The pictures of science we get from the movies is very different from the way it is actually done. We can know that, and yet still find it difficult to get those pictures out of our heads. There is mad Dr. Frankenstein in his laboratory; brave Madame Curie in a white coat bent over a lab table; the countless handsome young men from science fiction movies in the 1950s, ready to tackle issues of truth no matter where (or to what monsters) they lead; endless portrayals of people a bit more than slightly out of touch. 1 The main lesson these representations teach is that science is not like everyday life. It is separate, apart, divorced from the hurly-burly of daily interaction and commerce. Of course, implicitly, we are led to believe that therein lies the strength and power of science: It works so effectively because it is removed from the influences that might distract scientists from truth. 2 In short, we are led to think that science must get a completely different treatment from any other activity; all the assumptions we would make about the role of social, cultural, and psychological factors in any other activity (politics, the arts, business, etc.) are automatically invalidated.
Needless to say, these pictures are false and dangerous ones. 3 They may serve the interests of some scientists at some times, scientists who might like to deflect criticism and divert prying eyes, but for the most part they don't serve any body's interests. They just make it more difficult to talk and think about science as it really is, rather than in terms of foolish ideals. 4 Nowhere is this more clear than in examining the relationship of communication to science. Communication (written, oral, or otherwise) lies squarely in the realm of the social and the cultural, in the realm of human relationships, motives, and desires. There is very little we can actually do alone; science, like everything else, is a collective enterprise, sometimes requiring a dozen people, often requiring enormous organizations and institutions. For groups to operate, they must at the very least communicate among themselves and with other groups; there may even be more subtle forms of communication at work. So science arises out of a context of communication, and is not separate from it. In this chapter, we'll look a bit more closely at the idea of communication, how it figures into science, and ways of thinking about communication that can help those who do scientific communication professionally?including scientists.
There are a myriad ways to define and model communication, which present a real obstacle to understanding communication. While it's something we do every day, it still a bit of a mystery, in the same way the we can walk all of our lives without ever thinking about or understanding the physics and mechanics of human locomotion (which is vastly more complex than commonly assumed). If you were responsible for teaching people who walked poorly how to walk, the first thing you would want is to understand walking, in a terminology that would help you teach it. Knowing all about the chemistry of terminal efferent synapses might not help much, while kinesiology might.
Some ways of talking about and conceptualizing communication are more helpful than others. Let's start with some that most of us are familiar with, but are not really very useful, even if they seem "natural." One common way of picturing communication (especially for electrical engineers!) is in terms of information: Communication is the transmission of information from a source to a receiver. 5 It is usually associated with a picture like this:
While this is a very common (and for most people, very intuitive) picture of communication, it is unsatisfactory for many reasons. The main one is that the technical theory of information cannot model meaning, only structure. Since meaning is what, presumably, humans attempt to create when they communicate with each other, this is a fatal flaw. But in a larger and more important sense this picture is not helpful because it is radically incomplete. The terms by which it forces us to talk about communication filter out most of the interesting and important things we need to know about communication in order to be effective communicators. The whole emphasis is on messages, and how they can be coded, decoded, and cleaned up. There isn't really any way of talking about the people involved in the communication?and people are always involved. Also, notice that there is only one purpose given for communication, the transmission of information. If you think for a few moments about your daily life, you'll realize that you always doing much, much more than that in a communication interaction, and we'll discuss some of this "more" below.
Another unhelpful way of thinking about communication, which is difficult to avoid, is thinking in terms of the content only. Often people who have to do professional writing or speaking for the first time assume that it will be pretty easy, because the material will suggest its own structure and presentation. They think that the answers to their questions about presentation "What do I say, to whom, in what order?" are implicit in the subject matter, if they just know it well enough. As one might imagine, this is a recipe for communication disaster. Yet smart people do it all the time, and nowhere is the temptation greater than in scientific communication. In science in particular, we would like to think that the old legal principle applies: Res ipse loquitur, the things speak for themselves. But things do not speak for themselves: People have to speak for them. Typically, those operating from this picture think that they have very few choices to make in communicating a subject matter, since the subject matter will determine everything. But this is false; we could even generalize that most bad communication results from communicators not taking into account all their choices. No matter how clearly an area of science is understood, there are always many choices to be made in telling someone about it. Of course, if we are accustomed to a particular way of presenting the material, it may not seem like there are any choices because the way we're used to is so "natural." Neglecting to imagine alternatives and choose among them will be highly problematic unless all contextual features are held constant from communication situation to situation, which is virtually impossible.
What are some useful ways of thinking about communication? Let's focus on some of the basic concepts we'll need to use making decisions about how to communicate in a particular situation. 6 These are audience, relationship, purpose, and context. The first thing one always needs to think about before communicating is the audience. It's pretty obvious that what you will say 7 depends on who you are talking to, but most people don't think about how deeply this goes. We can distinguish between expressive and strategic communication: Expressive communication serves to express our ideas and feelings, nothing more. Strategic communication attempts to have some impact or effect on others: You want them to understand, believe, act, accept, reject, etc. Theses are two general kinds of purposes. If your purpose is expressive, it doesn't matter who the audience is or if there is one; a message in a bottle would be as good as a public speech or an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Truly expressive communication is probably pretty rare.
