Download bullshit proposal

L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
It may come as a surprise to you to find that a
serious consideration of the notion “bullshit” takes
us headlong into a shockingly revealing
understanding of our selves and the
communication environment we inhabit. It may be
your first reaction to downplay the topic of
“bullshit” as not terribly important, possibly a
prank, pointing to what we generally disdain and
turn away from without much thought. Or, given
that this is a proposal for academic study, it may
even be read as a criticism of the academic world,
the very act of applying for financial support to
study bullshit, not the topic “bullshit” but “the
usual academic stuff” as seen by those who see
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
academic stuff as bullshit. But Princeton
University’s professor of philosophy, Harry G.
Frankfurt’s 2005 little book titled, On Bullshit, set
in motion a closer look. No doubt Frankfurt’s lofty
station in life and record of serious academic work
helped to get our attention on the topic. A number
of thinkers have seen the topic as particularly
apropos to today’s world, connecting it to reasons
for war, a proliferation of fraud and deception,
new technologies allowing for the manipulation of
photographs and documents, scandals involving
the church and the financial industry, corporate
pronouncements of sincerity (“your call is
important to us”), titans of the entertainment
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
world, politicians, much of what passes in the
classroom as discussion, on and on. Bullshit has
been found even in the halls of science, a culture
respected for attempting to consciously keep out
its own bullshit. Some have referred to current
times as “an age of bullshit” (Reisch & Hardcastle,
2006). Many folks have given up the hope of
simple, authentic talk.
Some might write off the idea of paying any
serious attention to bullshit, keeping with the idea
that it is what we disdain, what we commonly
experience and see it for what it is, bullshit. But
this may turn out to be the most serious harm
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
done by bullshit, our casual acceptance of it, our
thinking that it does not matter. Some scholars
have taken the position that the pervasiveness of
bullshit and our casual acceptance of it does
matter. That in fact, this state of affairs points to
the heart of bullshit, and that is that it engages our
values of what does matter. Some have written
that bullshit calls into question our valuing truth
or not valuing truth. It may point to other values
simultaneously, impression formation, profit,
success, even politeness.
Ever since Frankfurt’s seminal work on the topic,
philosophers have been debating the question of
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
whether or not bullshitting is concerned with the
truth or not. What we hope to discover is a
somewhat different take on the matter by
introducing communication and discourse
analysis theory. We suspect that bullshit needs to
be understood as a transaction, as a
communication event will all that entails,
intentions, expectations, multiple meanings, a
history, relationships and not simply as a text.
Under this theoretical perspective it is entirely
likely that bullshit is about the truth at one level
and falsehoods at another.
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
What we suspect is that an exploration of bullshit
will benefit greatly from both a serious
philosophical, conceptual analysis of what it is and
also from a communication theory point of view.
What is meant by this is that bullshit appears to
operate as indirect speech acts. It functions at
more than one level simultaneously. Bullshit, we
hypothesize, functions at the level of direct
content and underlying relational messages,
underlying value messages. There is a tension
between these levels and messages. To offer a
simple example, a bullshit response to a student’s
poorly facilitated discussion may be something
like, “great job.” We may know this is not true but
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
it serves the underlying task of being supportive.
One can see a tug of war already in values
attached to this example.
What we propose to do in this study is to spend a
good deal of time reading and analyzing the
literature on bullshit, which includes works such
as Frankfurt’s book, a collection of philosophers
reacting to Frankfurt’s book and numerous others
who have written about the large field of related
topics, face saving behavior, news, politics,
corporate behavior, arguments over climate
change, guns and so on. Once we are familiar with
the variety of aspects discussed about bullshit, we
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
plan to explore the attitudes of our peers to see
where they stand on such questions as how much
bullshit they perceive around them, in what areas
of life, compared to the past, and reasons for
bullshit. Going back to our hypothesis, we wish to
explore the contention that bullshit typically
operates at more than one level simultaneously.
We offer survey participants an example or two to
see if they see a multiplicity of messages in the
bullshit transaction.
While philosophers have shown some interest in
bullshit, and in fact some have pointed out that
that is exactly what philosophy has focused on and
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
fought for centuries, what we propose to bring to
our analysis is a theoretic framework that focuses
on human communication. Bullshit afterall, is not
an entity that exists in a vacuum. It is a
communication exchange with all that goes into a
communication event. A communication
perspective promises to shine a great deal of light
upon this exchange. Some of this framework
comes from communication theory and some
more broadly from discourse analysis (Tracy,
2002). For instance, we can draw upon Baxter
and Montgomery’s Relational Dialectics (1997),
which helps us see the flux in our exchanges, the
moment to moment push and pull as we take up
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
stances that contradict one another in underlying
dimensions of things like closeness and distance.
Face work points to our concern for maintaining
our own and the other’s identity. Discourse
analysis has shown us that messages draw their
meaning from many sources simultaneously,
semantics, culture, relationship and context more
generally. What this framework encourages is an
analysis that considers multiple objectives in the
exchange, both for the sender and the receiver. It
allows us to see contradictions and how they are
resolved and maybe opens the door to considering
our valuing truth, politeness, success and so on. It
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
also holds out the possibility of exploring gender
differences in perceptions of bullshit.
Finally, we expect to interact with the literature
and with our findings and to flexibly navigate
through this investigation as we learn our way
along.
One final thought. Some of us have trouble with
small talk. “How you doing?” “Nice day.” “Gee, you
are up and out early.” One possible reason for this
is that small talk may be a good example of the tug
of war between different levels of meaning in an
exchange. If one values and focused on the
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
relational meanings, then small talk is to be
valued. If stated the truth and only what is
necessary is foremost, then small talk may be hard
to do. Just a thought.
Have a nice day, however you decide on our
proposal!
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
References
Leslie A. Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery,
“Rethinking Communication in Personal
Relationships from a Dialectical Perspective,” in
A Handbook of Personal Relationships, 2nd ed.,
Steve Duck (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, New York,
1997, pp. 325-349.
Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
L. Shedletsky and T. Sprague
April, 2015
UROP Proposal
Reisch, G. A. & Hardcastle (2006). On
Bullshitmania. In Geroge Reisch & Gary
Hardcastle, Bullshit and Philosophy, Chicago:
Open Court.
Tracy, K. (2002). Everyday Talk: Building and
Reflecting Identities. New York: The Guilford
Press.