Configuring as the Prototype of Understanding Persons |
Configuring pages
ABSTRACT Eleanor Rosch's' research on categorization has led to a very influential conception of a prototype. The "prototype-based model recognizes that category membership is a gradient phenomenon, such that some members of a category are more central members that others" (Lee 53). If we consider the ways in which we use language, the prototype use is conversation. Typical conversations employ ordinary language (speech acts). Radiating out from this typical use of language are specialized uses of conceptual and poetic language. A similar pattern can be traced from ordinary language to specialized uses of language in science and in the arts. In the analysis of discourses, we can identify various "modes of expression" along each radius. If we bring communication into the picture, the prototypical communication is interpersonal in which the use of language is ordinary and conversational. Radiating out from the prototypical communication situation, on the one hand, are highly specialized logical communications and, on the other, highly specialized analogical communications Configuring is the prototype of analogical communications involving the complexities of self-other understanding. |
Eleanor Rosch's research on categorization has led to a very influential conception of a prototype. The "prototype-based model recognizes that category membership is a gradient phenomenon, such that some members of a category are more central members that others" (Lee 53). In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson describe Rosch's findings on the categorization of birds:
We are using the word "prototypical" in the sense Rosch uses it in her theory of human categorization (1977). Her experiments indicate that people categorize objects, not in set-theoretical terms, but in terms of prototypes and family resemblances. For example, small flying singing birds, like sparrows, robins, etc., are prototypical birds. Chickens, ostriches, and penguins are birds but are not central members of the category—they are nonprototypical birds. But they are birds nonetheless, because they bear sufficient family resemblances to the prototype; that is, they share enough of the relevant properties of the prototype to be classified by people as birds. (71)
In their Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics Ungerer and Schmid add that Rosch's experiments establish that prototypes are cognitive reference points.
As the categorization of colours, shapes, birds and vehicles suggests, category membership is not, as was for a long time assumed by philosophers and linguists, a yes-or-no distinction. Rather it involves different degrees of typicality, as is supported by good ness-of-example ratings, recognition, matching and learning tasks. Rosch's main concern was to prove that categories are formed around prototypes, which function as cognitive reference points. (14)
As an illustration of prototype categorization, they offer Max Black's imaginary chair museum which consists of “a series of 'chairs' differing in quality by least noticeable amounts. At one end of a long line, containing perhaps thousands of exhibits, might be a Chippendale chair: at the other, a small nondescript lump of wood (Black 1949: 32).” The Chippendale is a prototypical quality chair (a), the kitchen chair is an ordinary chair (b), a log, which can function as a chair, is a poor example of one (c)
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For most of us, the chair in the middle is closer to a prototypical chair than the ones at either end. And we would not consider the following as "good examples" of a chair.
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Yet, all the images are of "chairs" that line up somewhere between the kitchen chair and the log chair.
[Prototypes] [Modes of Expression] [Inter-Personal Communication] [ Study of Communication] [CODA]
If we consider the ways in which we use language, the prototypical use is "ordinary" conversation. Conversation is the most common and frequent use of ordinary language. Conversation is also a mixture of embedded discourses or discursive structures ranging from narrative structures to argument structures. In his Introduction to Discourse Analysis, James Paul Gee argues that "discourses can split into two or more discourses," "two or more discourses can meld together," discourses can be hybrids of other discourses." He also remarks that "there are limitless discourses and no way to count them." (21-22)
Because discourses are limitless and discursive structures are countless, the analysis of discourse can be overwhelming . However, some discourse structures are typical and frequently used whereas others are atypical and rarely used. The following discourse structures are very common and are "marked" (have an identifiable begriming and end) and are thus available for analysis--descriptions, questions, arguments, stories, complaints, promises, and so on.
Any or all of these discursive structures can be included in ordinary conversations.
Radiating out from this typical use of language are specialized logical and poetic uses of language. Whereas ordinary conversations are usually a mixture of concepts and metaphors, more specialized uses of language tend to be dominated by concepts or by metaphors. This pattern can be traced in the ways specialized uses of language in science and in the arts move away from ordinary language.
