teaching: June 2007 Archives

Lecture Seven (Interpersonal Communication)

The basic tension described in Zediker and Stewart’s piece, Dialogue’s Basic Tension, is based on the work of Martin Buber. Buber describes the ideal interpersonal balance as “experiencing the otherness of the Other” while also “holding your ground.”

Keeping this dialogic tension in mind, I will expand more on the social construction of meaning, because in observing and responding to several of the Team planning processes so far it appears to me that this idea has not taken root. In fact, I am wondering how thoroughly you have understood the assigned readings? I know some of you have read (and understood) well, others among you may have read but been selective in what you chose to learn, and of course some of you may not have read at all. This is not unusual. However, in a Team project, there is a balance that must be struck between those who know the form of a presentation and those who comprehend the content. (Ideally, everyone knows both very well but such is rarely the case.) Many of the questions I received during the planning process had to do with form – obviously this is important as a guideline, but I am not interested in the reproduction of one model. What I want to know is, have you learned to conceive of interpersonal communication as a continuous, fluid, complex process of on-going meaning-making and re-making? Irregardless of which particular topic you have, you will ultimately be evaluated on your ability to demonstrate your grasp of this general theory on the basis of the quality of your application. In other words, can you use this new (social construction) model or are you still thinking/acting/talking in the channeled grooves of the old (transmission) model?

Leann (4.2, in the Logistics thread) said: “The loops i see in this conversion is that everyone agreed that there is a different between online communication and face to face interaction.” A social-construction-of-meaning analysis of this statement would examine how the repetition of saying the two modes are “different” actually makes the differences matter more than any similarities. I wonder why it is important for members of the class to focus on the differences? What function is served by negative comparison? What does emphasizing the difference “do” for us?

Another way to think of this, is to imagine to what would change if we spoke constantly about the similarities between online and face-to-face interpersonal communication?

This next section is a little risky because it may come across as direct criticism. On the one hand, to be fair, it is – I am “showing you” the language of what you said in order to expose (hopefully) the pattern “behind” it: the “loop” which I am trying to get us (as individual members of the class and as a group) to notice is how our basic conceptualization of where meaning comes from, or how it is made, sets a kind of limit on what it is even possible for us to mention, let alone what things (topics, issues, concerns, problems, joys, successes, revelations, etc) about which we can actually talk (technically, dialogue).

When we discussed meaning back in Unit 3, several members of class still wrote in transmission model terms. I’m including the quotes without names because the point is not who said it, the point is how “commonsense” these statements appear on the surface, and how difficult it is to challenge the deep assumptions of communication being a simple matter of taking a pre-established “meaning” (yours) from one “place” (you) to another “place” (me) and have “this meaning” be “understood” exactly as intended. I am starting with the examples of thinking that show the old model first because I guess this makes the most sense logically. Next are examples of thinking (use of language) that shows the new model: when you read these two lists, think hard about why I have categorized them in this way? What is that makes (in my teacher’s mind) the first set of statements indicative of the transmission model and the second set of statements indicative of the social constructionist model? After the two lists, I show how many of you are vacillating between the two, sometimes writing in a way that shows the “new” understanding and sometimes in ways that shows the “old” understanding. Please understand, at this point in time there is no penalty for wherever your understanding falls (at the end of the course there will be an actual test to see if you’ve “got” the distinction or not. More on that later.)

Transmission model type of thinking:

- “Meaning is defined as what is meant; what is intended to be significant or understood; a sense of importance.”

- “…meaningfullness can come from virtually anywhere. Something that is full of meaning to someone could be meaningless to the next guy.”

- “Our emotions create meaning, and as emotions vary from individual, thus meaning varies from individual.”

- “Meaning comes from how you interpret something…”

- “Meaning comes from culture, gender, working environment.”

- “If James hadn't established herself as a person who's life has been affected by these stereotypes by telling the reader the story of her two families, then her article would lose its intended meaning.”

- “Something that is meaningful to me might not be meaningful to you and vice versa.”

-“It's all up to you on how much meaning you place on a certain object or situation.”

The next set of examples is smaller. :-) This is ok (if this was easy then you would already know it and there would be nothing to learn!) Again, think about what is being said in these statements that indicates to me an understanding of the

Social Construction model of communication:

* “Meaning is in between being work and being inherent.”

* “We do not make meaning happen by ourselves.”

* “My interpretation and perceptions have changed with my surroundings.”

