Chapter Two

A Typology of Theories

While mostly socially rather than genetically carried, people, like the cardinal, inherit fundamental shared understandings of the world. These understandings include conceptions of the process of communication. Take a moment to reflect on your own understanding of “communication.” What kinds of things come to mind? If you are like most in the western world you will answer with a description that says something like: “Communication is the transmission of ideas from a sender to a receiver” “Communication is about the exchange of messages” or “Communication is having my ideas understood by another person.”

Thinking about communication as a “transmission” or “exchange” of ideas seems like commonsense and no surprise. The very word “communication” comes from the Latin word and Roman sense of “making common.” Neither the origin nor the conception, however, are as innocent as they seem. Indeed, thinking about human interaction in this way entails very specific assumptions and purposes. And, unfortunately, this particular understanding of communication often does not serve us very well in a highly mediated, pluralistic world.

This chapter will begin the exploration of alternative ways of thinking and taking about communication in relation to our contemporary life context. Communication theories will be shown to differ in fundamental ways regarding their conception of human experience and in the human motivations they serve. By the end we will characterize four prototypical theories of communication. Each of these theories can be a useful way to attend to the world and address problems therein, but only in certain situations. As in the cardinal example from the previous chapter, when the situation changes, the theory can become less than adequate.

Our contemporary life situation calls for more attention to the way our experiences are formed and how we can make decisions together than most popular theories allow. In an analogous way, most of us live life perfectly well treating the world as if it were flat but in particular situations we must develop more complicated approaches or we will be subject to various forms of “window bashing.” Common-sense ways of relating to others are not always useful; making positive mutual decisions with those who are different often requires more complicated practices and skills.

Human Motives Embedded in Communication Theories

People have many different motives for their interactions with others. Here we wish to characterize two fundamental orientations that have direct implications for the types of communication theories we develop. The first is an orientation to control the other—to have them know what we know, to think what we think, to do what we would like for them to do. We will characterize this as a strategic instrumental orientation to others. The second is an orientation to participate with the other—to learn from them, to make mutual

decisions with them. We will characterize this as a collaborative orientation. Quite simply, we can talk to tell, or talk to learn.

A strategic instrumental orientation directs the attention to the practices that help us know what it takes to get meaning or information to others, to influence how they see events, and to direct or control their thinking and actions. A collaborative orientation directs the attention to practices that help us know how to enable all points-of-view to have an opportunity to influence collective decisions, to open oneself to change by new ideas, to resist control attempts by others, and to encourage opposition, independence and difference. Certainly, no inherent contradiction exists between the two orientations. Focusing on strategy can, at times, aid collaboration and focusing on collaboration sometimes aids us in getting what we want. But different theories based in difference motives direct our attention differently. Communication theory has certainly been used effectively by dictators and others as means of control, but it is also intrinsically linked to any concept of democracy.

While in actual interactions our motives may be mixed and constantly change, most of us, at least occasionally, know when we are orientated one way or the other. We know when we are trying to persuade others and to get what we want. Conversely we know what it feels like to be in a genuine conversation with friends or collaborating on a project where we seem to be inventing, deciding and changing our minds on the go. But while these personal experiences provide an intuitive basis for your conceptions, our awareness of motives may be pretty slight and strategic actions pretty subtle. When these orientations are embedded in taken-for-granted theories of communication, they are hard to see and talk about. But each type of theory and its orientation enables some things and makes others more difficult. Strategy and collaboration have each been fore-grounded at particular historical times. Indeed, from the very beginning of the explicit study of communication in ancient Greece and Rome, we see this tension in motives. The ancient Greeks resolved it by a conception of the dialectic whereby an emergent truth could be reached by engaging effectively in an open dialogue. They believed that no one could find truth alone. Citizens, therefore, needed to be trained in the art of speech making and deliberation, so that different perspectives could be brought to the forum equally, thereby allowing truth to emerge in collaboration. Their great fear was that the most powerful speaker might simply win the day despite having the weaker argument. Particular forms of communication and democracy were carefully intertwined.

Throughout the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the focus on strategy intensified. The Greek social problem of working across the various city states—the polis—that created a somewhat pluralist cosmopolitan set of conceptions was replaced by the social problem of governing an empire. Communication theories designed to discover truth through participation were abandoned in favor of theories for strategically distributing (presumed-to-be) already known truth to distant populations across the Empire.

