Download The Nature of Human Communication

The Nature of Human Communication
The nature of human communication
Philosophically, “the purpose of words is to give the same kind of publicity to thought
as is claimed for physical objects” (Russell, 1979, p. 9). Pragmatically,
“Communication is the management of messages for the purpose of creating
meaning” (Frey et al, 1991).
According to Kreps (1990) human communication occurs when a person responds to
a message and assigns meaning to it. Specifically, we should be careful to define a
message as any symbol or thing that people attend to and create meanings for in the
communication process. Meanings are the mental images created to help us interpret
what happens around us so that we develop an understanding. Human communication
is irreversible, bound to the context in which it occurs (i.e. time and place), and arises
within relationships between communicators.
Acceptance arises from the apprehender’s choices, not the initiator’s intentions.
Participants to a communicative event take part in a process of creating shared
meaning. First we interpret the situation, then act, influencing one another.
We all have concerns, in response to each of which, we construct an inner
representation of the situation that is relevant to that concern. The appreciative system
(Vickers, 1983) is a pattern of concerns and their simulated relevant situations,
constantly revised and confirmed by the need for it to correspond with reality
sufficiently to guide action, to be sufficiently shared among people to mediate
communication, and to be sufficiently acceptable for a ‘good’ life. The appreciative
system is thus a mental construct, partly subjective, largely intersubjective (i.e. based
on a shared subjective judgement), constantly challenged or confirmed by experience.
The initiator begins the process of communicating with an intention, whilst the
apprehender is drawn into a joint system of communication when they try to interpret
the other person’s intention and the situation, and from this derive a meaning for the
event. Vickers would term this appreciation. Only if the appreciative mind classifies
the situation as changeable or in need of preservation, does the person devise possible
responses and evaluates them with criteria determined by their other concerns. Thus
‘problems’ are discerned, and ‘solutions’ sought. Action may or may not follow.
Vickers (1983) distinguished seven overlapping and coexisting ascending levels of
trust and shared appreciation (described in Table 1 below).
1.
Violence
2.
Threat
Erodes trust and evokes a response to contain it and to abate it, but has no
specific communicative purpose
The conditional ‘do it or else’ – involves trust only to the extent that the
threatened needs to believe both that the threatener can and will carry out a
threat unless the condition is fulfilled and to fulfil the condition will avert the
threat
3.
Bargain
4.
Information
5.
Persuasion
6.
Argument
7.
Dialogue
Involves a greater shared assumption – each party has to be confident that the
other regards the situation as a bargain – the attempt to negotiate an exchange
on terms acceptable to all the parties – each must believe that the other parties
can and will carry out their undertakings if agreement is reached – each is free
to make not merely an acceptable bargain but the best they can, or to
withdraw from the negotiation
The receiver must not only trust that the giver’s competence and reliability,
they must also be assured that giver’s appreciative system corresponds
sufficiently with their own to ensure that what is received fits the receiver’s
needs. Even if it does, it will, to some extent, alter the setting of their
appreciative system
The giver actively seeks to change the way in which the other perceives some
situation and thus to change the setting of their appreciative system more
radically
When the process is mutual, each party strives to alter the other’s view whilst
maintaining their own
Each party seeks to share, perhaps only hypothetically, the other’s
appreciation and to open their own to the other’s persuasion with a view to
enlarging both the approaching mutual understanding, if not shared
appreciation
Table 1: Levels of human communication (Vickers, 1983)
Cognitive bias
Left-hemisphere, lineal biased models (e.g. Shannon & Weaver’s ‘communication
theory’) ignore the surrounding environment (context) in promoting a pipeline
hardware container for software content. This wrongly assumes that communication is
a literal matching rather than a making of meaning. Birdwhistell (1970), on the other
hand, defines communication as the dynamic or processual aspect of social structure,
and as that behavioural organisation which facilitates orderly multisensorial
interaction.
