I was waiting to go on a television talk show a few
years ago for a discussion about how men and women communicate,
when a man walked in wearing a shirt and tie and a floor-length
skirt, the top of which was brushed by his waist-length red hair.
He politely introduced himself and told me that he'd read and liked
my book "You Just Don't Understand," which had just been
published. Then he added, "When I get out there, I'm going
to attack you. But don't take it personally. That's why they invite
me on, so that's what I'm going to do."
We went on the set and the show began. I had hardly managed to
finish a sentence or two before the man threw his arms out in gestures
of anger, and began shrieking -- briefly hurling accusations at
me, and then railing at length against women. The strangest thing
about his hysterical outburst was how the studio audience reacted:
They turned vicious -- not attacking me (I hadn't said anything
substantive yet) or him (who wants to tangle with someone who screams
at you?) but the other guests: women who had come to talk about
problems they had communicating with their spouses.
My antagonist was nothing more than a dependable provocateur,
brought on to ensure a lively show. The incident has stayed with
me not because it was typical of the talk shows I have appeared
on -- it wasn't, I'm happy to say -- but because it exemplifies
the ritual nature of much of the opposition that pervades our public
dialogue.
Everywhere we turn, there is evidence that, in public discourse,
we prize contentiousness and aggression more than cooperation and
conciliation. Headlines blare about the Starr Wars, the Mommy Wars,
the Baby Wars, the Mammography Wars; everything is posed in terms
of battles and duels, winners and losers, conflicts and disputes.
Biographies have metamorphosed into demonographies whose authors
don't just portray their subjects warts and all, but set out to
dig up as much dirt as possible, as if the story of a person's
life is contained in the warts, only the warts, and nothing but
the warts.
It's all part of what I call the argument culture, which rests
on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything
done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate. The
best way to cover news is to find people who express the most extreme
views and present them as "both sides." The best way
to begin an essay is to attack someone. The best way to show you're
really thoughtful is to criticize. The best way to settle disputes
is to litigate them.
It is the automatic nature of this response that I am calling
into question. This is not to say that passionate opposition and
strong verbal attacks are never appropriate. In the words of the
Yugoslavian-born poet Charles Simic, "There are moments in
life when true invective is called for, when it becomes an absolute
necessity, out of a deep sense of justice, to denounce, mock, vituperate,
lash out, in the strongest possible language." What I'm questioning
is the ubiquity, the knee-jerk nature of approaching almost any
issue, problem or public person in an adversarial way.
Smashing heads does not open minds. In this as in so many things,
results are also causes, looping back and entrapping us. The pervasiveness
of warlike formats and language grows out of, but also gives rise
to, an ethic of aggression: We come to value aggressive tactics
for their own sake -- for the sake of argument. Compromise becomes
a dirty word, and we often feel guilty if we are conciliatory rather
than confrontational -- even if we achieve the result we're seeking.
Here's one example. A woman called another talk show on which
I was a guest. She told the following story: "I was in a place
where a man was smoking, and there was a no-smoking sign. Instead
of saying 'You aren't allowed to smoke in here. Put that out!'
I said, 'I'm awfully sorry, but I have asthma, so your smoking
makes it hard for me to breathe. Would you mind terribly not smoking?'
When I said this, the man was extremely polite and solicitous,
and he put his cigarette out, and I said, 'Oh, thank you, thank
you!' as if he'd done a wonderful thing for me. Why did I do that?"
I think this woman expected me -- the communications expert --
to say she needs assertiveness training to confront smokers in
a more aggressive manner. Instead, I told her that her approach
was just fine. If she had tried to alter his behavior by reminding
him of the rules, he might well have rebelled: "Who made you
the enforcer? Mind your own business!" She had given the smoker
a face-saving way of doing what she wanted, one that allowed him
to feel chivalrous rather than chastised. This was kinder to him,
but it was also kinder to herself, since it was more likely to
lead to the result she desired.
Another caller disagreed with me, saying the first caller's style
was "self-abasing." I persisted: There was nothing necessarily
destructive about the way the woman handled the smoker. The mistake
the second caller was making -- a mistake many of us make -- was
to confuse ritual self-effacement with the literal kind. All human
relations require us to find ways to get what we want from others
without seeming to dominate them.
The opinions expressed by the two callers encapsulate the ethic
of aggression that has us by our throats, particularly in public
arenas such as politics and law. Issues are routinely approached
by having two sides stake out opposing positions and do battle.
This sometimes drives people to take positions that are more adversarial
than they feel -- and can get in the way of reaching a possible
resolution. I have experienced this firsthand.
For my book about the workplace, "Talking from 9 to 5," I
spent time in companies, shadowing people, interviewing them and
having individuals tape conversations when I wasn't there. Most
companies were happy to proceed on a verbal agreement setting forth
certain ground rules: Individuals would control the taping, identifying
names would be changed, I would show them what I wrote about their
company and change or delete anything they did not approve. I also
signed confidentiality agreements promising not to reveal anything
I learned about the company's business.
Some companies, however, referred the matter to their attorneys
so a contract could be written. In no case where attorneys became
involved -- mine as well as theirs -- could we reach an agreement
on working together.
Negotiations with one company stand out. Having agreed on the
procedures and safeguards, we expected to have a contract signed
in a matter of weeks. But six months later, after thousands of
dollars in legal fees and untold hours of everyone's time, the
negotiations reached a dead end. The company's lawyer was demanding
veto power over my entire book; it meant the company could (if
it chose) prevent me from publishing the book even if I used no
more than a handful of examples from this one company. I could
not agree to that. Meanwhile, my lawyer was demanding for me rights
to use the videotapes of conversations any way I wanted. The company
could not agree to that; it meant I could (if I chose) put videotapes
of their company on national television, make them look bad, reveal
company secrets and open them up to being sued by their own employees.
