Frankenstein and The Power of Language

Since Shelley's classic "Frankenstein" became a movie in 1931 it has become a familiar reminder of the dangers of unchecked scientific ambition. The creature takes on a life of its own, which has unintended results and consequences, and it finally ends up turning against its creator. Although we do not have the same abilities or ambitions, we all bring actions and words into this world, and thereby participate in the universal drama and discourse that continually shapes the world we live in. These words and actions can, just as Frankenstein's monster, take on a life of their own; with ripple effects that may go well beyond what the author ever intended or even imagined.

Kenneth Burke described a three-step process of how language can take on a life of its own. Words start by expression; there is something we want to express or emit from ourselves. These impulses are translated through the medium of communication, such as language, in order to engage with an audience. Then comes the stage of consummation, where the words can transcend both the original message the author intended and the meaning the reader originally perceives, and take on a life of their own. This is possible because words never leave a person without that person infusing the words with tendencies, tones, and what Burke called attitudes or incipient actions. They arouse expectations in all who hear and read them; expectations we want to have fulfilled. According to Burke words are like seeds, and they carry within them the potential for action. It is this process that can make reading a book such a thrilling experience. And good authors know how to arouse those expectations in us. For example, take a look at this passage from Shakespear, where prince Hamlet is planning to avenge his father's murder:

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."

The stage is set for the final tragic confrontation between Hamlet and his uncle. Yet Shakespear leaves us in this suspence for several other acts, where we are fearing and desiring the final resolution to the conflict which has already been prepared by these few lines.

Kenneth Burke's point was that the same dynamics of expectation and consummation play out in our daily lives. Not that this dynamic is necessarily bad in nature. Just imagine the mutual expressions and communications of love and admiration which are consummated in a happy marriage. However, if we are not careful, we might find ourselves caught up in a destructive discourse which has run out of control; seeking a consummation that will be bad for all the participants. Imagine a married couple who are caught in a destructive discourse of hurt and recrimination. Its final consummation may be to destroy their love and relationship, something neither of them intended as their dispute started. Many people are now questioning whether the Arizona shootings were in any way caused or influenced by the loaded war-rhetoric discourse which has flared up recently. Burke himself mentions the nuclear arms race of the Cold War as an example of this:

"The various scientific specialties are to be viewed as carrying out the implications of their terminologies, and thereby seeking technological consummation for its own sake, however deceptively their efforts might be justified. For instance, whether or not it is possible to develop 'clean' thermonuclear bombs, some men might well want to go on experimenting with these dismal weapons. For they have brought their calculations to the point where further experimental steps are in order, steps suggested by the present state of their terminologies. And the 'principle of consummatory self-consistency' would provide an incentive, or almost a compulsion, to continue in this same direction. . .”

In many ways the Cold War could be seen as a discourse of deterrence which ran out of control. If it had been allowed to reach its final destination, the result could have been a total annihilation of the human race. "Dr. Strangelove" envisions a situation where systems of deterrence have run out of control. In the film, a unstoppable Doomsday Machine has been activated, which will make the entire planet uninhabitable for human kind.

Even now, mankind is engaging in several discourses which are out of control. One example is the discourse of technological progress. People may question the wisdom of moving forward with communication technologies and what impact they have on our societies, but the discourse has now gained such a magnitude and momentum that it is close to impossible to halt it. The frameworks and conditions have been set, and any future invention that meets those conditions is almost destined to become a worldwide phenomenon within a year from the time it has been introduced.

So what final end or consummation are we headed towards? Is the drama of the human race going to be a comedy, a fairytale, or a tragedy? The entire discourse of human interaction is I believe too vast and complicated to be able to get a clear picture of it. But we can look at individual discourses that are driving forces in our society, and see if we can spot the final fruits of the seeds they are sowing (I will come back to exactly how we can detect the potential of a text in a later post). Think, the next time you are observing or participating in a discourse, what attitudes and emotions that discourse is driving. What is the ultimate good in this discourse? What is the ultimate evil? I think we can all profit from stopping up sometimes, both as individuals and societies, and ask: "Where are we headed?"

