll "down-hill." However, other speech acts are difficult (like
moving "up-hill") or impossible (like jumping over a mountain).

One way we reference our location in this moral order is by citing our
roles. For example, to say "I am a student" does far more than simply to
attach a label to the way you spend your days; it is to lay claim to a particular
set of rights and duties that contrast sharply to those invoked by the statement
"I'm a doctor" or "I'm a ditchdigger." A friend of mine keeps a sign that
270 Chapter 6 Self
says "PRESS"
in his automobile and puts it on the dashboard when he parks
By this means, he locates himself as having responsibilities that

illegally.
transcend normal parking rules and claims the right to park illegally with
impunity.
Far more than we usually realize, our conversations consist of claims
and negotiations about the rights and duties of the conversants. Even the
pronouns we use index different positions within the moral order. If "I" say
"I'm hungry," it makes little sense for you to ask me How do you know?
In the moral geography of the first person, "I's" have the right to avow their
—
hunger and a large class of other things. On the other hand, if "I" say "she
is hungry," it makes very good sense for you to ask me How do you know?
I might respond by talking about my observations of her stomach growling,
the incidence of food metaphors in her talk, the quick glances first to her
watch and then to the nearby restaurant, and my punctuation of all this as
having started just when the odor of fresh baked bread from the nearby
bakery started to fill the room. But no matter how well supported is my
ascription of her hunger, I do not have the right to just assert it; I have the
responsibility of providing an account if one is requested.
Take this one step further. If she says, "I'm hungry," and I reply, "No,
you are not," my statement is not even primarily a description of a state of
affairs; it is a clear denial of her claim to have the rights that go with the first
person. On the other hand, if I tell her that she must decide for herself
whether to cut class to help a sick roommate or attend class and prepare for
the exam, I am insisting that she accept the rights and responsibilities that
go with the first-person position.
Our sensitivity to the way we index our selves in the moral order
makes possible some profoundly liberating moves. For example, I was told
this story as the transcript of the shortest psychological therapy session
on record:
Therapist: Why have you come to see me?

Patient: Doctor, I have a personality problem.
Therapist: No, you have a personality characteristic. Let's talk about it
and see whether it is a problem or not.

(Pause)
Patient: Thank you very much, Doctor. Goodbye.
As I this story, the patient was taking a third-person perspective

understand
relative to his "problem." The therapist's question located the patient in a
first-person perspective, and in so doing helped the patient claim a different
set of rights and responsibilities in dealing with the "characteristic." Viewed
from this perspective, he had no problem and did not need any further
therapy.
Self as Physical Entity and Self as Moral Agent
Clarifying the differences between the first- and third-person perspectives is
very helpful, but there is a further ambiguity within the grammar of the first-
person pronoun. Do two forms of the pronoun "I" and "me" refer to
the
the same thing? For that matter, does "I" always mean the same thing?
Consider the statement "I am confused." There seems to be no trouble
with it, and the meaning of "I" is clear. However, what if the same person
made this statement: "I think that I am confused." In this second sentence,
the first-person pronoun is used twice. Does it refer to the same self) Is the
"I" that thinks the same as the "I" that is confused? The ambiguity within
the grammar of the first-person pronoun is illumined even more in this
sentence: "I'm certain that I'm confused." Clearly, a grammar in which an
"I" can be both certain and confused at the same time contains an ambiguity.
Let's shift the illustration from confusion to morality. If I say that I
want to do good but I find that I in fact do evil, and that I do not want to
do evil but I do it anyway, what should you think about me? Who is the "I"
that wants to do good, and how is that "I" related to the "I" that does evil?
And who is the "I" that paraphrases St. Paul so poorly?
In a series of lectures given at Oxford University in Spring, 1989, Harre
suggested that there a "double indexicality" in the first-person pronoun.
is
That is, when we "I" or "me," we are referring to ourselves both as

say
physical entities and as moral agents. These aspects of ourselves are quite
different.
As physical entities, we are embodied beings, "objects" located within
material conditions, including ongoing, unfinished speech acts, relationships,
and episodes. In this sense, my self is identical to the corporal being that I
recognize when I look in a mirror; "I" am the cluster of abilities and molecules
that opens doors, reads books, and runs to catch the bus.
As moral agents, we are responsible, decision-making, moral entities
located within a nexus of rights and duties. That is, my self is identified with
the roles I play in the various relationships that constitute me; "I" am that
dense node of expectations and attributions that comprise a story a biogra- —
phy —within the social world.
In the troublesome phrase "I think I'm confused; no, I'm certain that
I'm confused!" all the "IV are alike in that they refer to the same physically
embodied being. In this sense, the first person pronoun simply picks out the
speaker from the other bodies in the room at the time. At the same time, all
the "IV work together to locate the person in a very difficult spot with
respect to rights and duties. To be thoughtful, certain, and confused all at
once is contradictory, but such contradictions are the stuff of the moral orders
in which we live.
As a moral agent, I can certainly bewail my actions as a physical entity

or be certain that the physical entity that is "me" is confused. The fact that
272 Chapter 6 Self
the same pronoun is used for myself" both as physical entity and
first-person
as moral agent embeds ambiguity in our language that can be avoided by
making this distinction.
The confusion is nowhere more evident than in the second turn in this
conversational triplet:
"Why did you do that?"
"I could not help myself."
"Well, you should not have done it."
The second turn says that the self as moral agent is not responsible for the
actions of the self as physical entity (or way around?). Of course,
is it the other
many a scoundrel can hide behind this grammatical ambiguity, but a more
resourceful interlocutor might have insisted on clarifying the relationship
between the self as moral agent and as physical entity.
George Herbert Mead (1934, p. 178) said that "self" is a dialectical
process involving both the "I" and the "me." Struggling with ways of making
a distinction not distinguished in the language he was using, he described
the self as "essentially a social process going on with these two distinguishable
phases. If it did not have these two phases there could not be conscious
responsibility, and there would be nothing novel in experience."
Mead's view is not quite the same as Harre's. In Mead's language, the
"I" is the self perceived as a "subject": acting as an agent, capable of having
motives, accounting for actions, taking initiatives, and deciding among alter-
natives. The "me" is the self perceived as an "object": acted on rather than
acting, seeing itself as perceived by others,and affected by the decisions of
others. Both are, in different ways, moral agents; neither is quite what Harre
called a physical entity. Using Harre's terms for Mead's concepts: the "I" is
a moral agent; the "me" is a moral (not physical) entity (not agent).
In. Mead's description, the "I" is the moral agent who acts; the "me"
is what we remember ourselves to be. However, the "me" that we remember
was an "I" at the time, and we can remember it as an "I."
The "I" of this moment is present in the "me" of the next moment.
There again I cannot turn around quick enough to catch myself. I
become a "me" in so far as I remember what I said. . . . The "I"
can be given, however, this functional relationship. It is because of
"I" that we say that we are never fully aware of what we are,
the
that we surprise ourselves by our own action. It is as we act that we
are aware of ourselves. It is in memory that the "I" is constantly
present in experience. If you ask, then, where directly in your
. . .
own experience the "I" comes in, the answer is that it comes in as
a historical figure. It is what you were a second ago that is the "I"
of the "me" (Mead 1934, p. 174)
Counterpoint 6.7
I hope you see that this examination of the grammatical ambiguity of the
first-person pronoun is far more than just word play. It has far-reach-
ing, life-and-death implications.
For example,many people abuse alcohol, drugs, or both. Which is at
fault,the abuser as moral agent or as physical entity? If substance abuse is
a physical problem, then we should feel great sympathy for the moral
agent who
is tragically trapped within the body of a "sick" physical
entity. On
the other hand, if substance abuse is a moral problem, then
we should hold the abuser accountable for all the things she or he
does "while under the influence." For example, was told of a judge who
I
would not accept a defendant's plea that his actions were not criminal
because he was drunk when he performed them. "Did anyone hold a gun
to your head and make you drink?" the judge asked. "No, your Honor,
but .
." "Did anyone hold you down and force the liquor down your
.
throat?" "No, your Honor, but ." "You mean that you put yourself in that
. .
condition of your own free will? Three hundred dollars and 30 days in
the county Next case!"
jail!
But maybe
the preceding paragraph posed the question too simplisti-
cally. Perhaps self is not one or the other, either a moral agent or a
physical entity. Surely the two are inter-related in some complex manner.
But how? Where does the ability of moral agents to control their
selves as physical entities start and end? To what extent are our moral
selves the verbal expressions of the state of our hormones?
Once we disambiguate the first-person pronoun, we are able to pose
I think —
more clearly than otherwise many of the most vexing prob-
lems of ethics, law, and self-development.
Mead's ability to write passable English has never been in question, but when
he tried to use English to make distinctions that are not in English, he wound
up stuttering and stammering.
The interaction between the "I" (moral agent) and the "me" (moral
object) are the stuff of those "internal conversations" that comprise our
thinking, worrying, deliberating, and planning. Hewitt (1984, p. 90) gave
the example of
when we feel caught between what we want to do and what others

want us to do. Suppose one has been invited to a party, but would
u
really prefer to spend a quiet evening at home. IfIgo, " one might
say to herself, "I won't have a good time, because I'm tired and I
don't feel like partying. But if I don't go, I'll hurt his feelings.
274 Chapter 6 Self
The "I" contemplates

the "me. " Or is it the
other way around?
(© 1935 M.C. Escher
Foundation-Baarn Hol-
land. All rights
reserved.)
Well, maybe he'll understand if I explain that I'm tired. No, he'll
remember I also refused an invitation last week. Perhaps I can go

but not stay long. But that would also hurt his feelings, or perhaps
make him angry. " In this internal dialogue^ we see the alternation
between "I" and "me" that is self as process.
Is it too much to suggest that the quality of these internal conversations

determines the extent to which we are ethical, careful, judicious, spontaneous,
or deliberate? If so, it is well worth our whjle to make sure that both our
"I" and "me" are well developed, skillful conversants.
The Locus of Identity

The communication theory called the "coordinated management of mean-
ing" (Cronen and Pearce 1991/1992, pp. 54-56) treats the ambiguities
within the grammars of personal pronouns as a resource, not a problem. That
is, because we can use the first-person pronoun to reference ourselves as
moral agent, moral object, and physical entity all at once, we have room to
move around in our conversations. This flexibility enables wit, creativity, and
the game mastery type of competence as well as providing the raw materials
for making confusion.
Cronen and Pearce use the term locus of identity to refer to the perspec-
tive from which a person acts. This perspective is expressed in the paired
terms for self and other; that is, "I-You," "I-They," or "We-you" (singular).
The distinctive feature of this theory is the extent to which it describes
these perspectives as made in actual conversations rather than just found in
the structure of the grammar. In a debate with philosopher Josiah Royce at
Cambridge, John Dewey was confronted with the tangle of identity with
which I began this section: "How can 'A' identify 'A'?" Dewey's answer is
that there is no confusion between the two "A's" because one is performing
an action, "identifym/f," that the other is not (Farrell et al. 1959). This
substitution of the gerund identifying embeds the locus of identity within
the actions of a specific person in a specific context, not in the resources
available to us all.
There is no deep philosophical mystery about identifying oneself in

a particular situation. . . . From experience persons come to know
discursive patterns that can be coherently organized around various
lociof identity. There are, for example, ways to talk as a representative
of a group that are different than the way to coherently talk as a
personal friend or as a third-person detached observer. (Cronen and
Pearce 1991/1992, p. 57)
Some useful concepts can be gleaned from these attempts to wrestle

with the limitations of the languages of the self. The distinction between
first- and third-person perspectives keeps us in good stead, but Harre and
Mead point out that the first-person perspective must be further disambigu-
ated. Let us call the two aspects of the first-person perspective the self as moral
agent versus the self as moral or physical entity. And finally, we remember to
take these positions as made in particular conversations.
The Self in Interpersonal Communication
If Gergen (1991) about the state of contemporary society, it is

is right
characterized by the simultaneous presence of many languages of self, none
of which can sustain its claim to be the dominant idiom, or grand narrative.
Because researchers are persons, too, their work is done within these language
games, and the questions they pose as well as the answers they get are
prefigured in those languages.
Some teachers and researchers are deeply enmeshed in the romantic
language game; their work shows you how to express and discover the eternal
276 Chapter 6 Self
mystery of yourself and the selves of other people. Others arc predominantly
modernist, conducting carefully controlled studies that define the causal con-
nections between the social environment and your behavior. Some are post
modernist; their language game features metalanguage. Postmodernist
criticism and instruction focuses on how patterns of language use construct
the selves that we know ourselves to be. It is not too difficult to identify
which of these languages is drawn on by this book!
In the review of literature that follows, I have not tried to reduce
the heteroglossia of communication research about the self in interpersonal
communication because the diversity of research mirrors the heteroglossia of
contemporary society. However, by using the concepts that we gleaned from
the preceding section, we can sort through the diversity and distinguish
among perspectives. In what follows, I categorize approaches to this topic
in terms of whether it takes a first- or third-person perspective, and whether
it views the self as a moral agent or a physical or moral entity.
A reasonable question is Which of these accounts of the self is the right

one? As it turns out, although reasonable, this is not the right question to
ask, at least not without specifying what you want to do with the information.
The locus of identity results from how actions are situated. That is,
your identity in your relationship with Mike results from the how Mike (as
moral agent) positions both himself and you (as moral entities) and how you
respond to those positioning. In other words, your identities result from the
co-constructed act of identifym/f.
Therefore, if you want to position yourself or Mike as an object viewed
from the third-person perspective, then the information generated by studies
within that language for the self is the most directly relevant. On the other
hand, if you want to construct yourself or the self of those with whom you
communicate as moral agents, you need information developed from within
a different language of self.
Remember that selves are co-constructed, and that "information" is
not neutral. If you discern that Mike is using information developed within
the language of the self viewed as a third person treated as an object, you
can infer that he is viewing you as a third person (and what position does
that claim for him? The first-person perspective of self as moral agent, I think)
and as a physical or moral entity rather than an agent (i.e., you are controlled
by some factors that he has constructed for you). For example, if Mike says,
"You are an aggressive person; aggressive people like to be in charge of
others; so I am going to appoint you to the Student Government Task Force
on School Spirit!" you are being constructed as a moral entity.
Differentiating among these languages of the self is crucial to under-
standing what to do with the information developed by various research
traditions. Dialogue requires a different language of self than monologue; it
occurs in languages that take a first-person perspective and treat the selves
of both or all conversants as moral agents, not entities. In addition, theoria
speaks a language of the self as physical-moral entities, usually from the third-
person perspective; praxis requires a first-person language of the self as a

moral agent who makes decisions, takes into account and is affected by the
—
consequences of those decisions, and in this process creates social worlds —
that could have been other than what they are. The language that is "right"
is the one that serves the purposes for which you use it.
Self as Moral-Physical Entity from a Third-Person

Perspective: Personality Traits
Perhaps the single largest group of studies have been done in the modernist
language of self; they focus on the relationship between personality traits and
forms of communication. The common
element in these studies is that they
view the self as a physical or moral entity from a third-person perspective
(i.e., they tell us what he, she, or it or they do in communication). By using
impressive research designs and careful observations, these researchers claim
the right to tell "us" that our personality traits (which they will measure for
us, even if we deny having them) cause us to communicate in particular
ways. In addition, these studies tend to treat us as objects, comprised by the
perceptions of others and acted on by forces outside our knowledge or control.
Researchers who take this position believe that the differences among
much of the variety of ways in which we communicate.
individuals account for
For example, Dean Hewes and Sally Planalp (1987, p. 172) claimed that
"An understanding of the individual's knowledge, cognitive capacities and
7
emotion is the necessary point of departure for building adequate theories
of communication. That is the place of the individual in a science of communi-
cation." Thomas Steinfatt (1987) listed some of the personality' traits most
often associated with communication. One cluster of traits includes authori-
tarianism, dogmatism, rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity'. Another cluster
includes Machiavellianism (i.e., the extent to which a person's behavior re-
sembles the old Italian's advice to political leaders to be unscrupulous and
tyrannical) and whether their "locus of control" is "internal" or "external."
Each of these research traditions tells us something but at the cost of
not being able to tell us something else. These studies tell us a good bit
about "them"; it tells us something about "me," but nothing about "I" or
the possibilities of internal conversations between the "I" and the "me."
Counterpoint 6.8
One of the strongest criticisms of the "third person/self as moral/physical

entity" research project comes from the application of the Heyerdahl
solution with a twist. The twist consists of asking What will be made by
a particular pattern of actions? rather than How was this object made?
278 Chapter 6 Self
Specifically, if we look at the practice of social science that uses a

modernistic language of the self as a part of the larger societal conver-
sation about what selves are possible, then we see this form of social
science (like any other) as participating in the creation of the social
worlds in which we live, move, and find our selves. That is, the application
of this scientific process is not only a way of describing our social
worlds, it is a way of making those social worlds. And if it makes our
social worlds, it will make them in terms of the language that it uses.
Critics of the application of this form of "science" warn that if this
language is accorded the role of "expertise" and implemented in
parental behavior toward children, curricular development in the schools,
and political decisions about gun control and compulsory military
service, then we will become those kinds of selves that these scientists
think that they are discovering are already there.
Self as a Moral-Physical Entity from a First-Person

Perspective: Social Identity
Another group of researchers have asked how we achieve identification with

a particular group of people —
our social identity. That is, how do "I" know
that I am an American, middle-aged, white male? How do I act in conversa-
tions so that other people respond to me as having that identity?
Donal Carbaugh (1990) asked, "How do contemporary Americans
develop "selves" that are recognized as 'American'?" He focused on conversa-
tions that occurred in the nationally televised program named for its host,
Phil Donahue, arguing that this was a place where Americans recognize
themselves in the forms of talk that occur.
Carbaugh characterized by writing four rules, each of which
this talk
has these properties: 1) the participants in the show could "report" these
rules in their own talk; 2) the rules described "repeated" features of the talk
in the shows; 3) the rules were "intelligible" to the participants as sensible
guides to action; and 4) the rules were invoked as "repair mechanisms" when
problems occurred in the discussions on the show.
Here are the rules that met these requirements:
Rule #1: In the conversations of Donahue, a) the presentation of self

is the preferred communication activity, and b) statements of
personal opinions count as proper self presentations.
Each participant on the show assumed to have a unique self that only he
is
or she can access and about which he or she can

— — —
and should talk. Presenting
this self in talk "standing up and speaking out for yourself" is a highly —
valued activity. The structure of the show itself, of its
particularly the actions
host, constitutes a helpful scene for such a presentation, and these presenta-
tions in turn make the show interesting and profitable.
Rule #2: Interlocutors must grant speakers the moral "right" to present
self through opinions.
As enacted in practice, this rule guarantees both the moral capacity of self to
speak and the availability of a public forum for being heard, no matter how
outlandish or trivial the content of the speech might be.
Rule #3: The presentation of self through opinions should be " re-
spected," that is, tolerated as a rightful expression.
This rule, as enacted in practice, creates a tone that Carbaugh calls "rightful
tolerance," a scene in which it is right and proper to tolerate various view-
"Respect" in this case entails avoiding evaluation but does not imply
points.
"agreement" with the opinions expressed.
Rule #4: Asserting standards that are explicitly transindividual, or soci-

etal, is discouraged because such assertions are believed a) to
unduly constrain the preferred presentations of self, b) to infringe

on the "rights" of others, and c) to violate the code of proper
"respect."
That is, every self is entitled to his or her own personal opinion as long as that
opinion does not infringe on the right of every other self to have alternative
opinions.
Carbaugh says that conversations following these rules construct a
particular kind of person. Specifically, this "model person" is "realized
through free expression, is responsible for and tolerant of a degree of
dissensus, and speaks the virtues of individual 'choice' over majority
standards." (p. 137)
Lawrence Wieder and Steven Pratt ( 1990) did the same kind of analysis
of a minority group in contemporary American culture. Identity for Native
—
Americans in this case, they called themselves "Indians" has several as- —
pects. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (an agency of the federal government)
has a precise, unambiguous way for determining who is a "real Indian" based
on genetics. If someone is identified by this process as an Indian, they have
certain rights and under
responsibilities law, including access to land set aside
for them by the federal government.
However, identity is also a social issue. "Being a visible and recognizable
. . . real Indian for other real Indians is a continuous, ongoing, contingent
achievement involving both the doings of the person who would be a real
Indian and the doings of those real Indians with whom he or she interacts"
(p. 50). To be treated as an Indian by other Indians means to be admitted
to certain activities, extended certain courtesies, and granted certain respect
within the community. This is not done on the basis of genetics or physical
features; it is accomplished by participating in certain ways in conversations
with other Indians.
280 Chapter 6 Self
Wieder and Pratt describe eight characteristics of communication behav-

ior that help "real Indians" recognize each other. One of these is "reticence.*'
In the Anglo world, reticence is conceived as a communication "problem"
that people should be helped to overcome. From the perspective of "real
Indians," Anglos talk far too much and too personally in public and with
strangers. When "real Indians" meet, they are silent. This silence is not a
lack of communication; to the contrary, "it communicates that the one who
is silent is a real Indian" (p. 51). In other contexts, however, "real Indians"
engage in a distinctive form of verbal sparring described as "razzing." This
form of conversation involves humor, skill, and displays virtuosity in the
cultural form. One must know how, when, about what, and with whom to
"razz" (pp. 53-54).
This is a very interesting language of self that focuses directly on what
Mead called the "me" (or, more precisely, the "us" that is the plural of
"me"). Reading these descriptions gives a sense of how each of us engages
in conversations that construct our identity. Each group offers us a series of
tests that we have to pass if we are to be treated as a full-fledged member of
the group.
Counterpoint 6.9
The discussion of the research that treats "self as physical-moral entity

from the first-person perspective" raises some questions for me.
The absence of the data that treat "self as moral agent" strikes me as
significant. wonder if, for example, Native Americans have, in Hew-
I
itt's (1984) terms, "internal conversations" between the "I" and the "me"
about social identity? If so, in what languages of self do they occur?

Is the quality of these conversations related to the differences between
Native Americans who have more or less difficulty finding their selves
in the society in which they live?
also wonder about the relationship between social support in devel-

I
oping an identity as a moral entity (that is, in Wieder and Pratt's terms,
a "real Indian") and developing an identity as a moral agent. Can conver-
sations designed to help someone develop an identity as an entity have the
unwanted consequence of impeding the development of identity as an
agent?
These questions are one reason why am so interested in Carbaugh's
I
work that focuses on the social identity of the "dominant" group in contempo-
rary American culture: middle-class whites. Even though their identities
are more problematic, it is easy to see the processes by which
non-middle-class nonwhites' identities are constructed. And, I believe,
the view from the margins of society are always clearer than from the center.
But how do middle-class whites learn about their selves? Carbaugh's

Talking American (1988) provides one set of answers; Terry's For Whites Only
(1970) provides another. The key to both is that the members of the
dominant groups in any culture do not see themselves as a group. For them,
—
the social world in which they live even though it contains explicitly
racist or classist beliefs and institutions —
appears normal because
they experience no resistance in their movements through it.
Hardiman (1979) presented a theory of white identity development that
addresses these issues. Putting her ideas in the terms used in this
chapter, she says that whites in the United States have exactly the oppo-
site problem from that confronted by Indians in Wieder and Pratt's

account; they have an overdeveloped social identity as an entity. Specific
events or experiences must occur to challenge that identity and permit
the development of self as a moral agent.
Self as Moral Agent from a Third-Person Perspective

The contributors to this body of research proudly display their modernist
concept of the self. Calling their work "cognitive" because it deals with the
knowledge and beliefs of the people they observe (hence approximating a
sense of moral agency), they take a third-person perspective on the mental
states of the people they study.
Charles Berger's (Berger and Calabrese 1975; Berger et al. 1976) "un-
certainty reduction" approach is the clearest example of this perspective.
Berger imagined conversants as primarily motivated to reduce two forms of
uncertainty. First, they want to increase their ability to predict their own and
others' beliefs and attitudes. This phenomenon is referred to as "cognitive
uncertainty." Second, they want to increase their ability to predict their own
and others' behavior in given situations. This is referred to as "behavioral
uncertainty." The reduction of uncertainty in conversations, then, involves
the creation of proactive predictions and retroactive explanations about our
own and others' behavior, beliefs, and attitudes.
I confess to being puzzled by this approach. It reproduces the confusion
in the grammar of the first-person pronoun by treating the people studied

both as entities that are described from a third-person perspective and agents
who have purposes, make predictions, dislike uncertainty, and so on. The
problem is that these two senses of the self are not distinguished; they are
all jumbled together.
Can moral agents be engaged in conversation when treated as third

persons? Can "I's" be understood in a vocabulary of "he, she, it"? The
explanation offered here is that people want to reduce uncertainty. That looks
like the first premise of the practical syllogism leading to action, not the first
premise of an alethic syllogism leading to a statement purporting to be true.