The people I was working with at the company had no desire to
pass judgment on any part of my book that did not involve them,
and I had no intention of using the videotapes except for analysis.
These extreme demands could have been easily dismissed by the principals
-- except they had come after months of wrangling with the language
of drafts passed back and forth. Everybody's patience and good
will had worn out. The adversarial nature of the legal process
had polarized us beyond repair.
Requiring people to behave like enemies can stir up mutual enmity
that remains long after a case has been settled or tried, and the
lawyers have moved on. Because our legal system is based on the
model of ritual battle, the object -- like the object of all fights
-- is to win, and that can interfere with the goal of resolving
disputes.
The same spirit drives the public discourse of politics and the
press, which are increasingly being given over to ritual attacks.
On Jan. 18, 1994, retired admiral Bobby Ray Inman withdrew as nominee
for secretary of defense after several news stories raised questions
about his business dealings and his finances. Inman, who had held
high public office in both Democratic and Republican administrations,
explained that he did not wish to serve again because of changes
in the political climate -- changes that resulted in public figures
being subjected to relentless attack. Inman said he was told by
one editor, "Bobby, you've just got to get thicker skin. We
have to write a bad story about you every day. That's our job."
Everyone seemed to agree that Inman would have been confirmed.
The news accounts about his withdrawal used words such as "bizarre," "mystified" and "extraordinary." A
New York Times editorial reflected the news media's befuddlement: "In
fact, with the exception of a few columns, . . . a few editorials
and one or two news stories, the selection of Mr. Inman had been
unusually well received in Washington." This evaluation dramatizes
just how run-of-the-mill systematic attacks have become. With a
wave of a subordinate clause ("a few editorials. . . "),
attacking someone personally and (from his point of view) distorting
his record are dismissed as so insignificant as to be unworthy
of notice.
The idea that all public figures should expect to be criticized
ruthlessly testifies to the ritualized nature of such attack: It
is not sparked by specific wrongdoing but is triggered automatically.
I once asked a reporter about the common journalistic practice
of challenging interviewees by repeating criticism to them. She
told me it was the hardest part of her job. "It makes me uncomfortable," she
said. "I tell myself I'm someone else and force myself to
do it." But, she said she had no trouble being combative if
she felt someone was guilty of behavior she considered wrong. And
that is the crucial difference between ritual fighting and literal
fighting: opposition of the heart.
It is easy to find examples throughout history of journalistic
attacks that make today's rhetoric seem tame. But in the past,
such vituperation was motivated by true political passion, in contrast
with today's automatic, ritualized attacks -- which seem to grow
out of a belief that conflict is high-minded and good, a required
and superior form of discourse.
The roots of our love for ritualized opposition lie in the educational
system that we all pass through. Here's a typical scene: The teacher
sits at the head of the classroom, pleased with herself and her
class. The students are engaged in a heated debate. The very noise
level reassures the teacher that the students are participating.
Learning is going on. The class is a success.
But look again, cautions Patricia Rosof, a high school history
teacher who admits to having experienced just such a wave of satisfaction.
On closer inspection, you notice that only a few students are participating
in the debate; the majority of the class is sitting silently. And
the students who are arguing are not addressing subtleties, nuances
or complexities of the points they are making or disputing. They
don't have that luxury because they want to win the argument --
so they must go for the most dramatic statements they can muster.
They will not concede an opponent's point -- even if they see its
validity -- because that would weaken their position.
This aggressive intellectual style is cultivated and rewarded
in our colleges and universities. The standard way to write an
academic paper is to position your work in opposition to someone
else's. This creates a need to prove others wrong, which is quite
different from reading something with an open mind and discovering
that you disagree with it. Graduate students learn that they must
disprove others' arguments in order to be original, make a contribution
and demonstrate intellectual ability. The temptation is great to
oversimplify at best, and at worst to distort or even misrepresent
other positions, the better to refute them.
I caught a glimpse of this when I put the question to someone
who I felt had misrepresented my own work: "Why do you need
to make others wrong for you to be right?" Her response: "It's
an argument!" Aha, I thought, that explains it. If you're
having an argument, you use every tactic you can think of -- including
distorting what your opponent just said -- in order to win.
Staging everything in terms of polarized opposition limits the
information we get rather than broadening it. For one thing, when
a certain kind of interaction is the norm, those who feel comfortable
with that type of interaction are drawn to participate, and those
who do not feel comfortable with it recoil and go elsewhere. If
public discourse included a broad range of types, we would be making
room for individuals with different temperaments. But when opposition
and fights overwhelmingly predominate, only those who enjoy verbal
sparring are likely to take part. Those who cannot comfortably
take part in oppositional discourse -- or choose not to -- are
likely to opt out.
But perhaps the most dangerous harvest of the ethic of aggression
and ritual fighting is -- as with the audience response to the
screaming man on the television talk show -- an atmosphere of animosity
that spreads like a fever. In extreme forms, it rears its head
in road rage and workplace shooting sprees. In more common forms,
it leads to what is being decried everywhere as a lack of civility.
It erodes our sense of human connection to those in public life
-- and to the strangers who cross our paths and people our private
lives.
Deborah Tannen is professor of linguistics
at Georgetown University. This article is adapted from her new
book, "The Argument Culture" (Random
House).
For Argument's Sake; Why Do We Feel Compelled to Fight About
Everything?"by Deborah Tannen, The Washington Post, March
15, 1998.
Copyright Deborah Tannen. Reproduced by permission.
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