Rhetorical Pressure and Moral Will

We are currently living in deficient democracies. For democratic rule depends on an informed public who have the ability to be heard in the public discussion.

In “Introduction to Rhetorical Theory” Hauser writes that public discussion forms public judgment, and the quality of this discussion “depends on the conditions under which it takes place.” (88) Hauser mentions some of the conditions necessary for a good public discourse: “right to participate”, “access to relevant information”, “access to relevant media of dissemination so that they [citizens] can share their point of view with others in the public”, and “right of free speech.” (90) Whenever any of these are lacking it undermines good public judgment and (by implication) poses a threat to democracy.

Except for freedom of speech, all the conditions mentioned above are controlled mainly by the media. Though a citizen may want to participate in the public discourse, he is not likely to be heard unless he is granted access to relevant media of dissemination, and the media organizations often have the privilege to decide which information is relevant for their audience and how that information is presented.

Mass media is arguably one of the strongest “social forces” of modern society. There is a real danger that such forces could deceive a people to identify themselves with principles, parties and social movements that they ultimately do not have joint interests with. As Burke remarks in “Linguistic Approach to Problems in Education”, “In practice, democratic states move toward a condition of partial tyranny to the extent that the channels of expression are not equally available to all factions in important public issues. Thus we see democracy being threatened by the rise of the enormous ‘policy-making’ mass media that exert great rhetorical pressure upon their readers without at the same time teaching them how to discount such devices; and nothing less than very thorough training in the discounting of rhetorical persuasiveness can make a citizenry truly free.” (285)

Burke claims that a citizenry which has not been "thoroughly trained in the discounting of rhetorical devices" is in some ways enslaved. Clearly such a citizen will not be able to achieve enough autonomy from social forces to render him capable of reacting back on those forces effectively. Such training would contribute to restore the balance upset by the rise of ‘policy-making’ mass media and make citizens able to detect and hopefully avoid manipulation.

A stable democracy needs citizens who are able to distance themselves from these influences, question them to see what they are doing, and make a conscious decision to act with or react against those influences with intelligence and power. I believe that in order to become such a people we need to be learned in the intelligence of persuasion: rhetoric and rhetorical criticism.

As Professor Gary Layne Hatch writes, "those who understand the power of language to shape and respond to significant moments in time can gain some power over their circumstances and expand their individual freedom and influence. They become agents [no pun intended] - those who act - rather than those who are acted upon." Rhetorical criticism is how we can pause and negate some of the "bullets of influence" that fly at us all the time, and by using rhetoric we can fight back against those influences that are harmful. 
I believe we need to raise more awareness and help people be more educated about persuasion and democratic participation. Otherwise we may as well let a handful of powerful people rule us, since that is in effect the same experience we have as non-participating citizens. Hatch comments, "For many people, life is motion rather than action. Things happen to them that seem beyond their control. They are caught up in the flow of time and seem to be victims of circumstance."

Democracy is a gift that should be a cherished and living part of our societies. As Senator Smith says in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books."

Because It's Said A Lot: Mass Media and Mass Manipulation

We live in a world of gossip. What do I mean by that? I mean that most of the information we get is based on second-hand knowledge. Just today I have read about laws in China, military information in Afghanistan, the water scandal in Northern Ireland, all of which I have no first-hand knowledge about. All of this information, like gossip, is mediated. Information virtually never passes through a medium without that medium changing the information in some way. Even in live video coverage there is mediation, by selecting what is covered, camera angle, and how the coverage is introduced.

In such situations we tend to side with "conventional wisdom". Knowledge agreed upon by the majority of "informed" voices. For most of us those voices come from mass media. In the video below John Stewart succinctly describes the creation and result such "conventional wisdom" can have on an electorate, such as in 2004.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Talking Points
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

So politicians know that they have limited media coverage, and if they can flood that coverage with talking points and easily recognizable key words, people may accept it as the conventional wisdom since that is what they get to hear the most. That's hardly a secret. Ad agencies do it all the time with their brands, governments do it with their policies, I even do it with my web page so that google will make me more prominent on their search engine (Oh, btw. intelligence of persuasion, democracy, society, rhetoric). But what impact does this have on the public discourse and individual opinions?