However, the research design produces statements —empirical generalizations
282 Chapter 6 Self
about how people usually act — a kind of knowledge that tits thcorin rather
than praxis.
best use of this information is as a warning. Be wary when people
The
treat you as a third person (i.e., as a physical or moral entity) but try to
describe what you do as a moral agent! Your interests are not being served
by such a confused language of self.
Self as Moral Agent from a First-Person Perspective

This information most useful for people who live in a society containing
is the
multiple languages of self and for those of us interested in praxis rather
than theoria. Fortunately, there have been several major contributions to
understand self from this perspective. In the following paragraphs, I will
distinguish them in terms of whether their emphasis is on the first person
singular (i.e., my self located in a social context) or the first person plural
(i.e., on "face" —our selves as they are co-constructed in conversation).
First person singular: "my self." As you might expect, this is the ap-
proach of those who take a psychological interest in selves.
"Persons in conversation," noted Rom Harre (1984, pp. 15, 58) are
the primary human reality. As participants in this undifferentiated experience,
we become —
by individually appropriating and perhaps idiosyncratically
selves
—
transforming certain features of the conversations in which we participate.
Our selves consist of three features, all appropriated from our social
worlds: consciousness, agency, and identity. Consciousness consists of perceiv-
ing ourselves as located within the social world, that is, having a first-person
position within our experience. Perceiving ourselves as agents involves ac-
cepting responsibility for certain aspects of our experience as the results of
our own choices. Finally, our identity consists of an autobiography, that is,
an organization of our experience into a storv of who we are (Harre 1984,
p. 20).
Harre is deliberately interested in developing a better language of self
than currently exists; he is not content simply to work within conventional
we believe the social constructionist position, he says, then
vocabularies. If
the language we use is part of the process by which we make the selves that
we study, that we are, and that we have to live with in communities. It
behooves us, he argues, to be proactive in pur use of language so that we
can make a "better psychology" of identity. Part of his explanation of this
better psychology is a sustained analogy between physical and social worlds,
in which conversations are the creative or causal factors in the social world
just as the laws of motion or energy function in the physical world.
I take the array of persons as a primary human reality. I take the

conversations in which those persons are engaged as completing the
primary structure, bringing into being social and psychological real-
ity. Conversation is to be thought of as creating a social world just

as causality generates a physical one. (Harre 1984, pp. 64-65)
The by conversations has two parts. One is work,

social reality created
or the practical domain where we collectively produce the means of life; it
includes farming and manufacturing, buying and selling, hunting and gather-
ing, and sewing and chopping firewood. The second domain is expressive. It
consists of the moral orders in which we negotiate virtues and vices, where
we sin and achieve honor, and where we preen and prance for the notice and
approval of others.
The psychological reality consists of human minds. Minds should not be
confused with brains. Brains are physical organs that can be weighed, bruised,
— —
and perhaps someday transplanted. Minds are, in part, theories of them-
selves, clusters of beliefs that give rise to certain powers of action that produce
a recognition that, yes, "that is me."
Continuing the analogy between social and physical worlds, Harre notes
that one of the things we do when we converse is locate ourselves. Maps of
a campus or a ski slope may be useless to you no matter how well they
represent what they depict unless they contain some sort of marker that says
"you are HERE." In the physical world, we have elaborate ways of locating
ourselves "here" and "now" as we move about. In the social world, pronouns
serve this function. "I" and "we" are equivalent to "here" and "now." These
pronouns do not so much function to represent or depict who we are as they
do to locate our position within the moral worlds in which we live (Harre
1984, p. 60).
Without a sufficiently rich array of markers of location in the moral
order, or if those markers identify an insufficiently wide range of possible
locations, our selves are diminished. In this process, Harre finds the mecha-
nism by which discriminatory social structures are made. For example, Harre
noted, in the old radio version of "The Lone Ranger," "Tonto" was portrayed
as less human being than his Anglo colleague. The Lone Ranger's lines
of a
included many first-person pronoun self-references: "I'm not sure what we
should do, Tonto." Tonto, on the other hand, never referred to himself with
the first-person pronoun, but always by using his name: "Tonto confused,
Kemo Sabe." In this use of language, Harre found the mechanism for repro-
ducing the social structure that separated Anglos from Indians. Is there a
difference between Tonto's saying "I'm confused" and "Tonto [is] con-
fused"? Yes: "Tonto was the name of a public person. There was a pretty
clear implication that while the Lone Ranger had a rich and diversified personal
psychic life, the simple Indian," Harre criticized the script writers, "had no
need for the niceties of reference to personal psychic unities. His public or
social being would do" (1984, p. 67).
The emphasis on the self from the first-person pronoun does not imply
forgetting about social process. Harre argues for a fully reflexive relationship
between the personal and the social: "people and their modes of talk are
284 Chapter 6 Self
made by and for social orders, and social orders are people in conversation,"
he said (Harre 1984, p. 65) and described the process by which this reflexive
relationship occurs like this:
We express ourselves in public performances, and the quality of these

performances impress other people, who express their perceptions in
ways that impress us . . . and so on. From this circular, reflexive
processwe develop our personal skills, our beliefs, and our implicit
theory of who we are that is our ''personality." (1980, pp. 4-5)
Gergen ( 1991 ) presents a model of the development of the multiphrenic

personality that presumes the multiple languages of self in the contemporary
world. In his view, the task that each of us face is, to use Harre's term,
appropriate from the world that which we need to act effectively and with
integrity.
You probably noticed Gergen writes as if we are in a radically new
that
era, different from any that has gone before. The unique demands of being
a self in contemporary society involve an usually keen sense of self as moral
agent without forgetting our placement within co-constructed social worlds.
The multiphrenic personality' is developed in a sequence of three stages.
The first is strategic manipulator. The modernist self finds itself playing a
of roles designed to achieve certain social objectives. For example, I
series
embrace my friends from South America when I meet them but do not
embrace my friends from Northern Europe. In each case, I am acting politely
according to my friends' cultures . . . but where am "I" in all of this? What
is my cultural norm? Is my deontic logic mute with regard to hugging,
consisting only of the requirement to adapt to the expectations of others? If
you spend all your life flattering your boss so that you can be promoted to
a sufficiently high position in which you can express your own personality,
what has happened to your personality in the process? "No actions remain
sincere, simple explosions of spontaneous impulse; all are instrumental,"
Gergen (1991, p. 149) mused.
The second stage in the development of a healthy multiphrenia is the
pastiche personality. If we no longer believe in a prelinguistic "real" self, then
we are free to be "social chameleons," adapting without guilt or shame to the
requisites of the situation in which we find ourselves. The pastiche personality
"constantly borrow[s] bits and pieces of identity from whatever sources are
available and constructs] them as useful or desirable in a given situation"
(Gergen 1991, p. 150). The primary social skill needed by the pastiche
personality is "self-monitoring."
There is reason to believe that pastiche personalities thrive in contempo-
rary America. Snyder (1979) found that people who are better at strategic
self-presentation, sensitive to their public image and to situational cues of
appropriateness, and able to control or modify their appearance are generally
more successful in contemporary social settings. That is, they like others, are
less shy, less upset by inconsistencies, better at remembering information

about others, more emotionally expressive, and more influential. Gergen
( 199 1 p. 1 5 1 ) notes that a modernist would condemn such self-monitoring as
,
incoherent, superficial, and deceitful. However, Snyder works in a postmodern

vocabulary of self and praises it for giving the individual the flexibility to
cope quickly and effectively with the shifting demands of social life.
The development of an authentic self within the

third stage in the
postmodern vocabulary requires relinquishing the notion of the self as autono-
mous, separated from others. Gergen calls this the relational self. It finds
one's authentic role as a participant in a social process that includes more
than one's own self. Self identified not with a singular,
is autonomous "I"
or "me" but as the nexus of a cluster of relationships, each of which is an
"us."
At the moment, there is no well developed vocabulary for this relational
self, although fragments of it occur in the recognition that there can be no
leader without people who are led; no victor without people who are losers;
no person who is attractive without those who are attracted. We need to
Counterpoint 6. 10
"Popular culture" and fashion seem to be areas in which pastiche person-

alitiesfunction best. At least this is one interpretation of the fad of
identifying with a musical group, sports team, or celebrity. Take a look
at the insignia on t-shirts, hats, and jackets and ask yourself what is
being made by wearing them. Why do people need to be "with it" in
styles of clothing, haircuts, backpacks, athletic shoes, and all the rest?
For the pastiche personality, there is no self outside of that which can
be constructed with a social context. Clothing thus becomes a cen-
tral means of creating the self. With proper clothing, one becomes the
part. And if the clothing is orchestrated properly, it may also influ-
ence the very definition of the situation itself. In this context, the replace-
ment of the department-store-reliable clothing by the remarkable
array of apparel served up by "unique" boutiques becomes intelligible.
Each international (meaning both exotic and universally acceptable)
label promises a new and different statement of the self. And because
making the same clothing statement season after season would be a mere
repetition of the same old stories, the fashions must change. It is . . .
not the world of fashion that drives the customer into a costly parade of
continuous renewal, but the postmodern customer who seeks means
of "being" in an ever-shifting multiplicity of social contexts. (Gergen 1991,
pp. 154, 155)
286 Chapter 6 Self
develop a vocabulary that focuses on the coordinated actions of persons in

conversations, not just on individuals —and our supply of such terms, at the
moment, is limited. We have a better vocabulary for talking about Sarah's
feelings for Ken than we do for the various forms of relationships among
them. We particularly lack terms that indicate that the relationship between
Sarah and Ken may be something other than the sum or average of each of
their feelings or beliefs about the other.
First person plural: "our selves. " One attempt to develop a better vocab-
ulary for dealing with relational selves is to focus less on selves and more on
relationships, that is, to take what is co-constructed in conversations as the
primary substance of our social worlds.
Our ability to participate in relationships and episodes depends on our
location in the moral order. Some locations (the prosecuting attorney in a
murder trial, your mother and father) include the right to demand that others
describe what they were doing on the night of August 31; most do not. Most
locations include the right to choose with whom and about what we will
converse; some (patients in a psychiatric ward, prisoners of war) do not. The
clarification and maintenance of our location in to use Harre's terms — the —
productive and expressive orders is not simply a matter of self-gratification;
it is a matter of power, the ability to participate in the speech acts that involve
you.
Brown and Levinson (1979) noted that the concept of "face" is used
in many cultures as a nontechnical description of a self's location within the
moral order. If the best athlete in your high school can't make the team in
college, he or she has "lost face" by being unable to prevent himself or herself
from moving to a less desirable location in the moral order of your social
worlds. On the other hand, when your professor stops you on the street
when you are showing your parents around and praises your term paper, you
have "gained face."
Brown and Levinson (1979, p. 62) suggest, is remarkably
Face work,
consistent in all They developed a rigorous, tightly focused model
cultures.
that assumes that all people want to have autonomy (i.e., to be unimpeded
in their actions and movements) and approval (i.e., they want both positive
feedback and to avoid too much negative feedback from others). Further,
they assume that —
we are all rational in a specific sense about the ways of —
achieving autonomy and approval. That is, although we may not know any
formal logic, we are all rather skilled at reasoning how to accomplish our
goals. On the basis of these assumptions, and grounded in careful analysis
—
of conversations in three cultures the Tzeltal (a Mayan language spoken in
Mexico), Tamil (spoken in south India), and English Brown and Levinson —
developed a very useful model for understanding the way people coordinate
in themutual maintenance of face.
Adult conversants assume that all conversants have and know each —
—
other to have face and certain rational capacities. In this sense, "positive
face" refers to autonomy, and "negative face" refers to the desire not to be
disapproved of by others. Rationality refers to the expectation that each of
us is responsible for linking our behavior to certain goals. That is, if you buy
a new suit just before an important job interview, all of us who are hoping
that the interview goes well for you will infer that your new sartorial elegance-
is in order to impress the interviewer. On the other hand, you will lose face
if you select torn jeans and t-shirt for the interview; you will surely lose our
approval because we will infer that something is wrong with you, and in some
cases, you will lose autonomy because we will drag you back to your closet
and force you to change clothes.
Some speech acts threaten the face of one or more conversants by
creating a condition that restricts their autonomy or reduces their approval
Brown and Levinson call these by their acronym, FTAs, or "face-threatening
acts."For example, an expression of disapproval is more than just a representa-

tion of the speakers' evaluation; it is an act that threatens the face of the
other. In the same way, the command "get over here, you!" is not just an
expression of a desired state of affairs, it is a threat to the autonomy of the
person being ordered about.

The
face of a conversant is not always vulnerable. In the military, privi-
legesof rank allow acts that otherwise would be FTAs, for example, direct
commands, to occur without threatening the face of either conversant, and,
conversely, make other acts, normally quite benign, into serious FTAs. For
example, the face of the officer is seriously threatened if enlisted personnel
disagree with a suggestion and offer better alternatives. In psychological
therapy sessions or in the conversations between a client and lawyer, certain
definitions of the situation are created so that one person may speak freely
about things that otherwise would threaten his or her face to admit.
When the faces of all conversants are reciprocally vulnerable to the acts
of the others, any rational agent will seek to avoid FTAs or will employ certain
strategies to minimize the threat they pose. Much of the value of Brown and
Levinson's analysis comes from the taxonomy they developed of ways of
doing FTAs without really destroying one's own or the other's face. First,
they distinguish between doing acts "on" and "off record." This has to do
with the clarity of the intention of the act. To do the act on record is to make
it clear that the act threatens the face of one or the other conversant: "Smedley,
I'm placing an official reprimand in Off record means

your personnel file!"
that there could be several interpretations, at least some of which are not
threats to face. For example, if I say, "Oh, no! I forgot to go to the bank
and have no money," this may or may not be a request for you to lend me
enough to cover my lunch. At least, I can plausibly deny that was my intent
and thus save face if you say, "don't look at me, buddy, I am not going to
—
lend you money again." Although my response is weak, I can say, "No, I
was not asking for a loan."
An FTA may be done "with redress" or in ways that give face and thus
counteract the potential damage of the act. A redressive act may be focused
288 Chapter 6 Self
on either autonomy or approval. That is, it may anoint the face of the other
person by going on record that the other person has autonomy or approval.
For example, Bill may tell Tom, "Look, you may not like hearing this, but
I know that you'd do the same for me ." . .
Many communication theorists have found the phrase "bald on record"

useful. This describes an utterance that contains an FTA that is on record
—
and is done "baldly" that is, without redress. "In your face!" when shouted
by one basketball player who has just dunked the ball over the other's failed
attempt at defense is "bald on record" as an FTA.
Brown and Levinson offer some interesting observations about the
rational use of FTAs, the conditions under which it makes sense to be on or
off record, and when FTAs should be done with redress. For our purposes,
the details of this analysis are less important than the fact that a great deal
of our conversational behavior consists of the mutual care and construction
of our public selves.
A Final Word: Second Thoughts About a

Postmodern Sensibility
Gergen's description of the contemporary world as "postmodern" seems

right to me. But this description is disturbing because there really is no
"postmodern language of self." Instead, there are many different languages
of the self that coexist in doubtful harmony, and there is a heightened sense
of the importance of the process of communication itself. We have taken
on board the postmodern sensibility if we understand that our selves are
constructed in conversations, and, once constructed, those selves are contexts
for the conversations in which we participate.
This postmodern sensibility requires us to give up several ways of talking
or at least rethink what they mean. For example, "Know thyself!" does not
mean to engage in introspective navel gazing but to do an analysis of the
conversations in which you engage and the language you use in them. Circular
questioning is an excellent technique for knowing thyself, although I suspect
that the Oracle at Delphi had something else in mind when she made that
cryptic remark. In addition, expressions like "to thine own self be true" do
not make much sense without extensive qualification.
I have a lot of sympathy for Popeye's "I am what I am." I hear it as a
romantic protest against the modern language of the self; it is an exclamation
that no matter how many people converse with and about him in a language
that treats him as a third-person entity, he remains a moral agent. However,
if the statement quoted here is a sample of his competence in negotiating
about languages of the self, I'm not sanguine about Popeye's ability to
maintain face as a moral agent when he encounters the bean counters and
actuarial tables of modern society.
7. Power, Oppression, and Liberation 289
When and postmodern language of the self is developed, it will

if a
necessarily focus on the ongoing tension between the self as a moral agent
and as an entity constructed in social patterns of communication. The develop-
ment of such a language is not inevitable, but it is needed as a resource for
all of us who live in a world in which the languages of self comprise a
cacophonous motley.
Praxis
1. Power, Oppression, and Liberation
The second half of this century has witnessed a concerted effort to institution-
alize human rights. One part of this movement involves changing the identities
of oppressed people.
If oppression is successful, it is invisible to the oppressed. The poor feel
that they deserve their poverty and cannot imagine themselves well off; the
victims of discrimination feel that they deserve to be treated less well than
others (Frieri 1982). On the other hand, those who are wealthy believe that
the gap between them and the poor is inevitable if not justified and may be
completely oblivious to the conversational patterns by which they participate
in discrimination.
Anecdotes have been used as one of the most powerful tools in restruc-
turing the identities of oppressed peoples. Here are three such anecdotes.
1. Gandhi helped the citizens of his country to overcome the degrada-

tions of their experience as strangers in their own land during British colonial
rule. He told them that "there is no shame in having been a slave. There is
great shame in having been a slave-owner."
Working in groups of four, construct an explanation of why this state-
ment is so effective. Assign two of you to use Harre's notion of being a moral
agent rather than an entity and the idea of different rights and responsibilities
stemming from the first- and third-person position within the moral order.
Assign the other two to use Brown and Levinson's notions of face. Whose
face was being given and whose lost in Gandhi's statement? Was this statement
"bald on record" or was it done "with redress"?
During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, numerous stories

2.
were told by African Americans to other African Americans to foster both
290 Chapter 6 Self
resentment and pride. One of the most powerful stories had to do with a
great fair held in Atlanta for whites only. The speaker described how his
daughter saw the advertisement for the fair on television. She told him about
the clowns, elephants and tigers, and exciting rides. "Can we go. Daddy?
Daddy, take me!" Turning to the audience, the storyteller said, "How
Please,
do you tell your daughter, your darling daughter, whom you love almost as
much as if she were white, that she can't go to the fair because she's a nigger?"
As you might imagine, this anecdote was particularly effective for whites
sympathetic to the civil rights movement.
Working in groups of four, develop an explanation of why this anecdote

was effective. In what vocabulary of self is it located: romantic, modernist,
or postmodern? What person -perspective does the speaker take for himself?
What person-perspective does he invite the audience to take? Does he treat
himself as moral agent or moral entity?
If sympathetic whites were powerfully affected by this story, what about
racist whites? How do you think they would respond to the speaker telling
this story? Write a conversation between the black civil rights activist and a
white supremacist in which this story is the first turn. What languages of self
are used in this conversation? How would the conversation differ if a different
language of self were used?
When you are finished, compare your explanations with those of other
groups.
3. movement of the 1990s, the story is told

In the continuing feminist
—
of three persons a black woman, a white woman, and a white man who —
were asked to look into a mirror and tell what they saw. The first said, "I
see a black woman." The second said, "I see a woman." The third said, "I
see a person."
The point of this story, of course, is that one's own race and gender
are invisible to members of the dominant group, but that the gender and
racial inflections of society are very obvious to those who are among the
others. These inflections become part of their very identities in a way that
being a white male would not.
Working in groups of four, take the role of a task force whose purpose
is to help males become sensitive to the gender inflections of conversations
in which they and to help white males and females become more
participate,
sensitive to the racial inflections of their conversations. Do a bit of research
about how this is done, and assess these strategies in terms of how effective
and how ethical you think they are. When you are finished, select the most
and least effective, and most and least ethical strategy and describe them to
the other groups.
3. The Spiraling Cycle of Enfeeblement 291
2. The Identity Crisis
Psychologist Erik Erikson said thatyoung adults confront an "identity crisis."

A combination of social structures and genetic maturation make the late teens
and early twenties a period in which the question Who am I? becomes a
central concern. According to Erikson, much of the behavior of young adults
can be understood as various ways of answering this question.
But is this question equally relevant and equally difficult for everyone?
Slugoski and Ginsberg (1989) suggested that this question is more poignant
for males than for females, and more common among relatively affluent or
upwardly mobile members of modern, Western society than among those
from a more traditional society or those with fewer choices. In fact, they
suggest that the identity crisis is not a part of objective reality at all; it is a
"culturally appropriated mode of discourse in which individuals imbue their
actions with rationality and warrantability" (p. 37). That is, to have an identity-
crisis is not to have a physiological state that is different from those who do
not experience the crisis; rather, it is to engage in a particular language game

that names set of experiences as a crisis, initiates script for how the person
a. a.
and his or her significant others should converse, and confers a specific set of
rights and responsibilities on the person suffering the crisis.
To have an identity crisis is to treat "identity" as if it were the achieve-
ment of the person, and thus to define the person as exercising personal
freedom, and responsibility. These are positively valued traits in
self-efficacy,
contemporary American society, and the identity crisis may be seen as a means
of laying claim to these virtues. By the same token, those who do not have
an identity crisis are seen as exercising less freedom, efficacy, and responsibility.
What's wrong with your is the implicit question. Why aren't you having a
crisis?
Working in groups of three or four, answer these questions. What

language of self are Slugoski and Ginsburg using to think about the identity
crisis? what language of self did Erikson originally pose the description?
In
Assign one person to simulate or role-play an identity crisis (something like
Bill's with which the Narrative began, or worse), assign another to respond,
and a third to monitor their use of languages of self. Exchange roles and
change languages of self. Start with romantic, then modern, and then use
the postmodern sensibility to the plurality of languages about the self. Keep
track of the person positions that you use and whether the self is treated as
a moral agent or as an entity.
3. The Spiraling Cycle of Enfeeblement
The "spiraling cycle of enfeeblement" was described at some length in Coun-
terpoint 6.6. If Gergen is right, we have created a new growth industry in

.
292 Chapter 6 Self
this country: the creation and dissemination of new of

labels for patterns
"mental deficit. They discredit the individual, drawing attention to problems,
shortcomings, or incapacities" (Gergen 1991, p. 13).
Surely this is a game that any number can play! Working in groups of
five, think up some new enfeebling labels and start using them. For example,
you may judge someone to be pun impaired (the dreaded condition of not
being able to appreciate your puns), or rose phobic (someone who does not
like red-headed people), or suffering from post-dining syndrome (a cluster
of symptoms that occur after you have had a big meal in which food does
not seem interesting to you and you are a bit sleepy). Help each other invent
these labels, unless the other group members are numero-phobic (i.e., they
do not like to work with large numbers of other people). You may find a
thesaurus or an etymological dictionary a great help in this project.
For fun, compare your most interesting creations with those of other
groups. More seriously, think about the consequences that would follow if
you were highly respected professionals who had the power to pass laws,
distribute rewards and punishment, administer medication, and influence
public opinion about these people.
4. Popular Culture and Fashion
The pastiche personality seems particularly attracted to popular culture and

fashion. Working in groups of four, assign yourselves to watch television,
listen to radio, read popular magazines, and watch some movies. As you do,
carefully note the languages of the self that are used. When you have answered
the following questions, discuss your findings with the other groups in the
class.
1. words and phrases that seem particularly associated with

Identify
the romantic, modernist, and postmodern vocabularies of self.
2. Identify conversations that have mixed vocabularies. What kinds of
communication problems occur?
3. Are the various vocabularies of self associated with particular forms
of popular culture? For example, is romanticism really the dominant vocabu-

lary in country and western music and on soap operas or telenovellas? Is
modernistic vocabulary the predominant vocabulary in science fiction movies
and popular science magazines? Does "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
reflect a postmodern sensibility?
4. Based on this project, what is the mix of vocabularies of self in
popular culture?
5 Do you agree with Gergen's comment about an impoverished vocab-
ulary for the "relational self"? What instances of this vocabulary did you
find? Where do you think this vocabulary will be developed?
5. Constructing Your Self in Conversations 293
5. Constructing Your Self in Conversations
In the section "The Self in Interpersonal Communication," I alluded to the

fact that your self is co-constructed in conversations with many other people,
and that these people speak numerous different languages of self. The
in
language that they use when speaking to you is not neutral with respect to
the kind of self they want or want you to be.
You should not assume that everyone who speaks to you is deliberately
trying to construct your self in one way or another because most people are
only dimly aware of their language or the process of the social construction
of selves. However, the fact that they speak a particular language of self from
habit or ignorance probably means
that they are even more confined by what
its grammar prefigures than if they had deliberately chosen to use it.
The question I want to pose is how vow should deal with their languages
of self. At the very least, you should be aware of the languages of self that
you use and that the people with whom you converse use. In the following
activities, you should draw some conclusions about the kinds of languages
of self that you feel most comfortable with in particular relationships and
particular situations, and perhaps practice some game mastery skills in negoti-
ating for changing your conversations to those languages.
Working in groups of three or four, identify some familiar episodes
and relationships, such as basic training in the military; taking a standardized
achievement test, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test; or interviewing for
a job. Using the notions of person-perspective and the distinction between
self as moral agent or as physical -moral entity, identify what language of
the self is used in these situations. Continue to think of situations until
you have an example of all the ones discussed in the "Narrative" section.
Write down just enough about each of these situations to hold them in
your memories.
Try using Gergen's notion of romantic, modernistic, and postmodern
language of the self. Can you associate these situations with these types of
languages? What would be different if basic training in the military were to
assume the postmodern concept that there are multiple languages, none of
which is the grand narrative? What would happen if the SAT exam were
conducted and scored in the romantic language of self?
Assigning roles to the members of your group, do impromptu skits of
the situations you identified. Assign one person to act within the language
of the self that you described as usually occurring in this setting; assign
another person to try to change that language. Use all that you know about
game mastery as ways of changing the frame in which selves are usually
constructed in this situation. Assign the other member(s) of the group as
critics and referees, carefully observing the skit and noting what works and
what does not, and helping the change -agent to detect openings for game
master^'.
294 Chapter 6 Self
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CHAPTER
7 Culture
Culture is communication and communication is
culture.
Hall 1959, p. 169
Culture is interpersonal communication "frozen"; inter-

personal communication is culture "in process."
Pearce 1994
Communication and culture reciprocally influence each

other. The culture from which individuals come affects the
way they communicate, and the way individuals com-
municate can change the culture they share. Most
analyses of interpersonal communication, however,
virtually ignore this relationship and study commu-
nication in a cultural vacuum.
Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey 1988, p. 17
KEY WORDS

A Concept of Culture able to chapter include

for Interpersonal
Differentiate intercultural
Communication
between rhetorical communication;
Communication and sensitivityand communication in the
the Family: A Case exoticism as ways family; limits,
Study of Cultural of relating to
Change boundaries, and
other cultures
horizons; pidgin and
Intercultural Commu- Differentiate Creole; bricolage
nication: A Special
between
Case of Interpersonal conversations that are
Communication intercultural from
Culture and Interper- those that are deeply
sonal Communication enmeshed in a single
A Final Word: New culture

Communication Skills Compare various
Are Needed patterns of family
communication
Avoid linguistic
tyranny when you
are communicating
1. Improving Intercul- with people from
tural Communication other cultures
2. Family Communica- Assess three

tion Patterns suggestions for
living in postmodern
3. Common Sense
society
and Intercultural
Communication
4. Recipes for Living in
Postmodern Society
:
298 Chapter 7 Culture
Marrattve
Rosa: Hi! I'm Rosa. Who are you?
Robert: I'm Robert. I'm a freshman and I come from Ohio. How about
you?
Rosa: I'm a senior communication major. I grew up here in Chicago.
What's your major?
Robert: I haven't decided yet. I want to take some courses in several
areas that I don't know about before I decide.
Rosa: That's agood idea. I changed majors three times before settling
on communication! Do you live on campus?
For many people, this conversation is so mundane that they can practically
"lip-synch" the As I wrote it, I tried to typify the culture shared by
lines.
Rosa and Robert. If I was successful as a playwright, this conversation required

little thought on either of their parts; they acted spontaneously (i.e., following
cultural scripts that they have learned so well that they have forgotten that
they exist). If asked later, "Did you meet anyone interesting today?" each is
likely to name the other. If Robert is asked to describe Rosa, he might say
"she's friendly, helpful, and open minded." "How do you know that?" his
querulous communication professor might ask persistently, until Robert fi-
nally says "Well, I just know! That's how she seemed to me" — or, in other
words, by intuition.
The spontaneity of conversations such from the fact that
as this derives
their structure and the rules for who does what when and in what manner
are deeply embedded in the culture of the conversants. Because Robert and
Rosa are enmeshed in that culture, they are able to grasp almost instantane-
ously logical connections, moral evaluations, and aesthetic appeals that may
resist even their most determined attempt to articulate, and they are able to
act in the conversation without giving it any overt thought.

