At best, compliance is only a pale halfway step in the direction of where an advocate wants to take their audience.
The effects that individual messages have on others are often characterized by descriptors on the far margins. We say a person is “persuaded,” or they are not. We note that someone has “understood” a message, or they did not. We pay attention or we don’t. It’s a function of our language of binaries to characterize communication only at the ends of various continua. When we talk about ideas in the abstract we are a bit less likely to look at effects distributed in between pairs of opposites. It’s one of the advantages of survey and experimental research that the middle ranges finally get their due. But without research results to report, we revert to simpler reference points.
In studying how people are persuaded, we are lucky to have at least one term that suggests a realistic middle ground between “convinced” and “not convinced.” We may see them as “compliant.” A person in compliance seems to be taking on the behavioral attributes of someone persuaded, but the fine-grained meaning of the term also includes the possibility that they are not fully convinced. They are still acting to carry out expected roles, but are perhaps seeking a way to avoid a more volatile ‘stand your ground’ disagreement. If you have a teen, you know this state when he grudgingly takes out the garbage or mows the lawn. The behavior is present, but the attitude is still a work in progress. Ideas like “duty,” “obligation,” and “required” are likely descriptors of compliant behavior.
You know the same state from watching yourself. Someone wants something from you, and the calculation is to at least outwardly give it, even though you remain mostly unconvinced. A relative wants you to attend a party you would just as soon skip. A friend explains their theory of price-fixing among competitors in an industry, and you find it easier to nod in apparent understanding, even while you doubt that he or she is correct.
On one hand, compliance is a courtesy: a half-effort to oil the social machinery and not create a rift with another person. One the other hand, it’s usually a false signal: a momentary suspension of deeper or truer feelings. And so it happens that we get a commitment from another in a passing conversation that later falls short when they must actually deliver on their seeming agreement. This is the downside of compliance. It’s a low bar. Instead of a desired level of conviction that comes with authentic persuasion, you frequently get action that is grudging or a one-time-only change.
Compliance or conviction?
Understanding compliance ultimately is helped by a firmer effect several steps higher we can call conviction. A person with conviction is usually seen as having a firm allegiance to particular view or type of behavior. For them the issue is mostly settled. Conviction functions as kind of a lock that makes us resist efforts to change our commitment. Deep conviction is a motivator, representing perhaps the ideal of what an advocate would like from another person. We frequently “perform” or convictions to others, using language and an animated self to show how settled our views have become. On the other hand, compliance may be revealed in some circumstantial cues like less eye contact, more distance between the communicators, a three-quarter stance that puts the receiver on a different sightline, and a flattening of the receiver’s affect.
Change is always is a lot to ask from someone who is undecided on a point, but its existence is a reminder that compliance is, at best, only a halfway step. Think of conviction as Robin Williams. He was all in when he did anything. Compliance is more like a timid guy in the corner hoping not to be noticed.
Often a good title is an ironic play on words, like John Sayles perfectly named “At the Anarchist’s Convention.”
Working out titles for books, a film, a song or various shorter pieces is one of the pleasures of writing. A title is a kind of flag. It identifies a specific effort to capture a subject or the attitude of its author. It ought to be suggestive of what a reader or listener can expect to find. And it is sometimes meant to be a hook, baiting a reticent audience to take a chance.
A conventional view among some writers and publishers is that a good title is approximately three words. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odd Couple, The Grapes of Wrath, The Cherry Orchard,Angels in America, East of Eden, or Rebel Without a Cause. The three-word rule was on my mind in choosing The Perfect Response. It seemed like a good fit for my humble book on public rhetoric, and later, this blog. And then there are the gentle ironies of titles that suggest pages promising insights created by unusual alignments. For example, there’s John Berendt’s Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil or Robert Pirsig’sZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ideas that appear to be alien to each other often make interesting titles, though I was surely too pleased with myself for using “Case Studies in Constructive Confrontation” as a book’s subtitle. But my mother–probably the lone reader of the book–liked it.
Often a good title is an ironic and funny play on words, perhaps a non-sequitur like the title of a John Sayles short story, At the Anarchist’s Convention. Book titles don’t get any better than this. Can anarchists pull off an organized event? Jerry Stiller’s humorous reading below leaves no doubts; the can’t.
The names of hair salons have mastered this playful kind of humor. Apparently there’s a Sunny and Shearsand a Hey, I’m Dyeing Over Here sitting somewhere among shops with more prosaic names.
Some titles have a grace that matches their essence, like John Hartford’s Gentle on my Mind, which is now usually sung as a tribute to Glen Campbell. There’s also Pete Seeger’s beautiful tribute, To the Old Brown Earth, sung at memorial service of a friend, and below, by young singers from Milwaukee.
In a very different genre, but creating a broader smile, is Mark Chesnutt’s country ditty, Bubba Shot the Jukebox, which can be heard in his albumLongnecks & Short Stories. (1992).
Titles are almost always interesting welcome mats, inviting us in. They are reminders of how much we owe to the playfulness and associations created through language.
Compliance or conviction?