Scientific discourses tend to be dominated by logical structures. Artistic discourses tend to be dominated by analogical structures. In the analysis of discourses, we can identify various "modes of expression." As the use of language becomes more specialized, expressions are increasingly the products of specific combinations of cognitive techniques (methods of formulating expressions). The differences between logical and analogical expressions are discernible. Consider:
a) Episodic memory is critically different from all other varieties of memory (e.g., stimulus-response strengthening, general knowledge acquisition), and can be dissociated from them. An experimental dissociation occurs when one particular variable selectively affects a certain test or class of tests, while having little or no effect on different classes of tests. (Mark A. Wheeler, "Episodic Memory and Autonoetic Awareness," The Oxford Handbook of Memory.)
b)
To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
(William Shakespeare)
"A" is an expression whose force is a statement of facts. It is composed of a series of inter-related concepts that belong to a discursive argument structure in which they function as the conclusions reached on the basis of research experiments. "B"'s force is poetic. It is composed of a series of analogies whose force is affective, aimed at expressing strong emotions. Jerome Bruner's career as a research supports the view that there are two distinctive modes of expression. In On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand, he explores "art as a mode of knowing" (1966). In A Study of Thinking, he and his co-authors explore conceptualization as a mode of expression (1967). In the "Two Modes of Thought" chapter of Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986), he summarizes the two modes of thinking:
Let me begin by setting out my argument as baldly as possible, better to examine its basis and its consequences. It is this. There are two modes of cognitive functioning, two modes of thought, each providing distinctive ways of ordering experience, of constructing reality. The two (though complementary) are irreducible to one another. Efforts to reduce one mode to the other or to ignore one at the expense of the other inevitably fail to capture the rich diversity of thought.
A prototypical conversation includes both modes of expression: concepts and metaphors as do most expressions. However, as the expressions have increasingly specialised uses, one or the other mode becomes predominant. When concepts and logic are predominant, the expressions become increasingly scientific. When metaphors and narratives are predominant, the expressions become increasingly "artistic." The two modes of specialized expressions can be diagrammed as a centrifugal spectrum:
| exact sciences |
social sciences |
knowledge |
<<-conversation->> | aquisition of understanding | art as cultural configurations | configuring |
This diagram is intended as an heuristic. It broadly reflects the view that there are two modes of thought which are differently expressed. More specifically, it partially reflects Dilthey's distinction between knowing and understanding.
On both sides of the spectrum, the "specialization" (movement away from ordinary language) of expressions increases .
The initial move away from ordinary language is modest. We acquire knowledge of various things which is not usually regarded as science. On the logical side, concepts become increasingly technical. The expressions are increasingly precise—interpretations, justifications, explanations.
On the analogical side of the diagram above, configuring could be used in all three categories of the modes of thinking. We acquire understandings which have different degrees of complexity and the configurations become increasingly complex. We acquire our understanding of the world by analogies and metaphors as Lakoff and Johnson argue in Metaphors We Live By. We understand culture through art works which are virtual worlds analogous to the world we live in. We understand persons by configuring their experiences by analogy with our own—the most complex form of understanding. The expressions of our under sanding become increasingly unspecifiable as they increase in complexity.
The area of the diagram on the right is intended to suggest increasing degrees of the complexity of self-other understanding. 
[Prototypes] [Modes of Expression] [Inter-Personal Communication] [ Study of Communication] [CODA]
The prototypical use of language in a communicative situation is an "inter-personal" conversation. However, when another person's language is construed as an expression of a person whom we wish to understand, it takes on a special dimension characteristic of configuring as it has been delineated in the preceding essays. Configuring is the prototype of understanding other persons.
For a moment imagine two people meeting for the first time. Place them at a convention of professors of Communication in a large city. Both go to the same lecture on "Facebook as a Social Networking Site". One does not have his program with him and so introduces himself to the person sitting next to him in order to learn who is speaking first in the session. Their conversation would probably begin quite trivially. For instance, when he returns the program, one professor might ask the other "where and what do you teach?," and receive the response:
I teach at University College. Because of my dissertation I have been preoccupied by online social networks; mostly researching the changes sites undergo. At one time—though not now—I taught the history of the Internet from WWII to the World Wide Web. Working on social networking turned me into an Internet junkie.
