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50
Doina Lecca, Octavian Lecca
FROM THE TRILOBITES1 TOWARDS PROLEGOMENA FOR A SYSTEMIC MODEL OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Motto: Reference is ostensibly to the public world. Yet, in fact reference can only be to the inner, experiential, mental world of the speaker and a complete understanding of the act of reference must involve an exact reconstruction by the hearer of that mental world.
(Gorayska 1993, 50)
The article proposes a pragmatic model of decoding a speaker's message in terms of the logic of the bios, where aspects of mental, physical and social reality get activated by the utterer and the interpreter in their respective choice-making practices. The bios is treated as the whole reflected in human communication standing for the part, the theme of the bios being reduction of conflict and increase of cooperation of the individual with the outside world.
1. Introduction
Researchers of any field of science are not infrequently confronted with a dilemma as to how far one can go back in the development of a science when attempting to justify a new approach, especially within the space-limited dimensions of an article. This undertaking is even more challenging if the attempted justification lies at the crossroads of several disciplines as is the case with human communication in general and with pragmatic models in particular. How many times have we heard in naturally occurring conversation: 'You don't see my point!' or, to put it in Gricean terms, 'The speaker's wish to communicate sets his problem, but not the hearer's' [Bennet 1976: 187]. This point makes the truth and logic of our arguments seem alien to others or, conversely, we are unable to grasp and/or accept someone else's point of view. This can be explained primarily through the way we perceive the world in which we develop our arguments, a perception which tends to block the adoption by the speaker of the interlocutor's perspective, or the inclusion of the speaker's perspective in the hearer's decoding of the message.
Human beings' capacity to understand other 'kinds of minds' [Dennett 1996] in the process of communication, to make connections and to interpret reality by incorporating the interlocutors' point of view depends on a wide range of variables like age, education, experience, culture, etc., in which generation clashes or cross-cultural miscommunication are just two examples. To put it differently, the message can be understood by the hearer only if he or she 'reconstructs the inner, experiential, mental world of the speaker'. This is why language shouldn't be looked
upon 'primarily as a tool for descriptions of the outside world but a tool for an expression of the inner mental world' [Gorayska 1993: 50]. The pragmatic model presented below proposes tools for such a reconstruction process, following the evolutionary path of rationality. In the last decade, there has been a growing number of researchers who consider this path ripe for investigation [e.g. Dennett2 1996].
An attempt to look at human communication through a new lens imposes a scrutiny, however brief, of the discipline whose main object of research it represents and of the investigating tools this discipline has to offer. Unlike sciences whose domain is clearly defined, such as physics or biology, pragmatics still escapes a clear definition. From Searle [Lev-inson 1992: 6], in whose opinion 'pragmatics is one of those words .... that give the impression that something technical is being talked about when often in fact it has no clear meaning' to Mey [Mey 1998: 716], according to whom 'there seems to be no agreement as to how to do pragmatics nor as to what pragmatics is, nor how to define it, nor even as to what pragmatics is not', the boundaries delimiting the domain of pragmatics still remain unclear. Assuming, therefore, that pragmatics has flexible boundaries, which made out of it a crossroads of interdisciplinar-ity, our search for a comprehensive model of human communication starts with an attempt to establish a connection between elements of pragmatics as a prin-
1 The trilobites are supposedly the first animals that developed eyes some 245 millions years ago, an accomplishment which, in our opinion, is the first known attempt of an organism to build a representation of the outside world.
2 Unlike Dennett, who investigates the bios with a human logic, our approach is a systemic evolutionary approach which attempts to investigate the human being with the logic of the bios.
ciple-based discipline and law-governed fundamental sciences like biology or mathematics.
A good common denominator for such a connection could be found in mathematics, more precisely in the universal language it proposes, the language of logics. In fact, it has been said that 'the amount of science we possess is proportional to the amount of mathematics, logics and methodology that we are able to cram into it' [Margineanu 1975: 10]. This fundamental truth has inevitably led to the need to breach the borders of smaller systems towards other systems encompassing them, opening new horizons and making interdisciplinarity a sine-qua-non of a scientific approach. These are all preliminaries to explaining the roots of the present pragmatic model.
