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Created: March 22, 2003
Latest Update: March 22, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Different Aims for Different Discourses

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on an article in the New York Times on Saturday, March 22, 2003: Why Colin Powell Should Go By Bill Keller. Backup.

Today we would speak of communications theory, and sound ever so much more sophisticated. But classic sociological theory, well, OK, social psychological theory, has dealt with the issue of attitude persuasion for many decades before technology became so fashionable. For a review of some of this classical theory see Classical Theory: Attitude Change and Persuasion.

What we mean by attitude change and persuasion is the way we work at getting others to agree with us. Now politics is all about that. But so is law, and corporate management, and even war.

• Instrumental discourse

  Trying to convince others to accept our position and perspective as "the" right one, is what Habermas would call instrumental discourse, as opposed to illocutionary or civil discourse. In instrumental discourse we try to persuade others that our "interests" and values are important and worthy of their support. We have an individual interest in doing so. If the Other supports us, we gain something we want. A job. A reward. Money. They go home and leave us alone. Whatever.

• Illocutionary discourse

  In illocutionary discourse we are not trying to achieve consensus, not insisting upon choosing any one position as "the" right one, but on trying to understand each other's arguments and the context in which they occur. We are trying to understand how and under what structural conditions one might come to think and/or believe as the Other does. Our interests are not competing, but reaching out to understand how we interrelate, how we have similarities and differences, and how those can be handled in a positive and respectful way.

• Civil and/or Governance discourse

  In civil discourse we are trying to discuss issues to come to some consensus of action that will respect all validity claims, so that the needs and interests of all are adequately and fairly served. In these days of globalization we are coming more and more to recognize that consensus may not be a reasonable and efficient goal. Too many perspectives, too many culturalsettings that create differences. There is much more talk today of multicultural and multiperspective solutions.

  The US has been very careful during the start of the war with Iraq to command the marines to take down the American and marine flags they raised, saying that we are not there to conquer or to rule, but to liberate, so that raising our flag over the territory is inappropriate. That is a statement very much designed to gain world approval and to picture the US as a freedom enforcer, not as an agressor.

  Lots of the world is not convinced of our non-agressive or non-dominance motives. Many believe the war is about oil and exploitation. Certainly President Bush uses the language of aggression. But he's also from Texas and the tradition of John Wayne and the frontier. The other day Vice President Cheney said that it might not be so bad if he's regarded as a cowboy. That kind of horrifies me because I am well versed in the exploitatioin of indigenous peoples, and the imperialist foundation on which our country was built. But I doubt that Cheney meant it in quite that aspect. The cowboy also stands for manhood, power, protection of the weak (women and children), patriotism and defense of our country (nevermind that we were taking that country from Others), and the wonderful entertainment of rodeos and gunbattles, where few died (at least as formal history was recorded), and heroism stood out. If that's what he had in mind, I can see where he might be longing for the "good old days," while ignoring that history has long since been revised to tell a more honest story.

  Because Cheney and I see different infrastructures in the setting of the cowboy, we are unlikely to come to a consensus. But we might both manage to have an illocutionary discussion if we make the effort to understand the history and connotation to which the other is looking. I'd settle for that. Neither of us is evil incarnate. Neither of us would have accomplished so much if we didn't have skills, and some intelligence, and lots of motivation. If we can relate to one another on those levels, which is the object of illocutionary discourse, then maybe we can respectful discussions on how to solve the problems of the world we live in.

  Cheney and I may not like each other, because our value systems seem to be ever so far apart. I mean, he seems to like the Middle-Easterner as a candidate for running Iraq who is viewed by Middle-Easterners as having committed major frauds. After Enron, that really shocks me. I find that harder to understand than his cowboy metaphor. But maybe he sees some kind of business cowboy, where he's merely overlooking some under-reported and underpublished facts, as with the John Wayne cowboy. Either way, we don't have to like each other; we don't have to agree; but we do need to respect each others very different worlds. He shouldn't write mine off as totally un-macho and "a loser," and I shouldn't write his off as cut-throat and heedless of all but monetary success. There's more to each of us than that. And it's that more we need to find.