In most cases communicators would life to make some kind of difference to an audience, and in that case the specific audience makes all the difference in the world. No matter what your strategic purpose, you won't be able to achieve it unless you tailor your communication to the specific person(s) you're addressing. Dale Carnegie 8 once pointed out that when most people go fishing, they want to catch fish (i.e., they are strategic). In order to get the fish to bite, fishermen must put something on the hook to attract the fish. But what should they put there? (This question is analogous to the issue of communication choices: One wants to affect the audience?but which communication choices will do it?) Carnegie noted that some fishermen put things they like on the hook, such as peanut butter. Others put things, such as worms, that fish like (and further, different things to catch different fish) on their hooks. It's pretty obvious who's going to catch more fish, but it is amazing how resistant many people are to this logic; they refuse it, and say "It's really just a matter of getting the line attached tightly between you and the fish" or "No, see, the nature of the bait determines what is used, nothing more." 9
Before going on to expand on the variety of possible purposes in communication, we should briefly consider the concept of relationship in communication. Communication always involves an interaction between two or more people, even if the communication is written, and the people are separated by time and space. In fact, as B. Aubrey Fisher has noted, human communication and human relationships are coextensive, since there is never one without the other. The nature of the relationship makes an enormous difference to the kinds of purposes and strategies appropriate to a given communication interaction. Talking to one's fiancee involves very different requirements than talking to a clerk in a store, and most of these differences are attributable to the difference in the relationships. One's specific communication always has embedded in it information about the relationship, from obvious cues such as forms of address ("Darling," "Sir") to more subtle ones, such as a tone of superiority and condescension. A useful way to talk about relationships is in terms of roles. A role is a set of expectations that go along with a person's place in a particular kind of relationship, and so roles frequently come in pairs: teacher/student, lover/beloved, cheater/cheated, persecutor/victim, judge/defendant. There are many, many types of roles, and it is possible to enact more than one at a time.
Roles figure into communication in several ways. First, both (or all) communicators have perceptions about the roles of the interactants, and those perceptions determine not only what they will do and say, but also what these actions and language will mean. For example, consider the sentence "That's the wrong way to do it." This sentence will take on different meanings according to who is saying it to whom. Imagine it said by a teacher to a student, and then the reverse. Or a son to his father, and the reverse. Or by a homeowner to a contractor, and the reverse. In each case, given the constraints and expectations that go with the role, the sentence takes on a different meaning, has different implications, will tend to get a different response, etc. Second, it's important to remember that roles are not absolute, but depend on perception, in terms of both how communicators perceive their own and others roles. For example, you might find yourself in a group where you have an expertise others lack, and suddenly realize that they perceive as the "teacher" or "expert," while you were still perceiving yourself as just a participant; this difference could certainly cause communication difficulties. Or, as a student, it's pretty clear who's the teacher and who's the student, but less clear what these roles amount to. Does taking on the role of "good student" mean that you never ask questions? Always ask questions? Never argue with the teacher? Argue as hard as possible? Obviously, things will work out best when you have a sense of the teacher's perception of the role of "good student" (and "good teacher"), and can work from that.
Finally, there are many communication situations where the relationship comes into question in a particular way. In many cases, we must expect the audience to ask "Why are you talking about this subject? What entitles you? What are your motives?" Your perceived appropriateness to be saying something about a particular subject, to a particular audience, in a particular situation, is often referred to as your ethos. 10 Ethos can be seen as the appropriateness of trust in the relationship between communicator and audience. Ethos may be an issue of expertise: Do you have the credentials, the knowledge, to be speaking on this subject? Should the audience trust you to know what you're talking about? Few people would believe a carpenter talking about nuclear physics (though he might be credible about carpentry). Ethos may be an issue of motive: Do you have the audience's best interests in mind? Do you intend to help them or cheat and deceive them? Most people don't trust salespeople, because they judge the salesperson's motive to me making money, not insuring the customer gets the best deal. Ethos may also be an issue of appropriateness: Can you fill the role of one who speaks on this issue? Many times people see it as odd that, for example, a man speaks about the problems of rape or abortion?if he hasn't experienced them (and has no reason to think he will), why would he understand it well enough to talk about it? Similarly, student-athletes are going to be unlikely to judge someone credible who has not played college sports?how could they really understand? Of course, it's possible that the man or the non-athlete actually does understand, but the problem is that the audience (quite reasonably) doubts it, and thus the communicator has to do extra work in forming a trusting relationship that a woman or athlete would not have to do.
