Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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Where Is The Substantive Discussion?

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Our political discourse is not only more coarse than in the recent past, it also suffers from people disinclined to explain the logic of their positions. 

These days an American needs to look hard to find substantive discussions of proposed federal actions that will have significant effects. Asserting a position is one thing. Supporting the assertion with genuine good reasons is another. Federal downsizing, budget levels, infrastructure expenditures, and grants for programs ranging from health care to the arts would benefit from some deep dives into the specifics of what a  federal response should be. But with the exception of some third-party experts, or back-bencher members of Congress, or some long-form  news stories, we get sound bites rather than details.  Our President can get about half way to one generic reason, but not the solid reasoning for a particular decision. Too often the default is the conversion of a substantive issue into an inconsequential battle of political personalities. The scattered debate about bombing Iraq was a rare and only partial exception. Of course, if a leader’s only reasons for a change in policy are spite or retribution, we are probably not going to hear it.

A necessary distinction for understanding political rhetoric is between instrumental talk and expressive talk. As this broad difference suggests, instrumental discussion is focused on the merits of arguments or routes to a compromise for a given proposal. Instrumental talk is not about people or personalities, but about their ideas, values, goals, and whether evidence exists for their claims. Even as it becomes distressingly rare, It is the more substantial rhetorical form that is basic to decision-making in an open society. By contrast, expressive talk is about the theater of policy and its players. For example, do we really have not heard compelling reasons for why funding for the Voice of America was cut, or why NOAA kneecapped, in spite of evidence that it provides essential environmental data to corporations and citizens,  And Do we have an administration position on the total closure of USAID?  Or must we accept Elon Musk’s arrogant conclusion based on no evidence that USAID was “a criminal organization?”  Even with its life-saving work especially for children, he simply asserted  that it was “time for it to die,” and enjoying “the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” I have not seen other administration arguments for the cuts to these and many other programs. And has any American heard a sustained and compelling explanation for the high tariffs put on our northern neighbor and former ally?  It has been a long summer season of drama, but little public discussion.

National Politics is Personalized 

Expressive communication is centered on the personal characteristics of the people with a stake in a given outcome. In its most common forms it involves name-calling, the questioning of another side’s motives, and dismissive and self-serving summations of what others are trying to achieve with a given legislative act. One of Donald Trump’s recent claims for why Elon Musk abandoned his earlier advisory role is mostly attributed to Musk’s unhappiness with the President’s policy of not allowing tax credits for the purchase of electric automobiles. Musk called the portion of the proposed fax bill with this provision a “disgusting abomination.”  Trump, in turn, noted that Musk “went crazy” over the bill. Both are headline-grabbing expressive responses: noticeably devoid of any substantive discussion of the reasons for providing financial incentives for purchasing electric cars.

In our national politics expressive language is rhetorical candy: gratifying for its obvious effects, but having little value in shedding light on the substantive reasons for an action. “Dogs,” “losers,” and “enemies of the people”–all Trumpisms–don’t cut it as terms of substantive discourse. The problem is made worse by the obvious news value of including a sound bite of a politician in full flight, guns of indignation blasting.

Try using these distinctions in your own assessments of another’s political discussion. Do the parties have real reasons that are given? Can they outline what is at stake? Or are we just getting a recital of attitudes that, in the end, amount to little more than pseudo-responses? At the next town meeting with a federal or local official a good question is to inquire about why the politician will support or vote against a pending piece of legislation. Political “showhorses” will typically seek a way to attack a group or person. A “workhorse” will explain what he or she thinks are the merits of the pending legislation.

Messages Out of Sync

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In this age of distraction many of us don’t notice when we sabotage our own messages.

Over a lifetime of language use, if we are paying attention, most of us will notice the ironies and contradictions that so easily creep into our discourse. Some of us are better than others. And, as least in popular culture, even stand-up comedians can be good at zeroing in on pieces of our verbal or visual communication that are at war with other parts of the same message. Think of the old Woody Allen joke: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.'” In those ancient days of my college experience there also seemed to be no end  to repeating the same joke about Richard Nixon’s locution, “We can’t stand pat.” Of course he obviously meant that we need to keep moving forward. But Pat was his reliable spouse’s name. It was an unfortunate but funny unintended meaning that was further undermined by his dead-serious demeanor.

We are all guilty of blindly producing unintended meanings. But in this age of distraction many of us don’t notice when we contradict ourselves in the same message. That’s why one is lucky to have someone who can be their formal or informal editor.

There is no shortage of examples.

  • A full-page ad in a recent issue of Psychology Today features an image of a counselor talking to college students under the shade of large tree. The counselor wearing an official-looking lanyard and gesturing to the others is obviously in charge. It’s the bottom headline that is out of sync. “Earn Your Counseling Degree Online,” it asserts. The college making this offer is apparently prepared to deliver to your computer nearly all of the skills and knowledge needed for a counseling degree. Is it possible to teach and master this kind of personal communication almost entirely on the internet? A promise of teaching full competence remotely needs more.
  • Lately I’ve been reading and writing a about Mark Twain, a towering presence in American literary history. Early in his career he expressed admirable outrage for the same kind of governmental grifting and malfeasance that we are seeing today. His hostility to government leaders in the 1870s seemed prescient: an early warning for our own “Gilded Age.” And yet, as his biographers point out, his later years were often consumed in overspending on a lavish lifestyle, followed by dark moods when his investments floundered. I began to see my hero fading into the distance as he began duplicating the quest for easy wealth that he had criticized in his early writing.
  • There is an old advertisement for Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine featuring the testimony of a trucker, even though the medicine includes a warning to “not use heavy machinery” while using it.
  • A few years ago I passed a car with a “Conquer Cancer” sticker on the back and a driver up front puffing on a cigarette.
  • Denali National Park is pristine region of thousands of acres that is named after the Indian name of what is now been renamed Mt. McKinley, the highest Peak in North America. GMC clearly wants to invoke the same spirit of this natural wilderness with their popular Yukon Denali, a hulking SUV with, as one option, a gas V8 that gets 14 mpg in ordinary driving. To the extent that “the personal is political,” this seems like a non-sequitur on four wheels for any environmentally conscious driver.
  • Apparent contradictions can also yield pleasant surprises. I’m struck by the achingly beautiful music that was written by stoic men writing the last century, including Johannes Brahms, Edward Elgar and Sergei  Rachmaninoff. Common motifs in many of their pieces are the very meaning of musical melancholy and wistfulness. Our modern view of masculine expression now admits to most of the same feelings that women express. Even so, and perhaps unfairly, I see in images of Brahms an unlikely figure to have produced examples like the 3rd Movement of the Third Symphony. The music of the Romantics is a reminder that a person’s appearance is an unreliable marker of what might be going on inside.

  • Facing politically divisive issues this June, President Donald Trump noted that “My supporters are more in love with me today, and I’m more in love with them, more than they even were at election time where we had a total landslide.” It was an odd kind of lexicon for a world leader to employ about him or herself. It is usually an insecure person might need to publicly affirm their popularity. That is usually left to others. Ironically, the compulsion to say it suggests the opposite. The spontaneous assertion of others’ love for oneself seems like reliable  evidence  of self-doubt.