Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

Invitations From Hollywood to Witness Conversational Trainwrecks

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Actress Sarah Steele, "Bernice"
      Actress Sarah Steele

The scholar Hugh Dalziel Duncan believed that communication has to be studied as a form of theater.  We are not only role-players in our lives, but in his simple aphorism that I never tire of quoting, he noted that theater is the process “by which we become objects to ourselves.”  

Plays, films, and all forms of written or performed narratives allow us to see our lives in the proxy behaviors of actors in a performance. A character on screen may not be living a close facsimile to our own lives, but their responses to others are still recognizable.  Empathy and imagination give us all the room we need to compare our communication choices with a panorama of figures ranging from Hamlet to Harry Potter. 

It follows that sometimes the most direct way to access communication challenges is therefore to get down to cases. Communication is almost always a matter of relatively fixed templates: sets of expectations about what someone facing the demands of one setting must do if they are to use their communication abilities to make things better. And that frequently means taking a look at a key scene in a film or play to discover how key figures handle the demands imposed by their own social settings. We’re easily drawn in. And we find that our natural hard-wired love of narrative means that we can place ourselves in almost any scene and compare our likely responses to those given by a character on stage or on the screen. 

Most films have such moments, as in the recent Before Midnight (2013) written in part by actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke.  They play a married couple who came together over the course of two earlier films, and are now drifting out of love and into middle age. The film is a feast for those interested in conversational analysis.  But two current favorites are from more popular and commercial films released a few years ago.  Each film offers a moment when a simple communication misstep builds into a volcano of hurt and anger.  Both play to a familiar litany of questions we ask whenever we failed to realize our intentions with another person. What went wrong?  How could someone with good intentions create the interpersonal equivalent of a complete train wreck?   

The Family Stone (2006) revisits the familiar terrain of an engaged son bringing his fiancé home to meet his family.  Everett Stone’s clan is a free-thinking group of comfortable New Englanders.  Dad is a professor.  Diane Keaton’s mom is a sharp conversationalist, and happily uses it to build a protective fence around a younger gay son who is deaf, and who is in a committed relationship to an African American man.  This modern couple is also hoping to adopt a child.  Enter Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker), the new fiance and a Manhattan executive who is invited to meet the family over dinner.  Meredith’s views are more conventional that her hosts.  And that spells trouble as the conversation turns to the younger son’s impending marriage.  She clearly likes the family, but she’s thrown off by Mom’s offhand comment that she wished all of her children were gay.  They might stay around longer, she muses. And Meredith takes the bait. Her questions are earnest but potentially wounding to the senior Stones, who wear their liberalism as badges of honor.  Will an interracial marriage be more difficult?  And would the Stones really wish for gay children?  Dermot Mulroney’s Everett is suddenly silent as these question settle over the meal like a bad stomach ache.  

As the scene plays, we see a classic communication breakdown.  One person lays down an ambiguous observation. It’s followed by a clumsy question that is easily misinterpreted as a marker of bigotry. Meredith is clearly at sea, and wants to be in the good graces of the family.  But none of the Stones are interested in helping climb out of the hole she has fallen into.

The Family Stone is a modest film, but this scene is a brilliant miniature of the potentially rough terrain of even simple statements and queries.  As it plays, we see why language and the tonalities of presentation complicate what appears to be the simple objective of finding a secure place in another’s life. 

A second favorite scene is built around one of the many winsome figures the Hollywood producer/writer James L. Brooks has created over the years.  In Spanglish (2004) Bernice stands out as a sensitive soul in a family of over-achievers.  Actress Sarah Steele’s empathetic character has an impulse to please which closely binds her to a spirited grandmother and to John, her affectionate father (Adam Sandler).  But she must also defend her fragile self-esteem against aspersions about her weight from an overwrought mother. Deborah has made Bernice her project. And while the razor thin compulsive has mastered the outward rituals of everyday conversation, she  tends to substtitute empty talk and hours of jogging for true intimacy.   