2. Holistic Pragmatics. Roots of a Model
The world was not designed by God, but by committees1 (H.L. Mencken)
The catalyst in choosing the approach to the pragmatic model we propose was a Romanian philosopher's statement: 'I cannot analyze language because my analysis will be done through language and I cannot go beyond thinking through thinking' [Dumitriu 1985: 95]. Thus, it seemed clear that the solution to this problem should be looked for outside the language system2. Since the model we propose was initially conceived, some of its elements have been spelled out more clearly and my own view has been refined and enlarged. Time and an unprecedented enrichment of the field of pragmatics in recent years have been important factors in refining the model, but more particularly in clarifying its roots. However, the core of the model has remained unchanged, deeply rooted in human communication viewed from the crossroads of multiple disciplines in which biology (evolutionism), psychology, and system theory have important roles to play.
Such a model necessarily belongs to the inte-grative view which is the source of what has been called holistic pragmatics, a supraordinate discipline formed at the crossroads between the «Cartesian paradigm in 'cognitive science', the 'philosophy of mind' and 'linguistics' and its emerging non-Cartesian alternative» [Kopytko 2001: 784]. Given this broad setting, there is an increasing challenge as
1 Quoted in [Taylor 1984: 236].
2 Since then, the model has proven its validity to me in various types of discourse, such as family talk, L2 teaching methodology, academic writing, and business negotiations (Delfo International Inc.), a sample of which is given in Annex 1.
to what parts of the puzzle to choose from these sometimes intermingling domains in order to capture the essence of human communication.
The boundaries of a journal article oblige us to perhaps unjustly mention only a few accomplishments of this integrative view in pragmatics. Nuyts (1992), Blakemore (1992), Brown and Levinson (1987) focus more on cognition, while Leech (1983) and Mey (1993, 1994) emphasize more the social aspects of language use. A more integrative approach incorporating these two trends is offered by Ver-schueren with a holistic view incorporating physical, social, and mental worlds3. According to Ver-schueren, 'Aspects of physical, social, and mental reality get 'activated' by the utterer and the interpreter in their respective choice-making practices, and that is how they become part of language use as elements with which the making of choices is inter-adaptable' [Verschueren 1999: 87].
In addition to its openness to interdisciplinar-ity, the great asset of the fact that pragmatics is based on principles is that it is able to explain what could not be elucidated in rule-constrained domains, since principles, contrary to laws, can accommodate and account for a greater number of exceptions. This may explain, for instance, 'the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics' encountered in the English pronominal system4.
On the other hand, a way to counteract the rather 'loose' approach of pragmatics given by its principle-based foundation would be, as mentioned before, the daunting undertaking of exploring beyond its boundaries and establishing links with an axiom-generated5 and law-based system. In this respect, there is a growing field of research where the horizon of human communication analysis has been widened by resorting to supraordinate/larger systems such as the bios6.
3 For a comprehensive analysis of holistic pragmatics see [Kopytko 2001].
4 e.g. the use of 'it' for unborn babies or very young children even if their gender is known [Thomas 1995: 112].
5 The axioms are supposed to be so simple that their truth is beyond question. Things like, two straight lines are either parallel or else meet at exactly one point, or, when you add two numbers it does not matter which one goes first.... Once you've written down the axioms, to decide whether some given statement is true or false, you try to prove it from the axioms (Keith Devlin salutes the mathematician Kurt G^el; Thursday April 26, 2001 -The Guardian).
6 The need for exploring the biological roots of the human mind is exemplified by Deacon [Deacon 1997: 458]: "Evolution is the one kind of process able to produce something out of nothing, or, more accurately, able to create adaptive structural information (emphasis mine) where none previously existed."
Once the reference system - the bios - has been established, another crucial aspect of human communication has to be addressed: «the type of logic governing thinking in a given culture» [Fromm 1987: 50]. Unlike Aristotelian logic1, which prevails in Western culture, certain non-western cultures are dominated by paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. This statement, illustrated by Fromm with Freud's concept of ambivalence, explains why one can experience love and hate for the same person at the same time, or by extrapolation, why cooperation and conflict may coexist in human communication, which does not make sense from the standpoint of Aristotelian logic.