For the Caesars, popes, and kings, the emphasis was on strategic control. Whether by power or divine right, those in control had the “word” to be given effectively to others. If representation of the interests of everyday people happened at all it was through the goodness, kindness, or fear of those in control. Only the grievance process and the slow development of an independent judiciary system and natural rights provided a process of explicit participatory communication. Even within these forums, the model of communication was still based primarily on advocacy and influence. Indeed, for most of western history, communication theory has been dominated by a focus on strategic control with relatively brief periods where collaboration was of primary concern. Today we still struggle with alternatives of the Roman (strategic transmission of already known truth) and the Greek (collaborative deliberation to discover truth) models and their respective conceptions of pluralism and integration. As a society we implicitly decide daily whether we will be more Greek or Roman in the way we handle our differences.

Conceptions of Meaning and Human Experience

All theories of communication have an implied conception of meaning. For most of us the conception of meaning is pretty much commonsense. We presume that we have meanings in our minds, that they are fixed and locatable, that they are something we can possess.

Such a conception gives us a variety of person-centered theories of communication. In this view, the job of communication is to carry meanings to or share them with others. In this model, acts of communication seem to express inner states, represent personal identities and the world around us. Indeed, much of the professional study of communication has focused on the psychological development of thoughts, feelings and attitudes and treats communication as the processes by which these are transported to or influence others. However, these contemporary conceptions of meaning and human experience are neither necessary nor universal. Rather, they arose principally in the 18 th century and were refined and became dominant in 20th century pop psychology. Other, potentially more useful conceptions of meaning are possible.

Growing out of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy in the 1930’s and aided by social ferment and growing pluralism since the 1960’s, a radical new conception of experience and meaning has been developed. In this model, communication processes are seen as constitutive of the personal and the social. Rather than seeing communication as a tool for simply expressing already held personal meanings and beliefs, this model focuses on how communication processes actively produce meaning, feelings, personal identities, and the experience of the world around us. From this perspective our experiences and personal meanings are seen as outcomes of larger interaction systems. Although we usually see ourselves as “personal” first and only “social” on the occasions we interact with others, from this perspective we are first and foremost social beings; what we take to be “personal” is rather endlessly invented though interaction. Generally these have been called social constructionist theories of communication.

Thinking about human experience in this different way runs against common sense but has important positive implications for talking about communication in a highly mediated, pluralistic society. It allows us to see how our meanings and realities come to be, who produces them, and the subtle ways we are shaped and at times controlled as we take them on as our own. We are able to make visible the processes that are invisible when we simply assume that meanings and experiences are ours. In this way certain characteristic forms of contemporary “window bashing” can be avoided. We will spend the next several chapters gradually developing social constructionism and its far-reaching consequences for our communication conceptions and practices. Here we will only begin the discussion.

“Nice Night, Isn’t It?” An Everyday Example

The setting: Alex buys an ice cream cone at a Dairy Queen in the center of the student/bar section of town. After looking around he sits down on the curb next to a woman, Jennifer, whom he does not know.

Alex: (friendly) “Nice night, isn’t it?”Jennifer: (snaps) “This isn’t a bar!”Alex: (surprised) “Gosh, thanks, I never would have guessed.”Jennifer: “Just leave me alone.”Alex: “I just said, ‘it’s a nice night.’”

Even though no statement seems to be a direct reply to the previous one, most of us feel we clearly know what happened. We see both Jennifer and Alex as having meanings that got expressed with particular outcomes. Most of us see it as Alex initiating a “pick up,” Jennifer rejecting him, and him saving face. We would probably guess that each has feelings like annoyance or disappointment based on their personalities, self-concepts and motives. We might recommend different or more effective strategies or more honest and direct communication. A social constructionist perspective complicates this interpretation and leads us in different directions. First, we would notice that this interaction required a lot of cultural meaning and implicit theoretical work. Alex didn’t invent the “pick up” or various conceptions of being a man and a woman. His motives, even if we think he or we know them, are not in any simple way his “personal” beliefs. Further, the meaning of his initial statement, and their subsequent interaction, cannot be so simply identified. Indeed, the interaction is filled with ongoing ambiguity and complexity. For instance, “Nice night, isn’t it?” could have been the initiation of a relaxed casual conversation that became a pick up line only in Jennifer’s reply.

