The Way We Talk; The Way We Walk

On July 13th, 2024, Former President Donald Trump and nominee of the Republican party was shot during an attempted assassination while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. The bullet grazed his ear, and he was largely unharmed. But it will leave a scar in many people’s minds and for those who consider free speech, governance, and the democratic way of life as the quintessential way of life, the scar will run deep. ?

Political violence may be a largely foreign concept for the younger generation of Americans. They witness it on TV as something that happens in other countries but never their own. Despite attacks on Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Arizona) and Paul Pelosi (husband of then Speaker Nancy Pelosi), it isn’t since Ronald Reagan’s assassination attempt has there been one on a nominee of one of the major U.S. parties. Therefore, it may have come as a surprise to many that the nation often lauded as the pinnacle of the democratic experiment would engage in such anti-democratic acts. To some others, this political assassination attempt was the inevitable next step in the evolving nature of the way we talk about our people and our politics.??

I am from Sri Lanka. During my time growing up in Sri Lanka, I watched as several assassination attempts were carried out against major party contenders for the highest office in the land. Pres. Ranasinghe Premadasa, Opposition Leaders Lalith Athulathmudali, and Gamini Dissanayake were all assassinated, and Pres. Chandrika Kumaratunga escaped with her life but lost an eye during an attempt on her life. There were countless other political leaders who were killed or had attempts made on their lives. Granted Sri Lanka was in the midst of a civil war at the time and the problems of their politics were different from those of the U.S., for keen observers the pattern of talk was pretty obvious. There was an edge of dehumanizing and vulgar talk that foreshadowed what was to come. The last few years in U.S. political speech mirrors what I saw in Sri Lanka. I fear what is to come.??

At our best people are curious, kind, compassionate, and loving. We are social in nature, looking to create connections and meaning through our interactions. At our worst, we are fearful, hateful, and pessimistic. Driven by our worst instincts we revert to defensiveness and protectionist violence in words and deeds. Certainly, we cannot ourselves be nor expect others to be at our or their best all the time. But we can aspire to be mindful of how we interact with each other and the impact our words have on the people around us.??

Considering the kinds of rhetoric (the way we talk) that permeates our conversational space is a worthwhile endeavor. To frame our conversational patterns can begin with the useful framework advanced by Kachwaha (2002) separating dialogue, discussion, and debate. Each of these kinds of “talk” serve different purposes and are motivated by different emotions.?

?Dialogue is motivated by curiosity and wonderment and invites relationship and meaning making, whereas discussion is motivated by the need to understand or decipher and results in nuanced knowledge. Debate is a method of organizing ideas in an order of hierarchy often motivated by pride or ego. It establishes superiority and positional power. Dialogue, discussion, and debate are expected and valuable parts of the political process. It allows us to relate to people, understand issues, and make decisions about what is important to us. But that is not all the kind of “talk” we do any longer.??

Critique or critical theories have been around since the 1920s. Originating in the proximity and in response to the rise of Nazi Germany, critique or criticality (see Frankfurt School of thought) urged us to rethink social order and establishment politics (Bohman, 2020). This way of thinking resulted in a body of theory and practice that questioned if the way we think ought to be reconsidered. Critique often meant questioning the assumptions that underpin a claim or problematizing a solution for the good of social order. Whereas debate makes claim to power, critique queries power structures.? Even though critique has been around for more than a century, how it shows up in the way we talk about our politics is somewhat new.??

More recently, critique has meant pointing out the flaws of systems and institutions. And it has also meant denying facts and reality under the guise of questioning established order. Critique exposes the fickle nature of our understanding of the world. Our understanding of the world is a subjective experience and is based on what we accept as known “truths.” Critique in the interactional space is often motivated by self-preservation, and the desire for change or transformation.??

At the furthest end of critique is “cancelling” rhetoric. Cancel culture is a relatively new type of talk that seeks to isolate or eliminate certain types of rhetoric. Cancelling is a rhetorical move to delegitimize certain ways of thinking as normal or acceptable within a particular community of people. Often motivated by terror and self-preservation cancelling a person or an idea is often counter to our “informed intuition.” (Brown, 2020). It is a cultural phenomenon with value as it reinstates the power to cancel back to the masses, whereas in the pre-social media age determining the legitimacy of an idea was entirely up to those with power and access. Like critique, cancelling rhetoric is also often motivated by self-preservation, but located more within individuals.??

But perhaps the most destructive of the ways we talk, and what feels like the newest entrant to the American political discourse, is debasing talk. Debasing talk is not about ideas or meaning. It is about dehumanizing people to the point where violence against them is acceptable and perhaps even justified. Usually coded with negative evaluation debasing talk includes name-calling, diminishing a person’s humanity, and minimizing their value or experience. Combing through historical political speeches we are likely to find some degree of debasing talk scattered throughout. But it certainly is not to the degree that we see our political discourse play out in contemporary times.??

If our rhetoric has descended to the point where most of our talk is debasing, there is not much more we can do with our words. If talk moves us along a continuum of relationship work, at one end of the spectrum we have dialogue designed to initiate, build, and grow a relationship, and at the extreme other end we have debasing talk designed to completely end a relationship without any course for restoration. When there is nowhere else to go with our talk… we have to walk. And the walk that follows debasing talk is verbal or physical violence.??

Our workplaces cannot mirror the politics of our time. We cannot allow the people in our workplaces, schools, community centers, and dinner tables to accept debasing talk as a normal way of being even if the people in our politics think it a normal way to do business. Recognizing the kind of rhetoric we use, understanding the underlying emotions, and the kind of work they are each designed to do is of oversized importance now more than ever.??

The way we talk is what opens up opportunities for the way we walk.??

References

Brown, A. M. (2020, July 17). Unthinkable thoughts: Call-out culture in the age of COVID-19. Adrienne Marie Brown. https://adriennemareebrown.net/2020/07/17/unthinkable-thoughts-call-out-culture-in-the-age-of-covid-19/?

Bohman, J. (2023, December 12).?Critical theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/?

Gotham, J. (2023, August 16). A roadmap away from cancel culture and towards transformative justice. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13893734/a-roadmap-away-from-cancel-culture-and-towards-transformative-justice?

Kachwaha, T. (2002), Exploring the difference between dialogue, discussion, and debate. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.?