Such facts are interesting and informative but do not reveal much about the persons whose lives they describe. When conversations deepen, facts about a person's life become events embedded in their personal histories and reveal much more about them. Let's say, for instance, that our programless professor invited his neighbor to have a drink after the lecture. Their conversation would differ from the example I gave if they wanted to get to know each other as persons.
For example, instead of a catalogue of facts, a quite different story would be told, one that made them much more meaningful emotionally: The professor with a program, if she were interested in getting to know the one who didn't have a program, might this time say that at one time—though no longer, she had a close relationship to a colleague. That at one time they had done everything together: lunched and dined, talked till two or three of a morning time and time again together, though no longer. That, from the time another colleague came, they have been on poorer terms. She might explain that conversations turned into quarrels, commentaries into criticism; that, now, they are hardly speaking to each other.
We instinctively want to know, "was it a man, was it a woman?" "Was he older, was she younger, were you the same age?" we might ask. We'd want to know, "was he jealous, was she angry?" "What happened?," we'd ask. The more the narrative develops, the easier it becomes to recognize the story, to give it meaning, to interpret the story-teller. For us there would be no difference between her and her story; she is her story. Nor is there a difference for us between what we know of ourselves and what we know how to narrate about ourselves.
As told, the narrative of the three colleagues, though a story, is not much of a story. So, let's flesh it out. Let's say the teller is a young woman named Jill and she and John are in a cocktail lounge. Both are unmarried. They are talking about their professional lives in the academy. At first they speak only of the facts of their backgrounds. Where they studied, what they worked on, who they have been taught by and whom they now teach with. Then, the conversation deepens, becomes more personal. Jill begins to talk about the ways in which for a woman in the academy sexual motives interfere with professional relationships sensing that John would be sympathetic. Jill says:
When I first came to University College, I worked very closely with a colleague named Bill who was hired in the same year. We ran several lecture series together. Together, we wrote a paper entitled "A critical comparison of Facebook and MySpace as a social networking Site." He worked on Facebook, and I worked on MySpace. We used to argue until two or three in the morning. His wife was often very upset about this because I'm single. She had very little to worry about. I felt a great deal of affection for Bill, but I was not sexually attracted to him. Then, Jack came into the picture. He was very handsome, very intelligent, very informed and very single. Suddenly, as they say, "almost overnight," my relationship to Bill changed. When Jack and I began to date, I think Bill became jealous. When Jack and I became lovers, I think Bill began to get angry. Our conversations became quarrels. My commentaries on his work became criticisms of it. I no longer wanted to be around Bill. Now, we hardly ever even speak to each other.
Now we have a story that sounds like a story. Our narrative is now about pleasurable and painful feelings, fulfilled and unfulfilled desires, states of mind, motives, acts, and sequences. The narrative reveals many things about the teller, her feelings, desires, motives, and acts. These elements of a personal drama—his or her states of mind, than his or her feelings, than his or her motives, desires, acts—reveal a lot about a person to someone who wishes to understand that person.
The initial conversation was just that, a conversation, not illogical, not especially poetic. There is a implied logical connection in the text: because she became preoccupied by social network after her dissertation, one might be inclined to infer that her dissertation was on social networking though the inference comes close to a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. And, notably, there is a metaphor: "Working on social networking turned me into an Internet junkie."
The second conversation is quite different from the first. It is a story, a segment of a personal history. Jill is telling it to John as an expression of herself. If John is not identifying with a figure in the story, he would understand very little about Jill. The story would be little more than a chronology of events. However, if John identified with any of the three figures in the story, he would feel as if he were undergoing what they were which alters his perspective on Jill. If he identified with Bill on the basis of some past experience with a woman, he would understand her much as he understood the woman in his own life. He might be mistaken about Jill but he would come away from the conversation with an initial understanding of her. If John identified with Jack on the basis of his past experience with a woman, he would understand Jill as he understood his feelings toward the woman in his life that was attracted to him. If, on the other hand, he identified with Jill, he would reach some understanding of how she was feeling as she spoke to him. He would have a sense of how to respond to her story. If he construed her motive as an attempt to play out her relationship to Bill, a man she was not sexually attracted to, he would not respond to her sexually. If, on the other hand, he construed her motive as an attempt to replace Jack—for whatever reason, John might ask: "And are you still involved with Jack?" If she said "yes," John would have to revise his reading of her. If she said, "no," John would continue to explore the extent to which he was understanding Jill.