To see the socially derived and complex meaning work being done, let’s look at alternative ways the interaction could have played out. What if Alex’s reply to Jennifer had been: “Oh, I’m really sorry. Somebody as attractive as you must get hit on a lot.” What has he said here? Has Alex acquiesced to the Jennifer’s interpretation that what he said was a pick up line and he has offered an apology? Perhaps, but another conceivable reading might be

that he is just continuing with a more clever pick up line. If Jennifer replies, “Sorry, lots of guys are such jerks,” Alex becomes the “nice guy” who “understands.”

Is Alex a nice guy or not? Or is “nice guy,” as social constructionists suggest, a cultural idea, more a cultural resource than a personality characteristic? Perhaps personality is simply a convenient inference or name from a complicated set of interactions where it is constantly invented and contested. And what about Jennifer, perhaps she is from New Jersey rather than the Midwest and “This isn’t a bar” is a move in repartee assessing how tenacious he is or how clever in offering a come back. The “nice guy move” now becomes a disappointment or frustration.

In any of these cases, the meaning of their respective statements is probably not best described as something in their hearts or heads that they only needed to express. Instead, one might say that the meaning of their statements drew on already existing cultural scripts and practices and developed in an ongoing way as the interaction unfolded. Social constructionists draw our attention to the moves of meaning making in interaction rather than to the expression of meanings that people are presumed to have “inside.” The conceptions of man and female, the processes or courtship, and feelings about sexuality are outcomes of prior interactions and social conceptions that they are as much the products of as the producers. In the interaction they are “learning” as well as producing how they feel, these feelings change as the interaction continues and can change after the interaction is over as they talk to others about what happened. A social constructionist view of this conversation attempts to explain how such interpretations can come to make sense and how people work their sense making into acts of communication. It allows us to understand how situations like the Dairy Queen conversation work: how they produce the meanings they do, how these meanings become transformed, and how people work together to produce specific kinds of meaning.

Meaning as Constructed In Interaction

While specific consideration of the interactional production of meaning will be the subject of later chapters, here we wish to introduce some basic conceptions of the social construction of meaning in interaction.

The meaning of all interaction elements is systemic. No word, action, or environmental event has a particular meaning without understanding the larger system of meaning in which it is placed. From a systems perspective all potential messages are fundamentally ambiguous. All statements, expressions or gestures no matter how simple or direct have multiple possible meaning (e.g. students nodding their heads affirmatively in class means different things in the middle of class, then later as a part of a leave taking routine at the end).

Another simple example: A man turned to the woman he was with and said, “What would you like to do tonight?” She got very angry and went into a fairly lengthy monologue about his failure to make plans and his not caring enough about her to find special things to

do. “What do you want to do tonight?” on the surface is not a terribly offensive statement. Neither of the participants did anything unreasonable and our guess is that he had made the statement before without evoking this response. It meant what it did here not because of any intrinsic meaning of the message but because of how it functioned within an interaction system. Meaning is not a possession of one person, but a product of two or more people in interaction.

Interactants’ meanings are often unclear even to the speaker and most expressions have multiple meanings. At one level this is obviously true. All language and nonverbal behaviors carry with them historical cultural values and perspectives of which we are rarely aware. Most of us enact our gender and social class constantly and unknowingly in interaction with others.

Further, we express meanings that would be difficult to make explicit to ourselves and which emerge in the interaction. In the previous example, perhaps the woman really was not terribly important to this man. He expressed his low commitment and interest with his question, though without intention or awareness. He may not have known it until after he reflected on her statements; he may have become disinterested after her statements.

Most of us have at times watched friends laugh a bit too easily and long at a new acquaintance’s comments. When we ask them if they were interested in this person, they might quickly protest and then say “maybe, I’m not sure.” We may not even know what we meant until the conversation is over or other have reacted to it. As John Shotter developed in detail, when asked in the middle of a conversation what we mean, the best answer is “I’m not yet sure. I’ll let you know when the conversation is over.” But, of course, it is never truly over.