* “Communication, as I conceive it, is a word that describes the process of creating a meaning" (quoting Stewart).

There and Back Again!

Dawn, totally on track, writes, “Beginning from pages 22 of the text book, Stewart talks about different factors that contribute to “the world of meaning that we inhabit”. When talking about meaning, Stewart said, “It’s continuous because humans are always making meaning-figuring out, making sense of, or interpreting what’s happening”. I agree with this 100%.” But then, she reverts right back to the transmission model way of conceptualizing communication: “It is hard to define where meaningfulness comes from exactly because it varies from person to person.” Now, why do I say this? What do I “read” that is different in the “idea behind” the first quote from Dawn, and the “idea behind” the second quote from Dawn? And how happy was I to read, later in the same post, that “the exchanges of messages itself is “the building blocks” that create meanings.”

These juxtaposed sentences demonstrate exactly how challenging any process of learning is and – most important from my vantage point as a teacher – I think this kind of mixing is common: both in the sense that everyone goes through a kind of “in-between” stage between an “old” way of thinking and a “new” way of thinking, and common in that most members of this class are also struggling through this transition.

Kerry’s example of the teacher who used her position of authority to deliver a personal (prejudicial and stereotypical) attack is useful, I think, as a point of comparison with the way I am using my position of authority. If nothing else, her performance as a teacher shows the evidence of how damaging racism can be even when it is “only” as a legacy (passed on through the generations, just like Navita Cummings James’ family stories, without James' power of critical self-reflection). Kerry’s teacher was wounded so deeply she could not (at least at that time) find any other way to teach about the lingering costs of slavery and genocide (both the residue of institutionalized racism) except to cast blame. Kerry’s analysis of the situation shows an attempt to balance the mix of responses – the knowledge that racism was (and is) awful, the emotional pulls among guilt, resistance, belief in the perpetuation of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination through both well-intentioned and overly-aggressive attempts to confront these realities, and a bit of ironic humor about that teacher’s heavy-handedness.

That teacher used the power/status of her position to impose a message that she wanted to deliver. Can any of you articulate what it is that am I trying to ‘deliver’ to you?

One of the readings on dialogue is from a book with the subtitle referencing “a center, not sides” ( ). One of the loops in our class is a tension between the expectation of this course running like other college courses and the way it is actually unfolding “in real life.” Dawn named the extreme of the usual way when she said she would “rather read from the book and respond.” This kind of desire is cultivated by the experiences we have all had, as students, with the typical format of a college class. This is an example of what Pearce calls the episodic nature of a communication event. Interacting in a classroom has a general structure that we have all learned over years and years of schooling. We come to expect this structure, to be comfortable and familiar with what we are typically asked to do, and therefore may become frustrated or challenged when changes require adjustments in our behavior. Carla expressed this perfectly: “I had expected to be at ease with the interaction required for this class. Such a title led me to believe that my thoughts would come easily to me in regards to the matters of which we speak. After all, I've been communicating interpersonally since the conception of my being.” We all have! And each of us does have expertise within common frames of reference.

When things do not unwind in the particular process we anticipate, then we might make sense (meaning!) of the discrepancy in the ways expressed by Natalie and Aaron: suddenly we perceive “vague” open-endedness that “lacks clarity” and direction. In fact, these are responses to the absence of some usual markers that guide us in the performance of routine behaviors. My argument is that contemporary communication theory tells us that those habits generate “normal” meanings – rehearsed, usual, routine, expected . . . while these meanings can be a necessary comfort at times, such patterns can also be deadening, dull, even boring: less alive. It seems to me that the value of interpersonal communication is that it provides the possibility for experiencing our own beingness-in-the-world in special ways. I hope this class is teaching you to appreciate this potential and even improve your skills in being the kind of person you want.

What has been happening in our classroom is that I am deliberately messing with the usual ways of educational talking in order to help us all perceive how our expectations produce and recreate “meaning”. Once we truly understand this, we can begin to let go of the linear transmission model that Stewart and Logan critique on page 19. I bring that particular example up because Kerry and Aaron both misunderstood (it seems) the goal of Stewart and Logan in showing you the myth of that linear diagram with its assumption of a permanent, fixed, pure meaning that can simply be moved from one person to another.

One of the features of academic structure is to establish the teacher as “knower” and students as “learners” who need to be guided from what they (you) supposedly “don’t know” into a pre-established, unquestionable KNOWLEDGE. However, the most basic, foundational concept of contemporary communication theory is that there is no such thing as a 100% sure, guaranteed truth without exception. As we have been studying, this is particularly true in terms of interpersonal communication because of the fluidity and flexibility of language and the reality (!) of the co-construction of meaning.