Marshall McLuhan was one of the first to seriously consider differences in brain
function (see McLuhan and McLuhan, 1988) after being contacted by a neurology
researcher who thought that there might be a cerebral hemispheric basis for some of
the dichotomies of McLuhan’s work (linear-sequential, or simultaneous-spatial, for
example). He suggested a hemispherical dominance in the human brain. Each
hemisphere of the brain is thought to specialise in processing different kinds of
information and dealing with different kinds of problems. The left brain deals with the
more logical/verbal, whilst the right side is more intuitive/creative. According to
McLuhan, a private, left-brain ‘point of view’ became impossible with the invention
of the phonetic alphabet because both writer and reader were separate from the text.
The result was ‘civilised’ private detachment. The emergence of the alphabet elevated
the importance of the left brain functions and led to mathematics, science and
philosophy. Fragmenting and civilising technologies and tools favour the left brain.
The dual hemispheres of the human brain might hold some relationship to
understanding communication media, thought McLuhan and others, including Gerald
Goldhaber and Neil Postman.
Covey (1989) refers to our developing understanding of the specialisation of the
brain’s hemispheres as brain dominance theory. Covey concludes that personal
effectiveness comes from managing from the left-brain, and leading from the rightbrain. Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry carried out much of the scientific work in this
field. Buzan (1974) also promoted the idea that basic thought processing abilities are
located in a particular part of the human brain (Table 2).
LEFT SIDE: visual
Numbers
Lists
Order
Attention to detail
Mathematical reasoning – numbers,
calculation,
Logic
Breaking-down into parts
Time-bound
Sequencing – order
Analytical – measurement, abstraction
Lines
Words – verbal
Controlled, intellectual, dominant,
worldly, active
Sequences
RIGHT SIDE: acoustic
Overview of wholes (the big picture) –
holistic
Rhythm
Shapes
Synthesis, gestalt
Art
Imagination
Creativity, intuitive
Conscience
Empathy, emotional,
Inspiration
Day dreams
Colour
Spiritual, receptive
Space – visual
Table 2: The brain’s hemispheric specialisations (adapted from Buzan, 1974,
Covey, 1989, and Gelb, 1995, McLuhan and McLuhan, 1988)
Rational logical, scientific thinking is well served by the left side of the brain. Since
the invention of the alphabet and print there has been left-hemisphere dominance in
our culture – the activity of the right hemisphere has been suppressed. Thinking
processes from the right side need to be incorporated into our thinking to give a more
holistic thinking approach. Left-hemisphere dominance impacts on the way we
process information, as well as on content.
As Covey (1989) puts it, it would be nice to cultivate and develop the ability to have a
good crossover between the sides, so that a person could first sense what the situation
called for and then use the appropriate tool to deal with it. What actually happens is
that we tend to use our dominant hemisphere and process every situation according to
a personal left or right brain preference.
Further work has shown that not everyone has such a clear-cut brain function
dominance and that the functions may not always be in the same hemisphere.
Whatever the location, it is the ability to realise synergy between the two modes that
is of most value – logic and imagination – intuition and awareness of a larger context
- in harmony (Gelb, 1995). To succeed, we all need a balanced brain! A right-brain
dominant person will not get far in trying to communicate with a left-brain group by
urging them to “see the big picture”. A left-brain person will not get through to a
right-brain person by giving them facts and figures. A technique for balancing our
thinking is mind mapping, originally developed by Buzan. This applies creative
association to break out of divergent and convergent and to achieve synergistic
intelligence (Buzan, 1993). Mind mapping is a graphic technique for rapid note-taking
and note-making that flows like the way in which we think.
Left-brain explanations of ‘communication’ are outmoded by the advent of the
electronic (information) age. A right-hemisphere model of communication is
necessary to rid us of the assumption that communication is a kind of literal matching
rather than a resonant making of identity, meaning, and knowledge. Our ‘scientific’
models of communication are linear, logical, and sequential. Yet, we need a
simultaneous, holistic, relational conception. Our thinking about managing must cease
pursuit of control and location of facts and understanding to be shared. Instead we
must produce and relate. Communication is a making contact between people in
which meaning, identity, and knowledge are co-produced. From this we get a sense of
co-presence, some degree of commonality and co-orientation. Understanding alone is
rarely sufficient.
