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Examples we can productively study

Seating: A Concern For More Than Brides

Models, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , ,
Negotiating Table Inside the Joint Security Area Separating North from South Korea Photo South Korean Government
Negotiating Table Inside the Joint Security Area Separating North from South Korea
Photo: South Korean Government

Seating arrangements subtly govern how individuals are likely to respond.  Some arrangements encourage interaction.  Others discourage it. 

Movie stars, producers and other supplicants summoned to the office of Louis B. Mayer in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s complex in Culver City often remember their first impression. Mayer was the very definition of a movie mogul in charge of the studio that defined Hollywood’s “golden age.”  Befitting his place at the center of a industry that worshiped visual impressions, visitors passed through massive carved doors to enter his inner sanctum. Then it was another 60-foot walk between white leather walls to his massive ship of a desk at the far end of the room. The short man who gave us The Wizard of Oz apparently liked the idea inscrutability. All of the office trappings were meant to remind a visitor that any decision that would come out of the meeting was likely to be exactly what Mayer wanted.

Studies of non-verbal elements of communication include seating as a crucial variable.  Seating arrangements subtly govern how individuals are likely to respond.  Some arrangements encourage interaction.  Others discourage it. The arrangement of furniture for a gathering is nearly always consequential as an important communication variable.

Capture.JPG of seating arrangmentHere’s the drill on what to consider. For smaller groups a round table (B) is perfect for encouraging and even equalizing participation. No one has a power advantage by virtue of their place.  Any leader is visually an equal among peers.  Note, too, that at a round table everyone has at least some possibility of eye contact with others: a key variable that helps to encourage participation from the naturally introverted. The downside is that anyone around the table can use even minimal facial cues to undermine a speaker’s point. We’ve all probably used a frown worthy of an M-G-M closeup to telegraph our displeasure at a leader’s point. For good reasons the round table model needs a genuine commitment from all participants to work in common cause.

A rectangular table (A) is more likely to distribute advantages to some and limit participation by others.  In a typical rectangle the power positions are at the both ends.  From these vantage points it is easier to be seen and to control the participation of others.  And so we may be able to push “reluctants” out of their shells by placing them in these positions (even though introverts will often resist being placed at the head of a table).  Conversely, “dominators” will have a harder time controlling a discussion if they sit on one of the long sides of the table on one of the corners. Those positions make it difficult to have eye contact with some participants, especially those on the same side of the table.

A rectangular table is also the preferred arrangement when the objective is to carry on two-sided talks.  Labor-management negotiations, meetings in the “dead zone” between North and South Korea, and other situations where there are distinct “sides” are visually maintained this face-off arrangement.

Source: Wkimedia.org
     White House Cabinet Room                                      Source: Wikimedia.org

Interestingly, in the White House Cabinet Room a President usually sits along one side of the long oval table, not at the head.  But the oval preserves some of the virtues of a round table.  And it looks good in photo ops to have the president appear to be one among others. By contrast, with the serious business of discussions in the basement Situation Room, the President is usually at the head.

Rows of chairs facing a single source, as in the seating pattern represented in  the above diagram as “C” lends itself to giving one person in front maximum control.  It’s an obvious point, but for an interesting reason.  When a member of the audience has only the back of another’s head in their foreground view they have little choice but to give more attention to the presenter, even when that person is some distance away. Audience members are essentially denied most of the non-verbal facial cues that other members can give that would undermine their faith in the presenter’s message.  So arena or “classroom” styles of seating give all the advantages to the single source at the front.

We tend to forget that hundreds died in Vietnam over the Winter of 1968 while talks scheduled to begin in Paris were stalled. The issue? The shape of the negotiating table.  Were these essentially four-party or really two-party negotiations?  Only putting a round table in between two rectangular tables radiating out from the center finally settled the issue. The arrangement saved the South Vietnamese from having to deal with the Vietcong as an equal negotiating partner.  Seating can matter that much.

Comment at woodward@tcnj.edu

Looking for Multiple Narratives

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , , ,

 

Wikimedia.org
    Five Witnesses Will Usually Have           Divergent Accounts of the Same Event                          Wikimedia.org

 

We should be impatient if the reporting from a given medium asks us to settle for just one “story.” The better option is to expect that there are at least several.

As people in my line of work are fond of saying, ‘language sometimes does our thinking for us.’  Word choices are tracks that inevitably point us in specific directions.   So when we talk about “media”—because it is a plural term—we are primed  to acknowledge significant differences between individual outlets.  That’s as it should be, and a way of thinking we need remember when we are acting on the basis of any single version of events.

For most of us, the concept of a “story” could not be clearer, setting up an expectation that we will take in a running version of events that can stand on its own. This is all well and good if we are talking about one individual’s experiences.  We are all entitled to our stories. They function to make life understandable and meaningful. They are also useful barometers of our own mental states.

Narrative fiction and films have our attention because they fulfill what we seem hardwired to need: figures to empathize with, and the continuity and simplicity of a single of perspective. This is the rhetorical form of the synecdoche: when one example stands in for a whole class of people or events.

The mistake is when we accept the adequacy of  singular form as a tool for understanding the real world. The cable-news anchorperson asks a reporter in the field, “What’s the story?” A headline launches a short version of events usually defined by its internal coherence.  An editor or producer presses a reporter to find a single experience that encapsulates a larger trend. As news consumers we are attracted to narrative continuity over reports that ask us to consider “competing realities.”  Complexity tends to get written out of accounts that need to be boiled down to one and half minutes of air time or 600 words of reporting.

But in actual fact, human events usually contain multiple and contradictory stories: accounts that  are often diverse in their details and frequently inconsistent with each other. We easily recognize this when we compare notes with family or friends about key events that we’ve shared about some earlier experiences of our ancestors. We expect to add details another missed, or to add alternative interpretations of a participant’s motives, or  to pass on an observation that is completely new to others. In those settings we are not surprised to learn that one version of events is not enough.  Eventually all the pieces put together form a kind of intersubjective truth that works at least for those who participated.

The same is true in the current news environment. The ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Palestinians living on its borders does not permit the luxury of one narrative, but many. The controversial implementation of the Affordable Care Act cannot be contained in one  personal experience.  We know there must have many, reflecting the range of responses by individuals and the states where they reside.  Even when we think we have some clarity on the “aggression” of the Russian Federation in reclaiming Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, we can easily be surprised by long-form accounts from the region that can force us out of what seems  like a settled narrative.

We are smarter if we expect that news reports and other kinds of nonfiction accounts should come to us in uneven waves. In terms of conventional communication analysis, we usually look for a “preferred narrative:” the kind of account that comes from official sources and takes hold of the popular imagination.  But we also expect to find that there are “alternate” or “counter-narratives” as well, and often a series of them. These may come from the less powerful or the marginalized who were caught up in the same event.  It’s not unusual that years later they emerge as the new preferred narratives.

Charles Dickens started a novel with the famous lines, “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  The thought reflects his savvy as a narrator of the human condition.  We need to expect that there may be a plurality of perspectives that will undermine the coherence and psychological comfort that comes with a single account. “Reality” is often best represented in a Venn diagram of overlapping accounts. We need to remind ourselves to be impatient if reporting about human events seeks an unearned consensus by insisting on a single truth.

Comment at woodward@tcnj.edu