Talking points and key words are of necessity reductive, catchy, and represent the dumbing down of a discourse. They simplify complicated issues to a slogan, and reduce intense debates to a shout. When a politician is more concerned about pounding us with talking points than actually discussing a problem intelligently there is no room for compromise and mutual understanding, which is the very basis of a democratic society.

Apart from this, such "jack-hammering" of talking points creates the effect of bullying. A 1955 study of social psychology supervised by Salomon E. Asch discovered some disturbing facts about the pressure of conformity. Eight persons were brought into a room for an experiment. Seven had been told to advocate the same wrong answer every time and one had been told that all eight were being tested for perceptive skills. The participants were shown different objects and asked questions like "which line is longer?" and "which ball is white and which is black". Every participant would utter their opinion after each other according to where they were sitting in the circle. For the first few questions the eighth individual answered according to his own perception, but by the fourth question he was getting unsure and frustrated. Did the rest really see things so differently from him? Could they all be wrong each time? From then on the eighth participant answered the same answer as the rest of the group. He even said a white ball was black and that a black ball was white.

A full summary of the study can be found here:
http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps18.html

As a conclusion to the study, Professor Asch wrote:
"Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. When consensus comes under the dominance of conformity, the social process is polluted and the individual at the same time surrenders the powers on which his functioning as a feeling and thinking being depends. That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern."

There is a real danger that we as individuals will allow ourselves to conform to views, values and opinions that are neither personal, factual, or moral. Just like the participant in the study we may cave in to the pressure of conformity. Ask yourself, next time you are watching a movie, a political ad, or the news: "Do I agree with this representation of the world? What values is this movie promulgating as good and acceptable? What evidence does this person have for that claim? How is what this person is saying making me feel?"

In asking these questions we may very well choose to agree with what is being presented to us, but the difference is that we then make a moral choice rather than just taking the default option.

The MIB-phenomenon and Democratic Action

In the 1997 movie "Men In Black" K convinces J that secrecy and privileged information is crucial for intelligent action. The assumption for this claim is that human beings as individuals act more rationally than humans as a mass movement: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicking, dangerous animals, and you know it." Similar arguments about the irrationality of mass decision have been used to defend aristocracy, secrecy in government and military, and to attack whistleblowers and others who disseminate privileged information among the general public.

One of the most recent examples is that of Wikileaks. First with the Afghan War Diary, then with the Iraq War Diary and Cablegate, the whistleblower web site drew criticism from governments worldwide. Though there are other serious issues involved in that debate, the main question is "how much does a people have the right to know about what their government is doing?"

If intelligent democratic action is not possible then there is no valid case that can be made in favour of a democratic system. If K is right then people are best left in the dark about the essential decisions that determine much of their lives. I believe intelligent democratic action is possible, but the prerequisite is an informed electorate. That places a tremendous responsibility on the media as well as the individual citizen in any democratic society. This was eloquently advocated by John F. Kennedy in his first year as president.



He argues that nothing but the "narrowest limits of national security" should be kept secret from the people. One can question what those narrowest limits are, and whether these boundaries were crossed in the case of the leaks. Yet if we look at the total impact of the leaks, I agree with some points made by Professor Anatol Lieven from the War Studies Department of King's College in London. His complete analysis can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11918573

He argues that the arguments made for secrecy are "outweighed - in the West, not obviously in Russia - by the fact that we are after all supposed to be democracies, and our electorates have the democratic right to know more than they have done in recent years about the conduct of their government's foreign policy. Far too much misinformation and outright lying has surrounded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall, we in the West now live in an atmosphere of security hysteria and obsessive secrecy that would have filled our ancestors with horror."

A society is only democratic if a citizenry can protest against and stop actions they do not agree with, and such reaction is impossible if the actions of their government are kept secret.