So when communicators address particular audiences, they do so in the context of a relationship, which may pre-exist the situation, but is modified by the communication in it. Now, what are the purposes a communicator might have? Frequently people new to studying communication are not comfortable with purpose; it's not polite, or it just seems plain manipulative, to have a "purpose" in communicating. That's a natural feeling in our culture, so it's important not to mistake concealed or devious purposes for purpose in general. Actually, it's hard to describe and understand even everyday communication without talking about purpose. Traditionally, there have been three purposes (officia, Cicero called them) attributed to communication: Persuasion, instruction (information), entertainment. But these distinctions are probably too crude for most practical purposes, and they invite a serious mistake. Sometimes instruction, or as we might say today "informative communication," is contrasted with persuasion, and the logic criticized above is engaged: "Well, I'm just trying to convey information, nothing more, so the subject matter (information) will dictate all the important choices." So calling one's communication "informative" can be used as an excuse to ignore the constraints of audience, roles, and ethos. It makes sense, then, that most communicators who see their purpose as "informative" are truly boring, bad communicators. They would be better off seeing themselves as persuasive: They want the audience to care about the information, to understand it, to want to remember it and fit it in with the rest of their knowledge?much more than simply "informing" them; informative communication comes from either laziness (adaptation to an audience and specific purpose takes work) or more commonly from lack of knowledge about the communication possibilities and choices.
Let's call the attitude of taking purposes seriously, of always considering the audience and the context, being rhetorical. A communicator who takes a rhetorical stance thus takes responsibility for having a specific purpose in communicating, and designing the communication to fit that purpose. This is not necessarily manipulation, any more than designing a tool that fits the user's hand and task is "manipulating" that tool user. So specifying purpose clearly and precisely is very important. Here's an (incomplete) list of possible purposes:
Open new possibilities of belief or value
Propose change in ideas or action
Build credibility for future persuasion
Establish credibility for current persuasion
Create doubts about opposing ideas/actions
Refute opposing ideas
Create an audience
Build community with audience
Ratify or reinforce community values or ideas
Ask for small changes in belief/action
Ask for moderate changes in belief/action
You can come up with many more, depending on the specifics of the situation. The important point is that when planning communication, whether it is a paper written for a class, a request made to a friend, a proposal of marriage, a memo to colleagues, or a grant made to the NSF, if you don't design the communication with a specific purpose in mind, then it won't achieve anything specific (except maybe by accident). This is where the "informative" speaker goes astray. "Being informative" is not a specific purpose, because it doesn't take into account where the audience is starting from (with respect to the writer/speaker and the subject matter) and what the writer/speaker wants the audience to do with the information. A communicator who is being rhetorical takes these things into account.
The final thing that factors into our account of communication is context, or the setting for the communication. There are many ways to talk about context, but it is common to distinguish contexts based on the number of people, their relationship, institutions involved, or the medium of communication. Commonly, the most basic contexts of communication are:
Interpersonal
Small group
Organizational
Public Address
Mass Communication
But a great many other topical contexts are also studied:
Political Communication
Health Communication
Scientific/technical communication
Male/Female Communication
Intercultural Communication
The context will typically interact in important ways with the nature of the audience, the relationships that can be established among communicators, and the appropriate purposes. In the next section we'll look at scientific communication in particular, and try to see how a these concepts apply to it, and see if we can determine the nature of scientific audiences, relations among scientists, the purposes of scientific communicators, and the contexts of scientific communication.
Since we've established that communication is a natural part of science, we should now consider the various place in science where communication occurs. There are multiple contexts of communication in science, corresponding to different audiences and forms of communication.
Audiences in science
A traditional distinction is between audiences "inside" science and "outside" science proper. Even though this distinction has been challenged, 11 it is useful for understanding the scope of scientific communication. Beginning with insider audiences, we can divide them roughly into educational and professional audiences; but both audiences tend characterized by what they know. Educational audiences on the inside (there are external ones as well), are typically sophisticated about science, while lacking knowledge about some specific topic. For example, physicians frequently attend seminars where researchers teach them about the latest results and techniques in their medical specialty. The physicians are not laypersons or amateurs, but they are still there to learn. Graduate education in science is in the same category; textbooks and articles written for the graduate level presume insider status while still aiming to teach. Most insider education is connected in some way (in the US) to universities.
Professional audiences may be divided into researchers and practitioners, though this distinction is extremely permeable. Roughly, researchers do basic and (some applied) research, while practitioners do applied research and implementation of applications. Basic researchers are most closely associated with the label "scientist," and they are paradigmatically white-coated and laboratory bound. The laboratories frequently inhabit universities, but not always: since Thomas Edison's private laboratory there has been a tradition of corporate basic research, such as Bell Labs in New Jersey (for electronics) or Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston (for Artificial Intelligence). Practitioners frequently receive the label "engineer" (whether they are engineers or not), and can be found in many places. They represent an audience inside science to the extent that their professional activity it tied to communicating with other scientists, through seminars, professional journals and the like. Specialization further divides professional scientists of either type into distinct audiences. Mechanical engineers share only a general background with chemical engineers or computer scientists, and while ecologists and geneticists are both biologists, most of what each reads would be inaccessible to the other. l2 The division of scientific audiences according to specialty requires extensive knowledge of the particular science and such divisions tend to mutate rapidly.