Understanding persons is a process. One does not arrive at "the truth"; it is an unending search to unravel the mystery of the other. One goes from clue to clue trying to keep up with the changes in other persons.
This mode of understanding, which is a subset of Bruner's "art as a mode of knowing, is named configuring in this work. Instead of construing intelligence as a monolithic ability, it is construed here as a large set of cognitive abilities that are expressed in language in distinctive ways and which we combine to cope with certain kinds of situations. On the one hand, we argue with other persons. On the other hand, we understand other persons as loving and lovable. On the one hand we study other persons. On the other hand, we write poems about them. These are different cognitive abilities expressed in different terms.
[Prototypes] [Modes of Expression] [Inter-Personal Communication] [ Study of Communication] [CODA]
This is a study of a particular kind of communication. It does not fall into any category of communication research, though it is sometimes hinted at in publications on inter-personal communication.
Nonetheless, the study of how persons understand each other is certainly a critical area for research. Yet, it seems that Communication Studies is moving away from this research area. It is notable that interest in intra-personal communication has waned even though it is the basis of inter-personal communication. And, inter-personal communication seems to be less often studied by Communication researchers than the technologies of communication even though it is the baseline of any electronic communication including mass media.
The most formidable obstacle to the study of understanding other persons is that it does not fit the mold of academic argumentation. It's method is unavoidably configural. It's subject matter is expressive discourse. It has to be subjective—you can't get inside another person's mind. It is not quantifiable. It cannot be measured. Much of the relevant "data" is unspecifiable. To use Michael Polanyi's term, it is a form of connoisseurship learned through experience.
Communication is surely affected by globalization. In this context, and given the circumstance that there are many wars going on in the world, the understanding of people unlike us is sorely needed. It may be that academic institutions are not viable environments in which to learn how to understand persons unlike us.
[Prototypes] [Modes of Expression] [Inter-Personal Communication] [ Study of Communication] [CODA]
jjs
Notes:
. [(J. L Austin (How to Do Things With Words) and John Searle (Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language) have tracked such structures as "speech acts.")] ... 
. [(These discourse structures are linguistic patterns that are the result of cognitive abilities employed in signification (making meaning). See "Discourse Analysis.")] ...
. [(Dilthey's concern was to justify history and other humanistic studies as human sciences. However, his conception of Verstehen is not congruent with scientific expressions. As a result, I construe it as an art of understanding.
The diagram is not a representation of the distinction between the academic disciplines—the sciences vs. the arts. The Arts, more accurately, the Humanities—as academic disciplines—have as their goal the production of knowledge as frameworks of logically related concepts. They fit the diagram in "knowledge acquisition" category—less than scientific.)] ...
. [(The argument that the understanding of other persons is more complex than the understanding of culture is based on the circumstance that much of our understanding of culture is subsumed in understanding the relations between self and others. In this context, consider that the self is a function of others and our identities a function of social and cultural roles. Hence the complexities of our world views (sum of all past experiences as organized in our memory systems) are the "tools," so to speak, with which we configure ourselves in relation to others, particularly to significant others.
In his Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi argues that in our awareness of wholes, often the parts are unspecifiable. His term for this is tacit knowledge. On the analogical side of modes of expression, we can argue for a parallel phenomenon—tacit understanding, noting that metaphorical expressions are unspecifiable since they evoke the personal experiences of individuals.)] ...
. [(As R. D. Laing points out in Self and Other, our understanding of ourselves a function of our understanding of others. Hence the concept of "self-understanding" can be reconceived as "self-other understanding," which can be loosely related to Maslow's conception of a "peak experience" ( Toward a Psychology of Being, 1968 )or Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept on of "flow." (Flow)] ...
. [(Historically, the study of communication is propelled by economic contingencies. If you wish to understand the direction the study of communication is taking, follow the money trail funding agencies, grant opportunities, salary increases, and promotions. As academics our advances in university positions depend upon the criteria for promotion. We publish what is currently publishable, that is, on "hot" topics. We seek funds from agencies who are willing to grant us the wherewithal to advance their agendas. I have argued this case in Communication and Cognition.)] ...
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June 11, 2010
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