Interestingly enough, the bios itself seems to have found a solution to reconcile these two apparently incompatible views. Organisms undergo steady, long-term changes because of the environment (e.g. adaptation, in the Darwinian approach). On the other hand, they may try to concurrently adapt to sometimes incompatible possible worlds which they haven't experienced yet. For instance, while living in the water, the gastropod developed organs that disad-vantaged him, but that proved to be useful one million years later, when the gastropod migrated to another environment, the land. In evolutionary terms, this is called pre-adaptation. We claim that the human being, as part of the bios, and anything pertaining to him, including human communication, should necessarily be investigated in the light of this dual view, which permits the simultaneous existence of two types of logic.
Our attempt to clarify this dual view through a systemic approach2 takes us once more into axiom-based sciences3. One postulate of these sciences is that no system can be entirely described by its own laws; consequently, we need a meta-language, a language of a more complex system of which the former system is only a part and which is free from the constraints of Aristotelian logic. This new lens makes any study related to humans both promising and unexpect-
1 It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing ... [Aristotle in Fromm 1987: 51].
2 We have adopted Ludwig von Bertallanfy's definition of system further developed by the Vienna school within 'Die Systemtheorie der Evolution'.
3 In our opinion, Einstein and G^el laid the foundations of a new systemic approach in science. If Einstein raised duality to the status of law by stating that light could be both wave and matter depending on the context, G^el with his Theory of Incompleteness represents the second big landmark of the new science view, which irrefutably demonstrated the impossibility of explaining a system only from within its own rigid boundaries.
edly complicated, shaping itself as an infinite set of Russian dolls where opening the doors of one system leads inevitably to another one.
One example of such a complex structure is human communication, which can only be understood within a cultural framework, and which, in its turn, is determined by a certain mythical and archetypal structure. Furthermore, the search for other supraordinate systems which include human communication could go back in time to man's descent from the ape or, making another huge stride, to the appearance of the cell, which in fact is the boundary of what we perceive as the largest significant system encompassing humans - the bios. Thus the interaction between organism and environment opens a new horizon in analyzing human communication [Zlatev 2002: 260]4.
3. From a systemic view on human communication to the theme of the system
The individual opens the road to selection and to speciation for a species which is about to appear and to which he does not belong. From a biological point of view the individual is a monad in which a possible world is trying to appear. C. Noica [Noica 1986: 167].
Guided by the philosophical principle that 'the whole is in the part and not the part in the whole' [Noica 1986: 167], we emphasize the idea that human communication should be viewed from a bios perspective. In this view, the bios, which represents the whole, is reflected in human communication standing for the part5.
In addition to 'the bios within language' principle, a further step in supporting this systemic view of human communication is accepting the idea of a theme6 to be developed by the Darwinian mechanism. This theme can be developed by each individual in the process of selection and creation of a new emerging species and is based on this individual's representation of the outside world. This means that the whole has its own theme, which is reflected in the part, but which the part has the freedom to apply in a creative way. In
4 "Meaning is an ecological concept in the sense that it is not purely subjective ('in the head') and not objective ('in the world') but characterizes the interaction between organism and environment". '
5 Glimpses of this view can be found, among others, in Aristotle and Humboldt. In the latter's view language is 'das sprachliche Umfassen der Welt in das Eigentum des Geistes'.
6 Order isn't, therefore, ready-made, but it is only given as a theme [Noica 1986: 175].
other words, organisms are not entirely bound by their genetic plans, but also have the freedom to interpret these plans according to their original theme. The role of the genetic plans is to help organisms to adapt, a process during which they may be reinterpreted according to the organisms' representation of the environment. «As with the laws of entropy, the causality defined by the genetic dogma is not broken by organisms, but evaded. Neolamarckism postulates that there is a direct feedback. Neodarwinism postulates that there is no feedback. Truth lies in the middle. There is a feedback but it is not direct» [Riedl 1978: 245]. In our opinion the feedback is not direct because the organisms' 'interpretation' of the theme may interfere in the feedback chain1.
What could be then the 'original theme' of the bios, and implicitly of the human being? What is its generating principle? In the light of the theory of evolution, one possible theme of the bios could be diminishing conflict and increasing cooperation with the outside world, a theme which appears in the organisms' tendency towards optimization. This superior principle governing and directing the process of the organisms' transformation - the theme, is conducive to the idea that each organism must have a representation of the external world in which changes are triggered by modifications of external conditions/stimuli2. In their turn, these modifications in the representation of the outside world determine a change of the evolutionary vector. We may therefore postulate that: Adaptation is not directly triggered by external stimuli, but by the individual's representation of these stimuli, which helps the individual build his/her own unique representation of the outside world.