Audiences outside of science are typically characterized by a lack of knowledge: they are outside of science because they don't know what a specific scientist knows. Communicatively, this difference in knowledge (which, unfairly, is typically characterized as ignorance) creates a gap which communication must bridge. Insider communication typically takes an enormous amount for granted, and gets away with it because the scientists have similar knowledge, education, training, experiences, etc. But communication from inside to outside (and vice versa) cannot take all this for granted, and so presents itself as more difficult, frequently being characterized as a process of translation. Outside audiences may be divided into three main types: the general public, business audiences, and government/legal audiences. As LaFollette (1990) demonstrates, the general public has demanded and consumed enormous amounts of information about science since at least the turn of the century. The most obvious outlet for general science communication is the magazine, whose range extends from general, nearly professional magazines like Science and Nature to specialized magazines on computer applications. There are also many television programs that cater to this audience, typically found on PBS or the Discovery Channel. This audience has a varied set of interests in science: they may simply have a fascination with some topic ("dinosaur crazy"), they may want to be conversant with the scientific issues of the day, they may wish to connect the scientific knowledge (say, about advances in cryptography or archaeology) with a hobby/interest (in political and industrial espionage or civil war battles), or they may have some application they wish to make of the science, e.g. to personal computing or gardening. There are also foundations that are setup (by a wealthy, private individual) specifically to fund scientific research that someone thought was important; this should also count as a case of outside communication, since scientists applying for funding may be applying to committees of individuals that are not scientists, but interested laypeople.
Commercial interest in science constitutes the paradigmatic case of application. Those in business communicate with scientists to find out information and techniques they can apply to their business, to make new products, increase efficiency, or whatever. The business community's interests in science thus tend to be exclusively pragmatic: What can this (knowledge/device/technique) do for me? How can it help me/us make more money, sell more goods, conduct business more cheaply, etc.? Often the interaction between business and science falls on individuals in the business setting who must assume dual roles: on the one hand they must be quasi-scientists, conversant with the latest research in their area of expertise, able to talk with others in the area, and on the other they must represent the interests of the business, weeding out, ignoring or refusing to support science or research that does not serve the interests of the business. To say the least, their jobs get very complicated. Scientists interact with the government for two main reasons: The government sponsors scientific research, and the government regulates scientific research. Through the NSF, DARPA, DOD, NIMH, NIH and many other agencies, the US government has sponsored basic scientific research on a vast scale since the end of W.W.II. There is not an unlimited amount of money, and not all projects are equally worthy, so the various agencies have to decide who is to be funded. Scientists, in effect compete with each other by submitting grant applications describing the research they want to do and why it is worthy of being funded. Now, this is clearly a persuasive task, but more complicated that one might think. Since having a "mere bureaucrat" decide issues of science seems wrong to most people (they don't have the expertise?right?), the government typically employs scientists themselves to review grant applications and make awards. So, if a computer scientist applies for money from DARPA, those who review the grant application are likely to be her peers, other computer scientists. So, grant-writing is a mix of inside and outside communication, since the audience consists of insiders are working for outsiders, and they may not all share the same values, interests and purposes. The government also regulates science, in part through the funding process (a line of research will die out if no one funds it), and in part through laws about certain types of research. The Atomic Energy Commission regulates any nuclear or atomic research (for safety reasons) and there is a growing movement to regulate genetic engineering research in the same way. For the most part, though, the US government has not tried to "micro-manage" science, but only control the general patterns of funding. This may well change in the future.
The legal context for scientific communication has mainly to do with patents, accountability and expert testimony. Since it is possible to own a discovery, by patenting it, the legal process of obtaining a patent is very important. Additionally, parties may disagree about who deserves the patent on a particular discovery, conflicting patent claims may end up in court. Scientists may also sometimes be accountable for the applications of their work; if a chemist discovers a drug, makes a persuasive case that it has certain effects and puts it on the market, she may be held liable if the effects aren't as promised, or if there are negative side effects. Finally, there are many court cases, of all types, in which issues turn on matters of scientific fact and theory. Here scientists may be called in to testify, as experts in a particular field. Their audience in this case may be a judge or jury, but in any case non-scientists.