She is the provocateur in this conventional Brooks set up of an upwardly mobile Los Angeles family.  Connection and affirmation are put at risk by a character who is not so much malevolent as clumsy in understanding the fundamentals of social intercourse.   Even when Deborah returns from a shopping trip with new clothes for Bernice, we sense that her ostensibly thoughtful act will have a painful denouement.

The scene opens with John helping Bernice complete her history homework, making a game out of a quiz question asking for the name of the famous World War II President who was not a “ruse.”  What does the word mean? Bernice asks.  A “Phony,” he notes.  “So this president was not a ruse. . . He was the real thing.”  When Deborah returns with bags of new clothes, Bernice is at first delighted by her apparent thoughtfulness.  But when she tries on the gifts of a coat and sweater, they are clearly too tight.  A quick look at the tags of all the other new garments confirms that Deborah has deliberately bought everything one size too small.  This is her idea of an inducement for her daughter to lose some weight, and it unfolds as a slow motion humiliation in front of John and other members of the household.  The moment snuffs out the excitement that was just seconds old, leaving Bernice to find a way to resurface with some of her dignity intact.  She recovers, fighting back tears.  There is no big outburst, just a few rueful words said more in regret than anger.  “Thanks  Mom. . . I’m glad you didn’t get here a little earlier or else I wouldn’t be able to tell you that your gift is a ruse.  Please excuse me.”  And she exits.

There is agony in this small but emblematic moment where, as Brooks observes, Deborah feels “the futility of anyone understanding her point even as she makes it.” Those are his script directions to actress Tea Leoni who plays her.  She isn’t connecting with members of her family:  something she senses, but is powerless to remedy.  She is tone deaf to her daughter’s needs.  And somehow her ideals for success and a perfect waistline have also made her blind to the charms of her own family.  

What We Can Learn From the Persuasion of LDS Missionaries

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Missionaries-elders-mormon
       Source: Mormon-wiki

One researcher studying Mormon missionaries estimates that in the thousands of contacts a single member makes in a given year, he or she will convert only about four to seven people. 

Every year about 30,000 men and women between the ages and 18 and 21 pass through a well-manicured collection of low buildings that adjoin the Provo campus of Brigham Young University.  The Missionary Training Center of The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) lies at the base of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and runs what is perhaps one of the largest missionary training schools on the globe.  The specific goal of the center is to prepare recruits to proselytize for converts in the United States and overseas.  These intending missionaries spend up to twelve weeks honing their foreign language skills, studying The Book of Mormon and The Bible, and getting ready for the rigors of 10-hour days trying to ingratiate themselves to strangers in distant locales.  It’s all part of the church’s tradition of encouraging young members to give up two years to find new converts.

This massive effort at persuasive outreach is a huge change from the mid-nineteenth century, when small groups of followers of Joseph Smith escaped the east and Midwest in their own Diaspora.  Though they eventually settled in the geographic isolation of Utah hoping to be left alone, the LDS Church is now among the largest five denominations in the United States, and one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

All male Mormons over 18 are asked to serve on a mission, and about half do.  Women who are at least 21 can also join the ranks, but in smaller numbers. After they leave the center individuals are assigned a partner who will be their constant companion for the duration of the mission.   Young men in white button-down white shirts, pressed slacks and conservative haircuts easily stand out from their surroundings.   They may end up in Baltimore, Manila, or Sao Paulo.  But they look like they could have just walked out of the pages of your grandparent’s high school yearbook.

Missionaries call potential converts “investigators,” in recognition of the likely fact that conversion is not necessarily a sudden thing.   They are people who seem at least willing to listen, often at bus stops, or on street corners and front yards.  The logic is that the more they learn, the more willing they may be to explore the church be attending services or meetings.

