A Justice Site
Some things stand out; others are lost in the context.
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UWP Criminal Justice Dept. - CSUDH Dept. of Sociology
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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: December 15, 2006
Latest Update: December 15, 2006
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Message Building and Concept DevelopmentCocktail conversation is easy. Getting to know you. Getting to like you. Hanging out. Sharing good times together. But governance discourse, talking to each other about how we feel about the things that really matter to us, that's a lot harder. With globalization, the plea by our country that we serve in this war, health problems, diseases that never seemed so common before now at epidemic proportions, the wealth gap, new tests for faith and spiritual concerns, discrimination and exclusion based on everything from color of skin to gender, to which church or temple or mosque you go to, all these things are much harder to think about, to talk about, to trust each other in making ourselves vulnerable in the building of stronger, happier, safer communities.
Time to learn some important communication skills. Not just by reading them in books, (though I'd really like you to read about them, if that's comfortable for you), but by practicing talking about things that matter with each other, with our neighbors, with strangers who seem congenial enough. We need to understand the myriad social problems that are coming at us now, understand them in terms of what our communities are really like, in terms of the decisions we have to make almost daily on whether and how to support the things that corporations and our government and the dominant discourse are telling us we should. Understanding these social problems comes slowly, a bit at a time, so don't worry if some are confusing. The more we talk about them, the easier it will get to understand the nuances, the changes that are taking place.
Messaging and Plain English: The first rule of good writing is to be sure you know who your audience is and what you want them to hear. Our goal on Dear Habermas is to build the oral skills and presentation techniques that promote governance discourse. That is, we want to learn all that we can to let us share our informations and feelings on current social, economic, and political issues that affect our everyday lives.
The theory and practice we learn in the classroom are essential to understanding the facts as they are reported and rumored. We all hear different versions of those facts and of the arguments that accompany them. Our goal in community-building is to summarize what we have learned in plain English that everyone can understand, even our children, so that we can meaningfully talk about the issues with casual friends, neighbors, even strangers. Talking to one another is how we gain a sense of who our community consists of and how we can govern so that our needs are met, we and our children are protected, and we can move forward with our shared goals without offending anyone's spiritual and philosophical ethics.
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You see the problem with the theory message as the child has learned it. Dominant discourse used to hold that women wear skirts and men wear trousers. "Mommy" must have explained that dominant discourse today does not differentiate that completely between men and women, and that that's not "Daddy" in any case. The child responds to the message in plain English. It looks like "Daddy." But the child, from the vantage point of her view, sees only the triangular shapes of the trousers. She therefore interprets DaDa as "trousers." She has learned, but only a part of the concept, the schemata. When trousers are on a man, and the man is Daddy, then the man is called "DaDa." When trousers are on other males, they are called "men." When trousers are on females, well, . . . and you see how the concept requires a little while to get. By calling all trousered men DaDA, the child lets us know how far her understanding of the concept has developed. This is what fascinated Piaget. How children learn to construct language.
Piaget, concepts and their building parts: schemata. Daddy and the UPS man. Both wear trousers. Schemata for the concept "Daddy": trousers, because that's what stands out in the child's world as she sees it. Lots of times the reason we don't completely understand socially-constructed concepts is that we're not seeing the same physical world, or sharing the same memories, or understanding the historical differences our ages make. Writing messagies in plain English means attending to all those differences, and talking about them until we manage to share each other's view or vision of the world.
Art helps us envision each others' worlds. And that's the first step towards illocutionary discourse, talking aimed at walking, at least briefly, in the Others' shoes.
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Concepts in a Different Language Just as the child has not yet constructed the full concept for distinguishing all men in trousers from "Daddy" in trousers, one sometimes has the concept, but not the name for it in the language. A sample of this can be found in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Old men on front porch of the town's general store - discussion whether the child learns not to touch the stove by experience and teaching by the parents, or by his/her natural fear of the intense heat. In psychology class, we call it "nature" or "nurture." On the front porch of the general store, Zora Neale Hurston's characters are having the same discussion about the same conundrum, but without the technical jargon we use to describe the problem.
Discussion Questions
- Why do we need to talk about socially-constructed concepts if we read about them?
Consider that most learning does not happen in one-trial efforts. Particularly with problems as complex as the ones we face today, we aren't going to "get it" all at once. Also we're accustomed to not "make nice." We tend to shout each other down, instead of listening to understand where the other is coming from. As we talk these ideas over, if we listen in good faith, and help each other visualize what the Other is trying to say, we come to understand each other better. That helps us to "make nice," instead of calling the other "evil" when we disagree.
References:
- Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, "Colleges as Catalysts for the Creative Class."
- Piaget, The Language and Thought of the Child.