Forms of Communication in Science
The two basic forms of scientific communication are, not surprisingly, written and oral. Written communication in science takes different shapes depending on context and audience. A basic form for internal scientific communication is publishing, usually in the form of research articles, often called journal articles. 13 Scientific journals are typically distinguished by topic (i.e., there are specific ones for physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, etc.), and are supposed to represent a forum for the presentation of research and (once the research is accepted) a body of common knowledge for scientists. The form of a journal article responds to the first rather than the second of these purposes. An article should present or describe the evidence for a claim so that readers (i.e., other scientists) can evaluate the truth of the claim, and how it fits with other claims about the same topic (i.e., its theoretical implications). In different fields and sub-fields, however, the nature of evidence is different, and so the presentation of the evidence will be different. Mathematical articles typically very short, since they may simply present a theorem and its proof, assuming any other information is supplied by the reader. A study of the effect of a certain hormone on humans, however, may be quite long,; if it is a double-blind study, many correlations must be presented and explained. There is thus no one way to write a journal article, since the writing must take into account the beliefs and doubts of the audience as well as the standards and types of proof accepted within that scientific community.
Oral communication among scientists, as among everybody else, is typically face-to-face communication. (An exception will be noted below.) This might be in the setting of a one-on-one interpersonal talk, a small group of interactants, or in a public speaking setting, where one person addresses many. In each of these setting, a smart communicator would ask the basic communication questions: Who is the audience? What is my purpose? What is (or should be) my relationship to the audience? An advantage of interpersonal and small group interactions is that the communicator may have a lot of information about the audience members;in the more public setting, this may not be true (at a professional meeting of chemists, you could expect the audience to be mostly chemists, but you might not be sure how many know or care about the subject of your speech). Purposes in interpersonal communication are typically quite complex. This is due to the layering of purposes: you are managing not only the content of what you what to say, but also your relationship to the other person at the same time. Suppose two people, Ann and Bob, are working in a commercial lab, and Ann needs to tell Bob one of the lab procedures they're using is defective, possibly dangerous. Ann might be tempted to think about this only in terms of the procedure, but that's too simple. To see why, imagine first that Ann is Bob's supervisor. How would their relationship affect the communication? She can just order him to make the change, without explanation, which would probably make him resentful, or feel at fault for using the procedure, even if he wasn't at fault. This may in turn affect his future communication and job behavior, making the workplace less pleasant; Ann would need to find a way to explain the change in a way that respects Bob's integrity and diligence as a lab worker. Now imagine that Ann works for Bob. Now she can't order him to make the change, and would want to avoid appearing to subvert his authority, since he might not be willing to listen to an aggressive appeal, and has the power to just ignore her. However she puts the issue to him, it will have to be in a way that is respectful of their relative positions. Added to all this is that in a real situation Ann and Bob have a relationship history which figures in each succeeding interaction. Failing to factor in the relationship dimension of communication (which we earlier called ethos) can make for a multitude of misunderstandings.
Small group communication has many of the same constraints, and some others beside. The advantage of working in groups is that creativity in problem-solving is enormously enhanced; it is impossible to predict the precise outcome, but the outcome is almost always more satisfactory than one that an individual could arrive at alone. It is no accident that professions, like advertising and litigation, that put a premium on creative thinking about highly constrained problems, rely on group problem solving. The disadvantages of groups are that they take a lot of time, and require patience from the participants, since the road to the solution is rarely a straight line. You can think of the communication in groups as having two dimensions: a task dimension and a relationship dimension. The first is the content, or problem that the group is dealing with, while the second is the various relationships among group members. Successful groups try to maximize two qualities in their groups: The maximum amount of input and disagreement with the maximum social cohesion. On one hand, creative disagreement is necessary for the task dimension: if there is little disagreement or free input from members (as with a leader and a bunch of "yes-men"), then there won't be any productive interaction of ideas; it will be equivalent to one person thinking and everybody else agreeing, which is a waste of time. One the other hand, groups must attend to the relationship, or social dimension: if there is little social cohesion?disagreements are taken personally, feelings are hurt, pride wounded? then the group will soon begin to fall apart, with members either refusing to participate or actively working against the interests of the group out of spite. There are numerous techniques for structuring groups to achieve both harmony and creativity in group work. l4
Public communication, or public speaking, is distinguished by a lack of immediate feedback. In a conversation, by watching another person's non-verbals (head-nodding, "um-hum's" and so forth) you can tell whether or not they understand, agree, are offended, etc. (Though in truth these clues are often much more ambiguous that we realize.) But in the public setting, unless people are booing, clapping or sleeping, the speaker doesn't really know, moment to moment, how things are going, and so cannot make adjustments as one would normally do in conversation. What makes public speaking anxiety-provoking for most people is this need to plan ahead?and to have the plans be right. For a successful speech, the speaker must accurately gauge composition of audience, the relevance of the topic to the audience and their previous knowledge about it, the speaker's ethos (relationship to topic and audience) and on the basis of these, the most likely persuasive strategies. Obviously, a key to speaking success is to find out as much as possible about the audience in advance, and have thought carefully about it; speakers who speak to their own interests and knowledge are bound to achieve little.