And, our meanings are frequently multiple. When we make statements like, “Are you doing anything tomorrow?” or “Can I buy you a drink?” we are aware that more than one meaning is possible and we are allowing the other person to help us decide which is to be meant in this interaction. Meanings are also multiple because there are several possible recipients of the expression. We commonly speak to someone in the presence of others; and we are aware that each of the interaction systems will produce its own meanings out of the expression. We are also aware that things we say to one person are often passed on to unknown others (sometimes we say things knowing that this will happen), each recipient in a system with us will be producing meaning, and we sometimes make our expressions with this in mind. We are learning and making; they are learning and making as we talk.

Interaction has no clear starting and stopping points; conversations and relationships are never really over. Fixed views of meaning look at interaction as if it took place in a fixed time frame. In some situations we certainly do feel as if we know when the interaction started and stopped and who the speaker was and what effect the message had. But in complex interactions this is rarely the case. The same message frequently changes in meanings over time as environments change, systems change, and as the meaning of antecedent messages change. A guy who brings a single rose to a first date seems so sweet to the recipient until it is discovered that he always does this. The meaning of what was

done changes. The same messages may have different meanings and effects at different points in time.

The Dairy Queen dialogue is, in some sense, never over. It is continuously in the process of forming meaning. We can imagine a situation in which the guy sits down next to the woman and says, “Nice night, isn’t it?,” the woman says, “This isn’t a bar,” and he apologizes and leaves. Then three days later, the guy and woman run into each other on campus and she says, “I’m really sorry. I thought you were a jerk and it wasn’t very nice what I said.” The meaning of the conversation is not done. What she thought he meant and what he thought she meant is an endless and open ended project that has yet to be worked out.

Human relationships do not start clean or end clean. Prior relationship meanings help structure the meaning in future relationships and present and future relationships change the meaning of past ones. You can see this in your own relationships. Most couples have a story about “how they met” They say things like, “I remember seeing you on campus and our eyes met. Eventually you got the courage to ask me to dinner, but you didn’t have to be nervous because I liked you a lot already.” We are constantly writing and rewriting stories like these because establishing a starting point fixes fluid meanings and responsibilities.

Sometimes this starting point is disputed. For example, you may dispute which of you made the move first. You may say, “But you asked me out.” And your partner says, “I only asked you out because I knew that you were clueless and you really wanted to ask me out.” Such conversations are ways in which we try to negotiate starting and stopping places in our relationships. Similarly, stories like that of the Dairy Queen never end. The two parties can reflect upon it for the rest of their lives trying to figure out what happened there. They can endlessly rewrite it but they will never know for sure.

Reproducing meaning is only one of many communication motives. Sometimes we do want to reproduce our meanings in others (to whatever extent we understand them). But, just as often we communicate with others to invent understandings that neither of us had. Our society would die if it had to rely only on knowledge and understandings that already existed somewhere. Creative misunderstandings are frequently more valuable to us than understanding. Productive interactions can take place with considerable misunderstanding as long as people systemically coordinate their activities.

Meaning is multi-leveled. This is a complex idea to be developed later, but let’s look at the basic notion. First, within each interaction system every message has both communicative and meta-communicative functions. That is, it says something and it says something about how what was said should be understood. The “what it says” can be called the content of the expression. Two common meta-communicative functions can be referred to as contextual framing and specifying relational rights and responsibilities.

The contextual framing structures the relationship between this expression and other expressions and elements in the system. The question what does “Nice night, isn’t it?”

mean or function to do in the interaction is a question of contextual framing. Was it a “pick up” or “casual conversation?”

Specifying relational rights and responsibilities structures who the participants are in regard to each other. If you run into your personal physician on the street and he or she asks “How are you?” the question has different meanings depending if it was said as a friend or a doctor. Until we decide which, we do not know how to answer.

As we will develop later, every statement or action could be examined in regard to its communicative and meta-communicative functions and conflict in a system could arise at any of the levels. Conversations like that at the Dairy Queen are frequently not about the content of the interaction at all. Whether it really was a “nice night” or whether or not the Dairy Queen is a bar is irrelevant. Of greater importance is the attempt of the interlocutors to establish what they are doing and who they are to each other. A lot of what appear to be content messages (“Nice night, isn’t it?”) are really meta-messages framing and suggesting specific relationships. They are attempts to determine the interpretive frame in which the guy and the woman are operating, who they are to each other, and the rights and responsibilities that come with being that person in that context. As the couple at the Dairy Queen soon realized, we cannot easily communicate content until we agree upon who we are to each other and what it is we are doing. These are prior meta-communicative agreements that have to take place before we can get to any content issues.