1 'If learning to fly provided birds with new opportunities, why have some birds given up flying? Notably the penguin, which seems to be trying to resume its ancestral life as a fish -and not unsuccessfully' [Taylor 1984: 231]. This is an example of how the interpretation of the theme in terms of what world of adaptation to choose (see, land, or air) could interfere in the feedback chain.
2 The question is why some (and not all) animals radically changed their (evolutionary) plan when this change didn't bring any advantage to their struggle to adapt to their existing environment? As G.R. Taylor put it describing the evolution of amphibians: "The only conclusion we can draw from this is that amphibians lived on land because they chose to and not because they had to" [Taylor 1984: 62]. This re-confirms the idea that it is 'not the individual that matters, but the possible universal that is being reflected in it' [Noica 1986: 167].
4. The axioms of the bios and implicitly of human communication
From a systemic perspective, an axiom does not only represent the system, but it also generates it, while the laws which can be inferred from this axiom define the system. Finally, the theme has the 'overview' which allows it to generate a diversity of axioms. The theme is an idea while the axiom is a limitation applied to the theme.
For example, plants and animals, in spite of having incompatible axioms underlying their systems, have nevertheless the same theme. This is conducive once more to the idea that one way of looking at evolution would be to see it as a process of decreasing conflict and increasing cooperation with the external world viewed through an individual's representation of this world.
Given the system or rather the set of systems, the theme and the generating principles, we are at the stage when we can add one more element - the logical frame. In the light of the aforementioned paradoxical logic, if A is the organism's adaptation to the outside world (from the organism's perspective), the non-A could be the organism's attempt to adapt the world to itself, or to change the world so that its own adaptation effort would be reduced to a minimum. However, so far, apparently only human beings (with a few exceptions, e.g. the bee hive, the beavers' dams) have raised this non-A strategy - adapting the outside to themselves - to the rank of an axiom.
In the process of achieving the main goal of human communication, to change the outside world by reducing conflict and increasing cooperation, human beings act under two complimentary and at the same time antagonistic principles: to adapt their organism to the environment, or to change the environment so that it may adapt to their own organism.
In this perspective, for example, floor taking and floor gaining are part of the adaptation strategy and may be seen as steps in the process of changing the world to the benefit of the organism. Inevitably, this complex process continues to refine our way of interpreting our interlocutors' minds as well as our own - an essential step in linking the production and the comprehension levels of the same message with the view to fully comprehending it.
The cooperation-conflict dichotomy which we perceive as the core of human communication and its variability are better understood in the light of the assumption that thought, as part of human cognition, is adaptive [Anderson 1990], a feature enabling humans to adapt to the environment. It remains to be
seen whether the adaptive character of thought applies to the human being holistically or only to the conscious part of human thought. The question arises of how we could account for the variability of 'thought adaptiveness' - the fact that it is not the same for all individuals.
In fact, this is perhaps what may differentiate our version of Homo Cognoscens (term suggested by J. Mey) which we call Homo Thematicus (see section 7) from its rather formalized version offered by Anderson1. Homo Thematicus appears as a complex combination of conscious and unconscious levels; he has the freedom of rejecting a social world and of replacing it with a possible one - the major feature that differentiates him from robots that can exist in only one possible social world.
If we accept variability in the adaptive character of thought, we necessarily have to accept the variability of the 'optimal' (Anderson's term), which, for humans, may have multiple variants in a given world, unlike the case of robots, where the optimal is univo-cally defined for a given world. Viewed through our model, human optimality may be defined within a variety of possible worlds - one of the stepping stones of this model2.
5. The concept of WORLD3
Starting from the assumption that the goal of human communication is essentially to increase cooperation and decrease conflict with the outside world, we infer that in order to attain this goal, individuals have two main strategies: adapting to the outside world and/or changing it into a world for which they are already adapted. These strategies are achieved through the interaction between a real world (Wr) - the individual's inner world and the social world (Ws) with which the individual is confronted. According to Rescher's view of possible worlds -«possible worlds are collections of compossible sets of possible individuals duly combined with one an-other» [Rescher 1974: 78], individuals of a possible
1 Anderson's claim is that 'we can predict behavior of humans by assuming that they will do what is optimal' (P3). If the optimal is not perceived as different for each individual, it becomes 'the observer's optimal'. This was the error made at the dawn of psychoanalysis, when it was thought that 'the observer' had access to what was going on in the patient's mind.