Written communication in science is the subject of this book; it can take many forms (we have already discussed publications) and we will ponder here just a few of them: memoranda, grant proposals, and popular articles. For each of these forms, a smart communicator would ask the basic communication questions: Who is the audience? What is my purpose? What is (or should be) my relationship to the audience? A memorandum can go to one person or many. Most of them end up in the circular file because the recipients, dedicated if busy people, can't see what it has to do with them. In other words, the audience adaptation necessary to insure the relevance of the memo was lacking. It is not enough for the author to have a specific purpose or plan; that plan needs to be connected.
In grant proposals, the authors (almost always plural) are writing what is essentially a request for money to a public or private funding agency, saying "Here's why you should give us some money." Agencies don't give away money easily or unthinkingly; each government program or private foundation will have a specific purpose, and will specify the kinds of projects it wants to fund. So the situation is this: Your team has a project they want to do, and you have research appropriate grant sources. Now, in writing the grant, you have to find a way of talking about your project that makes it fit with the granting agency's requirements. This doesn't mean making things up or falsifying your plans. Instead, it mean putting the emphasis in particular places and drawing out implications of your project that connect with the granting agency. No matter how worth your work, there's no reason they should fund it if it not the kind of thing they fund.
In popular magazine articles, professional scientists must adapt to the knowledge and interests of lay audiences. Obviously this will be completely different from communicating the "same" research information to a sophisticated technical audience. In particular, the popular writer will have to balance comprehensibility and interest. To make the scientific information comprehensible, the writer will have to simplify it to a certain extent, using images, metaphors and analogies that capture its spirit. Of course, not any old image or metaphors will do; the most successful ones will be those that are not only true to the science, but connect to the experience and knowledge of the audience. Explaining one technical concept in terms of another is useless. Ball-and-stick models of atoms and molecules represent a certain kind of compromise; they are not particularly true to the physical object, but they show certain relations clearly and are easy for lay people to visualize. Comprehensibility is thus tied to the audience, and so is interest. What makes research interesting to the public? Many different things, having mainly to do with either flights of imagination or technological applications?or both. Enormous space stations capture the imagination because they combine technological applications with a vision of a different kind of society, and perhaps a solution to some of our social problems. l5
Thinking Rhetorically: An "Algorithm"
In the final section of this chapter, we'll detail a method of thinking about communication strategically, or rhetorically. This method has pretty general applicability, and can be used for most kinds of communication in most contexts. A first consideration is the kind of critical thinking need in communication. Many people initially think that what is required is analysis: breaking down the parts of the message, for example, and refining them. A better approach is a problem-solution one; thinking about specific acts of communication as the resolution to specific problems implied by the constraints of audience, context, ethos, etc. A good way to see the importance of this is to consider research in expert/novice problem-solving. In experiments with a type of problem (say, physics word problems), and some experts and novices at the problem (freshmen in a physics course and physics professors), researchers looked to see how their problem solving abilities differed, so that the novices could be taught the skills of the experts. One of the most significant findings is that experts spend most of their time one the problem, while novices spent most of their time on solutions. Novices would typically guess at a solution, find it to be wrong, guess at another solution, find it wrong, and so on, basically trial and error. Experts spend a lot of time thinking about how to set up the problem, and once they have decided, the answer usually drops right out with a few calculations. 16
In communication, one can see the same pattern. Novices typically concentrate on the artifact, the words to be written or spoken, writing up a draft of a speech or paper, and then tinkering with it. Experts spend a lot of time thinking about the requirements of the communication situation, and then know exactly the kind of thing they'll have to write, and can write with confidence and clarity. The problem, for expert physicists or communicators or whomever, is that the problem analysis they do is largely tacit, and they have trouble verbalizing what they're doing?they "just do it." The "algorithm" below is an attempt to make the analysis of communication problems explicit. It is not literally an algorithm (more like a set of rules of thumb, actually) but can be used in that spirit. Communicators can't be strategic until they have thoroughly analyzed their communication situation, and understood all the constraints their communication behavior must adapt to. By answering questions 1-4 below, a communication problem can be defined with a enough clarity that question 5, about the strategies actually employed, can be answered.
1. What, exactly, is my rhetorical purpose? (If more than one, specify priority)
As noted earlier, the more specific the purpose, the more likely it is to be achieved. All possible purposes cannot be listed, since they can be as various as communication situations themselves. Still, there are some that arise over and over again, and can be used as a starting point for thinking creatively and incisively about purpose in a specific context.
1. Open new possibilities of belief or value
2. Propose change in ideas or action
3. Build credibility for future persuasion
4. Establish credibility for current persuasion
5. Create doubts about opposing ideas/actions
6. Refute opposing ideas
7. Create/define an audience
8. Build community with audience
9. Ratify or reinforce community values or ideas
10. Ask for small changes in belief/action
11. Ask for moderate changes in belief/action
Two rules of thumb for understanding purpose might be minimization and complexity. First, be sure to have modest goals for any single interaction; the less you ask for, the you are more likely to achieve it. Rational people do not completely change their minds in a single interaction, and communicators would be wrong to expect this; in fact, asking for big changes indicates a real lack of respect for an audience. Instead, to effect really big changes, a communicator needs multiple interactions over time. So the minimal goal of the first time is to get a second hearing. If you can put a hostile or disbelieving audience in a frame of mind to hear more or listen again, this is an enormous success. Second, remember that there are always multiple goals operating on both sides of a communicative interaction; it is never as simple as one would like it to be. For example, in writing a memo proposing a new project, you might be doing (2), proposing a change in action, but since you need to get a group of people together to do it, you might be doing (7), defining an audience of people interested in the particular topic. In addition, since people will have accept you as organizer, (4) will be important, as will (3), since they'll have to think about it and probably listen to a second version of the pitch. Obviously, the analysis of multiple communication goals requires a determination of priority and emphasis.
