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From the book, Sensible Thinking

Some Useful Ideas To Enhance Communication:
Crasy Talk, Stupid Talk - A General Framework

by Martin LEVINSON

In the 1970s, I worked as a junior high school counselor in New York City. The students at my school didn't want to be in the building, the teachers were burnt out, and the administrators were bewildered about how to handle the situation.

Fortunately, I came across a book that helped me to understand what was going on, Neil Postman's Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk, one of the best self-help texts ever written. Postman, a former editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics, was the founder of the media ecology program at NYU. In Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk, he presents a philosophy of everyday language and describes different types of dysfunctional communication. He also shows how using general semantics can improve the way we think and talk.

Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk begins with this quote from Goethe: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words."  Neil Postman made a career of speaking and writing reasonable words. This chapter presents some of them.


Crasy Talk, Stupid Talk - A General Framework

Postman defines stupid talk as talk that has (among other difficulties) a confused direction or inappropriate tone or a vocabulary not well suited to its context. It is talk that does not or cannot achieve its purposes. "To accuse people of stupid talk is to accuse them of using language ineffectively, of having made harmful but correctable mistakes in performance. It is a serious matter, but usually not dreadful." A road sign that reads No crossing the median divider is an example of stupid talk, since it has the potential to confuse some drivers (the phrase "median divider" is the problem).

Postman asserts that crazy talk is almost always dreadful. "... (it) is talk that may be entirely effective but which has unreasonable or evil or, sometimes, overwhelmingly trivial purposes. It is talk that creates an irrational context for itself or sustains an irrational conception of human interaction. It, too, is correctable but only by improving our values, not our competence." Vandals who paint a "3" into an "8," so a road sign will read Speed limit 85 miles, are practicing crazy talk.

Semantic Environments

In Postman's view, human communication takes place in "semantic environments." Such environments include four elements: people, their purposes, the general rules of discourse by which such purposes are usually achieved, and the particular talk that is actually being used in the situation (the interaction of these elements would be labeled in general semantics parlance "organisms-as-a-whole-in-environments"). Science, religion, politics, commerce, war, sports, lovemaking, and lawmaking, among others, are examples of semantic environments. Let's take a closer look at two of them-religion and science.

The semantic environment of religion serves, at its best, to minimize fear and isolation and to provide a sense of continuity and oneness. Religious language achieves these purposes by creating metaphors and myths that give concrete form to our most profound fears and exaltations. Religious language offers a set of principles to give ethical purpose and direction to people.

In the semantic environment of science, one finds sentences that are mostly descriptive, predictive, and explanatory. Scientific language centers not on discovering true beliefs but on detecting those that are false. Scientific language provides a method to solve technical problems and problems of everyday living.

Purposes

There can be differences in the purposes of specific individuals in a situation and the purpose of the situation itself. For example, Charlie Brown, in a "Peanuts" cartoon, is screaming at Lucy because she made a stupid play in their baseball game. "You threw to the wrong base again!" he cries. "There were runners on first and second and you threw the ball to first! In a situation like that, you always throw to third or home!" Lucy considers his advice and replies, "You're destroying my creativity!!" The problem is such creativity works against the purposes of baseball. For social order to be maintained individuals need to follow the rules of structured environments.

Another source of conflict over purposes can occur when stated purposes do not match actual purposes. For example, a business leader says that he believes in honest competition and then we find out that he has tried to win monopoly status for his company. Or a politician says that he is an advocate of tight budgets and then he votes for tax cuts and more government spending.

A third source of conflict, somewhat similar to the above, can appear when the purpose of a semantic environment subverts the purpose of a subsystem within it. For instance, religion, in a broad sense, has as an overriding purpose-the "connectedness" of all people. Yet many religious practices, rituals, and institutions are motivated by the idea that people are morally different—some will have access to eternity and others won't. Much religious conflict stems from the idea of exclusiveness, while, paradoxically, "true" religious sentiment promotes the idea of inclusiveness.

Relationships

People tend to be highly sensitive to the rules of role structure. When such rules are broken, the consequences can be severe. For example, Postman recounts that when he was in the army all passes were cancelled at his base one weekend. A private in the barracks pleaded with the lieutenant to grant him a pass to see his girlfriend. The officer denied the request. The private then suggested that the soldiers in the unit vote on the matter and that he would go along with the result. This suggestion, which was sincerely offered and delivered in modulated tones, led to additional punishments for the private. (Another example of role-structure naiveté: Lecturing an IRS agent who is reviewing your income tax returns as if he were a child.)