The societal dimension
On a philosophical level of ‘grand theory’, Jurgen Habermas has elaborated the nature
of communicative action. According to Habermas (1984, 1987), acting
communicatively requires the desire to participate in a process of reaching
understanding. Something is uttered understandably to the hearer for them to
understand. The speaker makes him/herself understandable, and then comes to an
understanding with another person. This requires several conditions:




The choice of a comprehensible expression so that the speaker and hearer can
understand one another
The speaker must have the intention of communicating a true proposition so that
the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker
The speaker must want to express his/her intentions truthfully so that the hearer
can believe the utterance, i.e. they can trust the speaker
The speaker must choose an utterance that is right so that the hearer can accept
the utterance and the speaker and hearer can agree with one another in the
utterance with respect to a recognised normative background.
Habermas’s work is a form of rhetorical theory, based on the ideal communication
situation (system). A speech act succeeds if the relation intended by the speaker
between the speaker and the hearer comes to pass and if the hearer can understand and
accept the content uttered by the speaker in the sense indicated, for example as a
promise, assertion, suggestion, order, etc. (Habermas, 1979).
Burleson and Kline (1979, cited in Pearson, 1989) operationalised Habermas’ theory
of communication by stating the requirements for real dialogue:




Participants must have an equal chance to initiate and maintain discourse
Participants must have an equal chance to make challenges, explanations, or
interpretations
Interaction among participants must be free of manipulations, domination, or
control
Participants must be equal in terms of power.
Dialogue is characterised as a communication spirit or attitudinal orientation towards
the self, others, the topic for discussion, and the situation. Dialogue requires a clash of
attitudes, equality of control and initiation of the communication, the risk of one’s
own point of view, and agreed rules to facilitate the process. Dialogue is contrasted
with monologue in Table 3.
Monologue
Deception
Superiority
Exploitation
Dogmatism
Insincerity
Pretence
Personal display
Coercion
Distrust
Self-defensiveness
Dialogue
Honesty
Concern for others
Genuineness
Open-mindedness
Mutual respect
Empathy
Lack of pretence
Non-manipulative intent
Encouragement of free expression
Disclosure
Table 3: Qualities of communication styles (Johannesen, 1974, cited in Pearson,
1989)
Niklas Luhmann’s work offers an alternative social systemic constructionist grand
theory. The ‘grand theory’ philosophies of Habermas and Luhmann present two
conflicting functionalist perspectives (controversial paradigms) on social analysis (see
Table 4), although both centre communication in their analysis of the relationship
between subject and society and between action and structure. These functionalist
theories proceed from an understanding of the whole society to an understanding of
the parts of the whole (Barnes, 1995, suggests that this work is both suspect and
difficult).
Lifeworld rationality of Habermas
Social system rationality of Luhmann
 Rationality & universality
 Differentiation - pluralism
 Communicative action – language
 Strategic action - power, money
 Common good, understanding, consensus
 Efficiency – understanding in and by
communication is an exception
 Inter-subjective paradigm – agents acting
 Social systemic paradigm – system acting
 Strategic actions distort communication
 Communicants believe that they understand
each other
 It is unethical to enter the public sphere in
representing private or particular interests –
the ideal speech situation is necessary for
inter-subjective consensus
 It is functional to enter the public sphere
representing special interests since no
collective perspective on society exists – intersubjective understanding is based on
consensus and conflict
Table 4: Inter-subjective vs. Social Systemic Communication Paradigms (based
on Holmström, 1996)
The polarised treatment of informational vs. transformational conceptions of
communication as the basis for other description and explanation is further illustrated
in books that give considerable scope to discussion of Habermas’ work whilst
Luhmann’s considerable body of work is rarely mentioned (see Crook et al, 1992, for
example). A recent textbook on ‘theories of human communication’ (Littlejohn, 1999)
gives over two pages to the work of Habermas as a Critical Theory perspective on
communication, yet does not mention Luhmann at all. On the other hand, Eve et al
(1997) cite Habermas on only two pages, whilst referring to Luhmann’s work on
twelve pages.