The Student Manual at the Missionary Training Center sees the task of winning converts in terms of the expected biblical admonitions to go out and serve as witnesses for the faith.   In this frame of reference, missionaries often think of themselves as “sharing” or “teaching” the two primary works in the Mormon canon, with the hope that some of these scriptures will be prophetic or provide moral clarity.  The church also emphasizes the classic persuasion idea that you should somehow physically embody what you advocate, a principle that echoes back to ancient rhetorics that urged persuaders to show in their own demeanor the values that they espouse.  New missionaries are taught to be positive and always courteous, and to approach every person as a potential new friend.  This is not an effort that owes much to the irony or cynicism that flows through much of the rest of American life. Earnestness is the order of the day.  They also talk up the importance of family, and especially try to communicate with the unambiguous certainty of a committed believer.

Many new recruits are initially shy.  Most who openly write about their experiences are positive about the experience.  But a reader of these accounts sometimes gets a sense that many of the church’s volunteers don’t see themselves as natural persuaders.  Some appear to struggle to find the confidence to approach people in settings far different than the prosperous Rocky Mountain enclave that is the center of the LDS church.  What do you say to an impoverished mother of seven in a rundown section of Columbus Ohio?  One resident, Star Calley, feels the awkwardness of the moment, but invites Jonathan Hoy and Taylor Nielsen to sit on her porch and talk.  She worries about raising her kids in the neighborhood.  The missionaries listen, sympathize, and then ask her to pray with them.1 After they leave, she admits she was just trying to be nice, noting that “it must take a lot of courage to do what they do, for all the good it does.”  For their part, they hope they can come by again, perhaps building on a first encounter to offer more reassurance that her family will be better off within the local LDS community.

The Manual also offers a range of more secular advice about how to maximize success.  As a general rule, it urges missionaries to follow what is by now an axiom of political persuasion:  look for people who have recently been buffeted by reversals or unwanted change.  “People who are experiencing significant changes in their lives—such as births, deaths, or moving into new homes—are often ready to learn about the restored gospel and make new friendships.”2  It also reminds recruits to find a way to be brief and effective.  What can be offered to someone waiting for a bus, or a person who is willing to give up just a few minutes?  The promise of eternal salvation is, of course, the primary message.  But there are other inducements that open doors as well, such as helping someone do a simple household repair, or offering to help a family research its own history through the vast genealogical resources of the LDS church.

One researcher studying Mormon missionaries estimates that in the thousands of contacts a single member makes in a given year, he or she will convert only about four to seven people.3 That can amount to a “success” rate of one percent or less.  Jonathan Hoy went through the experience and remembers even fewer, but still found his limited success worth the effort.  In 2007 Hoy recalls the nearly 10,000 people he probably talked to during a 22 month stint in Ohio and Greece.  He especially remembers a young woman in Athens who converted after spending time studying various “restored” scriptures from The Book of Mormon.  “I saw it change her life,” he said.  “That’s what keeps me going.”4 

What is sometimes missed in the seemingly low rates of conversion is the crucial role that this rite of passage has on the missionaries themselves.   In the important process self persuasion sometimes the greatest effect a message has is actually on the persuader.  If these missionaries come back with limited success in turning large numbers toward the church, it is nearly certain that they have become committed activists for their faith, carrying some of that fervor into their relationships with others.

___________________

Adapted from Gary C. Woodward and Robert E. Denton Jr., Persuasion and Influence in American Life, Seventh Edition, (Waveland, 2014).

1 Josh Jarman, “God’s Salesmen,” The Columbus Dispatch, Friday July 6, 2007, p. 3B.

2 Missionary Preparation, Student Manual (Salt Lake: Church of the Latter Day Saints, 2005), 99.

3 Gustav Niebuhr, “Youthful Optimism Powers Mormon Missionary Engine,” New York Times, May 23, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/us/youthful-optimism-powers-mormon-missionary-engine.html, August 10, 2010.

 4Jarman.