The tendency of semantic environments to maintain their role structure is quite important, since it provides us with a basis for predictable continuity in life. But it can also be seen as the source of cruel behavior. The famous Milgram experiment, in which people followed the orders of the experimenter to administer what they thought were electric shocks to others, is a case in point. At the end of his study Milgram remarked that relationship overwhelms content—what people do is not as important as the "role" which asks them to do it.

Content

The words that comprise a semantic environment are not so much about a subject as they are the subject itself. "Subtract all the words that are used in discussing physics or law or theology, and you have just about subtracted the subject itself," said Postman. If there is nothing to talk with there is nothing to talk about.

Words are the content of our thoughts. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein put it: Language is not only the vehicle of thought; it is the driver. Discussing what words to use in describing an event is not a matter of "mere semantics." It is about trying to control the perceptions and responses of others (as well as our own) to the character of the event itself.

This point is illustrated in the story of the three umpires. The first umpire, a man of little knowledge about how meanings are made, says, "I calls ‘em as they are." The second umpire, knowing a bit about human perception and its limits, says, "I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em." The third umpire, a student of Wittgenstein, says, "Until I calls ‘em, they ain't."

What you call something depends on how well and widely you see. If you are "locked into" a particular vocabulary of a subject you will not be able to imagine alternative ways of conceiving it. You will thus be at the mercy of someone else's names and the purposes that such names imply. The more flexible you are in conceiving alternative names for things, the better you will be able to control your responses to situations.

Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk-Particular Characteristics

Fanaticism

Fanaticism is the internalization of sentences to which we are so attached that we have made them immune to criticism-not only by others, but by ourselves, as well. Put another way, fanaticism is what happens when we have no will to refute. Thus, our only protection from fanaticism is to develop and maintain our will to refute.

Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, has advanced a rational approach for refutation. He calls it "fallibilism" -a notion that presumes that all people and their ideas are fallible and that it is not possible for anyone to know if they are in possession of the "truth." Popper suggests we apply "critical rationalism" to one's beliefs by subjecting them to constant criticism in the hope of reducing the extent of their error. In Popper's view the history of science is the history of detecting false beliefs, not the history of finding true ones.

Role Fixation

Stupid talk is the most characteristic symptom of role fixation'a condition in which a person cannot move from one semantic environment to another (e.g., the professor who always lectures in conversation, the comic who is constantly "on," cynics who never allow themselves to be awed, or let anything be revered). People who are fixated in roles may think they have "strong characters," but they can also be seen as single-dimensional individuals lacking the courage to try out new roles.

Postman argues that health implies a capacity to grow and that semantic health cannot be acquired through mastering simple formulas for a single way of talking. While semantic flexibility has its limits—we probably don't want to be as chameleon-like as Woody Allen's Zelig—one measure of our ability is our competence in a wide range of semantic environments and social roles.

The IFD Disease

The IFD disease, a term coined by Wendell Johnson in his general semantics classic People in Quandaries, describes a condition in which high ideals combined with continued frustration can lead a person to become demoralized (IFD specifically refers to an individual going from Idealization to Frustration to Demoralization). It is a form of crazy talk because glorified ideals, such as "true happiness" or "real success," are vague standards that have no objective referents in the "real world."

The cure for IFD disease is to connect language with real and specific possibilities. For example, happiness is a warm onion roll with cream cheese on it; happiness is your car starting in the morning when the temperature is ten degrees. Or, if it is not these things, happiness must be something that you do or you can imagine yourself doing, something specific and achievable.

Model Muddles

In schools, tests are given to determine how smart someone is, or more precisely, how much smartness someone "has." If one child scores 140, and another 108, the first is thought to "have" more smartness than the other. But, people don't have smartness. They "do" smart things and sometimes do stupid things—depending on the circumstances they are in, how much they know about the situation, and how interested they are. Smartness is not something you are, or have, in measurable quantities.

"Madness," like smartness, can be classified in particular ways. The medical model considers it a disease, the moral model looks it as a character defect, and the social model views it as a product of a "sick society." Each metaphor invites an entirely different view of madness and as a result can expand our understanding of the subject. In discussing madness, or smartness, or any other abstract concept, it is important to know what metaphors are being used to avoid confusion, impotence, and bad temper that can arise from inadequate or partial models of "reality."