Luhmann views social systems as generated by people interacting through symbols.
They are autopoietic, capable of self-reproduction, i.e. at least some autonomy for the
system from the people who live in it (see Luhmann, 1990, and 1995, on selforganising/self-referencing systems). He defines evolution as the process of
increasing differentiation of a system in relation to its environment, arguing that the
mechanism for selection of one social alternative over another is “communicative
success” – some types of communication are more flexible than others and allow for
better adjustment to environmental conditions (Luhmann, 1982).
The socialising of the human communication concept
In Burr’s (1995) view, we should avoid a traditional psychological analysis, since
psychology itself is based on false premises, does not address the real sources of
personhood, and is oppressive in serving to uphold inequitable power relationships in
an individualistic western capitalist society seen to be comprised of isolated, selfsufficient individuals relating only through cold, rational calculation of cost and
benefit. Simply put, the reasons for people’s behaviour and experience are not to be
found inside their heads. Explanations cannot be found by seeking structures and
processes operating within the psyche of the individual person – memory, perception,
motivation, emotion, attitude, and so on, are social phenomena and not private events
that arise only within our own heads. The psychologist’s assumption that complex
social phenomena are reducible to the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of
individual actors is wrong. Constructions arise not from people attempting to
communicate internal states (feelings, desires, attitudes, beliefs – stemming from their
‘personality’) but from their attempts to represent themselves or the world in a way
that is liberating, legitimating, or otherwise positive for them.
Luhmann (1975) is clear that psychic systems can only think – they are closed
systems of consciousness. As soon as any communication takes place between people,
a social system arises. Thus, we discover the reason for the polarised views of
Habermas and Luhmann. Habermas thinks of communication as an act of transmitting
information. Luhmann, on the other hand, defines communication as a self-referential
system – the establishment of meaning an cognition is a construction of reality, not a
reflection of reality.
It is not that the social context of individual behaviour influences the pre-existing
individual as an ‘add-on’. Rather, according to Derrida (1974), the individual is
necessarily defined by its opposite term (‘not-individual’), society. The nature of
things lies in the relationships between them rather than in the things themselves.
Derrida shows that western thinking has been founded on the logic of binary
oppositions, in which one term usually is given a privileged position over the other
(for example, individual-society, mind-body, reason-emotion). For Derrida, this is
typical of ideologies. We are led to believe that one side of the dichotomy has greater
value than the other side, when neither can exist without the other. Derrida
recommends that we discard the ‘either/or’ logic, and adopt instead a logic of
‘both/and’. Drawing on Bateson’s (1972) notion of an ‘ecosystem’, Sampson (1989)
offers the relationship between individual and society as an ecosystem, for which it
makes little sense to separate either:
“The embedded or constitutive kind of individuality does not build upon firm
boundaries that mark territories separating self and other, nor does it abandon the
connectedness that constitutes the person in the first place” (1989, p. 124).
Personal identity arises from interactions between people, constructed out of the
discourses (of age, gender, education, sexuality, style, and so on) that are culturally
available in communicating (Burr, 1995). The person is the end-product of the
combination of ‘versions’ of things that are available to them:
“Our identity therefore originates not from inside the person, but from the social
realm, where people swim in a sea of language and other signs, a sea that is invisible
to us because it is the very medium of our existence as social beings” (Burr, 1995, p.
53).
Re-humanising communicating
Lee Thayer (1997) wishes us to reclaim communicating as a human condition. This is
largely a matter of learning how to express what others will comprehend, and to
comprehend what others will express. In this, we will have learned how to
communicate, and, in communicating, we will come to know. We cannot ‘impart’ to
another person some idea or other that that person is not equipped to ‘understand’.
Philosopher Collingwood (1940) suggested that an utterance (or a sign) is meaningful
to the extent that it is the answer to a question that could in principle be formulated by
the recipient (or, as Whitehead (1938) called the person who interprets the world and
its messages, the “percipient”). Thus, communication occurs in knowing the question
to which any utterance is the answer.