Second, systems are embedded within each other. For example, a marital or domestic partner relationship is embedded within a family system; a family system is embedded within kinship and community systems that are embedded within larger social and cultural systems. An activity within any of these systems has functional meaning both up and down the system chain. Specific meanings of an expression could be examined at each of these levels. Understanding meaning in any system includes some understanding of meaning in sub- and super-ordinate systems.

Any communication system can develop in ways that are equably impacted by participants and openly form meaning in response to the environment or the system may become skewed and systematically distorted in development which leads to advantaging some meanings at the expense of others. When we think of meaning as relatively fixed and possessed by people, problems of communication are most often conceptualized as a kind of breakdown or misunderstanding—a gap between the message sent and the one received, a message fidelity problem. But such conceptions make little sense if meaning is being produced in front of us rather than fixed behind us. The quality of communication from a social constructionist perspective is not based on understanding. Rather, the analysis of communication problems from a social constructionist standpoint would address whether or not we had an open construction of meaning versus a systematically distorted construction of meaning. Any bias within the interaction system (e.g. an asymmetrical power relationship) will advantage some meanings over others, and thereby distort the possibility of a fuller, more equitable, more creative interaction. Therefore, communication failure from a social construction

standpoint is identified as the skewing of the production process. We look to the ways in which messages and their meanings are either openly constructed or the construction becomes narrowed in some way. Skewing can happen in a number of ways. You have no doubt at times engaged in conversations where your conversational partner has a prior agenda and keeps producing that agenda. Therefore, the possibilities of you relating and producing meaning together become narrowed.

Understanding communication from a social constructionist perspective enables us to see greater complexity in communication events. As will become clear later, issues of power, censorship, and domination are not well understood if we think of communication as a simple process of moving messages around and expressing inner thoughts. Indeed, the most significant influences occur prior to expression. Person-centered theories might suggest that meaning is in people; social constructionists ask whose meanings are in people and how people came to take those meanings as their own. Only by examining the construction of meaning in communication can we understand these processes.

Prototypical Theories of Communication

If we combine the two different motives embedded in communication theories with the two different conceptions of human experience and meaning, we can describe four ideal types of communication theories. An ideal type is a kind of purified version that helps us see and attend to the messier versions that exist in life. Everyday ways of talking about communication show a preference for some of these theory types over others. But nonetheless most of us have at least some conceptions of each type that we use in particular situations. Making the general types more explicit allows us to see more clearly how they work and assess how useful each is in different contexts. See Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1

MotiveMeaning Strategic Control Collaborative Mutual Decisions

Person Centered

Strategic Communication

Primary interests: Information distribution; persuasion; influence; and compliance gaining

Best examples seen in: Campaigns; public relations; advertising

Liberal Democracy

Primary interests: Free speech; deliberation; bargaining; representation; due process

Best examples seen in: Town hall meetings; legislative and judicial processes

Social ConstructionistCultural Management

Primary Interests: Changing

Participatory Democracy

Primary interests: Assuring all

dominant meanings; integration; unobtrusive control; managing hearts, minds and souls

Best examples seen in: Culture industries; corporate culture management

relevant positions are heard; free and open meaning formation; maintenance of pluralism and difference

Best examples seen in: Win/Win conflict resolution processes; community collaborations

Strategic Communication- (Model: Person-centered; Motive: Control)

Most commonsense theories of communication assume a person-centered conception of meaning and a motive of control. These theories are often variations of linear information models of communication, presuming that meaning exists in individuals and that communication is a tool for expression. While the inadequacies of this perspective are often pointed out, most people still often think from a linear information model of communication.