Reification

Reification means confusing words with things. The key grammatical instrument through which it is accomplished is the verb to be, and its variants. For example, when we say "She is lazy," or "He is smart," we are suggesting that "laziness" is found in her or that "smartness" is found in him. That contradicts what is really going on: we are projecting our opinions concerning "laziness" and "smartness" onto other people.

Another way we confuse words with things is to believe that words have "real" definitions. A definition is not a manifestation of nature, but a tool for helping us to achieve our purposes. To quote the British literary critic I. A. Richards, "We want to do something, and a definition is a means of doing it. If we want certain results, then we must use certain meanings (or definitions). But no definition has any authority apart from a purpose, or to bar us from other purposes."

Poorly Reasoned Questions

A great deal of stupid and/or crazy talk is produced by poorly reasoned questions, sometimes spoken silently to ourselves, such as, "Why am I a failure?" and "What is the meaning of life?" These questions are formed at such a high level of abstraction that they cannot be reasonably answered. Another problem arises from certain structural characteristics of sentences. For example, many questions seem to limit responses to either-or alternatives—"Is that good?" "Is she smart?" "Is he rich?"

A third source of problems with respect to question-asking language is the assumptions that underlie it. Such assumptions can lead us into accepting as fact uncertain and even preposterous ideas. Two famous assumption-riddled questions are, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" and "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Finally, two people in the same semantic environment may ask different questions about a situation, but without knowing it. For instance, in a classroom a teacher may be asking himself or herself, "How can I get the student to learn this?" But the student is probably asking, "How can I get a good grade in this subject?"

By-passing

By-passing, a term coined by general semantics expert Irving J. Lee, is a process in which the following occurs: A says something to B. B assumes that A means what B would have meant if B had said those words in that situation to A. Thus, there seems to be no reason to ask A, "What do you mean?" B can go straight to the question, "Do I agree or disagree?"

By-passing can be disastrous. For example, let's say A has said to B "I love you." The meaning of that sentence depends completely on the life experience of the person using it. B may be in for a rude awakening if she or he does not spend some time observing A's behavior and figuring out what A means when using the words "I love you." (A general semanticist might advise B that love1 is not love2, is not love3, etc.)

By-passing is a "natural" form of stupidity that occurs because all communication is based, to some extent, on projection. We tend to become aware of by-passing only when people's actions are very different from what their words have led us to expect. A person who says "I love you," and then dates your best friend, is not only creating a painful situation for you, he or she is teaching you the limitations of talking to yourself.

Sloganeering

Slogans are intended to go beyond reasoning with the hope of eliciting signal reactions (quick, unthinking responses, also called knee-jerk reactions). They are a form of groupthink that says "This is what we believe," not "This is what I believe." Slogans such as "Le's go, Mets!" and "On, Wisconsin!" are fairly benign with respect to having detrimental effects on individuals and societies. That cannot be said of slogans like "Sieg, heil!" and "Death to all infidels!"

In many semantic environments (e.g., religion, sports, politics) mindless recitation in the form of slogans is encouraged. Sloganeering is, in fact, practiced ubiquitously through pledges, oaths, banners, bumper stickers, college cheers, mantras-wherever it appears desirable to ease the burden of individual responsibility for thinking things through.

Postman argues that, generally speaking, when you find yourself applauding, cheering, or chanting in public places you may suspect that your intelligence has been by-passed, and that an individual or group is encouraging your signal reaction. Knowing this, you may wish to applaud, cheer, or chant because you want to "let go" or submerge yourself in a collective mood. But unless you know what is going on, and understand that you have an option to withdraw, you are taking part in a fairly dangerous exhibition of stupid talk.


Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk-and General Semantics

Postman ends his book with an "autobibliography"-"a brief, highly personal commentary on nine books from which I have learned a great deal." Two volumes on general semantics are included among the nine references: Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity and Wendell Johnson's People in Quandaries. With respect to Korzybski's work, Postman writes, "Many academicians do not care for Korzybski-in part, because he is not careful, and in part, because they have no patience for genius." As for Johnson's book, Postman says, "I am tempted to say that there are two kinds of people in the world-those who will learn something from this book and those who will not. The best blessing I can give you is to wish that as you go through life you be surrounded by the former and neglected by the latter." These remarks, and the inclusion of Science and Sanity and People in Quandaries in his autobibliography, show Postman's high regard for general semantics as a useful discipline for preventing crazy and stupid talk.


 

 

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