Niklas Luhmann, the German social theorist whose work I will have the pleasure of becoming intimate with over the next few years, believed that communication was highly improbable despite our use of it daily. Communication is something we all assume we know, although when pressed few can define it. Like many things in life, we believe we know it when we experience it even if we can’t define it. What is communication then? Communication for Luhmann is not just speech but anything that is transmitted and can be perceived as having meaning. While one immediately thinks of language as the primary form of communication, it is only one aspect of the communication process. Anything that is produced with meaning and is seen to have meaning by another is communication.
Most creations by human beings are considered to contain meaning, in the sense that person A, discovering person B’s creation, assumes person B intended to communicate something in the said creation (even if the creation was only for themselves). Let us start this analysis with a simple scribble. When observing a toddler scribbling on paper with coloured crayons people think “I wonder what this toddler is thinking, to scribble in such a way”. One assumes that even if the toddler is not aware of the meaning of their scribbles, that something within the toddler has caused such a layout to be created, instead of another. The toddler may be unhappy and hence the scribbles are chaotic, more gentle scribbles may mean the toddler is calm. If I am travelling in a foreign country and see what to me looks like a scribble on a sign, I could well assume that this is the country’s written language before me. As such I would then assume it contains meaning, despite the fact I cannot draw this meaning out. In both cases what I see as a scribble is assumed to have meaning. It can therefore act as communication, i.e. conveying something from one person to another. From this we can consider communication to arise in almost all things people create, whether it be art, music, or language. This raises a query as to the initial point of this article: if people create communications all the time, how can it be considered improbable or in any way problematic?
The first problem with communication is the derivation of meaning from a non-communicative event. A good example here is a tribal chief, watching for the communications of deities in the weather. In years past a dramatic change in the weather would be understood as the gods praising or punishing the tribe; this was seen as a communication from the gods. This notion survives today in the expression “an act of God”. In virtually all modern cultures, despite the expression aforementioned, we do not consider weather cycles and natural disasters to convey any message; they are not considered as communications from a higher order. These are acts, events, yet they carry no meaning and therefore no communication.
This problem carries on in a different form into the modern day. This can be seen in the analysis of scientific discoveries by certain parties with certain agendas. The discovery of an inherently probabilistic universe at the quantum level is not a communication: it is devoid of any meaning whatsoever. Interpretations of this discovery may be made which assign meaning, however the discovery (fact) itself is meaningless. The same goes for global temperature rises and its link to global warming. Temperatures around the globe may be rising but this in itself is meaningless. It is only assigned meaning when placed within the context of something else, such as the global warming debate. In this case the facts are attached to a meaning (such as “we are causing this temperature rise through our industrial base!”). Events themselves contain no meaning then; meaning is assigned by placing an event within a context and as I have shown, mankind has had a habit of assigning meaning where none is present.
Language, once considered sacrosanct, also often fails us in our quest to communicate meaning. There are many famous cases of being misunderstood . In 1992 in America, Japanese student Yoshihiro Hattori was shot dead for trespass. When a man wielding a magnum revolver shouted “Freeze!” at him, he thought he had said please and advanced. The man then opened fire, mortally wounding Yoshihiro. An possibly apocryphal story came was published about the interactions between Rover, the beleaguered car manufacturer, and their Chinese buyers. British expressions such as “it could be worse”, “things could be better”, “things haven’t been so good recently”, etc. were all taken at face-value by the new Chinese management. It was supposedly months until the Chinese management realised the true meaning of their British staff’s analysis. One can only imagine the reaction of a Chinese official with a perfect grasp of English grammar realising to his horror the actual usage of it in colloquial speech. These can be classed as examples (and extreme ones) of miscommunication due to language naivety: meaning was completely lost. The language used by the transmitting party was not of sufficient clarity to register the correct meaning in the receiving party’s understanding.
Miscommunications occur between not only those who possess the same language but those who communicate frequently (i.e. family, friends, colleagues). There exists a multitude of phrases in the English language that are ubiquitous in their usage but, despite the seemingly solid nature of them, have rather loose meanings. The phrase “I’ll be there in five” can mean anything from five minutes to a few hours in colloquial usage. When we use this expression though we don’t usually expect it to be taken literally. We expect the other person to know that it means we’ll be there shortly, or perhaps we’re politely telling them we’re trying to avoid coming at all. People also express opinions about movies, books and other people in somewhat cryptic ways depends on who they’re talking to. I may express disdain about a book to one person but take a more conciliatory tone with another. Whilst I wish to express the same meaning in both instances (assuming I am aiming to make an honest communication of my opinion), the language I use is balanced upon the expectations of the person I am communicating with. If person A doesn’t care what I think of the book, I can be brutally honest. If person B expects me to like it, and I wish to make a honest statement, I would take a lighter tone in my disparagement. This is not only to save face; the lighter tone also serves to get my message across to person B and change their expectations. To be brutally honest here may lead person B to stubbornly refuse my opinion, question my understanding of the book, etc. In any case, language contains within it not only meaning from person A but expectation about how person B will receive the communication as meaning.
This can also be seen in the two cases I looked at previously. Both Yoshihiro and the Chinese official misunderstood the true meaning of the communications aimed at them. Yoshihiro (one assumes) would not expect a man to shoot him for merely trespassing on his garden path. The Chinese officials would have expected a candidness from the British staff that was obfuscated by British pleasantries of speech. Language then, far from being a simple way to communicate, seems to rely on pre-understood meanings and expectations that can corrupt attempts at communication between two parties.
In summary, I have discussed how communication, despite its seeming ubiquity, is actually quite a problematic subject. Communication is essentially the transmission of meaning between two parties and can be encoded in anything. Problems arise though when non-communicative events are mistaken for communications and then assigned meaning. The occurrence of natural disasters fits this as in previous times, they were seen as a message from the Gods that they were unhappy. This is also an issue in the modern era as events are considered to have intrinsic meaning whereas they only have meaning when we assign meaning to them. Language is also problematic as it relies on each party to have expectations as to what is communicated and how it is understood. Meaning it seems is a rather difficult entity to transmit.
In part two I shall discuss in further detail Luhmann’s precise issues with communication, how he proposes solving these and what sort of model of society this leads to. It could be a while for this one to surface though; Luhmann and I have a lot of time to spend with each other first.
ssptmusing 