Careful analysis shows that far more than what Robert and Rosa are
aware of is going on in this conversation. By their spontaneous ability to put
together a pleasant conversation, they have identified each other as sharing
a common culture. (This sets them apart from the aforementioned pesky
querulous communication professors who ask "How do you know?") They
have exchanged what their cultural script defines as the appropriate informa-
tion on which to base further decisions about whether to continue the conver-
sation or establish a relationship.
However natural this conversation may seem Rosa and Robert, its
to
coherence derives from a specific cultural context. There are many other
cultures in the world with different scripts, frames, and rules. If this conversa-
tion were to occur elsewhere and at a different time, the conversation would
appear deviant, perhaps shocking, but certainly not as bland as I intended
A Concept of Culture for Interpersonal Communication 299
for you to find it. Some of its distinctive features "fit" its specific cultural
context.
1 The woman, Rosa, took the initiative in starting a conversation with

a man that she did not know. Further, the man, Robert, treated this as normal;
he did not take offense or show surprise. In some cultures, Rosa's assertiveness
would be unusual, unseemly, and understood as evidence that she is an
immoral person.
2. The whole conversation took place without identifying the conver-
sant^' families. In fact, Rosa and Robert consistently used only their first
—
names a practice considered shockingly familiar for a first conversation in
some cultures and cripplingly uninformative in others.
3. The conversation assumed that Rosa and Robert were social equals,
suitable for any relationship they chose to develop. In many cultures, whether
this conversation itself would have occurred depends on their membership
in appropriate social or economic categories, and if these were not known
from the way they dressed or some such sign, they would certainly seek to
discover it in the conversation.
4. Certain things did not occur in the conversation and would probably
be considered inappropriate if they did. For example, Rosa did not ask: "Are
you married?" "What's your gradepoint average?" "How much money do
your parents make?" "What's your religion?"
Counterpoint 7. 1
American researchers have focused on "initial interactions" as a particu-

larly significant form of conversation. To what extent is this limited to the
culture of the researchers?
One study compared Taiwanese and American college students. They
found that is impossible to compare the two conversations directly.
it
The social structure of the United States makes meeting people a frequent
and important event; in Taiwan, the most significant meetings are accom-
plished when both people are introduced by a third person.
Compared with college students in the United States, Taiwanese give
relatively information about themselves. Americans are garrulous and
little
tend to talk freely in the initial conversation about topics that Chinese
college students think of as "private" or "too intimate."
However, simple counts of bits of information given in these first en-
counters is misleading. Because of the social structure, when a Taiwanese is
told the other's home town and high school, they know far more about
the other than a similarly informed American (Alexander et al. 1986).
As I created them for the sake of this example, Rosa and Robert would
find these questions unusual in a conversation with a newly met acquaintance.
However, there are cultures in which these questions are normal parts of
such conversations. It is not the content of the questions per se, but only
their fit into culturally specific patterns of felt moral obligation that make
them seem foreign to Robert and Rosa.
If Rosa or Robert had asked each other any of these questions, they
would have revealed that they did not share a common culture (or that at
least one of them chose not to follow the prescribed patterns for the culture
that they shared). This would have produced a very different conversation
and a very different response by each of them to the inquisitive communication
professor's questions about "What happened in your conversation?" and
"How do vou know that he or she has those characteristics?"
A Concept of Culture for Interpersonal Communication
Culture is a part of our social worlds. Like other events and objects of our
social worlds, it is simultaneously the context of the conversations in which
we and the product of those conversations.
participate
Culturedepicted in the "atomic model" as one of the multiple
is
contexts for what we do and say in interpersonal communication. Along with

speech acts, episodes, relationships, and the self, it frames each successive
moment of action in interpersonal communication, imposing elaborate matri-
ces of deontic logics within which we act and evaluate our actions.
The term culture is not easy to define precisely. It is used in a family
of language games and has no single best definition. Gudykunst and Ting-
Toomay (1988, pp. 27-30) took four pages to review various attempts to
harness the concept into an acceptable verbal formula, and their own offering
is not likely to be taken as definitive. "Culture," they say (p. 30), "is a script
or a schema shared by a large group of people. The 'group' on which we
focus throughout the book is the nation or society."
The various definitions of culture can be sorted into three groups,
artifact depending on whether the definer focuses on cultural artifacts (stone axes,
Doric columns, Roman arches, Gothic cathedrals, or modern skyscrapers);
collective beliefs (Islam, Christianity, animism, or democracy); or recurring,
distinctive scripts or practices (college homecoming celebrations, elections,
Thanksgiving, or human sacrifice).
I have come to believe that there should not be a definitive definition
of culture. Culture is not"thing" to be defined but something similar to
a
a relationship or a "difference." That is, maybe it is best to think of culture
as something like an eddy or a current or "dark." The "dark" is all too visible
when you are trying to find your way on a steep hill on a cloudy night, but
it disappears as soon as you shine a flashlight on it. Questions like How dark
is and Where does the dark end and the light begin? are best answered
it?
indirectly because the dark shrinks away from the glare of too- intense scrutiny.
Culture is something like that. We learn culture by participating in it,
not by studying it. That is, as infants, we are given roles in a particular set
of relationships (but not others), are allowed or forced to act in a particular
set of episodes (but not others), and are enveloped in a particular set of
languages with which to name and comprehend all of this. As infants, we
begin to feel our way around in the complex texture of social worlds; after
a while, we don't bump into sharp edges quite so frequently we learn what —
to expect and are less often surprised (and perhaps less often delighted! ), and
we begin to take more and more for granted. Culture is precisely this "taken- — f/j\/l5iBi~&
for-granted" aspect of our social worlds that surround the relationships,
identities, or speech acts that we think about.
More useful than a definition is a description of when and why the
term culture is used. In the preceding chapters, you learned to think of your
social worlds as of conversations, and of yourself as locations within
a terrain
that terrain. To come to grips with culture, now take an Olympian view of
this terrain as if'you were outside it.
This fictitious, privileged perspective is possible because you can watch

ethnographic films that depict social worlds in which you cannot participate,
you can imagine worlds that have not and willyou can travel and
never exist,
observe conversations in which you have no role, and you can develop the
powers of empathy so that you see that even the conversations in which you
participate are different if they are experienced from locations that you cannot
be in. The first and most important value of these "travelers' tales" is that
there are conversations beyond the array of those that you can participate
in, that your social worlds have an end but that there are social worlds on
the other side (Pearce and Kang 1988). In other words, your own social
worlds are a part of a much larger set of social worlds, some of which you
do not know about and many of which you could not enter no matter how
hard you tried.
Almost a century ago, an ecologist named von Uexkull (1909) intro-
duced a way of thinking that is useful for dealing with culture. He used the
German word umwelt to name that part of the physical world that is available
as a living space to the members of a species. For example, the sea is part of
the umwelt of a seal but not that of a wolf, and neither can use the air like
a bird. I suspect that neither the seal nor the wolf thinks much about the
fact that one of them swims and the other does not, but that fact structures
their lives in many ways, not the least of which is that fish are a prime food
source for one but pretty much excluded from the diet of the other.
Culture is to social worlds as the umwelt is to the material world. Culture
is that part of the sum total of humanity's social worlds that are available to
groups of conversants as a living space. We know and can move around in
our culture; what is outside is unknown and unavailable to us. Culture sur-
Refrain 7.1
Two Definitions of Culture

From a third-person perspective: Culture is that part of our social worlds
in we live and can move;
which that array of conversations in which
we know how to participate.
From
a first-person perspective: Culture is that part of our social worlds
inwhich we live and can move but of which we are usually unaware; the
"frame" for those events and objects that we focus on as the content of
our social worlds.
rounds the events and objects on which we focus our attention; it is the
context of the contexts in which we find ourselves and into which we act; it
the usually-taken-for-granted background, ox frame, of our actions.

s* is
You
are already familiar with Wittgenstein's ( 1922) statement that "the
limitsof my language make the limits of my world." But what kind of limits
are these? Pearce and Kang (1988) distinguished between "horizons" and
"boundaries." Horizons are the natural limits of sight; they mark the end of
what can be seen but with no sense of confinement or impediment. That is,
they are not visible as limits. Boundaries are imposed restrictions; the bars
on a cage that mark off distinctions within the array of what we know between
where we can go and where we cannot.
The natural state of human beings is to be limited within cultural
horizons. We can we can move unimpeded within these
feel fully free if
horizons because, to put it simplistically, we do not know what we do not

know. Horizons are the limits of our social itmwelt. However, human beings
have the expand their social umwelt by peeking over those horizons
ability to
(or, to change the metaphor, to deconstruct their symbols, empathically take

the roles of others, imagine other worlds, etc.). When we do, we find ourselves
thrust into social worlds for which we are unprepared or aware of social worlds
into which we cannot gain admittance. Thus, horizons become boundaries.
Wittgenstein's project was to convert horizons into boundaries, thus
freeing us from limits built into our language of which we were unaware.
Thus freed, we can avoid repeating old mistakes and develop new ways of
acting. In a strange way, the events of the twentieth century have done on
a larger scale what Wittgenstein was trying to do for professional philosophers.
The tragic wars of the first half of the century created an unprecedented
economic and political interdependence among cultures once nearly separated
by tradition, mutual choice, and geography. The development of the technol-
ogies of moving messages and people easily around the world have created
an infrastructure for conversations in which we regularly confront things from
Counterpoint 7.2
In the description of culture as a social umwelt, made extensive use of

I
geographic and spacial metaphors. Treat these as metaphors, that is,

sense what they are being used to do without taking them literally. The
point am making is fairly clear within the structure of the metaphor: your
I
"life space" is smaller than the sum total of the past, present, and future
life spaces of all human beings. You simply cannot live all the lives
that have been lived.

The metaphor breaks down if you treat it literally. What is this notion
of the sum total of all human life spaces? Who says that our social worlds
are best represented spatially? I'm particularly suspicious of the notion
implicit in the spacial metaphor that all points in the space are equiva-
lent. In the discussion of heteroglossia and polysemy, expressed myI
belief that —to mix metaphors —

every point in the space of our social worlds
is a part of many dimensions and that these dimensions are, at least
potentially, incommensurate.
Perhaps there are better metaphors. Geertz (1983, p. 30) said that the
three major metaphors for culture currently in use are "game," "drama,"
and "text."
As "life is a game" proponents tend to gravitate toward face-to-face

interaction, courtship and cocktail parties as the most fertile ground
for their sort of analysis, and "life is a stage" proponents are attracted
toward collective intensities, carnivals and insurrections for the same
reason, so "life is a text" proponents incline toward the examination of
imaginative forms: jokes, proverbs, popular arts. There is nothing

either surprising or reprehensible in this; one naturally tries one's analo-
gies out where they seem most likely to work. But their long-run fates
surely rest on their capacity to move beyond their easier initial suc-
—
cesses to hard and less predictable ones of the game idea to make sense
of worship, the drama idea to explicate humor, or the text idea to clarify
war. (Geertz 1983, p. 33)
Joseph Campbell (1972) said that the events of the twentieth century
both require and provide the opportunity for the development of new
metaphors by which we can understand ourselves (he cited psycho-
analysis as the turn "inward" and the exploration of space as the turn
"outward").
I have no interest in defending my use of one of these metaphors
instead of another; instead, I invite you to think with whatever meta-
phor works best for you.
However, the spacial metaphor works well to make the distinction be-
tween boundaries and horizons. For example:
We are writing at the end of a long New England winter. If we knew
only the geography of New England, the "margins" set by the
Atlantic to the east, New York City to the south, the Berkshires to the
west, and the St. Lawrence River to the north would appear to be the
[horizons] of the world. We would feel free if we could travel unrestricted
within this area. The idea of "leaving" would never occur to us because
we do —
not know of— or believe in anything outside it. Travelers who
tellus of warm sun on white bejches with sparkling blue water
even in the winter (sigh!) seem to us to be telling fairy tales. If they
insist on being taken literally, we may accuse them of being mali-
cious or deluded. On the other hand, if we learn that there is a world
outside New England, with deserts and rain forests and warm
beaches and coral reefs, then the margins of the region function as
[boundaries] rather than [horizons]. Our sense of freedom vanishes unless
we can travel outside the limits. Unrestricted regional travel, which
gives us freedom within [horizons], is frustrating confinement within
[boundaries]. (Pearce and Kang 1988, p. 22)
beyond our cultural horizons. In the process, those horizons are transmuted
into boundaries, and we have to decide whether to be content within our
cages or to expand our social umwelt. Either choice has important conse-
quences, and the decision warrants a consideration of the role of culture in
interpersonal communication.
Culture Is Normally Invisible
By definition, what is prefigured by our culture appears "normal" to us.

Culture consists of those resources that we use to "normalize" our perceptions
and our actions. Other people's cultures are visible. They eat strange foods with
funny utensils, laugh at jokes that we don't understand, and miss the point
of our clever witticisms. They show up at the wrong time for appointments
without even the decency to apologize. On the other hand, our actions are
"natural," "normal," and "decent." (Curiously, they say the same thing
about us!)
In the quotation with which I began this chapter, Gudykunst and Ting-
Toomay reported that researchers usually study communication in "a cultural
vacuum." Although their point is clear, their metaphor is not the best. Neither
interpersonal communication nor research about it can occur in a cultural
vacuum; in fact, I cannot imagine what a cultural vacuum might be. What
Gudykunst and Ting-Toomay meant to say, I think, is that most researchers
do not specify the cultural context in which interpersonal communication
occurs; like the people they study, researchers think, act, and write in the
context of cultural patterns of which they are unaware and which they do
not focus on in their descriptions. Most interpersonal communication (and
most research about it) occurs within unnoticed and hence unremarked cul-
tural frames that tacitly determine its shape.
Two Ways of Discovering Culture
An educated person (as opposed to one who has extensive "training") is

WVOlP^ J
among other things, by an awareness of the sources and limita-
distinguished,
CxQ^^ A ^^
J
tions of what he or she knows. One part of this quality is an awareness that
\ v\C^^^
we have cultural horizons. At least the awareness that, for example, not ' -
\i\ x'VJ^"''
everyone observes the same religious or national holidays that we do or share r » (\»
jfy^"
a fondness for the same cultural symbols as we do facilitates communicating X" ^ ,
pA)^-^
with people who have different cultural parameters than ours. Even if we are W)i^ /"0
going to communicate primarily with people who share our culture, if we ^ *
\\K^
f
are going to engage in gcime mastery, we need to know what the rules are y \j^
so that we can change them. With an awareness of our cultural horizons, we ^
can seek out and converse with those who are not like us and glean the
benefits of new perspectives on our own form of life and opening up new
vistas for our amusement, edification, and aesthetic pleasure.
But how can we discover our cultural horizons? They are the most
elusive parts of our social worlds. There are two proven ways.
By contrast. In contrasting our culture with others, we hold our own

taken-for-granted perception up against some other, and in the process we
gain a sudden, vivid, and sometimes transforming awareness of the particulari-
ties of our culture. This discovery of our own culture breaks us out of
"normalcy"; it is as if a wolf suddenly realized that his evolution of pelt and
paws barred him from swimming in the sea like a seal, or if a seal were
suddenly to see how the evolution of flippers forever prevented him from
running miles in the woods like a wolf.
We have experiences like these when we discover the differences between

our culture and those of other people. In my culture, being late for a meeting
is considered rude —
it requires an apology and an explanation. The extent
to which my culture is structured by the mechanical computation of time is

a discovery I made while working with people from other cultures in which
promptness is not a virtue and minutes or hours are not the primary measure
for activities. This lead to a greater discovery that my culture has a particular
sense of time that is from some others: it views time as
strikingly different
linear, moving from one place to another, and as a commodity that is to be
"spent" and not "wasted." No matter how natural this concept of time is
to me, it is certainly not universal.
There are many ways to discover your own culture by contrast. Take a
long, overseas vacation in which you live and work with people from other
cultures. If you do not have the resources to do this, make friends with people
from a different national, ethnic, or religious heritage than your own. In
addition, take courses in cultural anthropology or "area studies" courses
about parts of the world about which you know very little. Make a point to
watch foreign movies; watch ethnographic films; and read books about and
by authors from cultures different from your own. As you do, you get a
double education. First, you learn about other people, places, and things.
Second, by contrasting your own culture with theirs, you learn about your
own.
By experiencing cultural change. You do not have to travel to exotic

places to contrast your culture with that of another. The dynamic forces in
contemporary society are sufficiently powerful that they create cultural change
rapidly, that is, within a normal lifespan.
Perhaps there was a time when only immigrants enlarged their cultural
horizons. However, the pace of change is now so rapid that modernity' makes
immigrants of us all; all that you have to do to experience cultural change is
wait for a bit.
I have no idea of what cultural changes you have experienced and will
experience in your life, but I feel very confident in predicting that you have
adapted or will have to adapt to a culture that has changed around you.
Counterpoint 7.3
"Progress" is one of the central beliefs in Western culture. Nisbett (1980,

p. 8) wrote
The history of all that is greatest in the West

is grounded deeply . . .
in the belief that what one does time is at once tribute to the
in one's own
greatness and indispensability of the past, and confidence in an ever
more golden future. remain convinced that this idea has done more
. . . I
good over a 2500-year period, led to more creativeness in more spheres,

and given more strength to human hope and to individual desire
for improvement than any other single idea in Western history.
After such a valedictory, we are dashed to read Nisbett's (1980, p. 9) dire

observation that "Everything now suggests, however, that Western faith in
the dogma of progress is waning rapidly ." . .
When the belief in progress is coupled with the powerful instruments

of social change as they have been since the industrial revolution,
the rate of change is increased. If we use a human life span as the measure,
then the rate of change is rapid; that is, human beings may reasonably
expect to see a new product, idea, or fashion come into being (as some-
thing "new"), mature (become something "old"), and be replaced by
something else that is celebrated as being "new."
Pearce (1989, p. 145) described this pattern as the "strange loop of
modernity." If you follow the arrows in Figure 7.1, you trace the cycle of
novelty, obsolescence, and replacement. The length of time that it takes
for something to go through this whole cycle is its "period." If the
periods are sufficiently short, even the most committed modernists begin
to recognize that they have gone around this path before.
Truth is rational Figure 7.1

The strange loop of
Change counts as progress
modernity (From
Self-worth is achieved by being the agent of change Pearce, 1989, p. 145)
"this is not new" "this is new"
work to change it £ celebrate its novelty
The strange loop of modernity.
One consequences of the strange loop of modernity is that values

of the
are destroyed. That is, the value of any object has to do with its novelty;
"old" is bad, and "new" is good. But novelty does not adhere in the
object, only in its placement within a time sequence. As a result, no
— —
thing (and think the play on words nothing is appropriate) has value
I
other than that derived from its place within the strange loop.
The followingdescription of the culture of people who write interpersonal

communication textbooks may give you an analogy that you can use to
understand your own experiences.
Gudykunst and Ting-Toomay's 1988, p. 17) description of the cultural
(
vacuum in which books about interpersonal communication have been written

is an accurate assessment. Until recently, the scholarly literature about inter-
personal communication has said very little about culture. More specifically,
it has silently assumed and thus unwittingly reproduced the cultural assump-
tions of the culture of those who wrote it: they are mostly male, predominantly
white, upper-lower or middle class, and almost exclusively enmeshed in the
culture of middle and late twentieth century United States.

History has a way of playing jokes at the expense of those who grow
too comfortable within their cultural horizons, and so it has been in the
study of interpersonal communication. We have not so much "discovered"
culture as we have had it forced on our attention by the not-so-gentle blows
of social and political events.
Thirty years ago, the analysis of Rosa and Robert's initial interaction
would not have extended so far as to implicate their culture. For example,
Watzlawick (1967) concept that there were tnvo
et al.'s levels of meaning
in conversations —
content and relationship was a major and controversial
innovation. However, as more research was done, we discovered that conver-
sants' ability to participate in conversations like these is specific to their
. —
cultures. This became obvious, in part, because the white, male, United States
culture was undergoing radical changes that showed up both in the practices
of our subjects and in those of the researchers.
Take 1962 as a bench mark year for comparison with the present. It
was in this year that Rosa Parks, a tired African-American woman riding home
from work, refused to stand in the back of the bus so that white passengers
could sit in the front. Sadly, if you had a "state-of-the-art" education in
interpersonal communication in 1962 and wanted to do an analysis of this
event from a communication perspective, you would probably not get to the
issues that would have sensitized you to the civil rights movement and the
rest of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Prior to 1962, interpersonal communication textbooks and research
like the society in which they existed —could be characterized like this.
1 They assumed a culturally homogeneous society. That society was

white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant; they spoke English as their only lan-
guage. Of course, non-WASPS and non-English speakers existed, but they
did so as "others." They were identified by their differences from the norm
and left to find their own way of getting around in society. For example,
traffic signs, high school classrooms, and public announcements were made
only in English, and minority groups were "acceptable" based on how closely
they approximated the characteristics of the "stories told" by WASPs about
themselves.
They assumed that everyone shared a common rationality. That is,
2.
that there is one "right" way of reasoning, and anyone who does not draw
the same conclusions from the same evidence is either a knave or a fool.
Students were taught what counted as persuasive evidence, making no allow-
ance for cultural difference in what counts as "evidence," much less what
counts as "persuasion." That is, everyone was expected to perform the same
conversational implications, to use the same array of accounts, to punctuate
episodes similarly, and to do "face-work" in the same manner.
3. They assumed that the contexts in which people acted were stable.
That is, particular acts could be evaluated on the basis of how well they fit
the requirements of specific situations, and those situations were not expected
to change. Etiquette books as well as manuals on how to win friends and
influence people prescribed how to dress, speak, and think "properly" and
"effectively." This assumption was institutionalized in a particular form of
dcontic logic that paralleled the categorical syllogism. That is, if the actions
of particular individuals did not fit what was prefigured by the established
contexts of relationships, episodes, and selves, the individuals not the con- —
texts —were at fault. The goals of discipline, law and order, education, and
therapy were to help wayward individuals fit into established contexts.
4. They assumed that the locus of social action was the individual, and
that individuals (each of us, separately) are autonomous, cognitive entities
who possess certain rights and live in an objective world of events and objects.
The obvious tension between this assumption of radical individualism and

the strong contextualism in #3 earlier was bridged by an ethic of responsibility.
It was considered the moral responsibility of individuals to discern the com-
mon rationality (#2) within the horizons of a common culture (#1) so that
each person would hold themselves responsible for "fitting in" to the estab-
lished contexts. Individuals who did
fit in were not considered as evidence
not
that might call thesecond, or third assumptions into question, but as
first,
morally irresponsible persons who should be admonished.
Around 30 years later, American culture has changed and so have inter-
personal textbooks and research. Both are far more aware of culture, and are
sensitive to their specific cultural patterns as well as to their horizons. In
addition to being more aware of culture, contemporary American culture
includes a set of assumptions that specifically deny each of those listed earlier,
and these are prominently featured in interpersonal communication text-
books. Specifically:
1 We live in a culturally diverse society in which "we" are many differ-

ent things. When thought of all together, we are a "collage" or "motley"
rather than either a single cultural group or a homogeneous intercultural
group. This statement simply recognizes that we Americans come from many
different culturalbackgrounds and that the "melting pot" is a poor metaphor
for our cultural experience in this country. In addition, we live in an increas-
ingly interdependent world in which military, economic, and political alli-
ances, as well as our mutual participation in the ecology, prevent us from
constructing sharp boundaries around any homogeneous notion of who "we"
are.
2 There are many rationalities and sets of values that cannot be reduced
to some common denominator or forced to fit, or agree, with one another.
As people communicate with each other within these rationalities, they pro-
duce many mutually exclusive stories, each of which contain powerful ethical
imperatives for action, which surround any given situation. For example, the
five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas
is no longer an unchallenged celebration of the discovery of a "new world"
by the inhabitants of Europe. Native Americans say that they discovered
Columbus, not the other way around. (That is, he was lost, not them! ) African
Americans and Hispanics find little place for themselves in the sacred story
of the Pilgrims who fled England for Massachusetts to escape religious perse-
—
cution their story has a different plot with different heroes, villains, and
motives. In 1992, Columbus's journey was remembered in many communities
during "commemorations" (rather than "celebrations") of the encounter
between two worlds (rather than the discovery of one by the other).
3. The situations in which conversations occur are not only not stable,
they are inherently open ended. We have become sufficiently experienced

with change to realize that even the most sincere efforts to replicate the status
quo may bring about a transformation in the episodes, relationships, and

identities that eomprise our social worlds. We now regularly think not only
of how our actions fit existing situations but how they will create new ones.
We even have access to of evaluative terms that criticize people who
a set
"fit in" to situations in which they should not. These include being "co
opted," "oppressed," and "mystified," as well as "copping-out."

