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.