This is not to say that there is no place in the middle where we meet and understand each other – only that any such place is an achievement of collaboration occurring continuously and constantly with many, many complicated variables always at play. So, when Tristram asks, “Did I miss something?” (when I asked about the “stuck place” I thought we might be in as a class), it is up to all of us to decide

a) whether there was “something” to be missed (or nothing at all) and

b) if there was “something”, what was it? The teacher’s vague impression? Was I mis-listening? Did I invent a problem where one did not exist? Did I identify a phenomenon but give it a certain slant by labeling it “stuckness” when a different label might have been less confusing or more accurate from your point-of-view?

:-)

So far, what have we learned about the co-construction of meaning in/through communication? Erin quotes Stewart & Logan on representation: “words are symbols that represent an existing object. Confusion arises with words describing abstract things.” Confusion can also arise when words describe concrete things, because if I tell you about a chair (using a colleague's oft-repeated classic example from Aristotle), how do I know that the “chair” you have in your mind is the same “chair” I have in mine? I do not, unless I explain it or – better yet – provide you with a picture! You and I might both understand “chairness”, but that does not guarantee identical representations. Brett is on top of the implications of this variation when he challenges Stewart’s identification of “four distances that create limitations and boundaries for meaning. I think,” says Brett, “[that] there is too much differentiation to create those limitations for meaning in regards to how close or far away you talk to someone.” We – human beings – use generalizations to create categories that help us sort our perceptions and experiences, but these very generalizations LIMIT the KINDS of categories we can create unless and until we recognize that our minds – the very specific ways in which we think! – have been shaped (one could say channeled in particular ways simply because of the exposure we have had through linguistic representations of so-called “meaning.”

Again, Dawn gives us a classic example of a predominant American mode of communicating: I “just want to speak my thoughts,” she says, showing both a particular understanding of conversation (loose, unstructured, without a disciplined focus) and also a preference for expression (what our text calls “exhaling”) moreso than listening (“inhaling”). Once we understand that there is no inherent meaningfulness in what we say (or write), then we begin to understand the power of language, and the range of uses it can be put – from the beautiful to the ugly – in interpersonal communication.

Brett’s evocative title in Unit 4, “a spoonful weighs a ton”, suggests the complexity of our endeavor here. I imagine that everyone is feeling the tension of our engagement in some way? Tristram, insightfully recognizes that “the agreements and disagreements [among classmembers to date] do in fact show a pattern because we as a class are just bouncing around on each others ideas where the information at hand therefore becomes rather limited. Even the ideas in our heads are pulled from previous bits learned so are we truly able to introduce original open minded discussion or is everything here part of some pattern in communication?” My job, as the teacher, is to try and channel or otherwise guide this “bouncing” into a tighter focus; meanwhile, each of you is being drawn to the topics that are of most immediate relevance to you: these may or may not be what I think are the most important in terms of the overall subject. These diversities lead me to try and tack back-and-forth between “where you are” and “where I am”. In other words, what is meaningful about this course is somewhat different for everyone!

My job is to try and generate opportunities for practicing a way of thinking that may go against common experience and certainly invites change. As Erin said after reading Virginia Satir’s comments about the use of the word, “I”: “Should I feel selfish for using that word? Now I'm going to think about it more, but haven't before.” Now, maybe Erin will say “I” more or less or at different times than she used to – that kind of change is not my goal. But for her to be aware that it matters if/when/to whom she says “I” – now that is the kind of change that signifies actual learning. Kerry provides another example: “[A]fter reading these articles, and a few pages of the other ones in the chapter, i started realizing that i make so much body movment, and use so much body language when i communicate and i never really noticed. i feel as though it is just a natural me. like thats who i am, and when i talk to people, do i talk to them differently? i never took that into account.”

Learning, by definition, means changing. The changes are in perception and awareness, which affects one’s range of choices. Heather noticed a pattern beyond the simple selection of a common topic for the midterm presentations:

“All these people had "voted" the same way for there [sic] favorite textbook topics but that the way they spoke about the subject was similar. A lot of people mention that they chose this topic because it is something that they struggle with and would like to improve on.” The loop here is deeper than the commonality of topic. What is fascinating from a contemporary communication point-of-view is that the choice is made on the basis of perceived personal values of struggle and improvement. This is the morality of making educational choices.