2. What is the nature of my audience?
Understanding the audience requires two things: relevance and generalization. First, given the topic and purpose of the communication, there will be certain relevant things you want to know about the audience. Do they agree or disagree with your position? Why? What motivates them? What are their interests? What persuasion have they already heard about this topic? The profile you construct of the same group of people will be different (i.e., they will be a different audience) when the topic and purpose are different, so these are highly relevant to audience analysis. It would be nice if you could always survey or question your audience completely in advance to find out exactly the information you need. But this is rarely possible or practical. Instead, speakers and writers are forced to make educated guesses about the views and dispositions of their audiences. They do this by making generalizations for demographic and social information. Of course, these generalizations and be wrong, and to the extent they rely on stereotypes, must be handled very carefully. But with experience, they can be useful tool for estimating the nature of audiences and guiding communication. So, given a topic and purpose, one must ask:
What are the demographics of this audience? (Gender, race, ethnicity, age, politics, religion, education level, socio-economic status, occupation, geography, culture.)
What do the demographics imply about other beliefs, values and behaviors relevant to the topic? What other sources of information do I have for this?
What are the various constituencies (i.e., sub-groups that share interests, explicitly or implicitly) in the audience, and how are they related to my purpose(s)?
What are their expectations regarding the entire communication experience? What appeals or behaviors will or will not be expected, or offensive? Is this a genre (such as a research article or grant proposal), such that there are particular schemes or formats to which the communication must conform? What are the possible roles that the audience expects, and what are the roles that would suit my purposes?
Speaker roles
advisor, counselor
helper
leader
advocate
partisan
salesperson
teacher
expert
antagonist
Audience roles
judge
jury
client
supplicant
buyer
actor, ones with power
voter, decider
Generic expectations
Occasion & setting
Discourse conventions
Speaker constraints
Audience constraints
What are the sources of resistance to persuasion? (For this audience, in this context)
Inconsistency with their beliefs, actions, values or behaviors
Lack of communicator credibility
Misunderstanding of message or speaker
Lack of motivation or interest in topic
Remember that while the group of people is a stable thing, their constitution as an audience is very flexible A group of people sitting in a classroom listening to a professor might be defined as a group of students, or potential scientists, or communicators, or professionals-to-be, or men and women, or as patriotic Americans, or as a diverse group with diverse interests, or as excellence-oriented people, and so on the possibilities are endless Also, while there may be pre-existing expectations as to speaker and audience roles, these are only a starting point, not something set in stone For example, in pitching a proposal informally to a group of people, you might be expected to be a partisan, or salesperson for it; this will put the audience in the role of skeptical consumer, which might make things difficult if you're trying to pitch something new and uncertain So, as part of your message design, you address the audience as if you were a friend or helper "We all face this common problem, and here's something to consider doing about it " In this way, the audience is invited to take the role of partner, looking at common interests, rather than a consumer defending against the interests of the seller.
3. What information and ideas are part of the rhetorical context?
For almost any topic and audience, they have heard or read something about the topic or genre before. Regardless of the nature or quality of this previous experience, it must be taken into account. Has the reader read many proposals before? On this topic? Are there many rumors about this type of chemical theory, so that I must take into account these rumors as background information for my speech? More generally, as a special part of audience analysis, communicators must consider the background assumptions of the audience, the things they take to be true. Whether or not these thing are true or reasonable, they have to be the starting point for the communicator. If you are writing a popular piece about superconductivity, you'll have to begin with the fact that most people understand electricity either as little tiny peas zipping through wires, or as fluid flowing through wires. If you want to present a more sophisticated view, you can't just dive in; you'll have to start where the audience is and move from there. Consider these questions:
What beliefs and values are part of the common ground assumed before the discourse begins?
What things are taken as "facts" by the audience to which the discourse must respond?
Credibility
In this context, how important is the credibility of the speaker?
What is the speaker's prior ethos?
What are the obstacles to building ethos in the speech?