We see these theories played out when individuals focus on information transmission, distribution and diffusion, and in attempts to use communication for influence and persuasion. The linear model assumes that people have meanings (things they wish to express) in their possession and they work to find ways to express them so that they are reproduced in the minds of other people. In this perspective, communication refers to the process of translating these intended meanings into messages and transmitting these messages to other people so that they can translate them back into meanings roughly approximating those of the first person. While there are many sophisticated ways of expressing this way of thinking about communication, perhaps one of the clearest was provided by Shannon and Weaver. It is pictorially depicted in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2

Source Transmitter Channel Reciever Distination

Redundancy Noise Feedback

The source can be used to refer to the mind, a person, or a corporation depending on what communication system is to be analyzed. The transmitter could be the voice box, a radio transmitter, or a telephone. The channel could be airwaves, electronic impulses, or a piece of paper. The noise could be anything that interferes with the transmission through the channel. The receiver could be an ear, a radio receiver, or another telephone. And, the destination could be another mind, person, or corporate body. Redundancy refers to any repetition in the message that might reduce the effects of the noise. Feedback refers to any message initiated by the destination that lets the source know what got through so that any additional effect of noise can be overcome.

This model draws our attention to places where the accurate transmission of information may fail. People may encode their meanings poorly, noise can interfere with transmission through the channel, or a different system of decoding might be used by the destination. And it draws attention to overcoming noise problems through increasing redundancy and feedback.

While presented in different ways, the basic perspective here is common to thinking and writing about communication. In fact, it is probably the implicit conception of communication carried by most people on the street and in this class. It is useful when applied to communication situations where efficiency and effectiveness of meaning reproductions are of concern. But, there are many communication situations for which this model is not the most useful. Like our poor cardinal, we may often carry it into a situation where it misguides us. In general, 18th century theories of meaning and experience are not likely to guide well with 21st century social problems and situations.

More recently many scholars and practitioners in these areas are perceiving their tasks differently. Two-way reciprocal public relations, for example, is gradually emerging. In advertising less attention is given to direct selling and more to creating consumption “needs.” Workplace managers are doing less directing of work and more establishing core vales and shared decisional premises. And, journalists increasingly talk about public dialogues and community-based journalism. Each of these call for a different type of communication theory with both a different motive and conception of meaning. Let’s look to a different motive first.

Liberal Democracy- (Model: Person-centered; Motive: Collaboration)

Historically, strategic communication has been balanced with a concern for mutual decision making and democracy. With the French and American revolutions and the wide-spread development of constitutional law in the 18th century, a conception of liberal democracy was developed for the public arena. The basic conceptions of human experience and attendant communication process became embedded in the US constitution and its amendments. Like political science, communication studies both benefits and is limited by its 18th century concepts being written into the US constitution. Today, liberal democracy and the embedded theory of communication exists as the conceptual ideal for most of the western world and often elsewhere. Most institutions, however, only occasionally follow such a model. Many if not most, families and educational and corporate organizations operate with control motives even in the great state democracies. Even in the state political processes, the motive may be one of control rather than participation with lip service paid to the idea that everyone has (potentially) an equal opportunity to try to gain control. Only occasionally do we see well-developed deliberative processes of seeking consensus and truth rather than personal gain and opinion domination. This is partly an outcome of the weaknesses in the initial conceptions. But, despite areas of low use, we can rarely attend a meeting where implicit concepts or everyone having a say, representation, and due process do not provide guidance.

Liberal democracy rests on three essential communication conceptions. First, the autonomous individual is seen as the origin of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Second, freedom of speech and speaking forums are adequately available for equable participation in decision making. And third, persuasion and advocacy are seen as the preferred mode of communication leading to decision. Let us consider each of these three conceptions.

The Primacy of Personal Experience: Liberal democratic models of communication treated meanings as already existing as worked out in the private life of the individual. In the 18th

century conception of experience that grounds this version of democracy, little consideration was given to the possibility of the social formation of experience. If we can assume, as the constitutional authors did, that experience arises spontaneously in the individual then the conception works well. But if we think through democracy from a social constructionist perspective we see grounds for concern. If the processes of experience formation are not open and equable, then the freedom of speech is only a freedom to express meanings formed by others. Freedom of Speech and Speaking Forums: Liberal democracy is greatly dependent on both the freedom of speech and the having of places to speak. Clearly more attention has been given to the defense of the freedom of speech than to the preservation of meaningful places to speak. Liberal democratic theories of communication work well where equality of access to speaking forums exists and equality of the capacity to speak effectively there are present, and less well when they are not. Freedom of expression is essential because good decision making requires that all relevant perspectives should be known by all. Unfortunately contemporary communication environments do not assure all perspectives can be heard. Freedom of expression is meaningless if there is no one to represent relevant

positions, if the one with the biggest megaphone can drown out the chorus of free voices, or if, as in the case of the Internet, the proliferation of opinions often allows few places for meaningful discussion. Freedom of expression neither specifies the right of being heard nor guarantees the expression of all positions.