“In our obsession to scientize the study of communication, we have trivialized it; we
have neglected what may be the key fact in the relationship between communication
and human interests. It is that any theory of communication is at once a theory of
human nature.” (p. 205) “We have trivialized human communication by reducing it to
the notion of “information transfer”” (Thayer, 1997, p. 202).
Communication is essential to survival and prosperity. A closed social enterprise is
one in which the object or the end is known, and for which the basic rules or means
are also known – it has been institutionalised. An open social system is one in which
the end or the object is merely desired, and for which the rules or the means are
improvised. A closed social enterprise constitutes the structure of a society; an open
social enterprise constitutes its anti-structure. A closed system is for preserving itself.
An open system is creative and therefore destructive (Burke, 1969). In looking at the
accelerating rate of change in human history, the “poetics” of communication ought to
be at “the very center of one’s theoretical musings, if for no other reason than simply
because the source and the limits of all change lie in the “poetics” of communication.”
(Thayer, 1997, p. 26). Traditional cultures reproduce themselves in a sort of cyclical
fashion by constraining what could be said about things. The ‘modern’ culture
produces itself by unconstraining what can be said about things. The former is “truthkeeping”, whilst the latter is “truth-seeking” (see also Deetz, 1992, 1995, on
productive and reproductive communication processes. Thayer (1997) sees that:
“….. a modern society, unlike a traditional society, is not systematically a whole of
which every part has the same functional relevance as every other part – as was the
case with tribal societies. It is more like an ever-changing congeries of subparts, each
vying with the others for dominance, for hegemony, for relevance.” (p. 33)
He explains the social dynamic with a metaphor:
“What brings the audience to a symphony hall is the expectation of hearing something
with which they are familiar ……. What brings the audience to a jazz festival is the
willingness to coproduce, with the performers, an “experience” in hybridization – that
is, musical enterprise. What makes the soloist relevant is his (or her) performance.
What makes the ensemble player relevant is the music. The one presages the modern,
the other the traditional. These are two very different kinds of social order.” (p. 34)
Thayer (1997) is clear why we should discard the informational conception of
communication. Meanings are human artefacts. They do not exist in nature. The
environment (which includes us) contains no information. It is what we can give to
something that informs us. “What is the question, that “information” may constitute
the answer?” (p. 48).
By assuming something other than a scientistic posture, we can be intrigued by the
possibility that communication is not primarily referential in nature, but
consequential. In our ways of expressing ourselves, we create the shape and form and
the characteristics and the very nature of all that we might know. And in the process,
we create the nature of the knower; we create ourselves. Our contemporary (and
longstanding) view of communication in Western civilizations limits us almost
exclusively to the tactics of communication and to matters of ‘effectiveness’ or of
‘efficiency’.
Our understanding of ‘communication’ technologies follows from the exigencies of
private or common metaphors; it does not precede them. These ‘communication’
technologies are technics for the acquisition, generation, distribution, storage, and so
on, of data. There is no piece of hardware that, for example, “transmits” the stuff of
consciousness. The ‘information’ of consciousness is of a different order of reality
from the “information” of Information Theory. There are technologies for the latter,
but not even the ‘hardware’ of the human sensors is capable of accepting anything but
informationless (in the human sense) data. A human must be the de facto creator of
what comes into his or her consciousness – that is, that which that particular human
can comprehend or can articulate.
Thayer can explain why the orthodox conception of what it is to communicate does
not make sense: “Our assumption, given the nature of the biases of our Western
mentalit, is that one first has a mind, and merely learns how to “express” it in
words, or in communication; or that one has feelings, and then merely learns how to
“express” them to others, or to comprehend others’ expression of “them”; or that one
first somehow “knows” something, and then merely learns how to “communicate”
that knowledge to others. This is not so. Minds and feelings and attitudes and thoughts
are literally communicated into existence; and then they have only that existence that
their communicability permits – enables or constrains. It is not that we communicate
the way we do because we are the way we are; it is that we are the way we are
because we communicate (or not) the way we do.” (p. 203) “Communication, then, is
the process in which we create and maintain the “objective” world, and, in doing so,
create and maintain the only human existences we can have.” (p. 203)