4. The locus of action is seen as interpersonal systems that co-construct
reality. In business, we look at the economic system as well as individual
virtues as the explanation of success or failure. Clusters of conversations are

seen as the substance of families and organizations, and the characteristics of
those conversations as the difference between better or worse performances.
We are at least beginning to develop a vocabulary that permits us to describe
co-constructed entities and actions —although we have a long way to go.
This comparison shows that American culture has changed in some

important ways in the past 30 years. One result of these changes is an increased
awareness of culture per se that is reflected in interpersonal communication
textbooks. You will certainly experience cultural changes that will sensitize
you to specific features of your culture and will require you to adopt new-
ways of conversing.
Counterpoint 7.4
Newspaper columnist William Pfaff (1992, p. 3) noted that the 1992 Presi-
two "worlds." President Bush came of
dential elections contrasted
age in an America that
was white, provincial in its attitudes, Protestant and closely attached

to a rural past. The norms of society were Protestant, and this
. . .
was taken for granted by the rest, who usually tried to assimilate them-
selves to the majority, internalizing the discrimination, proudly putting
—
forward their successes their ballplayers, boxers, Medal of Honor win-
ners, etc., as evidence that Catholics and Jews could be "good" Americans
too ...
Bill Clinton was a generation younger and came to age in a very different
world. The cultural frame that his age cohort brought into conversa-
tions about the draft, "character," "family values," and the role of the
government in dealing with the economy differed greatly from that of Presi-
dent Bush's age group. This is not to say that all the "baby boomers"
agreed with Clinton or that all of the World War veterans agreed II
with or voted for Bush, but it does show that within the lifetime of people
who went to the polls in November 1992, there had been a major cultural
Communication and the Family: A Case Study of Cultural Change 311
change, and that one part of that cultural change is an explicit recognition
of cultural diversity.
The United States in which Bill Clinton came of age was by contrast
one of the deepest doubts: about a particular war, and foreign relationships
and threats in general; about the credibility of the nation's democracy,
the justice of relations between races and classes at heme . . .
Pfaff noted that the "integrative forces" of this "new country" are those
of "popular communication and entertainment rather than conscious instruc-
tion, or felt family or community continuities." Like many thoughtful
observers, he wondered if these integrative forces are sufficient to
establish a nation's "dynamic center, its integrative culture and tradition,"
but it is, he notes, the new reality with which we have to deal.
Communication and the Family: A Case Study of

Cultural Change
The patterns of conversations within families are, some argue, the most
important in our social worlds. They comprise the matrix of conversations
into which we were born and nurtured as infants, in which our children will
find themselves and their deontic logics of action and meaning, and in which
many of the most important decisions of our lives will be made. However,
all families are not alike, and in the United States, there has been a great deal
of change.
In the 1992 Republican National Convention, the phrase "family val-
ues" was suggested as a political rallying cry. It quickly became apparent that
there was little consensus on what values were included under that banner;
even the definition of what comprised a family seemed controversial.
Let's rejoin Rosa and Robert some time after their first meeting.
Robert: Rosa, let's get married and have a family.

Rosa: That's an interesting suggestion, Robert. What kind of family do
you have in mind?
Robert (stunned): What? Afamilyl You know, me, you, some kids.
Rosa (determined): No. Before I agree to marry you, I want to know
what I am getting into. Will this be a traditional family, an extended
family, a companionate family, a professional family, or a dual
career family?
Robert: Rosa, what have you been reading?
Although this is an unlikely conversation, itmakes the point that contempo-

rary U.S. society includes various types of families, and that they place very
different conversational and relational demands on their members.
Six types of families were identified by Dizard and Gadlin ( 1984). Like
the languages of self, these types of families arose within partieular historieal
and material conditions; Dizard and Gadlin interpret them as responding to
partieular patterns of work, production, and consumption that is, "the —
marketplace."
Traditional families arc large and complex; the husband-wife-children
node are intermeshed within a dense network of kinship relations. The family
is the site of most of the work by which
1
it produces its livelihood — think of
the "family farm,' in which the workplace and the home are the same. The
needs and desires of individuals, and even the relationship between husband
and wife, are routinely subordinated to the economic and social necessities
of the larger family. From a communication perspective, such families are
comprised of interlocking conversations in which decisions are made by the
elders, in which solidarity prevails over individuality or creativity, and in which
the horizons of the culture are firmly held in place by a resolute determination
to ward off "threats." A contemporary example of traditional family structure
may be found in Minnesota among the Mennonites, or in Pennsylvania,
among the Amish.
The development of an urban, industrial society changed the circum-
stances in which families existed. In more and more families, the workplace
is separate from the home. People leave the family to "go to work," exchange
work for goods, and return with them to the family.

According to Dizard and Gadlin (pp. 288, 289), the expanded family
was created by poverty in a modern economy. "Like the traditional family,
relations with kin are intense and extensive, often competing directly with
ties between spouses. Unlike the traditional family, however, marriages tend
to be quite unstable, largely because under modern, urban, industrial condi-

tions the male head of household is a problematic figure. Stripped of the
capacity to earn a living, males tend to become peripheral and females tend
to dominate the family network." The stability —
and "whatever comfort, joy,
and strength there is to be found among the poor in our society" (Dizard
—
and Gadlin, 1984, p. 189) in extended families come from conversations
among kin rather than from the husband-wife bonding.
The companionate family is characterized by its relative autonomy from
kin; its primary relationship is between spouses, who are supposed to be
"best friends" and share activities and feelings. Parents seek to become com-
panions to their children. "Ties to relatives are present and strong, especially
to immediate relatives, but unlike the traditional and the expanded families,
households are decidedly not permeable: the home is for the nuclear family.
Relatives can visit but are not expected to remain. Children are rarely moved
from one household to another as personal circumstances and economic
exigencies change" (Dizard and Gadlin 1984, p. 290).
The communication demands in the companionate family are quite
strong. The primary dyad —
wife and husband —
must provide for each other
the mutuality and support that was supplied by a diverse set of kinfolk in
Communication and the Family: A Case Study of Cultural Change 313
Moreover, each family member must balance the rival

traditional families.
demands of work outside the home and relational demands or opportunities
inside the home. "For the companionship to flourish, especially after the first
romantic blushes have faded" (whatever that might mean!), Dizard and
Gadlin (1984, p. 190) observed, "at least two conditions must be met: the
couple must be able to spend considerable time together and husband and
wife must see one another as substantively equal both conditions are
. . .
difficult to sustain over time, making the companionate family less stable
than might otherwise be."
it
The tensions in the companionate family lead to various responses.

Think of the familiar conversations that construct each of these responses
(and note how many soap opera plot lines are contained in this brief list!):
Some families drift back toward an involvement with kin, back

toward an assertion of traditional patterns. Others strive for even
greater involvement in the marketplace, making a virtue of the
separation of husband and wife roles. Others find themselves in
tumultuous relationships. Still others hang on and make do, main-
taining respectability and suffering stoically the absence of involve-
ment and affection that follows the decline of companionship.
(Dizard and Gadlin 1984, p. 291)
The professional family is one way of resolving the tension between kin and
marketplace. "The professionalized family looks like the companionate family
with one crucial difference:it is largely organized around the principal task
of maintaining the husband's high level of occupational commitment" (Di-

zard and Gadlin 1984, p. 291 ). Professional families are mobile, with shallow
roots in communities, and its ties to kin are subordinate to career
contingencies.
Women were not likely to be long satisfied with the role offered them
in the professional family, and, Dizard and Gadlin argue, their dissatisfaction
led to the women's movement and to the development of yet another type
of family, the dual-career family. In addition, the children in such families
provided much of the energy behind the "counter-culture" movement of
the 1960s and 1970s.
Dual-career families are highly mobile and stress the autonomy of the
people in them. As a result, they are often terminated in divorce. Deeply
enmeshed in the marketplace, members of these families often feel that the
demands of family life outweigh the rewards.
The deliberate weighing of the costs and rewards of relationships in
the context of a materialistic, affluent society has produced yet another kind
of "family": singles. Many
singles have children, networks of friends, and
been most prominently portrayed on the television
careers. This family has
show "Murphy Brown," where it served as an example of what former Vice
President Dan Quayle saw as the deterioration of "family values."
InterculturalCommunication: A Special Case of

Interpersonal Communication
All interpersonal communication occurs within the context of culture. How

ever, in most conversations, the cultural context is invisible; the limits of the
conversants' social umwelt are treated as horizons rather than as boundaries.
Let "intercultural communication^'refer to conversations in which the "lim-
its" of the conversants' social umwelt are visible, in which they are treated
as boundaries.
Intercultural communication is not necessarily exotic; these conversa-
tions do not have to involve folks with strange customs or different skin
colors. When Columbus splashed ashore on that Caribbean island and en-
countered the people who lived there, their conversation was clearly intercul-
tural — their umwelt included different material cultures, different ideological
cultures, different routinized practices, and even different languages. How-
ever, intercultural communication can occur among people who look alike
and speak the "same" language.
The more common definition of intercultural communication focuses
on the background of the interlocutors. In this way of thinking, intercultural
communication occurs when a Kenyan converses with a Briton. In my way
of thinking, we do not know whether the conversation between the Kenyan
and the Briton is intercultural simply on the basis of their background. Ken-
yans and Britons can talk for years without becoming aware of their cultural
limits —that is, without converting their cultural horizons into cultural bound-
aries. For example, if both continue to act according to the script for how
one should speak to the other, they can coordinate their conversations without
learning much about the other or anything about themselves. On the other
hand, intercultural communication can occur in a conversation between
neighbors or even siblings if they do encounter their horizons as boundaries.
Think with me about a conversation between Ann Swidler and Barry
Palmer (Bellah et al. 1985). I believe that this was an asymmetric conversation
in which Palmer communicated interculturally but Swidler did not. This
conversation was presented as part of the "data" on which some important
conclusions about contemporary American life were based. Swidler and her
colleagues argued that contemporary Americans' first moral language is "indi-
vidualism," and that this moral language is incapable of sustaining the public
order (pp. 20, 161, 163). They urged a renewal of "biblical" and "civic
republican" moral languages as a way of keeping individualism in check,
trusting that individualism will limit the tendencies of these languages to
sanction discrimination and oppression. Both the conclusions and the evi-
dence on which they are based have elicited quite a bit of attention.
The research included a series of semistructured interviews with ordinary
Americans. Of course, "research interviews" are just a form of conversation,
and we can understand them as we would any other conversation.
Intercultural Communication: A Special Case of Interpersonal Communication 315
Counterpoint 7.5
When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he started a long conversation

among the cultures of different continents. Robert M. Pirsig (1991, p.
American cowboy is a rendition
46) claimed that the "character" of the
of Native American values, and that American culture is a mixture of
European and Native American values. In making this claim, Pirsig under-
estimates the influence of African and, more recently, Asian values in order
judgment, usually disregarded effect
to stress the distinctive and, in his
of Native American culture. Perhaps because European languages
and material culture have dominated, we often ignore how much the
European cultures learned from, and were changed by, their contacts with
Native American cultures.
ColumbusinlndiaprimoappeNensâgnisexcl- IX.
piturmuncribusabincplis.
communi-
Intercultural
cation.Columbus dis-
covers America and
confronts the "Indians.
Or is it that the Native
Americans discover Co-
lumbus? Either way, this
meeting brought a new
level of consciousness
about both cultures.
Refrain 7.2
Cultural communication: conversations in which the participants are not

aware of their cultural horizons; these conversations almost always
repeat normal patterns and reproduce the social worlds in which they
occur.
Intercultural communication: conversations in which the participants
are aware of their cultural horizons; these conversations are usually
perceived as rupturing the taken-for-granted surroundings of the social
worlds in which they occur.
The on moral choices that people made: Why do

interviews focused
you work? Why Why did you marry and start a family?
did you change jobs?
The researchers "did not seek to impose our ideas on those with whom we
talked" but they "did attempt to uncover assumptions, to make explicit what
the person we were talking to might rather have left implicit. The interview
as we employed it was active, Socratic" (p. 304).
The researchers believed that the interviews revealed the horizons of
the respondents' cultures. They found that the ordinary Americans with
whom they talked were soon rendered unable to articulate good reasons why
they made the moral choices that determined the course of their lives.
Ann Swidler was "trying to get Brian Palmer to clarify the basis of his
moral judgments." Mr. Palmer had said that "lying is one of the things I
want to regulate."
Swidler: Why?
Palmer: Well, it's a kind of thing that is a habit you get into. Kind of
self-perpetuating. It's like digging a hole. You just keep digging
and digging.
Swidler: So why is it wrong?
Palmer: Why is integrity important and lying bad? I don't know. It just
is. It's just so basic.I don't want to be bothered with challenging
that. It's part of me. I don't know where it came from, but it's
very important.
Swidler: When you think about what's right and what's wrong, are
things bad because they are bad for people, or are they right or
wrong in themselves, and if how do you know?
so
Palmer: Well, some things are bad because ... I guess I feel like
everybody on this planet is entitled to have a little bit of space,

and things that detract from other people's space are kind of
bad .(Bellah et al. 1985, pp. 304, 305).
. .
Swidler and the others interpreted this conversation as showing that Brian
Palmer lacked a sufficiently powerful moral language; that when confronted
by a "Socratic" interlocutor, he was quickly reduced to incoherent babbling
("I don't know. It just is." "I guess I feel that everyone on this planet is
entitled to have a little bit of space . . ."). They characterized Palmer as

using the moral language of individualism that they believe is rampant in the
popular culture of the United States but is philosophically defective.
In his analysis of Swidler's report of this conversation, Stout (1988, p.
194) suggested that the Socratic interview method is not necessarily the best
tool for uncovering people's reasons. At its best, the Socratic method engages
both interviewer and the interviewed in a conversation that leads to unex-
pected self-understandings. At its worse, the persistent queries Why? or How
do you know that? can be a tool for intellectual bullying; it relentlessly
continues until the person interviewed "either becomes confused or starts
sounding suspiciously like a philosopher." Stout (1988, pp. 35, 36) warned
that
there are many propositions that we are justified in believing but

wouldn 't know how to justify. Anything we could say on behalf of
such a proposition seems less certain that the proposition itself By
now, it is hard to debate with flat-earthers. What real doubt do they
have that can be addressed with justifying reasons? . . . we ought
to be suspicious of people who want reasons even when they can't
supply reasonable doubts (emphasis added).
This is what happened to Brian Palmer. "When Brian says that the wrongness
of lying is what he means is that "he
basic," Stout (1988, p. 195) suggested,
can't think of anything more certain than the wrongness of lying that might
be introduced to support the idea that lying is wrong. He'd rather not be
bothered with the sort of challenge that the question implies. But his . . .
interviewer won't stop."

Because our social worlds are heteroglossic, all conversations are poten-
tially "intercultural." The cultural umwelt of different interlocutors is never
completely identical; if the conversation continues long enough or if they

probe each other's background understandings deeply enough, they will reach
the horizons of their culture. Differences in our social worlds are very apparent
when one conversant is from a different country or ethnicity than the other,
but none of us could ever find ourselves in precisely the same nexus of social
worlds as anyone else. Most of the time, these cultural differences are not
important for the purposes of conducting the conversation, and we communi-
cate in ways described here as "deeply enmeshed in our culture." We assume
that our interlocutor shares the same cultural surroundings for the conversa-
tion that we do, and often this assumption is good enough. However, in
some instances, we come to the horizon of the culture of one or more
—
conversants that is what happened in the conversation between Swidler and
—
Palmer. Swidler's Socratic questioning pushed Palmer to the limit ot his

culture and demanded that he respond.
Intereulturalcommunication can be fun, frustrating, and illuminating.
In this instance, it was an oppressive use of linguistic tyranny. In effect,
Swidler was demanding that Palmer give her in her own language, not his — —
reasons that she would find acceptable for him believing that lying is bad.
This is altogether a different thing from finding out in his language the reason
that he finds acceptable for his beliefs.
The meaning of Palmer's explanation of why lying is bad "I don't —
—
know. It just is." depends on the concept of communication that we use
to interpret it. If we assume that communication is a means of representing
Palmer's "intrapsychic state" (that is, meanings inside his head), then we
should understand him as saying that his head is empty. This seems rather
unlikely: Palmer is a middle-aged man who has been successful in business,
whose first marriage failed but who has remarried and is thoughtfully restruc-
turing his make sure that his second marriage succeeds hardly the
life to —
history of an empty mind. On the other hand, if we understand communica-
tion as a way of making and doing something, then Palmer's statement
describes his present location within his social worlds; it locates him at a
particular point in a matrix of rights and responsibilities. It says that, for
him, now, this is commitment that he has made. Stout (p. 195) muses,
the
"Evidently . . Brian doesn't know how to answer questions that aren't
.
connected to real doubts ... he can't think of anything more certain than
the wrongness of lying that might be introduced to support the idea that
lying is wrong."
Palmer's answer does not satisfy Swidler, and she pursues him, de-
manding that he respond within her language game. Her language game
uses the pattern of the categorical syllogism as the frame to reconstruct his
logic: give me an abstract statement of a principle by which we can judge
lying to be wrong, she insists, and Palmer gamely tried: "I guess I feel that
everyone on this planet ..."
Palmer's first response to Swidler's challenge to justify his judgment
that integrity is good and lying is bad was to say, "It just is. It's just so basic.
I don't want to be bothered with challenging that. It's part of me." Deeply
enmeshed in the culture of the Aristotelian philosophical tradition, Swidler
did not even hear this as an answer. However, as Stout (pp. 195, 196) noted,
—
Palmer's answer is quite satisfactory even an eloquent moral statement
in the culture shaped by the philosophic tradition of Wittgenstein and the
American pragmatists. Unlike the cultural assumptions surrounding Swidler's
Socratic method, this tradition is content grounding moral certainty in the
experience of the speaker rather than in abstract principles suitable for writing
on God's Own
Chalkboard in the Sky. In fact, when Palmer is describing his
experience without Swidler's relentless Socratic probing, he uses a moral
vocabulary of reciprocity, involvement, shared goals, and mutual respect. The
lame individualism expressed in his second attempt to satisfy his interrogator,
Stout 196) concluded, is certainly not his "first moral language" but
(p.
"his language of last resort —
a set of slogans he reaches for (with obvious
reluctance) when somebody won't take storytelling or unprincipled talk of
habit and happiness as sufficient for the purposes of justification."
Sw idler bullied Palmer by means of linguistic tyranny. She demanded
that he describe his morality- in her terms,
and then she judged his performance
according to her standards. What horizons of her own culture prevented her
from hearing and accepting Palmer's clear statement that he did not "want
to be bothered with challenging" his judgments that "integrity [is] important
and lying bad"? Why did this conversation not confront her with these aspects
of her own culture?
After the interview, Swidler changed from interlocutor to author; in
this role, she took over Palmer's voice and, in a widely read book, said
His description of his reasons for changing his life and of his current
happiness seems to come down mainly to a shift in his notions of
—
what would make him happy. His new goal devotion to marriage
and children —seems as arbitrary and unexamined as his earlier
pursuit of material success. Both are justified as idiosyncratic prefer-
ence rather than as representing a larger sense of the purpose of life.
(Bellah et al., p. 6)
Sw idler demanded that any moral language must give reasons that represent
a larger sense of the purpose of life, that is, moral principles that have the
form "One ought always to ." Instead, Palmer offered a narrative of his
. .
own life, saying in effect, I have lived in two ways, the first made me unhappy,
and I responded by changing my form of life (e.g., by trying to take control
of lying), and the second form of life makes me happy. For him, that is a
sufficient answer unless Swidler —
or the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune —
bring him reasons to doubt what he is experiencing.
Counterpoint 7.6
Regardless of what Swidler intended to do in her conversation with

Palmer, there came a point where his voice ended and hers took over.
When she and her colleagues wrote Habits of the Heart, they did to Palmer
what am now doing to both: putting their words into my contexts
I
of interpretation and presentation. Whatever else that does, it drastically

reduces their ability to "speak back" and to "speak for themselves." How will
Swidler answer my interpretation of this conversation to you? To whom
and in what context will Palmer articulate his side of what happened?
One of the most fascinating issues in social science is that of saying

something useful about other people and other cultures without dis-
empowering them. Social scientists have become very sensitive to the
dangers of linguistic tyranny, recognizing that when "we" put what
"they" are up to in "our ways of putting things," we have imposed our
interpretive and evaluative criteria and thus changed what we are
describing.
This isn't a new discovery, of course. Almost anyone who has been
quoted in a newspaper story understands that what was said (in the context
in which it was said, in the tone of voice in which it was uttered) is
different from what was quoted (in a different context, in cold imper-
sonal print).
Forget about "accuracy." There is no way in which "we" can ever
"accurately" reproduce what occurred because we would have to
reproduce the whole context of the original event, including the fact that
it was the original event and not a retelling of it. It can't be done.
In many conversations, you will be asked to —

or will want to describe —
what happened in a particular time or place, or recount what someone
said. How can you do this in a manner that respects the other person?
Those who have wrestled with this have come up with three ways: quotation,
translation, and interlocution.
Quotation involves saying just what the other person said. However,
there is no way to reproduce it exactly. If write the words that you said,
I I
have distorted them tremendously. If play an audio or video tape re-

I
cording of what you said, am still playing it into a context other than the
I
one in which you spoke.

