FORM VERSUS SUBSTANCE: BOTH MATTER
Each of the four paradigms reveals pitfalls that an effective communicator should avoid (noise, third-party transmitters, multiple audiences, and so on). Our discussion thus far has mainly focused on the inherent complexity of communication, and how its misuse can engender or exacerbate conflict.
At first glance, the picture it presents is bleak. Tallying all the ways a communicative interchange can go awry leads one to wonder whether communication can ever have an ameliorative effect. Nevertheless, we all know that at least some disputes do get resolved peacefully, that long-standing adversaries can become allies, and that even seemingly irresolvable conflicts can be isolated, allowing parties to “agree to disagree.” In this section, we consider some simple behaviors that can enhance (though not guarantee) the ameliorative effects of communication.Given a genuine desire to resolve the conflict, communication, artfully employed, can help achieve that end. Obviously, what is most critical is the substance of the communication—the quality of the proposals and counterproposals that each participant makes. It would be foolish to expect others to accept solutions not in their best interests just because of “good communication.” However, quite apart from substance, the form that messages take can have (sometimes unintended) consequences. The very flexibility that makes communication so adaptable a tool also allows for more and less effective ways of achieving the same ends. For example, “Shut the door,” “Would you mind closing the door?” and “I wish we could leave the door open, but it’s so noisy” could (in appropriate contexts) be instances of utterances understood to have the same intended meaning. Although they differ in grammatical type and in the particular words they employ, all are understood as directives—attempts to induce the addressee to do something.
Utterances often are described in terms of the speech acts (Austin, 1962) they represent. Like physical actions, the things we say are intended to accomplish certain purposes; but unlike physical actions, they accomplish their purposes communicatively rather than directly. As we have just illustrated, the same speech act can be accomplished by a variety of utterances. Nevertheless, although “Shut the door” and “Would you mind closing the door?” both represent directives to close the door, they differ in another respect. The latter is an indirect speech act (one whose literal and intended meanings differ), while the former is a direct speech act that represents its meaning literally. Generally speaking, indirect speech acts are perceived as more polite than direct ones, probably because the two kinds of directive have implications for the status or power differential of requester and requestee. Although different versions of the same speech act may be identical insofar as the message’s explicit content (construing that term narrowly) is concerned, it behooves a communicator to ensure that the form of the message does not undermine the information it conveys.
Principle 7. Pay attention to message form.