It is common to speak of prior and concurrent ethos; the first is roughly equivalent to reputation (even if that just means stereotypes people have about the speaker/writer based on superficial information), which the second is built in the process of communicating. Earlier we spoke of ethos in the context of trust, and building trust is clearly an important part of persuasion. The third question above is very important, since it forces speakers to confront reasons why audiences might not trust them. Remember that these reasons, despite all the speaker's good intentions, may very rational; if you look at it from the audience's point of view, you might realize that, knowing what they know, you wouldn't trust yourself either! Almost as a reflex, most communicators attempt to hide the reasons for bad ethos, or objections to the point they're making, as if not bringing them up will cause them not to exist. This is extremely bad strategy. A more effective way to deal with problems of ethos is to neutralize them: Bring them up, give a satisfactory response, and let them go. Combined with credibility building through the communication, this gives the speaker or writer the best possible chance. For example, suppose that Wayne is pitching a project to his supervisor Laura, a project that doesn't yet have a clear practical payoff, and might be very time-consuming. Now, Wayne knows that Laura sees the world in terms of practicality, and so whether or not someone else might not care, she will mind very much that the payoff is not immediately in view. Also, Wayne knows his history with Laura is one of broken deadlines and worked turned in late, and that she gets very irritated with this. So Wayne knows that he has two obstacles to overcome, one having to do with the values of the audience and the other with his prior ethos with this audience. By ignoring these obstacles ("Better not mention that!") he will insure disaster, since they will be quite present in her mind. His best strategy is to account for them in the way he puts his appeal together, emphasizing the closure he will be able to get, and the reasons he both wants and will be able to meet the deadline for this project.
4. What are the rhetorical problems that must be solved?
Questions 1-3, taken together, amount to a description of the rhetorical/communicative situation. Answers to them define the set of constraints to which the actual communication must respond. So the analysis of the communication problem leaves the communicator with two questions:
What burdens are taken on in speaking to this purpose in this situation?
What are the priorities of these problems?
Jointly these guide the construction of a written or oral message. In the case of Wayne, just discussed, the communicator realizes that he must me two specific burdens, in addition to those demanded by the genre (rigorous argument, correct calculations, reasonable costs, etc.). No one can fully meet the burdens of a communication episode unless these have been thoroughly analyzed, and this can only be done "in your head" for very experienced and skilled communicators. But the rest of us can work on this skill and improve constantly at it.
5. What rhetorical resources are available, in this situation, for solving those problems?
Finally, one the problems of the particular communication situation have been analyzed, one turns to solutions. This book, in a sense, is about the solutions relevant to science, its particular problems and contexts.
1. Marcell LaFollette has documented these stereotypes in her Making Science Our Own (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
2. Throughout this chapter I will use "scientist" to mean both scientists and engineers, noting differences as necessary.
3. See Steve Fuller The Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents (Westview, 1991) for a discussion of the social dimension of science as the source of error.
4. "I've yet to meet that 'coldly calculating man of science' whom the novelists extol. . . I doubt that he exists; and if he did exist I greatly fear that he would never make a startling discovery or invention." C.G. Suits, quoted in LaFollette, p. 66.
5. Claude Shannon, The Mathematical Theory of Information (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949); L. David Ritchie, Information (Newbury Park: Sage, 1991).
6. For any of these, there is of course enormous disagreement among theorists about how it is to be properly defined, but these differences won't matter too much for our purposes.
7. Let's allow "say" to stand in for both speaking and writing, since, unless it's otherwise noted, all remarks apply to both. They don't all apply, however, to mass communication.
8. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1936).
9. A problem with this analogy is that it implies that communication is basically one-way (fisherman to fish) and serves only one communicator's ends (the fisherman's), which is certainly how Carnegie saw things. But the points made can easily be generalized to more complex cases, where interaction and purpose are mutual.
10. The terms 'ethos' and 'ethics' come from different, and unrelated, Greek words. Ethics has to do with (moral) habits of behavior, while ethos concerns the character of a speaker.
11. But if they know some other science, then they are in a dual role of insiders and outsiders.
12. Phillip Davis and Reuben Hersh, in The Mathematical Experience (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1981) call this "Ulam's Dilemma" after the famous mathematician Stanislaus Ulam. They quote him (pp 20-21):
"At a talk which I gave at a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the construction of von Neumann's computer in Princeton a few years ago, I suddenly started estimating silently in my mind how many theorems are published yearly in mathematical journals. I made a quick mental calculation and came to a number like one hundred thousand theorems per year. I mentioned this and my audience gasped ... It is actually impossible to keep abreast of even the more outstanding and exciting results. How can one reconcile this with the view that mathematics will survive as a single science?"
Davis and Hersh conclude (21) "...there will rarely be any single person who is in command of recent work in more than two or three areas."
13. These have been studied in depth by Charles Bazerman in his Shaping Written Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
14. See Irving Janis, Groupthink, 2nd ed., rev. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1983).
15. See Ed Regis, Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (NY: Addison-Wesley, 1990), for a skeptical and humorous account of space stations in the popular imagination.
16. See James Gleick's biography of the physicist Richard Feynman, Genius (NY: Pantheon, 1992), for a description of someone who was obviously very good at this, and left an impression on a whole generation of physicists.