Translation "is not a simple recasting of others' ways of putting things
in terms of our own ways of putting them (i.e., the kind in which
things get lost), but displaying the logic of their ways of putting them in
the locutions of ours; a conception which brings it rather closer to what
. . .
a critic does to illumine a poem than what an astronomer does to account

for a star" (Geertz 1983, p. 10). Translations may consist of a para-
phrase or a description. "Experience-near" descriptions are close ac-
counts of what happened, giving as much as possible a feeling of
being a participant; "experience-distant" descriptions are much more
abstract, using the most powerful words in our vocabulary to establish
an interpretive frame. A hand-held camera showing what an exotic ritual
(such as professional football) looks like from the perspective of a player is
an "experience-near" translation; a scholarly treatise on ritualized subli-

mated aggression as manifested in football is an "experience-distant"
translation.
Interlocution involves engaging in conversation with the person whose
voice being appropriated. For example, an ethnography that uses interlocu-
is
tion will record conversations between the ethnographer and the people
being studied, including the subjects' reactions to what the ethnographer
wrote about them.
Swidler first quoted Palmer, then gave an experience-distant translation
of his moral language ("individualism"). An interlocution would have
included Palmer's reaction to what Swidler wrote about him.
We are constantly representing what other people said and did. Make
a record of these events, and whether the representation was a
identify
quotation, translation, or interlocution. Which of these modes of repre-
sentation gives the person represented most power? Which gives the
least? Which is the most frequently used?
This conversation resulted in Palmer's being bullied into saying some

foolish things. was an asymmetric intercultural conversation because
It
Palmer, but not Swidler, was forced to confront the horizons of his culture.
We can only wonder how Palmer felt when he read Swidler's account of the
moral poverty of his successful and happy marriage, and of the decisions that
he made to restructure his life.
Fortunately, not all communication come out

instances of intercultural
so badly. Often the experience of being brought to the horizons of your
culture is the means of self-discovery, an opportunity for the exercise of
curiosity, the occasion of the pleasures of exploration, and, simply put, fun.
Culture and Interpersonal Communication
Recall Gergen's (1991) description of "postmodern" society in which there

are many of self. Now we are in a position to see that
different languages
Gergen was right as far as he went, but that the plurality of logics of meaning
and action extend beyond languages of self. They include all aspects of culture,
such as speech acts, episodes, and relationships.
Living a life, establishing relationships, moving effectively in the social
settings that we encounter, and simply having a conversation is made more
challenging by the plurality of cultures. Geertz (1986, p. 122) characterized
the social and material conditions at the end of the twentieth century as a
"collage" and argued that life in a collage requires special skills. To live in a
collage, he argued, requires special skills.
One must in the first place render oneself capable of sorting out
its elements, determining what they are (which usually involves
determining where they come from and what they amounted to when
they were there) and how, practically, they relate to one another,
without at the same time blurring one's own sense of one's own
location and one's own identity within it.
The combination of these skills avoids the twin dangers of losing one's self
in the pluralism of multiple cultures (what Geertz calls "cosmopolitanism

without content") and of treating one's own culture as if all others were
inferior ("parochialism without tears").
When we do encounter the horizons of our own culture (from the

inside,of course), we have up the boundaries
several options. One is to shore
of our culture, marking the limits of our social worlds and remaining in them.
A second option is to import materials from "outside," enriching who we
are and what we know. A third is to extend those boundaries. Gccrtz 1986, (
pp. 113, 114) noted that
the reach of our minds, the range of signs we can manage somehow
what defines the intellectual, emotional and moral
to interpret, is
space within which we live. The greater that is, the greater we can
make it become by trying to understand what flat earthers or the
Reverend Jim Jones are all about . .the clearer we become
. . . .
to ourselves. . . .
It is the asymmetries . . . between what we believe or feel and

what others do, that make it possible to locate where we now are in
the world, how it feels to be there, and where we might or might not
want to go. To obscure those gaps and those asymmetries by relegating
them to a realm ofrepressible or ignorable difference, mere unlikeness
. . . cut us off from such knowledge and such possibility: the
is to
possibility of quite literally, and quite thoroughly, changing our
minds.
Interpersonal communication in a culturally diverse society is rich with

both promise and peril. It means that every conversation may become intercul-
tural —that is, that we might at any moment be brought unexpected!}' to the
horizon of our culture. It means that we must find a way of dealing with
people whose cultural horizons differ from ours when we attempt to decide
whether to raise taxes or reduce services, or whether to build new highways
or invest in public transit systems. Moreover, it means that we risk running
into the limits of our languages when we talk about such mundane matters
as the responsibilities a son has to his father (clearly different in different
kinds of families), the ways in which men and women communicate, or the
assessment of responsibility in an urban riot.
What communication skills enable us to converse within a culturally
diverse society? How do these skills differ from those that suffice for con-
versations that are "deeply enmeshed" in a stable culture? Here are four
—
observations two "negative" and two ''positive" about intercultural —
communication.
Distrust Intuition
Most of our conversations find us "mindless," simply acting naturally and

spontaneously. If pressed to explain how we know, for example, that our
interlocutor is telling the truth or lying, we say that we know it "intuitively,"
or we protest that "everybody" knows what we have perceived.
Counterpoint 7.7
We make judgments about important things on the basis of our intuitions.

These judgments consist of the application of a great deal of cultural
knowledge to specific cases. Your decision that this man is trustworthy
is based on many subtle observations of his nonverbal cues as well as a
series of stereotypes that you have developed. This knowledge looks

foolish when it is expressed in sentences. For example, "All men with little
beady eyes are devious and cannot be trusted" seems silly. However,
such intuitive judgments are absolutely essential (we cannot explore
the full personality of every person we meet on the street) and important
(if we misjudge, we may lose our lunch, our fortunes, or our lives).
Is this man telling the

truth?
What does "intuitively" mean? I do not believe that intuition is a
separate means of perception, but at the same time I believe that there is a
phenomenon that we sometimes label intuition. We know something intu-
itively when we think with the taken-for-granted parts of our culture that
surround the event in which we are participating. Such thinking is very fast
and does not leave traces of the steps that it follows; we may be completely
unable to retrace the steps that we took in arriving at our judgment or to

articulate good reasons for the decision we made. You just feci that it is right,
for example, to break off a relationship with Joe, even though you cannot
explain —
why to yourself, to Joe, or to your mutual friends. You intuitively
trust Sam and let him use your car.
Intuitive judgments have three characteristics: 1 ) they are often impossi-
ble to explain or justify; 2) we have great confidence that they are "correct"
decisions or accurate judgments; they seem obviously right, effortless, and
overwhelmingly powerful; and 3) they are often wrong. We frequently trust
people who are unreliable or who are deliberately manipulating us if it were —
not so, the used car industry would not prosper as much as it does. Intuitive
judgments are particularly suspect when you are conversing with someone
from a different culture.
In intercultural communication, you cannot act "naturally." That is,
your intuition or ability to act spontaneously is always a guide for you to act
appropriately within your own culture; it guides you poorly in conversations
in which you encounter the horizons of that culture and must adapt to
another. Ann Sw idler acted naturally and oppressed Brian Palmer.

One of the great moral maxims of Western culture is the "Golden
Rule": "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This ethical
principle adds anticipation to reciprocity: it admonishes us to do good to
others before they have had a chance to act toward us. A careful analysis of
this maxim, however, shows that it works best in monocultural social settings.
What if the other person does not want to be treated as you want to be
treated?
For example, some people feel that brutal honest)' is the best policy in
conversations; others feel that social sensitivity requires much more "face
work." Assume that you are among the latter, and you meet someone who
acts according to both the Golden Rule and the strategy of always being
"bald on record." Think through the way the conversation might go; feel
yourself being pushed around against your will by the self-righteous virtues
of the other person. If you confront your interlocutor with a demand for an
account (Why you always telling me things that I don't want to know?
are
Why do you ask me to tell you things that I don't want to tell you?), you
are likely to be told that you are in the wrong because 1 ) you are not sufficiently
"honest"; or 2) your interlocutor is simply treating you as he or she would
like to be treated. Your response should be, with whatever level of emotional
intensity you care to deliver it, that your culture differs from that of your
insensitive interlocutor and that he or she should kindly and quickly stop
acting in such an ethnocentric manner.
"Knowing About" Other Cultures from

Differentiate
"Knowing How" to Converse with Them
Knowing about another culture is an insufficient guide for knowing how to
converse with people in other cultures. What you know about another culture
gives you the and understand people in them, but not

ability to describe
necessarily the ability to join them in the process of co-creating speech acts
in a coherent conversation. Knowing about other cultures can be simply an
idle fascination with the exotic, in which nuggets of information are displayed
in conversation as a way of ornamenting the speaker. Let me contrast exoticism,
or knowing about another culture, with rhetorical sensitivity, or knowing how
to communicate with another people from other cultures.
Exoticism: knowing about other There are many resources

cultures.
now for learning about you can visit a museum
the artifacts of other cultures:
or take a packaged tourist tour of the temples and villages of exotic cultures.
There are also many resources for learning about the beliefs of various cultures:
courses in comparative religions are offered at most universities, and anthro-
pologists have developed a wonderful literature about the histories, customs,
folk ways, and myths of many human cultures. Documentary films provide
an accessible way to engage the routinized practices of the mundane forms
of life of people in cultures different from your own.
All of these resources produce what Jack Bilmes (1986, p. 189) called
"the level of sociological explanation of human action." He explained
The discursive sociologist, like the linguist, deals not with individual
choice but with systemic constraints on choice and systemic resources
for action. He asks: What does it take for behavior, within a particu-
lar context, to be meaningful, what are the bases of intelligibility
within a culturalgroup, and how does the requirement ofintelligibil-
ity limit what members can do or how they can react within particu-
y
lar situations 7 . The object is not to strictly predict members
. . .
behavior, but to demonstrate the constraints on members and the

resources available to them in creating effects, to show the possibilities
inherent in the system and how those possibilities are effectuated.
Broadly speaking, the concern is with system and structure, not with
statistical outcomes, on the one hand, or individual choices, on the
other.
If we stop our inquiry with a "sociological level of explanation," we

have done the equivalent of putting other people and their cultural artifacts
into glass cases in museums. Although this may quench our taste for exoticism,
it is more likely to confirm our enmeshment in our own culture (what Geertz
called "parochialism without tears") by reinforcing the line between "us"

(who visit museums and watch or make ethnographic movies about bizarre
customs) and "them" (who are the subjects of ethnographic films, museum
displays, and ethnic shows).
Rhetorical sensitivity: knowing how to communicate with other cul-

tures. To be able to participate in intercultural communication, we need
a different kind of knowledge. This kind of knowledge is praxis; it is the
—
"practical wisdom" of making good judgments that if I say this it this particu-
larmoment in the conversation, it will direct the conversation in that way.
More specifically, intercultural conversations require a rhetorical sensitivitv
to "openings."
Praxis consists of a particular form of reasoning that might be expressed
in the question What acts can I perform that will become the cause of the
effect that I want? In intercultural communication, this reasoning uses what
Bilmes' called "sociological explanation" for the purposes of engaging with
those whose cultures are not the same as ours. Unlike Bilmes' model, praxis
deals not only with individuals but also with individuals situated at particular
moments in the unfolding of a conversation. As a part of the practical wisdom
required to communicate well, rhetorical sensitivity consists of a fascinated
awareness of what is happening and the ability to sense
in the conversation
and seize opportunities to influence the direction in which it unfolds.
Rhetorical sensitivity requires a good deal of self- awareness and, some-
times, creativity. If we have never encountered the horizons of our culture,
then we do not know where they are; we do not know how far we can stretch
or how wide an array of conversations can fit into our social worlds without
having to make an adjustment. If deeply enculturated conversations are the
only ones that we have we will give a trivial recitation of the
experienced,
obvious as answer to the question What acts can I perform in this conversation?
Experience in intercultural communication gives a sense of where those hori-
zons are, and this way increases our rhetorical sensitivity to what we are able
and willing to do.
There is a kind of awkwardness when people first encounter the horizons
of their culture. Think of the first time you had to beg on the street for
money for food, or the first time you encountered a beggar; think of the first
time you realized that the family with whom you were visiting has very
different rules for meaning and action than the family in which you grew up.
This awkwardness contrasts with the much more sophisticated conversational
—
behavior of a person who has learned and learned to be comfortable with
the horizons of his or her own culture.
Rhetorical sensitivity requires an ability to assess the contingencies of
actions, that is, to anticipate your interlocutor's responses to your own actions.
This cannot be an exact science because people are not automatons; however,
by using all that you know and your keen observations of the other you may
be able to make good judgments about these responses.
Conversants who are rhetorically insensitive act "naturally," not realiz-
ing or taking into account the situation in which they find themselves or the
way their acts intermesh with those of other people. If you were visiting in
the home of a family who remove their shoes at the front door, how long
would it take for you to notice that you were the only one who walked into
the house with shoes on? I have seen people blissfully unaware that they were
the only shod person during a whole evening; others quickly notice what is
going on and either remove their shoes or make a conscious decision not to.
The difference between noticing what is going on and not noticing is rhetori-
cal sensitivity.
1
Finally, rhetorical sensitivity requires an ability to sense "openings '
in
the logic of the conversation. "Openings" are words, phrases, actions, or
"props" that allow you to influence what is going on. Openings are very
important in conversations in a culturally diverse society because differences
in gender, economic class, race, religion, and ethnic heritage mean that we
will frequently engage in conversations in which "acting naturally" is insuffi-

cient. We will need to manage our conversations, to steer them into mutually
productive and satisfactory patterns.
There can be no complete list of such openings because each is specific
to the situation; however, there can be a trained sensitivity to them. The
basic structure of an opening is that there is something shared among the
conversants that permits something else to be contrasted.
One form of opening is a shared activity. By participating in a common
activity, whether it be sewing or basketball, dancing or chopping down a tree,
the conversants establish the first part of an opening —they create something
shared. On they then can compare and contrast other elements of
this basis,
their experience. For example, what does sewing mean in each culture? Is it
an economic means of producing commodities for sale, a neutral activitv
enabling intense social interaction (e.g., gossip, storytelling, or enforcement
of group norms)? Is it a site of artistic expression? Is it a gender-specific
activity designed to create a space in which the other gender will not or
cannot intrude?
Another form of opening deals with language. In oral conversation, 1
the words that we speak are built around some metaphor, 2) they describe
Counterpoint 7.8
The concepts of and game mastery as forms of

rhetorical sensitivity
competence are As see it, game mastery
related but not identical. I
requires rhetorical sensitivity but includes something else as well: the

ability to imagine alternatives to the cultural scripts and the ability to
anticipate the success of performing according to these alternatives.
The term rhetorical sensitivity focuses attention on the ability to spot
openings for game mastery. This ability is similar to teamwork in
various activities requiring closely coordinated movements, such as
dance and martial arts. think that rhetorical sensitivity can be learned but
I
not taught. Practice listening for openings in the conversations you partici-
pate in or overhear; imagine what the conversant might have said
other than what she or he did, and what would have been the outcome.
a pattern of belief, feeling, or both, and 3) they are comprised physically of

a set of sounds, gestures, and movements. If we "match" our interlocutor
on any two of these three, we can introduce a contrast in the third as an
opening that we have created.
For example, if we use the same metaphor and nonverbal cues as our
interlocutor does, we can introduce a different set of beliefs or values about
what is being talked about. If we match our interlocutor's beliefsund nonverbal
cues, we can propose a different metaphor with some hope that it will be
adopted.
of humor, parody, metacommunication, and the presenta-
Finally, use
tion of exotic artifacts constitutes openings. Each of these forms of communi-
cation builds multiple levels of meaning into the conversation, permitting a
"matching" on one level while acknowledging a difference on another.
Developing a Pidgin as a Means of

Achieving Coordination
The first "positive" observation about conversation in a culturally diverse
society is that we can achieve it relatively easily z/all that we aspire to is —
minimal coordination. There is a long history of cultures that have rubbed
together, usually in the marketplace, and have developed a special kind of
language called pidgin to communicate.
A pidgin is not really a language; it is a created substitute for a language
that has a small vocabulary, a rudimentary grammar, and is not the "native"
or "first" language of anyone who uses it. Although it is impossible to express
great thoughts, deep emotions, or complex ideas in pidgin, it is possible to
negotiate terms for buying and selling and for giving and taking orders
between "masters" and "servants."
Contemporary pidgins include the stereotypical ways in which we often
think and talk about members of minority groups or those with stigmatic
conditions. As soon as we start treating "those people" as if they were all
alike, and as soon as we start using easy phrases quoted from the culture
around us, we are using a kind of moral pidgin that allows us to deal with
people of other cultures without coming into contact with our own cultural
horizons.
In contemporary society, there will be conversations among people with
very different cultures. These conversations are not likely to be intercultural
communication as I hive defined it here if it is confined to various sorts of
pidgin.
Developing a Creole for Intercultural Communication

If we are committed to understanding each other, not just skating around
each other without bumping too painfully, pidgins can develop into Creoles.
A creole is a new language born out of the interaction among people with
dissimilar cultures. It is the first language of the participants (or at least it
might be), and it has a sufficiently rich vocabulary and grammar to permit
the expression of the whole realm of human emotions and thoughts. It is
sufficiently powerful that those who use it can develop rhetorical sensitivity
and encounter their own cultural horizons. Creole contains sufficient re-
sources to enable perspicuous contrasts between other moral languages.
Bricolage: a means of developing Creole. The term bricolage was intro-

duced by Claude Levi-Strauss; a bricoleur takes stock of the problems that
confront him or her and proceeds by sorting out, reordering, packaging,
weighing, and filling in the materials available until a solution is reached.
Think of making a shelter from a storm in a deserted field. All you have
available are some dead branches, some large rocks, and the blanket you
brought with you. Of course! Using the branches as a frame and securing
—
the blanket with rocks you take what is available and put it to novel uses
this is bricolage. Stout ( 1988, p. 75) said that all creativity involves bricolage.
Pidgins become Creoles as human beings confront the need (a "prob-
lem") to express something that their language does not permit. They take
stock of the various resources —
my language, your language, linguistic items
that we might make up —
and assemble them together. If we do it well, other
people take it up, finding that we have provided them with the resources
they need to meet a similar (but never quite identical) need, and so on. The
fact that dictionaries get longer every edition, and that every edition has a
substantial number of new words and phrases indicates that even English is
still the site of considerable bricolage.
Dialogue: a means of developing Creole. A second way in which Creoles

are developed by dialogue. Not every conversation is a dialogue, of course.
is
In dialogue, the conversation is constructed in such a manner as to allow the

individual participants to speak in their own voices, and these voices are
woven together into a tapestry in which each has its place.
The question is not whether you agree with what I say, and certainly
not with the imperfect way that I am saying it; rather, whether you
see some of the things that I see and am trying to point to and am
offering a vocabulary to talk about and whether you see other things
of this ilk that I have not seen, and can point them out to me. And
finally, of course, the question is whether those things that various
ones of us have seen are indeed there. The purpose is that we may
all live enriched . . . (Smith 1988, 11)
Dialogue dangerous. The attempt to interweave your voice with that of

is
someone else makes you vulnerable, particularly if they have no interest in,
or ability to, weave. Your voice may be suppressed in the conversation; worse,
you may be perceived as "uppity," "heretical," or sharing the crime for which
Socrates was killed, "corrupting the young." The danger is the other side of
the opportunity because the distinguishing characteristic of humankind is, in
the final analysis, the ability to participate in critical self-consciousness, and

the conversational structure in which this ability is best developed and best
practiced is dialogue.
A Final Word: New Communication Skills Are Needed
The social and material conditions of contemporary society require us to

communicate in a culturally diverse world. This means that new conversational
skills, not needed (or at least not so conspicuously needed) in a smaller, more
stable, more homogeneous world, are the difference between communicating

well and communicating poorly.
A practiced ease in dialogue, a certain knack of bricolage, and a well-
developed rhetorical sensitivity will give you resources on which to draw in
conversations in which you encounter the horizons of your culture. In such
conversations, distrust your intuitions, interpret vertigo as information about
your cultural horizons, and look for openings.
These special skills for conversations in a culturally diverse society will
help you avoid the twin dangers of which Clifford Geertz warned: a sterile
exoticism ("cosmopolitanism without content") and an inability to reach
beyond the limits of your own culture ("parochialism without tears"). You
will be open to the possibility of genuine dialogue with others who are not
like you; you will know the many pleasures of exploring new reaches in your
social worlds.
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as

sharing a nature with ourselves is But it is from
the merest decency.
the far more difficult achievement ofseeing ourselves amongst others,
as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case
among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind,
without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a
sham, comes. (Geertz 1983, p. 16).
Praxis
1. Improving Intercultural Communication
I do not minute believe that Ann Swidler set out to bully Brian Palmer.
for a
I suspect that she thought that the conversation on page 316 was deeply
7. Improving Intercultural Communication 331
enculturated and that she and Palmer were located at similar places within
comparable social worlds. As a result, she trusted her intuitive judgments
about what to say and how to say it, oblivious to the fact that her Socratic
questioning brought Brian Palmer up against the horizon of his cultural
urnweltand forced him to make a decision about how to continue the conver-
sation. When Swidler rejected his statement that "That's just the way it is,"
he chose to try to speak in her moral language and wound up saying things
that she could use in her book. Trying to invent a universal moral principle that
makes integrity good and lying bad, he uttered the philosophical equivalent of
baby talk.
What else might he have done?
1. He might have decided to help Swidler discover her own cultural

horizons. One way of doing this is to use circular questioning (see Chapter
5, "Relationships").
Take turns re-enacting the conversation, first as Palmer and then as

Swidler. In the role of Palmer, avoid the trap of offering universal moral
principles. Instead, ask the person playing the role of Swidler circular ques-
tions. For example, Palmer might ask Swidler
Who would be most affected if I were to come up with a universal principle

about the morality of integrity and lying? Would it change my life more than
yours or someone else's?
What would be different in my life if I were to articulate such a universal

Would I be more ethical? Happier? Richer? More handsome?
principle?
If Iwere to start lying and were not concerned with personal integrity,
who would be the first to notice? What would be different in my work? My
family?
What would you to give up the notion that statements of moral
it cost
way to justify one's morality? Who would lose respect
principles are the only
for you? What could you no longer do that you think is important? To whom
would you have to explain yourself)
Be relaxed, inventive, and creative in these conversations. Do not try

so hard to ask the "right" questions that you cannot ask anything, and enjoy
making up the answers.
Carefully observe the effect of these questions on the person playing
the role of Swidler. What brings him or her to the point of confrontation
with his or her own cultural horizons? How does the conversation change
after that point?
2. Brian Palmer might have used some of the techniques for managing
the interactional contingency that were discussed in Chapter 4, "Episodes."
Again role-play the conversation between Palmer and Swidler. This time,
make it a contest: when you are Swidler, keep asking some variation of why
until you can extract some sort of moral principle from Palmer that you can
use in your book; when you have the role of Palmer, try to avoid giving a
universal ethical principle by
Giving accounts (e.g., "I've had a hard life, and you can't expect me to
talk like a philosopher").
Metacommunicate (e.g., "I know that you expect me to say something
silly like 'all people on earth have the right to their own space' but I don't
work that way, and I resent your pushing me to fit into your language game").
Reconstruct the context (e.g., "I think you have crossed over some kind
of line here; you aren't asking this as part of your research, are you? You are
looking for some help in your personal life. Are the concepts of integrity and
lying disturbing to your What have you done that makes you so vulnerable
to the simple idea that lying is bad and integrity is good?").
2. Family Communication Patterns
In the 1992 Presidential campaign, the Republican Part)' attempted to make

"family values" a central issue. As it turned out, this was not a particularly
successful strategy.
Before Gather some of the news coverage of the 1992 Republican
class:
National Convention. I suggest the major national newpapers, such as the

New York Times and the Washington Post, and the national newsweeklies,
such as Time, Newnveek, and U.S. News and World Report. If you can get
v ideotapes of some of the most important speeches, this would be very useful.
Look also at some of the "alternative" or nonmainstream press, such as the
Christian Science Monitor.
In Using Dizard and Gadlin's typology, just which kind of "family"
class.
mind when they spoke of "family values"?

did the speakers have in
In the "Narrative" section, I described an episode in which Robert
asked Rosa to marry him, and she made her answer conditional on their
agreeing about what kind of family they would have.
Form groups of three or four, including at least one man and one
woman. Assign two people to take the roles of Rosa and Robert and continue
the conversation; assign the other(s) to make two act
sure that the first
consistently with the various types of families described by Dizard and Gadlin.
Repeat these conversations until you have worked out various images of your
wedded bliss.
In your conversations, decide whether either or both of you will have

a "bachelor's party" w
ith exotic dancers, what kind of wedding you will have,
who will earn the money you need, whether anyone other than yourselves
will live with you in your house, whether you expect your spouse to enjoy
the same recreations that you do, where you will spend Thanksgiving and
religious holidays, and who will keep track of the family's finances. Focus
4. Recipes for Living in Postmodern Society 333
not only on the decisions you reach but also the process by which these
decisions are made.
3. Common Sense and Intercultural Communication
Geertz (1983, p. 91) proved that the content of what "everybody knows"
differs among cultures, but that the form of common sense is pretty much
everywhere the same. "Common sense represents the world as a familiar
. . .
world, one everyone can, and should, recognize, and within which everyone
stands, or should, on his own feet."
Intercultural communication as described in this chapter is the natural
enemy of common sense. It is the foregrounding of the taken for granted;
it is the deliberate contemplation of the fact that our social worlds contain
much in them that is not familiar; and
it runs the risk of vertigo.
Outside Expose yourself to another culture in whatever way is

class.
available to you. Pay particular attention to what the other culture treats as
"common sense" that yours does not. Look for cultural assumptions that
are so deeply enculturated that they probably will not be marked as significant
events; they will not be the object of "accounts" because they will be taken
for granted.
Compare these cultural assumptions with those of your own culture.
By observing your own common sense, note that it is artificial —that is, it
is made in recurring patterns of conversation just like the common sense of

the other culture.
In class. Working in groups of three or four, compare your observations.
Discuss how your conversations would be different
you substituted the if
content of the other common sense for your own. What accounts would you
give, demand, and accept that you take for granted now? What would you
accept that you now demand accounts for? What accounts would you accept
that you do not now?
These comparisons of cultural assumptions comprise the openings that
you should sense as part of your rhetorical sensitivity. They identify the places
where you can create the preconditions for successful communication among
people from different cultures.
Look again at the conversation between Ann Swidler and Brian Palmer.
What openings are there? If you were to advise them about improving their
conversation, what would you suggest?
4. Recipes for Living in Postmodern Society
In Chapter 6, Gergen's suggestion of three stages in the development of a

healthy multiphrenic personality were summarized. In this chapter, Geertz
was described as naming two skills and two dangers of life in a cultural collage,
and I described four characteristics of intercultural communication. How do

these various prescriptions fit together? How much confidence do you have
in them?
Working in three teams, explore whether Geertz', Gergen's, and my
"solutions" are sufficiendy powerful to solve the problems that Gergen and
Geertz described. First, identify those problems. Second, make sure you
understand what Geertz, Gergen, and I have suggested. Then, stage a debate
between your three teams. Assign each team to argue that one of these
solutions is better than the other two.
When you finish compare your results with other groups. Which
the debate,
of these sets of solutions fared the best in your debates? How much confidence
do you have in any of them?
References
Alexander, Alison, Cronen, Vernon E., Kang, Kyung-wha, Tsou, Benny, and Banks,
Jane. "Patterns of Topic Sequencing and Information Gain: A Comparative Study
of Relationship Development in Chinese and American Cultures." Communica-
tion Quarterly 43: (1986): 66-78.
Bellah, Robert, et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American
Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Campbell, Joseph. Metaphors to New York: Viking, 1972.
Live By.
Dizard, Jan, and Gadlin, Howard. "Family Life and the Marketplace: Diversity and
Change in the American Family." In Historical Social Psychology, edited by Ken-
neth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen, 281-302. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1984.
Hall, Edward T The Silent Language. New York: Doubleday, 1959.
York: Basic Books, 1983.
Geertz, Clifford. "The Uses of Diversity." Michigan Quarterly Review 25 (1986):
106-123.
Gergen, Kenneth J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.