Alex’s deep loop (even though he was arguing against there being a pattern!) is “if someone does not think what u think is right then they disagree and if they do think that what you say is right then they agree.” Geez, if that is how we communicate, how are differences ever going to be resolved?

Again, my pedagogy and my own ethos concerning the value of education (why I am a teacher) is that I think we need to learn how to navigate when “the rules” are not predictable, when “the meanings” we take for granted are not the same as other people’s “meanings.” Heather is right on target with what’s happening (on purpose!) here in this class: no security! “At this point I have finally got down what it is that the professor is looking for in the posts. I know to incorporate what other people are saying, interpret the reading, and add my own thoughts. None of this is anything I have a problem with. However, now these small group projects show up again and I am completely lost.”

What if when we are “lost” is when we have the best chance to make new, different, better meanings?

As a teacher myself, I loved interpreting another professor today.

Professor: "Since class began, I have received over 100 emails and have answered almost every single one individually. You have told me about your personal life - going to weddings, car breakdowns, your commute time, how many hours that you work, that you have to get up too early in the morning, how late you go to bed. I know so much about you."

"Let me tell you a little about myself." (At which point my team interpreter looked me in the eye and signed OMG, "Oh my god", and I thought, "Yep, here we go!")

The professor continued: "I work sixty-five hours a week on payroll: time counted by the clock. I commute fourteen hours a week. I work another sixteen hours a week grading homework, this is not on the clock. I get up at five a.m.; I go to bed at one in the morning."

He did not say, "Stop whining!" but really, after that, was it necessary? :-)

Many students go through the motions - to get a job, to earn the credit, for a grade - but how many really want to learn?

These are the ones who keep us teaching. :-)

(I am thrilled to have several motivated learners in my intensive summer session online course, yippee!)

Just look at the great material they are generating!

The reading assignment takes you through each component of this definition and describes five implications. Instead of summarizing the text for you, I will supplement it by sharing some excerpts from another book I’m reading, The Scientists by John Gribbin (2002). This book is a history of what is often called “hard science” in contrast with the “soft sciences” that have to do with people and social relations. It might be interesting to have a discussion about the meanings of “hard” and “soft” in the context of science, but for the moment my goal is to show how the principles of the scientific method are not separate nor exempt from the above definition of communication.

For instance, Gribbin asserts that the only truth science can give us is mathematical. Concerning the “move on from the classical science of Newton (dealing, broadly speaking, with things you can see and touch) to the ideas of the twentieth century (dealing, in some sense, with things that cannot be seen or touched), Gribbin tells us, “Models are important, and helpful; but they are not the truth; in so far as there is scientific truth, it resides in the equations” (431). The so-called “soft sciences” also deal with the intangible: with relationships and dynamics rife with patterns, rituals, and rhythms. In fact, the microscope we will turn on language use is a technology that scientists discovered long ago: “…although it is quite right to say that light behaves like a wave in many circumstances (particularly when traveling from A to B), under other circumstances it behaves like a stream of tiny particles, just as Newton thought. We cannot say that light is a wave or is corpuscular; only that under certain circumstances it is like a wave or like a particle” (italics in original, 430). This may seem like a distinction of little account, however in the world of hard science, like versus is means the difference between painstaking precision and grotesque overgeneralization.

The soft sciences, and communication in particular, are no less attentive to fine detail. We are always concerned with the circumstances and conditions of the subject of study. Social scientists scrutinize our objects of study as cautiously and deliberately as any hard scientist. The label of “hard” or “soft” applies to the percentage of predictability each science generates: the soft sciences always have more variables and less controls in our objects of study than the hard sciences. The question arises as to the value placed on prediction as a skill or tool. Again, the purpose of this class is not to resolve such a debate, rather, it is to explore the way that we talk the value of prediction into being, literally, into existence: “the construction of [a] world of meaning.”

Online teaching began Monday, as did interpreting for Physics 101. Ha! (I'm in heaven.) :-)

The physics definition of dynamics is "the effect that forces have on motion."

I have been wrangling some "force" onto my students use of the online discussion technology (an asynchronous "bulletin board" type of software). Of course I am curious what "motions" will be effected by my language-based exertions. In which "direction" will the students move? Compliance? Competition? Resistance? OH the JOYS of HUMAN INTERACTION!

The first "lecture" was made available to them yesterday morning. I'm going to post them here, too, to see what (if anything) gets sparked in and/or out of the class.