Persuasion and Advocacy. Liberal democratic communication theories provide a model concerned more with the expression of personal positions than with reaching mutually beneficial decisions. This is in part because they contain a strong conception of natural rights but a relatively weak conception of collective good. Discussion often operates with a faith that if all engage in self-interested expression, good collaborative decisions arise. Decisions are most often left to voting, a private individual act. As Ben Barber would argue in his book Strong Democracy, liberal democracy was better designed to keep us safely apart than productively together.

For example, in the US, the preferred political forum is the debate. The political candidate who can advocate for an already held position is declared the winner. But, in the election process, would we select the same person or think the same about issues if we required the candidates to sit down and solve a problem together rather than simply advocating their position? Surely watching intelligent people figure out ways to meet the different needs and values of society could be instructive to us. The candidate most creative in finding mutually satisfying systemic solutions might well be the better leader. But all this requires a different communication model.

It is important to recognize that each of the three dimensions of liberal democracy described above work together to form a commonsense theory of communication that has some significant limitations. If one assumes that meaning originates primarily in individuals rather than social systems, then protecting the freedom of those individual to express already held truths seems most important, and decision-making should proceed best by simply letting individuals advocate forcefully for their own beliefs and opinions.

This theory of meaning and of communication is perfectly useful in certain situations. However, in situations where no individual does or could possess the one true meaning or solution to the problem, and where collaborative creation or discovery of unforeseen possibilities is required, the person-centered liberal democratic model of communication is less adequate. As we will show later, liberal democratic conceptions tend to work better when high degrees of social homogeneity exist and less well as pluralism increases. This becomes clearer as we consider different conceptions of human experience and meaning.

Cultural Management- (Model: Social Constructionist; Motive: Control)

While our everyday talk still primarily demonstrates person-centered views, increasingly we see much more concern with issues of cultural management. Here a social constructionist (rather than person-centered) conception of meaning is presumed and control is achieved by managing of the formation of meaning rather than through direct

advocacy and persuasion. The interest in social constructionism and its strategic use is seen most clearly in the concept of culture wars. The conceptual shifts that lead to the phenomenon of culture wars were an invention of the sixties but continue deeply to our time. Prior to that time most of the interest of disadvantaged or marginalized groups in the US society was to become mainstream, to become integrated into the social and economic life of the wider community. The various movements of the sixties—whether by blacks, women, or students—using social constructionism posed a different question. They did not want to speak white male adult meanings, to model the lives of white male adults, but rather to discover their own voice, to speak their own meanings, to participate in the construction of a different society. While in the past, activists and critics where most concerned with economic and territorial colonization, here the concern was with colonization of meaning and cultural practices, the shaping of the everyday experience of the world.

The stark contrast in how to think about politics and communication could most clearly be seen in the schism between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X—one fighting for integration and the other for a distinct black voice as a path to equality. In our current society Malcolm X’s issues of identity and voice remain even as the grounds of conflict have changed and some degree of integration has been achieved. Rap music is quite explicitly seen as a political voice as is Bill Cosby’s concern that the “hood” has colonized the black experience and provided only a distorted mirror of it. The discussion in the primaries for the 2008 presidential election in the US could unabashedly ask how “black” is Obama.

But these questions are broader than one community. The women’s movement continues to struggle with the liberal democratic sense of making it in a man’s world and the desire to transform the world in some fundamental way. The English-only debate and the religious right’s focus on a specific notion of family values all bear witness to radically different realities, not just different views of the same one. The various conflicts in the Middle East are as much about culture and Western cultural colonization as about oil and economic colonization. What was once the culture of each society has become a culture. And we are trying to figure out ways to live in such a pluralistic society.