Gudykunst, William B., and Ting-Toomay, Stella, with Chua, Elizabeth. Culture and
Interpersonal Communication. Newbury Park: Sage, 1988.
Nisbett, Robert. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books, 1980.
Illinois Press, 1989.
Pearce, W. Barnett. Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds. New York:
HarperCollins, 1994.
Pearce, VV. Barnett, and Kang, Kyung-wha. "Conceptual Migrations: Understanding
'Traveller's Tales' for Cross-Cultural Adaptation." In Cross-Cultural Adaptation:
Current Approaches, edited by Young Yum Kim and William B. Gudykunst,
20^*1. Newbury Park: Sage, 1988.
Pirsig, Robert M. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. New York: Bantam, 1991.
Pfaff, William. Chicago Tribune. Sunday, November 8, 1992, Section 4, p. 3.
References 335
Smith, W. C. "Transcendence." Harvard Divinity Bulletin. 18 (1988): 10-15.

Stout, Jeffrey. Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.
von Uexkull, J. Umwelt and Innenwelt der Tiere. Berlin: Springer, 1909.
Watzlawick, Paul, Beavin, Janet, and Jackson, Don. Pragmatics of Human Communi-
cation. New York: Norton, 1967.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden.
London: Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 1922.
PART THREE
Recapitulation
. think of social life as a kind of conversation. All

. .
our actions are creating a kind of conversation,

. . .
an endless conversation into which individuals enter,

make their contribution to the common discourse,
and eventually though some may go on con-
fall silent,
tributing to the conversations of mankind long after

they are dead, by writing books, becoming legendary,
and so on. Babies are immersed in this conversa-
tion. We construct our worlds in talk of various
. . .
kinds. Every exchanging of symbolic objects is a

kind of extension of that conversation, I believe. So we
have ... to look at the properties of talk, the form
of conversations, we want really to get to the heart
if
of what it is to be a human being, engaging with other

people in constructing a social world.
Rom Harre (in Jonathan Miller, States of Mind. New York: Pan-
theon, 1983, p. 159)
The physical world is elegant in design, predictable in

action, and fixed in purpose. The social world, the world
we have made, is vastly inelegant, unpredictable, and
unfixed. Made of ambiguity and ambivalence, con-
tradiction and conflict, it is a clown in the temple. It can
change as you look at it. Sometimes, it changes be-
cause you are looking at it. It requires alertness, curios-
ity, impatience, courage, and skepticism.
Warren Bennis, Why

Leaders Can't Lead: The Unconscious Con-
spiracy Continues. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990, p. 48.
CHAPTER
8 Putting It All Together
Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.

That things should be able to pass from the plan of external
pushing and pulling to that of revealing themselves to
man, and thereby to themselves; and that the fruit
of communication should be participation, sharing, is
a wonder. . .When communication occurs, all
.
natural events are subject to reconsideration and revi-

sion; they are re-adapted to meet the requirements
of conversation, whether it be public discourse or that
preliminary discourse termed thinking. Events turn
into objects, things with a meaning.
Dewey 1958, p. 166.

KEY WORDS
After reading this Some terms that will help

Two Metaphors able to chapter include
for "Putting It
Analyze the way language, paradox,
All Together"
racism, sexism, and enabling, healthy
Relations Among As- classicism are socially
self-concepts,
pects of our Social Worlds constructed
interviewing,
Patterns of Interper-
Identify forms of "good
reflexivity,
sonal Communication
communication communication"
Three Final Words that promote
psychological and
social health
Praxis Choose among

several styles of
1. Racism, Sexism, interviewing
and Classism
2. Developing Healthy
Self-Concepts
3. Interviewing
—
340 Chapter 8 Putting It All Together
Narrative
Kyle and Shirley work together in the office of a law firm. Kyle noticed that
Shirley is work on Mondays and after most holidays. At work,
often late for
her moods often shifted abruptly. In one minute, she would be high spirited
and gregarious; in the next, sullen and withdrawn. The quality of her work
became inconsistent; she sometimes made mistakes that were far below her
competence.
Concerned and wanting to be helpful, Kyle quietly began to check
Shirley's work before she turned it in, correcting the most obvious mistakes.
He became very sensitive to her moods, and tried to fit in with them. He
talked freely when she was happy and avoided her when she was depressed.
When their supervisor questioned her tardiness, he sometimes lied, saying
that she was running an errand for the company. He sometimes did her work
for her so that her moodiness and tardiness would not be noticed by their
supervisor.
What should we think about Kyle's behavior? From one perspective,
he appears kind, generous, and caring. From another, his actions
profile of a person who — to use the technical term
— "enables" the
fit
someone
classic
else to continue to abuse alcohol or other drugs without confronting the

consequences of their condition.
Like one time or another, Kyle is involved in a conversation
all of us at
that requires him to act in the context of contradictory demands. In this
case, if he wants to maintain a "normal" relationship with Shirley, he must
cooperate with her in the mutual production of her "face." This means that
he help her provide accounts for her poor work and tardiness; that he not
call attention to the fact that her failures are increasing his work load. On
the other hand, if he wants to help her confront the fact that her performance
at work is poor —or simply get her to do her share of the work at the office
he will have to confront her in a way that is very different from their current
patterns of communication.
assume that Kyle is very competent in all of the particular areas of
Let's
interpersonal communication that we have discussed: he knows about the co-
construction of speech acts, he is skilled at punctuating the stream of events
into coherent episodes, he is sensitive to the relationships that he acts into and
out of, and he is even able to make his own cultural frames visible. With all of
this, he still does not know what to do in his conversations with Shirley.
Situations such as this one confronting Kyle pose the strongest tests of
our practical wisdom (i.e., phronesis) because they require good judgment
among the various things that we know how to do. Kyle knows that whatever
he does will have far-reaching implications for his relationship with Shirley,
for the episode of their working together, and for the array of speech acts
that will characterize the office in the future.
Kyle's decision involves putting together the various strands of the logic
of meaning and action in which he finds himself. This "putting it all together"
issomething that you do in all your conversations. Usually, you do not find
yourself in a predicament as difficult as Kyle's; most of the time you find ways
to integrate the various contexts of conversations so that they are coherent,
pleasant, and effective.
However, it is not always easy, and in some cases, not always possible
to have such a happy outcome. In previous chapters, you learned that these
logics are often confused; the subject of this chapter is what to do about the
tangles and jumbles that occur in our social worlds.
Two Metaphors for "Putting It All Together" ^$£r

^
But what does it mean to put it all together? Who does this "putting"? Just Vx ^ O^ I
what is "put"? How does it fit Remember that communication

"together"? >Jso x
^^
is a process of making and doing: what way do we "put" episodes and
in
Y^N^""' x.
>
N^ v S
relationships together? If our self-concept and our culture are contradictory, J
\J
how do we put them together so that we can act in the "now" of a f/\^W-
conversation? ^- ^
Two images help me understand the process of putting the various
aspects of conversation together: juggling and weaving.
Juggling
Like jugglers, communicators pick up various objects that we find in our
social worlds and throwing them back and forth, in this way making them
start
into the substance of the conversations in which we live. This is inherently a
social process,and our own skills must be matched with those of the persons
who catch whatwe throw and throw what we catch.
Every conversation always includes all of these: speech acts, self, relation-
ship, episode, and culture. Within each of these, there can be competing
definitions of relationships, conflicting pressures from episodic scripts and
our goals for the episode, and uncertainty about the speech act that is being
performed. All of this makes juggling necessary.
Just like juggling balls or clubs, conversational juggling requires certain
skills. Unlike juggling, which only a few people learn to do, every "normal"
human being learns how to juggle the events and objects of their social world
to make coherent conversations.
Even the most skillful juggler can be overwhelmed if he or she has to
keep too many balls in the air. Are five "aspects" of communication too
many? Conversational juggling is possible because 1 ) in each conversation
some things are more relevant than most conversations, the
others; 2) in
actions we take in making speech acts, self, and culture
relationships, episode,
are compatible; and 3) in most conversations, we can rely on intuition for
much of what we do.
1
Communicators "put it all together" by juggling the events and objects of their social worlds to make a
specific conversation.
Counterpoint 8.
In the text, I said that "every 'normal' human being learns how to jug-
gle. ..." This statement begs the question of what "normal" means,
of course.
I am
content to use a circular argument here: normal human beings
are those who can participate in normal conversations with other people.
Although this circular argument gives no help in identifying the attributes
that distinguish normalirom abnormal people, it does locate the site in which
such attributes are noticed. That site is, of course, the conversations that
we have with other people.
Most of us have a keen sense of when things go slightly wrong in
conversation. If your interlocutors do not juggle episode and relation-
—
ship well that is, they talk in ways that are appropriate for your relation-
—
ship but not in this particular setting you quickly note it and wonder what
is wrong with them.
Any metaphor can be pushed too far and should not be taken literally.
The image of juggling distorts what conversants do when they put it all
together because it implies that the events and objects "tossed" back and forth
are discrete entities, unrelated to each other, and not significantly changed ^-^
by the process of being thrown around. In interpersonal communication, r~vGlA^
v-^ffrrft TN f -P^
however, the creation of our social worlds is continuous, and our selves, .
^
speech acts, cultures, episodes, and relationships change as we "juggle" them. &x^\Y"\ * ^\\ *-^-^
The self that we "throw" of a conversational
to the other person in the first act
triplet is not quite the same self that she "throws" back in the second act,
or that we "throw" yet again in the third act. Those changes in our self affect
our relationship to those with whom we are juggling, which in turn affects
the episode in which we are acting, and so on, in a continuous, fluid, and
reflexive process.
Counterpoint 8.2
I had been trying to describe the continuing creation of our social worlds
in class. As usual, had waved my arms a lot, mostly in circular
I
patterns, and spoken in run-on sentences. left the classroom with a I
sense of frustration, and met one of my students at the head of the stairs.
"Just a minute, Prof," he said. "Do you mean to say that nothing stands
still in conversation? That everything rotates around everything else?"
"Yes!" I cried. "That's exactly what I am trying to say."

"Wow . . . I'm going to have to think about that," he replied.
As you can see, / am still thinking about this brief conversation. I won-
dered at my student's trouble in visualizing a fluid, reflexive process,
and his amazement when he "got
the picture." He acted as if were I
teaching something new, highly radical, and perhaps slightly subver-

sive. But although this view of our social worlds may be unusual, it
really is neither new nor original.
Our Western intellectual heritage has taught us to think in terms of
unchanging entities (e.g., atoms) that fit together in relatively simple
ways (e.g, Newton's three laws of motion). Even people who are not
physicists have been deeply affected by this cosmology; they apply
thisschema to the events and objects in their social umwelt. But physicists
have known for nearly a century that the universe is far more complex
than things that are "as old as the hills" are very young, that
this, that
the "fixed" stars are not only in motion but are in a process of evolution,
that we are surrounded by swirling forces that reciprocally influence each
other in complex patterns. believe that my student would have been less
I
—
amazed by and would have had less difficulty understanding the social —
constructionist notion of communication if he had understood the cosmology
taught in contemporary physics and astronomy classes.
"Putting it all together'

inconversation is like
weaving together the
events and objects of
our social worlds.
Weaving
The metaphor of weaving is in some ways a better metaphor for conversation
than is juggling because in the hands of an accomplished weaver, the individual
strands of fabric are less important than the pattern that they construct. Many
strands of materials can be braided into complex patterns; a skillful weaver
can choose which of the strands will give the dominant texture or color to
the whole pattern. A less skilled or less gifted weaver ties ugly, rough knots
that have unpredictable or boring, repetitive colors or textures. When I am
talking with a skillful conversationalist, I am reminded of a master weaver
who takes the strands of both my self-concept and his, our relationship, the
episode in which we are participating, the speech acts we are performing,
and our and braids them into a pattern sufficiently familiar
cultural horizons
so that I can recognize it and sufficiently unpredictable so that it is interesting.
This is an art form whose beauty is enhanced by understanding the complexity
of the process by which it is accomplished.
Relations Among Aspects of our Social Worlds
Whether we weave or juggle, we have to organize the speech acts, episode,

relationships, self, and culture that are being made in the conversation. These
organizational patterns may be described with two terms: compatibility and

hierarchy.
Compatibility
If you have only two eggs, and you are trying to make both a two-egg omelette
and a two-egg cake, then the performance demands of your recipes are
incompatible: you cannot juggle them so that you can follow both recipes
as they are written. The best that you can do is to have either the omelette
or the cake (but the decision about which is more preferable is not found in
the recipes themselves) or you might decide to cook a single fried egg and
a one-egg cake (but that would be a form of game mastery in which you
adapt the recipes to the necessity of your juggling).
Because communication is a process of making and doing, compatibility
refers to what we are to do in a specific instance. Each of the aspects of
conversation like a recipe; certain acts are required if we are to maintain
is
face, others, if we are to co-construct a mutually satisfactory relationship,

and still others, if we are to pull off the performance of a particular episode.
The analogy of a recipe breaks down, of course, because most performance
demands in conversations include many ways of achieving the same goal.
However, the necessity to juggle the performance demands of speech acts,
self, episode, culture, and relationship simultaneously means that there are
many instances in which our skills as game players are stressed.

Let the term compatible refer to instances in which what we are required
to do, for example, by the episode in which we are participating, is the same
as that which we are required to do, for example, by our relationships with
other people. Let the term incompatible refer to instances in which we cannot
do both what is required by the episode and by our relationships.
Incompatibilityis not a cognitive problem (i.e., knowing what to do)
as much asone of being able to perform all that we must do. For example,
it is
if you are a witness to a traffic accident involving a friend, you may be sworn
to give truthful testimony in court that would convict your friend of criminal
negligence. In this case, what do you do —
lie and face charges of perjury or
tell the truth and lose a friendship? If you are starving and homeless during
a blizzard, the performance demands of your self ("honesty") may conflict

with those of your relationship to your children ("parental responsibility").
Without trying to resolve the question of what you would do in that situation,
by each aspect of the situation are incompatible.
clearly the actions required
—
No matter which you choose virtuously watching your children freeze while
you starve or stealing firewood and two eggs and build a guilty fire for
—
warmth and to cook an omelette and a cake you will have to live with the
consequences of having to choose between incompatible requirements.
Often, we can resolve incompatible demands by stepping out of this
particular instant in time. For example, we can do first one thing and then
another, or we can call into being things that have not happened yet.
)
A dramatic instance of both of these ways of playing with time occurred

in Maine. Some young people were shipwrecked on an island in one of the
tidal rivers.Because the tides in that part of the world rise and fall over ten
feet and have a current of over four knots that reverse direction twice a day,
it is a dangerous area for navigation, and because the water is always cold,
these teen-agers were in a life-threatening situation. They managed to get

to shore and found that there was one house on the island, closed for the
winter.
They broke into the house, burned the owner's firewood, ate the own-
er's food, took dry clothing from the closets, and dripped all over the floors.
Before leaving, they left a long letter for the owner, whom they did not know,
explaining the circumstances, apologizing for the damage, and promising to
repay. According to local legend, that incident was the beginning of a long
friendship, but it might have turned out otherwise if the shipwrecked sailors
had not been so careful to punctuate their violence to the house and locate
it as one part of a longer episode. They made their entry to the house
compatible with their own sense of dignity by proposing it as a part of an

as-yet-unrealized friendship; within the context of that friendship, the owner
would welcome the damage to his house in exchange for keeping them from
freezing after their close escape from the river. As it turned out, the owner
accepted this definition of the events, acknowledging a particularly deft bit
of conversational juggling or weaving.
Hierarchy
Kyle was juggling with incompatible performance demands in his conversa-
tions with Shirley. When she came in late, he had to act either as a coworker
( You are making me do your work as well as mine"
"Shirley, this has got to stop!
or as a co-conspirator "Shirley, I told your boss that you were at the mail room
(
sending out a special delivery letter"). Whether wisely or not, he was letting
the performance demands of his relationship with her (co-conspirators, helpful,
friendly) take precedence over the performance demands of the episode (co-
workers). That is, was the context for episode.
relationship
Let hierarchy describe the pattern of relationships among the various
aspects of communication that we are continuously juggling. One way of
understanding this relationship is as a series of concentric circles or boxes
inside each other (see Figure 8.1). In each case, the larger circle or box is
the one that predominates.
Another way of representing the hierarchy is to use the atomic model
presented in Figure 1 .5 that shows you at each moment during a conversation
at the nexus of social worlds. In this case, you are simultaneously performing
a speech act, co-constructing an episode, reproducing a social relationship,

enacting your self concept, and moving inside your culture. As shown in
Figure 8.2, you have juggled this complicated set of relationships by making
the episode the most important context (as shown by the darkest lines) and
your concept of self the least important (as shown by the lightest lines).
Culture
Self
Relationship
Episode Figure 8.
The hierarchy of con-

Speech act texts. (From Pearce et al.
1979)
Figure 8.2
The hierarchical rela-
tions among aspects of
communication (an-
other representation).
The among the various aspects of conversation

hierarchical relationship
performance demands are compatible. The hierarchical
are invisible if their
relationship —
that is, which event is the context for which —
is revealed when
the performance demands are incompatible. If your culture requires you to

manner incompatible with the requirements of your relationship with
act in a
your interlocutor, you will act consistently with the one that is the context
for the other.
For example, many cultures are racist. In the contemporary world, many
young people work or study in cultures far from their homes. In so doing,
they meet other young people and sometimes form close friendships with
them. It is only to be expected that they will invite each other to visit them
in their homes when they return to their native countries; it is likely that
some of them will fall in love and want to marry. However, when their
relationships to their friends encounter the cultural patterns of racism and
the relationships with their parents and siblings, incompatible performance
demands result. In fact, most cultures even provide scripts for how such
problems are to be dealt with.
In his remarkably candid book, The Human Cycle, anthropologist Colin

Turnbull ( 1984, p. 205) describes the and Kumari, "an Indian girl
efforts he
from a good Hindu family," made to juggle or weave the incompatible
demands of their relationship and the culture of upper-class England.
Their plan to marry was opposed by both families, who cited both
racial and religious reasons. Undaunted, Turnbull and Kumari attempted to
overcome the social barriers to an inter-racial relationship that were erected

by society. Their efforts included attending together the social events staged
by TurnbulPs social class for couples planning to marry.
/ escorted her to the Flower Ball in London, where she was considered
not quite proper, the reason given being that the then Princesses
Elizabeth and Margaret were also attending. Now social considera-
tions at the widest national extension were impinging. To be a
responsible, patriotic adult it was evidently necessary to be a racist.
There was much more furor, however, when I brought Kumari into
that south country hunting territory and escorted her to the ball
given at Arundel Castle for the coming out of the Duke of Norfolk's
daughter. Kumari fled to India and I to Africa. Between us we
first established our own economic marker for a joint adulthood,
and as soon as I could support her we were to get married. But when
with my first job in hand I wrote a formal letter of proposal, it was

delayed in the Indian mails and she received it months later, just
two weeks after she had finally succumbed and married a Hindu.
If relationship is the context for culture, you may well act in ways that
are considered inappropriate for your culture, not only by having inter-racial
friendships or marriages, but in the manner in which you present this situation
to your parents and siblings. If culture is the context for relationships, you
may act in ways that preclude you from making friends with your classmates
or co-workers who are from other races. In fact, you might develop a conversa-
tional style that functions to shield you from the possibility of getting to
know and like someone from another race or social class.
There is no universal pattern of hierarchical relationships. For example,
relationship can be the context for episode or vice versa. In fact, much of
the dynamism in our social worlds is caused by changes in what is the context
for what. Consider a couple who meet and begin to date each
at a party
other. They probably evaluate their relationship on the basis of the episodes
they co-create: "I must like her," he tells himself, "because we have so much
fun together." Sometime later, they realize that something has changed. The
common word for this is "commitment;" in the terms I am using here, it is
that relationship has become the context for episode. That now they are
is,
willing to co-construct episodes that are not necessarily much fun because
they are part of their relationship.
After many years of marriage, a woman may realize that it has been a
(while dating) (while engaged) (after years of marriage)

Figure 8.3
Hierarchical patterns of
"Episode" "Relationship" "Self" relationships at different
isthe context for is the context for isthe context for times in a person's life.
"Relationship" "Episodes" "Relationship"
long time since she has participated in an episode that she enjoyed. She feels
that she has been foolish, that her life has not turned out as she wanted or
expected; she tells herself that she is "trapped" by her relationship to her
husband and demands that he join her in a systematic process of restructuring
their relationship. At this point in time, her selfis the context for her relation-
ship. (Figure 8.3 shows these three patterns that occur at different times in
her life.)
Patterns of Interpersonal Communication
Using the concepts of hierarchy and compatibility, we can look at some

specific forms of communication and see how the conversants juggle or weave
speech acts, episodes, relationships, self-concept, and culture.
Enabling
Enabling is a term used to describe conversations between a person who has
a problem with alcohol or other drugs and those people who are sincerely
but naively trying to help them. By definition, a person who has a problem
with alcohol or other drugs acts in ways that are harmful to self and others.
To decide that someone with whom you work or play is abusing drugs
is no small matter. Among other things, it means that you have decided to
revoke their moral right to avow their own competency; you have decided
for them that they have a problem and that they need help for which they
have not asked and that they may well not want. However, the alternative is
to enable them to continue in their abusive or dependent patterns.
Enabling as an aspect of deontic logic and practical reasoning. There

are several reasons why people fall into enabling patterns of conversation.
Some people they "must" or "ought" to act in ways that are
feel that
"helpful." When Kyle saw that Shirley had difficulties, he tried to protect
her. Perhaps Kyle was absolutely sincere in his attempts to help, but what he
did was to shield Shirley from the need to seek help.
In this case, it is not clear how to punctuate the episodes that Kyle and
Shirley co-construct. The performance demands of the episode are not clear.
One plausible framing of the episode includes a script in which the speech
act of "covering" for the other counts as "keeping her from being fired"
Counterpoint 8.3
Those who work with alcohol and drug-related problems have developed
some standard terms.
Use: This term describes use that is not harmful for the user or others.
Misuse: This term describes behavior that is similar to "abuse" but is
less regular in occurrence. For example, someone who regularly uses alcohol
to relax without trying to reduce the cause of stress or relieve stress by
other means could be described as misusing alcohol because they may be
beginning a habit of use that will harm them in the future.
Abuse: This term describes use of chemicals in ways that harm the
individual or others. For example, a drunk driver returning from a
wedding has abused alcohol. This term also describes the beginning of
dependent behavior. Abusive users are usually regular users who still have
some control over their use patterns, but changing their behavior is get-
ting more and more difficult.
Dependency: The term describes persons who cannot control their use
of alcohol or other drugs. They are damaging their health, ruining
their personal relationships, and destroying their opinions of themselves
as capable, productive people. When they refrain from using the addic-
tive substance they will suffer physical and/or psychological withdrawal
pains. They find ways to justify their behavior and insist that they are
in control.
Enabling: This term describes behaviors that unwittingly allow or en-
courage alcohol and other drug problems to continue or worsen by
preventing the abuser from experiencing the consequences of his or her
condition.
and is thus "being helpful." Another plausible framing of the episode includes
a script in which the same acts count as "shielding her from the consequences
of her acts" and is thus not only not helpful, but in fact has become part of
the drug-dependent person's problem.
Enabling as an aspect of relationships. Enablers do not want to jeopar-

dize their relationship with the drug-dependent person. Perhaps Kyle valued
his friendship with Shirley —
or hoped to develop a romantic relationship with
—
her and felt that he would lose both if he confronted her about her behavior.
Of course, there is the potential for many levels of exploitation in such a
relationship: with whatever degree of sincerity or cynicism, Shirley might

offer Kyle a relationship as part of a bargain for him to continue covering
for her at work, or Kyle might, with whatever degree of sincerity or callousness,
propose such a bargain.
Enabling as an aspect of self. Enablers sometimes feel good by helping

the chemically dependent person. In this case, the self-concept of the enabler
"needs" someone who is not functioning well so that he or she can act as a
"helper." If this pattern escalates, it can produce very bizarre forms of behav-
ior in which one person is required (by the logic of the relationship) to display
ever-greater extremes of capability and the other, to display ever-greater
extremes of incompetence. As the relationship goes on, the conversations
become more and more asymmetric, with the helper (Kyle) acting as if he is
more and more the intelligent, competent, and caring partner, and the helped
(Shirley) acting if she is increasingly dependent and incompetent.
Of course, we should not interpret this or any other relationship without
suspecting that it is more complex than it may appear. For example, if we
were to watch Kyle and Shirley over a period of time, we might find that
Shirley is more competent as a communicator than Kyle. Assume that Kyle
has moved in with Shirley so that he can take care of her. I believe that
any social worker or therapist would recognize the following hypothetical
scenario.
Shirley skillfully enticed Kyle into a relationship in which he is her
protector. She used all sorts of conversational devices, including nonverbal
cues and the careful construction of episodes that offer him the role of
protector, to structure this relationship; now that it is established, she counts
on the logical force to bind him to it.
Kyle does not quite know how he got into this situation and would
like tobreak it off. However, every time he tries to act autonomously (e.g.,
going out for an evening by himself or with other friends), Shirley responds
with an act of spectacular dependency (e.g., abusing drugs or being taken
to a hospital, her life barely saved). Shirley's "inability" to take care of
herself, of course, is part of a conversational triplet that redefines Kyle's

"autonomous" evening out as a "irresponsible shirking" of his responsibility
to take care of Shirley.
It is possible to construct other plausible scenarios, of course. Here is
one in which Kyle is the more competent communicator, managing to bring

about coordinated actions that meet his needs more than hers. Again, I
believe that any experienced social worker will recognize this pattern.
Kyle carefully constructed a set of conversations in which Shirley was
forced to acknowledge that he ismore capable than she. The relationship
that develops makes it legitimate for him to point out every fault and failure
of hers and requires her to present herself as less competent than he (e.g.,
by deferring to his judgment or asking his opinion about virtually every
matter of judgment).
Shirley is not quite sure how she became enmeshed in this relationship
but finds it impossible to leave it. Kyle cleverly blocks her attempts to prove
herself as autonomous and competent. For example, if Shirley acts autono-
mously by going out for an evening by herself, Kyle will find some aspect of
her performance (she forgot her housekeys, she went to a dangerous part of
1
town, she had a couple of drinks

— "and what might have happened?!") that
he can use to convince them both that she needs his presence and help on
every issue.
In any case, the surface pattern of enabling is not necessarily the same
as the relationship that emerges if we take a longer and closer look at the
conversations. Enabling may be a pattern carefully woven by two conversa-
tionalists, both of whom are happy with the results, but it may also be a one-
sided pattern. Think of two weavers working on the same tapestry in which
one is more skillful than another. Every time the less skilled tries to bring
out his pattern, the other weaves his strands of fabric in such a way as to
make a different pattern.
Enabling as an aspect of episodic scripts. Some enablers have unre-

solved issues of alcohol or drug abuse in their own families. For them, enabling
is part of their culture; it is the form of social relationships that they learned
as children. Sharon's father was an alcoholic, and she is married to an alcoholic.

When her husband has a hangover, she calls his office and tells them that he
is sick; when he has abrupt mood changes, she tells the children to excuse
him because he had a hard day at the office. She literally cannot imagine
herself acting otherwise; this is the only pattern of behavior within her cultural
horizons. What odds would you give that her children will be alcoholics or
enablers, too?
Refrain 8.
The communication occurs in context reminds us that

principle that all
it is very what pattern is produced by any single

difficult to discern
communicative act. Nowhere is this more clear than in the comparison
between "enabling" and "supporting."
"Enabling" consists of those patterns of interaction that allow a per-
son with a problem, such as substance abuse, to continue behaving in
the problematic manner without confronting the consequences. "Sup-
porting" consists of those patterns of interaction that allow a person
to overcome or avoid problems by providing a certain set of conse-
quences to the other's actions. These consequences include feeling
included, recognized, responded to, and appreciated.
Some specific actions taken in the context of "enabling" may resemble
those taken in the context of "supporting." What is important is the "whole'
pattern.
Supporting Healthy Self-Concepts

If "putting it all together" in conversations is like weaving, then some of the
strands of fabric are the self-concepts of the interlocutors. The discussion of
enabling shows how the concept of self as helper or helped can be woven into
a destructive pattern of relationship. However, conversations are also the site
of the processes by which healthy self-concepts are developed. By observing
patterns of communication in families and organizations, we have developed
a good bit of sophistication about conversational styles in which healthy self-
concepts emerge.
The list of (what I call, with tongue firmly in cheek) the "Nine Com-
mandments" in Figure 8.4 are typical of many ways of summarizing this
information. If you look at the commandments closely, you will see that they
are predicated on several basic assumptions.
The co-construction of healthy self-concepts. These commandments

assume that self-concepts are co-constructed in conversations with other
people. By acting in the ways commanded here, you do not "give" the other
person a healthy self-concept or "cause" him or her to have one, but you
do establish the preconditions for the development of a healthy self-concept.
That is, you provide the social umwelt in which healthy self-concepts can
emerge.
Like the concept of "normal" people introduced earlier in this chapter,
these commandments do not seem very precise about what makes a self-
concept "healthy." However, on closer reading, some features of a "healthy"
self-concept are clearly implied. Shame, doubts about one's worth, and embar-
rassment are not the components of or ways of producing a healthy self-
concept; on the other hand, some sense of success, of feeling wanted and
belonging, and an ability to be proud of oneself is a part of health. Finally,
Thou shalt Figure 8.4

1. Make a person he or she belongs, that he or she is wanted.
feel that Nine commandments
2. Try to help each person achieve some success every day. for helping others have
3. Recognize the effort the person makes. a healthy self-concept.
4. Do not cause the person to doubt his or her worth; do not shame or
embarrass him or her.
5. Answer each person's questions openly, honestly, attentively, and
immediately when possible.
6. Compliment sincerely new clothes, hair styles, neat work, any
improvement in school work, homework, etc.
7. Encourage the person to speak of himself or herself proudly and often.
8. Meet the person's eyes when he or she is talking to you.
9. Listen closely and attentively.
interacting contingently with other people both the way of producing a

is
healthy self-concept and of acting as a person with a health)' self-concept. That

is, you are to recognize the other's effort, acknowledge changes (particularly
"improvements"), make nonverbal contact, and listen well to other people.
Health as an ability. These nine commandments actually do have a precise

definition of what it means to be a healthy person, but the definition is not
what you might have expected. Health is not the possession (or absence) of
particular attributes; it is the ability to engage in a particular kind of activity.
Specifically, the ability to enter into symmetrically contingent conversations
with others is the substance of a healthy self-concept.
Reflexivity in healthy self-concepts. Finally, this list of commandments

about how to help others have a healthy self-concept has a hidden reflexivity.
What kind of person do you become ifyou engage in "symmetrically contin-
gent conversations with others" as a way of helping them: Of course, you,
too, find these co-constructed conversations the social umweltm which your
self-concept can emerge "healthy" as well. Helping, like anything else, is
reflexive. One of the great discoveries is that helping others is the best way
of helping yourself. There is nothing mystical about this observation: we live
in the patterns of communication that we co-construct with other people;

these conversations are the ecology in which our selves, relationships, cultures,
and episodes exist. If we create ugly, spiteful, garbage -filled conversations,
then those are the umwelt in which we live; but if we create beauty, caring,
truthfulness, and honesty, then we can live in those environments. It should
not surprise us that those who hurt others bear the scars of those hurts, or
that those who help others are "healthy."
Persuasive Interviewing
Interviewing consists of a wide array of conversations that have a certain
asymmetry as their common feature. In an interview, one person will do most
of the asking and the other most of the answering of questions; one person
(the interviewer) is usually the more skilled or practiced of the interlocutors,
and the interviewer usually has a specific idea in mind for what the interviewed
person will say or do during or after the interview.
The development of news, the new genre of "infotainment," and talk
shows on television have given us a wide array of models for interview s. These
public interviews can be arrayed along a continuum from Bill Movers on one
end to Sam Donaldson on the other. Bill Movers uses a great deal of prepara-
tion and skill to create a conversation in which the person interviewed can
say what she or he wants to say as well as possible; Sam Donaldson uses an
equivalent amount of preparation and skill to create a conversation in which
the person interviewed must say something that he or she does not want to
say.
There is a hidden reflex-

ivity in conversations.
We live in the patterns
of communication that
we co-construct with
others. If we create ugly,
spiteful conversations,
then that what we live
is
in and what we become.

But if we create beauty,
caring, truthfulness, and
honesty, then that is
what we live in and what

we become.
For all their diversity, these public interviews pale in comparison with
those done in private. A similar continuum can be constructed between
"therapeutic interviews" ( using circular questioning or some other technique)
and "interrogations" (using bright lights and threats, or some other coercive
technique).
One form of interview consists of persuading a person to do something
that he or she feels should be done but is reluctant to do. For example, how
do investigative reporters convince people to allow themselves to be televised
saying things that will cost them their jobs?
I interviewed veteran investigative reporter Michael Lyons, who de-
scribed his technique for persuading reluctant witnesses to agree to a televised
interview. (Hmm ... In this interview, did I function more as Bill Moyers
or as Sam Donaldson?) The reporter described an instance in which he had
to persuade a man who worked for a defense contractor to appear on "Sixty
Minutes" to expose corruption and waste in the Navy. They met in a hotel
restaurant. The facts of corruption and waste were not the issue; the question
—
was whether this man would risk his job and perhaps set himself up for less
sophisticated retaliation — by appearing on television.
According to Lyons, his interview technique has three stages: bonding,
exalting, and closing. In the bonding phase, the interviewer "echoes" what
the interviewed person says: "Yes, I know how you feel." "I'm outraged
about that, too." "You're right, this is an important step that you are taking."
what the person is being asked
In the exalting phase, the interviewer connects
to do with some of the well-known but seldom used "power words" in the
person's vocabulary. For example, the interviewer may say, "It takes real
courage for you to testify." The repetition of this power word empowers the
Refrain 8.2
There are many forms of interviewing, and very different communication

episodes can be performed using the same "question and answer" format.
In the Narrative, contrast "persuasive interviewing" with "circular ques-
I
tioning." The former is designed to elict compliance with the question-

er's intentions; the latter is designed to help the answerer discover and
act according to his or her own intentions.
These two forms do not exhaust the range of interviews. "Interroga-
tions" including torture or threats are the most monologic; the form
of interview associated with Carl Roger's "Client-Centered Therapy" (in
which the questioner simply restates as a question what the answerer
says) is perhaps the most dialogic.
person to make a risky decision. Finally, the closing consists of actually bringing
the person to allow himself to be recorded.
Call this a "persuasive interview." It exemplifies the process of weaving
the various strands of our social worlds into a braid that allows the journalist
to get his or her story. The power words (I read this as part of the "culture 1
'
are conditionally connected to the relationship with the journalist and to the
self of the interviewee; these power words apply if and only if the person
engages in the episode of going on television and testifying against the

miscreants.
This conversational pattern can be contrasted with other ways of
braiding strands of social reality. For example, paying the informant for the
information (a bribe, by any name, costs the same) consists of linking perfor-
mance in the episode to a desired consequence (more money). This braid is
much thinner and less "noble" than that intertwining self, culture, and
episode.
Living Comfortably with Paradox
Paradoxes are states of affairs in which mutually contradictory things are both
true. Logicians and rhetoricians have long been aware of paradoxes, because
they seem to strain our very ability to comprehend the world. One of the
oldest paradoxes involves the charming man from the Mediterranean island
of Crete who starts to tell you about his culture. "All Cretans are liars," he
says. "But aren't you a Cretan?" you ask. "Yes, of course. I am very proud
to be from Crete," he replies. "But," you stammer as he smiles inscrutably,

"if you say that all Cretans are liars, and you are from Crete, then you must
be lying about all Cretans being liars, but if you are lying, then not all Cretans
are liars and maybe you are telling the truth and all Cretans are liars ." . .
Ways of understanding paradoxes. Paradoxes are confusing, but they

are also very useful. In thehands of mathematicians and logicians, they are
tools that test the consistency of formal symbolic systems. The term itself
comes from two Greek words: para ("beyond") and domr ("belief"). If you
believe two things to be true, but they are contradictory, you have encoun-
tered a paradox; the paradox is at least a signal that something is wrong with
your beliefs. Nicolas Falletta (1983, p. xvii) said that the best definition of
a paradox is "truth standing on its head to attract attention."
Paradoxes have played a dramatic part in intellectual history, often

foreshadowing revolutionary developments in science, mathematics,
and logic. Whenever, in any discipline, we discover a problem that
cannot be solved within the conceptual framework that supposedly
may compel us to discard
should apply, we experience shock. The shock
the old framework and adopt a new one. It is to this process of
intellectual molting that we owe the birth of many of the major
ideas in mathematics and science. (Rappoport 1967, quoted in

Falletta, 1983, p. xviii)
Paradoxes in the realm of action are more difficult to deal with than
paradoxes in the semantic realm. Ordinary people have little trouble affirming
their beliefs in inconsistent, mutually exclusive propositions — a fact that says
something important about the difference between "believing" something
and "affirming belief in a proposition." However, if people feel morally
committed to performing mutually exclusive acts in a particular setting, this
can be very troubling. What do you do when you "must" lie and tell the
truth simultaneously?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, British philosopher Bertrand
Russell proposed what he called the "theory of logical types" as a way of
instructing us how to use language without encountering paradoxes. The
—
theory forbade "classes" to be members of themselves that is, your Cretan
friend and his statement that "all Cretans are liars" cannot both describe the
class of all Cretans and their lies and be a member of that class. His solution
to the problem of paradox is perhaps less interesting than the fact that he
understood the potential for encountering paradoxes to be a problem and
warned us to try to avoid them. This sentiment persisted, and extended even
to people who had not read his snappily tided Principia Mathematica.
In the middle of the twentieth century, Gregory Bateson and others
noted that schizophrenics were enmeshed in paradoxical conversational struc-
tures with their families. That is, they were simultaneously required to act in
mutually contradictory ways, they were prohibited from talking about the
problem, and they were unable to leave the family system. Bateson and his
colleagues developed this as the theory of "double binds" and argued that
such patterns were the context in which schizophrenia develops.
The concept of double binds was enormously exciting to communica-
tion theorists and psychologists. If we could teach 'people to prevent the
development of double binds, we could reduce the occurrence of schizophre-
nia. Unfortunately, it did not work out quite so simply. Further research
showed that families that did not have schizophrenic members had just as
many double binds as those who did. Apparently, the experience of double
binds is not, at least in itself, a sufficient cause of severe psychological trouble.
Ways of dealing with pragmatic paradoxes. We have come now to

realize that pragmatic paradoxes, that is, the requirement to act at any one
time in a mutually exclusive way, are a normal feature of our social worlds,
and that they do not usually cause us great problems. Some of the ways that
we deal with pragmatic paradoxes are these:
1. Clarity the hierarchical relation among the paradoxical demands.

That is, we decide that one of the mutually exclusive things that we must do
is more important than the other, so we deliberately break the paradox by

not doing one of the things that we must do. For example, if your mother
felland broke her leg and needed you to drive her to the hospital and your
professor expected you to come by his office to pick up an assignment sheet,
you are in a pragmatic paradox. Few of us would agonize over the decision
about what to do, however, and most of us would find ourselves at the
hospital emergency room.
2. Reconstruct the context. Mutually exclusive requirements always
occur in a context that holds them in their relationship. If you can reconstruct
the context, what once seemed mutually exclusive is no longer paradoxical.
For example, this is often presented as a paradox:
all statements in this box are false
If the statement truly describes all statements in the box, must be one of
it
the false statements that it truly describes, and thus must be both true and
false simultaneously.
Note that this statement is paradoxical only in a context in which some

statements are considered "true" and others "false." Some schools of Bud-
dhism hold that the nature of the world is such and the nature of language
is such that all statements, whether in boxes or not, are false. In this Buddhist
context, the boxed statement that all boxed statements are false is not particu-
larly interesting and certainly not "true."
Bertrand Russell showed a different way of reconstructing the context.

His "theory of logical types" forbids us to put statements about the box into
the box, so he would have us take the statement out of the box and thus
eliminate the paradox.
Counterpoint 8.4
If our social worlds are heteroglossic and polyphonic and if every utter-
ance we make is polysemic, then we should make friends with paradox

and contradiction because we will have close acquaintance with thorn
both. Those of us whose thinking is structured by print media are
often paralyzed by contradiction and paradox. To avoid any such para-
lysis, look at two classic ways of dealing with paradox.
This is a classic paradox:
All statements in this box are false.

—
On depends on
closer inspection, the paradoxicality of this statement
two assumptions, not usually articulated. The first consists of a belief
about "truth" and "falsity," specifically, that some statements are false
and others are true. The second assumption is that the statement is
or can be — "in" the box.
Russell's solution to the paradox is to deny the second assumption.
His "law of logical types" states that no statement about a class can also be
a member of the class. In other words:
All statements in this box are false.
Russell's solution "protects" statements from paradoxicality, making

them falsifiable by empirical test of, for example, the statements in the box.
The other solution, which associate with Buddhism, denies the first
I
assumption. To the extent that language represents the world, this philosophy
teaches, it distorts it; therefore, all statements are false, whether they are
in a box or not. That is:
All statements are false
All statements in this box are false
The Buddhist solution subtly redefines the meaning of truth and falsity,
such that the falsity of the self-referential statement in the box is not
really very interesting. "Of course, they are false!" we say, "so are all
other statements."
This all leads to a much more tolerant treatment of language and com-
municative acts than is implied in Russell's way of thinking or in the
original paradox. That is, polysemy is a fact of life: everything we say
means more than what we meant by it, and some of these meanings
are quite different than what we intended.
In Communication and the Human Condition (Pearce 1989, p. 84), I
argued that mystery (along with coherence and coordination) is an

inherent, universal feature of human life.
Mystery comprises recognition of the limits of the stories in which we

are enmeshed. These limits are not taken as confining boundaries,
but the surest sign that there exists something beyond them. Mystery
is a quality of experience of the human world, characterized by rapt
attention, open-mindedness, a sense of wonder, perhaps even awe . . .
it is a way of treating words and language as "friends" instead of either
"masters" or "slaves."
There is an irony in mystery that must be accepted, not dispelled: "The

problem is words. Only with words can man become conscious; only
with words learned from another can man learn how to talk to himself.
Only through getting the better of words does it become possible for some,
a little of the time, to transcend the verbal context and to become, for
brief instants, free" (Shands 1971, pp. 19, 20).
If we
extend this "friendship" with language to others and claim it for
ourselves,we have room in which to deal with contradictions and paradoxes
without making them into problems.
3. Use humor, irony, or sarcasm. Ordinary language seldom has the

precision or single mindedness of scientific or logical talk. Instead, it is filled
with metaphors, allusions, and other ways in which we can do multiple things
all at the same time. For example, if we our own
are required to be true to
self and to obey the commands of the sergeant, we can find ways of doing
what we are required to do in a manner that clearly allows us to maintain
our own principles. The comic strip "Beetle Bailey" has demonstrated how
this is done for dozens of years.
problem confronting Colin Turnbull. On the one hand, he

Recall the
had a (romantic) relationship withKumari that he wanted to turn into mar-
riage (i.e., into a relationship with romantic, familial, and economic aspects).
On the other hand, he had a complex set of economic relationships with the
institutions of his society that would cut him off from funds if he acted too
bizarrely — by marrying someone who could not be taken to
for example,
formal social events that he was expected to attend because she was of the
"wrong" race. Finally, both he and Kumari had familial relationships with
their parents, both sets of whom opposed the relationship.
Colin Turnbull and Kumari were in a situation that might well be called
a pragmatic paradox. They tried to resolve the paradox by doing something
like Russell suggested: to leave the box (in this case, England) so that their
relationship would not be in contact with those parts of their social worlds
with which it conflicted. Sadly, it did not quite work, and thus the tragic
experience of their relationship is a final cautionary tale for us. Juggling and
weaving are arts requiring skill, good judgment and for lack of a better —
word — luck. It does not always work out as it should.
Three Final Words
In this final "final" section, I want to weave together several strands of what
I have written, highlighting themes that are subtexts stretched throughout
the book.
Robinson's Laws of Shared Pain and Joy

Spider Robinson (1981, p. 71) declared that two laws govern our social
worlds: "shared pain is lessened, and shared joy is increased." By "sharing,"
he means being talked about with a caring interlocutor — that is, someone
who follows the nine commandments in Figure 8.4.
Joy
Shared Not shared
Shared
Figure 8.5
Pain
A two-by-two matrix for
testing Robinson's Not shared
Laws.
How should we think about these laws?

Robinson writes fiction, but I believe these statements to be true.
^ Specifically,
and
I believe that if you were to do
a survey of all experiences of pain
and were to divide each into two types, shared and not shared,
joy,
thus making a two-by-two table (Figure 8.5), what the statisticians call an
interactive effect would be seen. That is, the amount of joy would be greatest
in the shared cc\\, but the amount of pain would be lowest in the shared cell.
This proposed empirical test is silly, of course, not least because pain
y and joy are not easily converted to amounts that can be statistically analyzed.
(Which hurts the most? A broken arm, being rejected by the man or woman
you love, or the death of your parents? Of course these are different kinds
of pain that cannot be reasonably compared that's my point.) —
What is not silly is thinking about the reason why there is something
"true" about Robinson's statements. Let me call attention to two things:
V the perils of quantification and the location of the events and objects of our
social worlds.
'0>
$ Numbers are a vocabulary, and statistics is a syntax. The apparent clarity
and precision of mathematics makes it seem that it is a better representation
of "the world" than our subjective, flexible, corrigible perceptions. For exam-
ple, the terms "lessened" and "increased" appear to have a precise meaning
if the quantity of some variable can be measured. But if we think about what
is being talked about, it quickly becomes clear that "more" and "less" in —
this context, at least — are metaphors.
Sharing does not mean transporting some of my pain or joy to someone
else, nor does it mean creating in someone else's mind the same experience
as in mine. Rather, it is a rather vague term indexing a particular type of
conversation in which my emotion is acknowledged, I do not feel shame or
embarrassment, and you and I act in ways that are symmetrically contingent.
That is, sharing is a way of coping with (reducing) pain and of enhancing
(increasing) joy.
Implicit in the discussion of whether pain and joy can be usefully mea-
sured is a struggle with language that runs throughout this book. Language
is once the great facilitator: we would not have human worlds without it.
at
But same time, the very capacities that language gives us are snares.
at the
By enabling us to do some things, it makes it harder to do others (see Pearce

Counterpoint 8.5
In this chapter, I contrasted two forms of conversation, enabling and

supporting. Perhaps you noticed that the term "help" was used in
both, and that it was not used in the same way.
Determine some of the differences between these two uses of "help."
As you do, remember to identify the perspective from which you are
describing what help means. From a third-person perspective, the help
provided by an enabler may be quite different from what it appears to be
from the perspective of the enabler or the drug-dependent person being
enabled.
At least one of the distinctions has to do with the concept of commu-
nication that is implicitly understood in each use of the term.
you do not If
push the distinction too hard, it seems that to help in enabling is to create
a conversational context in which the enabled person can continue
a specific form of actions; to help in supporting is to create a conversa-
tional context in which the supported person can choose among a
wider array of actions. In enabling, the helper finds himself or herself
more deeply enmeshed in a particular, unhealthy relationship with
the person being enabled; in supporting, the helper finds himself or her-
self freer to develop many relationships or many kinds of relationships
with the person being supported. From the perspective of an observer,
enablers seem to be working within a transmission concept of communica-
tion; that is, they see themselves as doing something for or to the other
person in a one-way, linear process. From the same perspective, sup-
porters seem to be working within a social constructionist concept
of communication, that is, they see themselves as engaged in a co-con-
struction of a social umwelt in which both they and the other can live and
develop "healthily."
1989, Chapter 3). Specifically, the language into which most of us were born
and must use if we are to understand and be understood by our fellows is
not well adapted to a social constructionist perspective.
If pain and joy, like the other events and objects of our social worlds,
exist in conversations, if conversations comprise the objective reality of social
worlds, and if conversations are co-constructed, unfinished, polyphonic, re-
flexive, all the other things discussed in this book, then we need to
and
develop language that directs our attention toward those features rather
a
than to other things. Such a language would indicate that the stuff of our
social worlds does not lie just or even primarily either "in our heads" or in
physical place outside our actions. Rather, pain and joy are created and
continually recreated in the continuing, recursive crucible of conversation.
We should look there for those things that enrich or degrade our lives,
and the form, or configuration, of those conversations constitutes our social

worlds.
Stability and Change in our Social Worlds

The arguments among the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers are one of the
foundations of Western culture. Among other things, they heatedly debated
the question of whether the physical universe was comprised of change or
stability. They sometimes posed the question quite prosaically: can you put
your foot in the same river twice?
Leaving the philosophers and physicists to continue this discussion
about the physical world, the nature of our social worlds is quite clear: they
are indeterminant, changing, and with multiple meanings at any one point.
In Chapter 2, you learned the terms heteroglossia, polyphony, and polysemy
as labels for various aspects of the continuing process of the creation of
social worlds. In Chapter 3, the conversational triplet provided a model for
understanding the unfolding nature of the creation of the events and objects
of the social world. Clearly, you cannot say the same thing twice even if you
quote yourself or replay a videotape of what you said yesterday or five minutes
ago. And because we live in communication, the fact that you cannot have
he same conversation twice means that you are not quite the same person
in any two conversations.
I am suggesting a picture of our social worlds as formless, seething,
—
and in constant change a picture strikingly different from ordinary life as
most of us know it most of the time. Most of us live within "local" conditions
of stability and structure. These local conditions can be as broad as a culture
and can last far longer than a human lifetime. If so, then what's the point of
worrying about the underlying flux?
Two important implications derive from the awareness of the fluidity
of our social worlds. One has to do with our sensitivity to what is going on
around us, the second, with competence.
Sensitivity to forces that create stability. Which is the natural order,

stability or change? The understanding of interpersonal communication pre-
sented in this book argues for change. This does not deny the existence of
stability, but it implies that stability is achieved rather than found. If you find
yourself within a social world that appears stable, permanent, and structured,
these features should claim your attention. By applying the Heyerdahl solu-
tion, you should look for patterns of conversations that have produced a
local condition of monoglossia (i.e., in which there is only one language),
—
monophonia (i.e., in which only one voice no matter how many speakers
use that voice —
is heard), and monosemy (i.e., words mean just what they say
and only what they say). How is such an orderly, tidy space within social
worlds made? Who makes it? What patterns of power are prefigured in it?
We have a tendency to take clarity and order in our social worlds
as givens; we seek explanations for change. The analysis of interpersonal
communication in this book suggests reversing that presumption: the fact of

change is natural and needs no further explanation, the direction of change
is a fruitful topic for exploration, and pockets of local stability and order
should strike us as intensely unusual and excite our curiosity.
Situational differences in what competence means. The second im-

plication of recognizing that the substance of our social worlds is flux has to
do with competence. In Chapter 2, you learned that game playing and game
mastery are different depending on whether they occurred in situations that
were clear and stable or ambiguous and changing. Specifically, game mastery
in clear and stable situations means achieving coordination in ways that differ
from the established scripts, goals, and rules of the context. On the other
hand, game mastery in ambiguous and changing situations involves creating
order where there is none, achieving coordination by establishing scripts,
goals, and rules when such structures are missing, confused, or jumbled.
If nothing else, Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 suggested that contemporary
society as a whole is better described as ambiguous and changing than clear
and stable. There are many local areas of clarity and stability, of course, but
these are the results of powerful processes of structure making. If you are to
live a life of dignity and honor, to develop sustaining relationships and a
healthy identity, and to cope with the various strangers you will meet, you
will need to be able to use both kinds of competence game mastery and
—
game playing in both kinds of situations.
When your social worlds seem comfortable and stable, you will be happy
to play out the established scripts as agame player; but at other times, you
may need to be creative and find alternatives to those scripts by exercising
your game mastery. When your social worlds seem chaotic and unstable, you
will enjoy the opportunities of polysemy and improvise as a game player; but
at other times, you will want to act as a game master and impose order on
fluctuating impermanence and create clarity in the midst of confusion.