Cultural management is one way to deal with pluralism—recognizing the social/cultural locus of meaning (rather than presuming it lies in isolated individuals), cultural managers attempt to shape experience by controlling language and cultural practice. The goal is to produce consent to a dominant set of meanings. We are using the term ‘consent’ a little different from its ordinary usage and it will be developed further later. Basically, consent designates the variety of situations and activities where someone actively, though often unknowingly, accomplishes the interests of others in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own. As a result, rather than having open discussions, discussions are foreclosed or no need for discussion seems present. The interaction processes reproduce fixed identities, relations, and knowledge claims, and the variety of possible differences are lost. Thus, important discussions may not be had simply because there appears to be no reason for them.

We are each born into worlds with ready made scripts, with institutions and languages which enable us to attend to some things easily and disregard or overlook various differences that might make a difference. We are called into being as subjects directed to (encountering and engaging) the world in different ways. These historical ways of being-there were designed by others to accomplish their own practical purposes. We take them on as if they were our own, they are us-in-the-world. The term consent refers to the variety of situations and activities in which we actively, though unknowingly, accomplish the hidden interests of others in the faulty attempt to fulfill our own.

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Cultural Management in the Monkey Cage: An Example of Consent Formation

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as the monkey touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result—all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To the monkey’s horror, all of the other monkeys attack. After another attempt and attack, the monkey knows that trying to climb the stairs will lead to an assault.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat the new monkey have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

Because that’s the way it’s always been around here.

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Consent arises from the way language structures attention, the way values are embedded in routine practices, and the way advertisement and culture industry messages (media/entertainment) invade consciousness. One of the difficulties for our society is that most people using person-centered conceptions of communication know how to identify and protect themselves from direct forms of influence and manipulation but not from the systematically distorted forms of communication that produce consent. These processes remain hidden. We will discuss this is detail later.

The strategies are much more subtle than the direct strategies of information distribution and persuasion. If those in control can influence the perceptual and belief structures of others, others will chose on their own behalf what the authority figures would otherwise have to direct them to choose. No better definition can be given for consent than that of leadership from Lao-tza.

A leader is bestWhen people barely know that he exists,Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,Worst when they despise him.Fail to honor people,They fail to honor you; But of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, They will all say, “We did this ourselves.”

(The Way of Life)

Cultural management processes in organizations and large culture industries are having significant social impact. Some of this is intended and explicit. But much of it has a strategic direction that is unknown to both producers and recipients of messages. Systematically distorted communication reflects the narrowing of the system of meaning production rather than intentions of participants. Scholars working with cultural studies have developed fairly sophisticated communication theories to understand the management process. While cultural management is one way that societies try to stay integrated and make joint decisions, the creativity that comes from difference is lost. Participatory democracy provides a different way societies can work together.

Participatory Democracy- (Model: Social Constructionist; Motive: Collaboration)

The growth of pluralism and mediation produces more and more situations where the combination of social constructionist and the desire for mutual decision is beneficial. This new way of directing our attention is especially important in a heterogeneous society experiencing rapid change. Participatory democratic theories draw attention to the ways that perceptions, thoughts, feelings, knowledge and meanings are socially constructed in contemporary society. And from a motive standpoint, attention will be draw to how consent

can be overcome and more active and representative construction processes can be developed.

As will be developed within these theories, communication at all levels, even the most everyday and personal, is productive of meaning and hence political. The core communication questions focus on the production of personal experience, identities, knowledge and so forth. In this sense communication and democracy become wed in such a way that democracy becomes an everyday life issue rather than about elections.

The concern for participatory democracy is to develop communication conceptions and practices that overcome each of the limits of liberal democracy in our contemporary situation. First, meaning and experience are seen as outcome of communicative processes, thus, freedom of speech is a necessary but never sufficient condition of democracy. The more basic questions of how we have the experiences and meanings we have and wish to express are core to our democratic freedoms. The presence of consent will be seen as a limit to our everyday democracy.

Thus the focus in participatory democracy is on how people communicate with each other to overcome consent and regain freedom and equality in the social production of meaning and social worlds. And, how particular forms of interaction can aid the development of mutual creative decisions in regard to the problems we face and the need to live together. Chapters 4 through 6 will develop each of these ideas in detail.