That is to say, the conditions of contemporary society require an unusual
awareness of interpersonal communication: its contexts, its processes, and its
potentials. What is lost is a certain kind of innocence; what is gained is a
certain kind of sophistication that Aristotle called phronesis.
What "Good" Communication Means

Earlier in the book, I contrasted two concepts of communication. I compared
the answers they give to three questions: What is communication? How does
it work? and What work does it do? The rest of this book can be seen as an
extended discussion of the social constructionist answer to those questions.
However, a fourth question has never been far from the surface: What
is "good" communication?
The transmission/representation model of communication focuses on
the accuracy with which messages represent reality and the fidelity with which
they are transmitted. Because this model has an affinity for the modernist
vocabulary of self, "good" communication from this perspective occurs when
the mental pictures or images in your head resemble those in mine, and both
resemble the events and objects of the real world. We have communicated
well when we agree with or understand each other in this sense.
By now, the description of good communication in the preceding para-
graph should seem very strange. From a social constructionist perspective,
good communication occurs when you and others are able to coordinate
your actions sufficiently well that your conversations comprise social worlds
in which you and they can live well —
that is, with dignity, honor, joy and
love.
Praxis
1. Racism, Sexism, and Classism
Why do people tell racist or sexist jokes? Why do they repeat so many times
the same ethnic stereotypes in conversations with people unlikely to challenge
or correct those derogatory simplifications? What are people doing when
they laugh at or make fun of the characteristics of people who are richer or
poorer than they?
There are probably many reasons, but this one may be more often
important than it would seem: By communicating in ways that are offensive
to selected groups of people, racists and sexists protect themselves from the
frightening possibility of developing friendly relationships with those they
put down. Try this as an explanation the next time someone refers to you
in ways that classify you as a member of some unliked group: interpret their
comment as an unimaginative way of protecting them from getting to know

and like you. How does this change the way you think about them? Practice
interpreting racist, sexist, and classist remarks with this interpretation; look
for openings in what is said that would allow you to reconstruct the context
in which the remarks are made.
Of course, the situation is more complicated than this. The preceding

paragraph locates the racist, sexist, remark in the first position of
or classist
the conversational triplet, and suggests that you reply (in the second position)
in such a way that the third utterance is something other than the first. But
if we locate the racist, sexist, or classist comment in the second position, the
structure of the conversational triplet directs our attention to the comments
preceding as well as following it.
2. Developing Healthy Self-Concepts 367
Before class. Listen carefully for racist, sexist, and classist comments. In
each case, note what was said and done immediately before and after the
comment. How are these linked in terms of the interpersonal needs of inclu-
sion, affection, and autonomy? As I have done this exercise, I hear derogatory
remarks made after someone has talked about how "they" do not like "us"
(thus threatening our need for affection), how "they" are out to get us (thus
threatening our need for inclusion), or how "they" are taking away "our"
do what we choose (thus threatening our need for
resources or ability to
autonomy). The comments following the sexist or racist remark are even more
illuminating.
If this interpretation is at all accurate, it suggests that at least some of
the problem of racism, sexism, or classism is part of a spiraling process in
which a perceived threat elicits a response from us that increases the likelihood
of the thing that we fear is actually happening. The first part of this process
has been called the malevolent transformation (when affection is denied, the
person responds in a hateful manner as if to say "I did not want your affection
anyway!"); the second part of the process is a self-fulfilling prophecy (an
action that predicts that something will come true and, by predicting it,
makes it so).
In class. Form groups of three or four people; include as much gender,
racial, and economic diversity within your group as possible. Compare your
notes of sexist, racist, and classist comments that you heard, noting their
position (first, second, or third turns) within conversational triplets. Try the
hypothesis that at least one function of such comments is to preclude the
possibility of establishing a personal relationship or engaging in dialogue with
a member of the group being put down. What else is being made and done
by these comments? What do you think that the speaker intended to be heard
as saying?
Discuss your conclusions with other groups.
2. Developing Healthy Self-Concepts
In the first part of this chapter, I spent some time describing an unhealthy
pattern of conversations between Kyle and Shirley. Later in the chapter, I
gave a list of nine "commandments" that produce a more healthy pattern

of conversations.
Divide into groups of three persons. Let one person play Kyle, one
Shirley,and one an observer. In this project, Kyle and Shirley will alternate
between the unhealthy pattern of enabling and the healthy pattern of support-
ing. The observer will coach both Kyle and Shirley to make sure that they
stay in character.
As you repeat the process, make notes of the skills needed to bring off
each type of conversation. What did Kyle and Shirley try? What worked
and what did not work? What conversational ploys and performances are
appropriate for enabling that are not for supporting, and vice versa?
After finishing the exercise, compare your notes with those of other
groups. Can you come up with a recipe for enabling? How would you
change the list of nine commandments for being supportive? With which
conversational skills do you feel that you have most experience and compe-
tence? With which do you feel you have least experience and competence?
3. Interviewing
Compare and contrast two forms of interviews: circular questioning and the
persuasive interview described in this chapter.
Work in groups of three, exchanging roles frequently. For each round,
one person is the interviewer, one the interviewed, and the third is a consultant
helping the others stay in character and to use the appropriate interview
technique.
Pick a topic involving corruption, waste, mismanagement, larceny, or
some other horrendous crime. The person being interviewed is not the crimi-
nal but has first-hand knowledge of what happened, sufficient to convict the
culprit if she or he were to testify but is in some relationship with the culprit
so that would be dangerous or at least inconvenient to testify. Work together
it
to create a scenario in sufficient detail that you can improvise in the interview.
First, practice the persuasive interview. Let the interviewer work through
the stages of bonding, exalting, and closing. Let the interviewed person
alternate resisting and complying with the technique.
Second, practice circular questioning about the same topic.
After several improvisations in each style, discuss the similarities and
differences in them. What did it feel like to be interviewed in the two styles?
What did it feel like to be the interviewer in the two styles? Which did you
like best? Which made you feel What differences between
more in control?
the conversations in these you notice when you were in the

two styles did
third-person role? How do these styles of interviews compare with the nine
commandments for supporting a healthy personality in Figure 8.4? How do
these styles of interviews fit into the distinction between monologue and
dialogue?
When you finish, compare your observations with those made by the
members of other groups.
References
Dewey, John. Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. New York: Dover, 1958.
Falletu. Nicolas. Tin Paradoxicon.Garden City: Doubleday, 1983.
Illinois Press, 1989.
References 369
Pearce, W. Barnett, Cronen, Vernon E., and Conklin, R. Forrest. "On What to Look
At When Studying Communication: A Hierarchical Model of Actors' Meanings."
Communication 4 (1979): 195-220.
Rappoport, Anatol. "Escape from Paradox." Scientific American2\7 (1967): 50-56.
Robinson, Spider. Time Travelers Strictly Cash. New York: Ace Books, 1981.
Shands, Harley Cecil. The War with Words: Structure and Transcendence. The Hague:
Mouton, 1971.
Turnbull, Colin. The Human Cycle. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.
PHOTO CREDITS
Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are — —

106 Harold M. Lambert; 117T Robert Brenner/
the property of Scott, Foresman. Page abbreviations —
Photo Edit; 117B Duomo Photographv Inc.;
bottom, (L) left, (R) right.
are as follows: (T) top, (B) 179TL— Ulrike Welsch; 179TR— Uirike Welsch;
6TL— Ulrike 6TR— Robert Brenner/
Welsch; 179BL— Photri, Inc.; 179BR— Cleo Freelance
—
Photo Edit; 6CL Robert Brenner/Photo Edit; —
Photo/Photo Edit; 205 Escher Foundation-Haags
6CR—Alan Oddie/Photo Edit; 6BL—Alan Oddie/ —
Gemeentemuseum-The Hague; 249 Rhoda Sidney/
Photo Edit; 6BR— Ulrike Welsch; 21—Alinari/Art Photo Edit; 266— David Young-Wolff/Photo Edit;
Resource, NY; 54TL— Paul Mathews; 54TR— Ulrike —
274 M.C. Escher/Escher Foundation-Haags Geme-
54BL— Ulrike Welsch; 54BR— Ulrike Welsch;
Welsch; —
entemuseum-The Hague; 315 COLLECTIONES
55TL—ARAMCO; 55TR— Neg. 116946/American PEREGRINATIONUM IN INDIAN ORIENTAL-
Museum of Natural History; 55BL—ARAMCO; EM ET INDIAN OCCIDENTALEM; 323— Photo-
55BR— Courtesy of The United Nations; 56 —David Fest; —
344 J. Myers/H. Armstrong Roberts; 355T
M. Grossman; 68 —Jack Stein Grove/Photo Edit; —
David M. Grossman; 355B Ulrike Welsch.
371
NAME INDEX
Abbott, Edwin, 166 Cronen, Vernon, 15, 28, 30, 58, 59, 171, 183, 193,
Alexander, Alison, 299 219,249,252,274-275
Aristode, 11, 12 Cronon, William, 72
Argyle, Michael, 133, 155 Cupach, William R, 82
Austin, J. L., 106, 111
Averill, James, 16, 178
Dance, Frank E. X., 20
Davies, Bronwyn, 251, 257-258
Bakhtin, Michael, 61, 90, 263
Descartes, Rene, 66
Bales, Robert Freed, 163-164
Dewey, John, 10, 69, 275, 338
Barnlund, Dean, 20
Dizard, Jan, 312-313
Bateson, Gregory, 20, 22, 26, 58, 168-171, 200,
Donaldson, Margaret, 135-136
215-216,219,234-237,358 Duck, Steve, 200
Beavin, Janet, 20, 235
Duncan, Hugh Dalziel, 210
Beit-Hallahmi, B., 155
Duncan, Starkey, 185
Bellah, Robert, 314, 316, 319
Bennis, Warren, 337
Erikson, Erik, 291
Berger, Charles, 281
Berger, Peter, 101
Escher, M. C, 93, 205
Berne, Eric, 80, 224
Berlo, David, 20, 71 Falletta, Nicholas, 93, 357
Bernstein, Richard, 55, 56, 65 Farrell, J.,275
Bhaskar, Rov, 24 Fink, Edward L., 59
Billig,Michael, 58 Forgas, Joseph, 59, 157, 167, 171
Bilmes, Jack, 8, 58, 325 Frieri, Paulo, 289
Birdwhistle, Ray, 132

Boscolo, Luigi, 239 Gadlin, Howard, 312-313
Branham, Robert J., 189 Gardner, Howard, 165
Brown, Penelope, 286-288 Geertz, Clifford, 7, 1 1, 254-257, 303, 321-322, 330,
Buber, Martin, 78-79, 212 333
Burgoon, Judy K., 132 Gerard, H. B., 172
Buttny, Richard, 43, 186 Gergen, Kenneth, 55, 200, 246, 250, 259-268, 275,
284, 292, 321
Calabrese, R J., 281 Gilligan, Carol, 138
Calder, Nigel, 65 Ginsburg, G. P., 291
Cameron, Deborah, 115 Gleick, James, 22, 76
Campbell, Joseph, 52, 93, 303 Goffman, Erving, 152, 158, 161, 168, 170, 172, 185
Carbaugh, Donal, 113, 257, 278, 281 Gozzi, Ravmond, Jr., 112
Carson, Robert, 223-224 Grice, H. P., 181
Cassirer, Ernst, 50 Gudykundst, William, 296, 300, 304, 307
Cecchin, Gianfranco, 235, 239 Gumperz, John J., 152
Chang, Chung-Ying, 256
Claiborne, Robert, 71 Hall, Edward T., 157,296
Cody, Michael, 168 Hall, Judith A., 73, 132
Cornelius, Randy, 178-179 Hardiman, Rita, 281
373
374 Name Index
Harre, Rom, 11, 81, 161, 180, 250, 257-258, Parry, John B., 63
282-284, 337 Pearce, W. Barnett, 16, 28, 30, 56, 161, 171, 189,
Harris, Linda, 29, 45-46 193, 249, 264, 274-275, 296, 301-302, 304,
Harris, Marvin, 158 306, 360, 362
Hayakawa, Samuel, 63 Peters, John, 21
Hewes, Dean, 277 Pfaff, William, 310
Hewitt, Jack, 187, 273, 280 Philipsen, Gerry, 15, 16
Heyerdahl, Thor, 67 Pirsig, Robert M., 315
Huxlev, Aldous, 63 Planalp, Sally, 277
Hymes, Del, 113 Postman, Neil, 1, 40, 50, 72, 126-128
Potter, Stephen, 94
Innis, Harold, 72 Pratt, Steven, 279-280
Jackson, Don, 20 Rapoport, Anatol, 63, 79, 358

James, William, 10, 69, 250 Rawlins, Bill, 214-215, 228-230
Jones, E. E., 172 Robinson, Spider, 361-362
Rogers, Carl, 365
Kang, Kyung-wha, 301-302, 304 Rokeach, Milton, 253
Kaplan, Abraham, 14 Rorty, Richard, 55, 190
Keenan, Elaine, 182 Rosaldo, Michelle, 113
Knapp, Mark, 73, 82, 132, 185-186, 217-218, Rosaldo, Renato, 177
226-228, 231 Rosen, Lawrence, 158
Korzybski, Alfred, 63 Rothenbuhler, Eric, 21
Kreckel, Marga, 113 Russell, Bertrand, 63, 358
Krivonos, Paul D., 185
Sacks, Oliver, 251
Lang, Peter, 42 Scheflin, Albert E., 133, 156
LaTour, Bruno, 221 Schelling, Thomas, 76
Lardner, Rex, 95 Schultz, Emily, 61, 63
Lederer, Richard, 73 Schutz, W. C, 210
LeGuin, Ursula, 163, 171, 209 Searle, John, 92, 107, 111, 113
Levinson, Stephen, 286-288 Semin, Gunn R., 187
Lodge, David, 165 Shands, Harvey Cecil, 93, 360
Lutz, Catherine, 178 Shannon, Claude, 20, 22
Lyons, John, 256 Shimanoff, Susan, 182
Shorter, John, 75-78, 102, 115, 123, 190-191
Manstead, A. S. R., 187 Siegal, Mordecai, 95
Margolis, Matthew, 95 Silvini-Palazzoli, Mara, 236
Mead, George Herbert, 273 Slugoski, B. R., 291
Meyerwitz, Joshua, 72 Sluzki, Carlos, 58, 235
McHugh, Peter, 156 Smith, W. C, 329
McLaughlin, Margaret, 2, 11, 168, 182 Snavely, Lonna, 30
Milgram, Stanley, 155 Snow, C. P., 171
Miller, Jonathan, 73, 81, 337 Snyder, Mark, 284
Miller,George, 162 Spitzberg, Brian H.~, 82
Morales, Waltraud Queiser, 62 Steiner, George, 92-93
Morse, Samuel F. B., 126 Steinfatt,Thomas, 277
Stern, Daniel, 65-66
Nelson, John, 221 Stokes, Randall, 187
Nisbett, Robert, 306 Stout, Jeffrey, 263-264, 317-319, 329
Nofsinger, Robert, 185
Tan, Amy, 140
O'Keefe, Barbara, 136-138, 176, 184 Tannen, Deborah, 17, 138
Ong, Walter, 71-74, 127, 129, 131, 133 Taylor, Talbot J., 115
Orwell, George, 63 Tehranian, Majid, 72
Name Index 375
Terry, Robert W., 218 Weimann, John, 82

Thoreau, Henry David, 126 Wheelwright, Philip, 210
Ting-Toomay, Stella, 296, 300, 304, 307 Whitehead, Alfred North, 63
Toulmin, Stephen, 26, 215 Whorf, Benjamin, 61, 62
Tomm, Carl, 236 Wish, Myron, 225
Turnbull, Colin, 202, 348 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 20, 50, 73, 109-111,
113-116,219,251,302
Vangelisti, Anita L.,217-218, 226-228, 231 Woelfel, Joseph, 59
Vico, Giambittista, 24 Woolgar, Steve, 221
von Uexkull, J., 301 Wright, Paul, 207
Watson, J. B., 10
Xi, Changsheng, 121
Watzlawick, Paul, 20, 58, 83, 159, 216, 218,
233-234, 307
Weaver, Warren, 20, 22 Zimbardo, P. G., 155
Weider, Lawrence, 279-280 Zimiatin, Evgenii Ivanovich, 251
SUBJECT INDEX
Accounts, 43 E-model of self, 258

Actions, 23 Ecology, 22, 53, 219
63
Analytical philosophy, Enabling, 341, 349-352, 363
Atomic model of communication, 34, 35, 144, 154, Enlightenment, 258
171, 346 Epistemology, 12, 13
Exoticism, 325
Boundaries, 302 Experience, 10
Bricolage, 264, 329 Experience-near concepts, 255
Exposition, 128
Canonization, 90
Chunking, 162 Face, 286-288, 340
Circular questioning, 236, 356 Factor analysis, 166
Co-constructed, 119, 142, 145, 160, 276 Families, 311-313
Coevolutionary, 114 Frame analysis, 168
Cognitive complexity, 138
Common sense, 7, 125, 128, 333 Game-like patterns, 80, 82-84
Communication: Gender, 229-230
transmission model of, 19, 71 General Semantics, 63
social constructionist model of, 19, 22, 23 Gergen Test, 248
interpersonal Greetings, 185
from first-person perspective, 27, 36-38, 80, 123,
162, 174, 270-271 Healthy self concept, 353-354
from third-person perspective, 27, 30, 31, 38-39, Heteroglossia, 60, 171, 263, 276
80, 123, 162,270 Heyerdahl Solution, 67-70, 105, 204
Competence, 83
9, 80, Horizons, 302
Configurations, 105, 119
Confusion, 232-234 Indirect speech acts, 137-139
Context, 114, 154-155 Initial interaction,299
Contingency, 12, 13, 173, 182 Interaction analysis, 163-165
Conversational implicature, 137-140 Interactional ladders, 172-173
Conversational triplet, 121, 144 Interactional view, 20
Cooperative principle, 181 Intercultural communication, 314-319
Coordination (game), 193-195 Interlocution, 320
Creole, 264, 269, 328-329 Interpretive schemes, 176
Culture, 256, 300, 302 Intuition, 298, 3-22-323
Culture shock, 28 Irony, 210
Demand ticket, 185 Joint-action, 75-76

Deontic logic, 12, 14, 15,42,44, 182-183,252-253,
349 Language, 60, 62, 71-74, 169, 254
Dialogue, 69, 76-80, 205, 329 Languages of self in postmodern societv,
Difference, 237 261-264
Double bind, 58, 358 Language games, 109-111, 113, 209, 275
Double indexicality, 271 Linguistic relativity, 62
376
Subject Index 377
Linguistic tyranny, 90-92, 118, 318-320 Practical svllogism/practical reasoning, 12, 42, 44,
Linearity, 20, 22 181,252, 349
Literacy, 128 Pragmatic method, 69
Locus of identity, 275 Pragmatic paradoxes, 358
Logic-in-use, 15 Praxis, 11-14, 160, 165, 282, 325-326
Logical force/logic of meaning and action, 27, 28, Principle of expressibility, 92
58,95, 119, 142,321 Principle of ineffibility, 3, 93
Logics of message design, 136-138, 184 Progress, 306
Punctuation, 160, 206
Media, 71-72, 126-128, 130, 262-264, 266
Metacommunication, 168-169 Quotation, 320
Metalanguage, 168-169, 276
Metaphor, 303 Racism, 348
Mind-reading, 231 Radical empiricism, 10
Modernity, 306-307 Rationality, 268, 287
Modernist language of self, 259, 261 Reaccentuation, 90
Monologue, 69, 76-80, 205 Reconstructed logic, 15
Moral agent, 271 Reflexivity, 21, 203-205, 212-214, 238, 354
Moralitv/moral order, 15, 26, 39^0, 43, 77, 269, Relational 285
self,
286 Rendering, 170

Multidimensional scaling, 166 Rhetoric of science, 221
Multiphrenia, 261-262, 284 Rhetorical sensitivity, 325
Mystery, 360 Romantic vocabulary of self, 259, 261
Nonverbal communication, 132-133 Second-order cvbernetics, 239

Normal, 8, 305, 342 Self, 255
Serpentine model of communication, 30, 31, 39, 42
Objects, 105 Shotter strategy, 123
Oral speech, 72, 129-134 Socratic interview method, 317
Spiraling cycle of enfeeblement, 267, 291
P-modelofself, 258 Stories lived/stories told, 63-64, 189
Paradigms, 10, 220 Strange loops, 59, 306-307
Paradox, 59, 357-361 Strategic manipulator, 284
Pastiche personality, 284, 292
'
Supporting, 363
Patterns, 23, 170 Syllog^tic reasoning, 12, 13
Performatives, 106 Systems/systemic, 22, 25
Periodic table of the elements, 107-108
Person perspective (first; third), 9, 10 Theoria, 12, 13,
Persuasive interviewing, 354—357 Theory of logical types, 358
Phronesis, 12-14, 162, 340 Translation, 320
Physical entitv, 271 Turn-taking, 185
Pidgin, 328 Turn-yielding, 185
Polyphony, 60
Polysemy, 59-60, 62, 168, 171, 360 Umwelt, 301-302, 314, 343, 353
Popeye Test, 248 Uncertainty reduction, 281
Positive connotation, 239 Unwanted repetitive patterns, 30, 183, 195-196, 252
Postmodernity, 161, 261-264, 288
Poststructuralism, 258 Vertigo/social vertigo, 28, 162, 166, 265
.
>
W. Barnett Pearce
The relevance of our communication with others extends bevond

the moment in which it takes place. Ultimately, it defines our world.
Our culture. And points to who we really are.
This idea forms the cornerstone of Pearce's Interpersonal Communication.

Making Social Worlds.
This groundbreaking interpersonal communication text is set apart

by its "social constructionist" approach that challenges students
to consider how "social worlds" are built on communication.
Interpersonal Commun USED

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INTERPERSONAL

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Daniel F. Pipp

Interpersonal Communication: Making Social Worlds

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pearce, VV. Barnett.

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Conversations 2

CHAPTER 2 Competence in Making Social Worlds 50

CHAPTER 3 Speech Acts 102

CHAPTER 4 Episodes 152

CHAPTER 5 Relationships 200

CHAPTER 6 Self 246

CHAPTER 7 Culture 296

CHAPTER 8 Putting It All Together 338

Photo Credits 371

Name Index 373

Subject Index 376

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Conversations 2

The Formal Study of a Familiar Process 4

When Common Sense Is Not Enough 4

Interpersonal Communication as Contingent (Praxis) 11

Good Judgment or Practical Wisdom (Phronesis) 13

Conceptualizing Interpersonal Communication 16

Definitions of Interpersonal Communication 26

A Final Word: Conversation and Moral Responsibility 39

1. A Communication Analysis of Your Communication

4. Judging the Actions of Other People 45

5 Comparing Readings of Conversations 46

CHAPTER 2 Competence in Making Social Worlds 50

We Live in Multiple Social Worlds 53

Social Worlds Are in a Continuous Process of Being

6. Some Exercises in Conversational Competence 94

CHAPTER 3 Speech Acts 102

How Speech Acts Are Made 1 16

Oral Speech is the Medium for Interpersonal

Competence in Making Speech Acts 134

A Final Word: Empowerment in Speech Acts 145

King of the Mountain 147

2. Nonverbal Communication in Making Speech Acts 148

CHAPTER 4 Episodes 152

Juggling Scripts, Goals, and Contingency 183

1. Coordinating the Meaning of Acts in Episodes 191

2. Identifying Cues Used to Punctuate Episodes 192

3. An Exercise in Coordination 192

4. Unwanted Repetitive Patterns 195

CHAPTER 5 Relationships 200

A Final Word: A Language Game for Relationships 240

2. Dealing with Confusion Competently 241

3. Stages in Relationship Development 242

4. Circular Questioning 243

CHAPTER 6 Self 246

Romantic, Modernist, and Postmodern Languages of

Perspective: Social Identity 278

3. The Spiraling Cycle of Enfeeblement 291

CHAPTER 7 Culture 296

"Knowing About" Other Cultures from

CHAPTER 8 Putting It All Together 338

Photo Credits 371

Name Index 373

Subject Index 376