2 Although Anderson is completely Darwinian in that he considers evolution a 'local optimizer' (P 27), he asserts that the biological level is real but almost inaccessible to cognitive theorizing. In our opinion, the rational level of analysis he proposes is insufficient to account for the system's variability.
3 To facilitate the reading of the article, the notation conventions of the proposed model are given in Annex 2.
world have in common a certain descriptive specification, a concept which, for our current purposes, needs some clarification.
Wp = the proposed world
Wr = the 'real' world (perceived by the individual as his own world)
W'r = the 'true' real world
(of which the individual is not necessarily
conscious) Ws = the social world
Fig. 1
The real specification representing the individual's true real world (W'r) is more often than not perceived as distorted and/or incomplete. In fact, at a given moment, the individual has only access to this distorted/incomplete image of his real world, which we called (Wr). In the process of interaction (Wr) is likely to be clarified, but it could also be further distorted.
However, practically, the question is whether the specification which the individual claims to be his own in the social world is his real variant description or is he simply an intruder in this world? He may be an intruder if his specification answers a potential variant description of an individual belonging to the social world (Ws). Most of the time, the individual is only partially conscious of his true real world (W'r) with which he may only get acquainted in time, sometimes temporarily adopting a specification which is alien to him.
In the frame of our model, an individual's world could be defined as the totality of his/her 'specifications' - adapting/changing strategies (winning and/or failing, 'instinctive' and/or conscious) as well as the individual's representations of the outside world viewed diachronically. In this sense, any change in the individual's representation of the outside world will trigger modifications in the individual's real world (Wr). This also explains the rather high degree of variability of (Wr)s versus a relatively high level of inertia in (Ws)s, which are in fact man-made worlds.
Cooperation with other individuals belonging to (Ws) is possible in (Wp) - the proposed world, which is ideally the intersection between (Wr) and (Ws), a conflict-free micro-world from an individual's perspective. The possibilities of cooperation decrease as (Wp) narrows its domain. The most alarming case is when Wp = 0 and when the individual's (Wr) doesn't find any specification in common with any micro-world of (Ws). In this case, the individual
will borrow a specification from (Ws) - which could be a micro-world in itself - and will try to make others accept this specification as his own (see Fig. 1).
Most likely to be encountered in everyday interaction is a proposed world (Wp) whose specifications are clearly defined and where all the members could potentially achieve some of their goals. There are many sub-world variants in any (Wp), and its equilibrium is maintained through continuous world negotiation, resulting in individuals accepting worlds or persuading others to accept their own.
Making the hearer accept his world is the speaker's ultimate goal. In this sense, under normal circumstances, interlocutors will take special care to minimize the difference between their worlds and those of their interlocutors on the one hand, and the proposed world (Wp) on the other hand.
The application of this model to several types of corpus (see footnote 4), resulted in several mechanisms of world dynamics which may be available to the human mind.
1. The mental mechanism of building up a proposed world (Wp) organized around individuals' conflict and cooperation-based interaction in the existing social world;
2. The mental mechanism of finding appropriate strategies to reduce conflict and increase cooperation with a given world, more precisely with the individual's representation of this world as well as the capacity of recognizing this mechanism in others;
3. The social mechanism of proposing new worlds of interaction and the individuals' ability to simulate belonging to them, as well as the capacity to recognize this mechanism in others (typically human);
4. The strategies of adapting to a given world and the capacity to negotiate and change this world as well as the capacity to recognize this mechanism in others (typically human).
The process of simulating the belonging to social worlds (Ws) or various proposed worlds (Wp)s brings to the fore the concept of Face1.
6. FACE
In case (Ws) and (Wr) are wide apart, it is very likely that the individual will (consciously or unconsciously) adopt (Ws) as his (Wr), an action which triggers the risk of face loss. The intensity with which
1 A man without a mask is indeed very rare. One even doubts the possibility of such a man. Everyone in some measure wears a mask .... In ordinary life it seems hardly possible for it to be otherwise [Laing, 1990: 95].
an individual defends his 'public face' (Fp) may be an indication of the distance between (Ws) and (Wr) and may also provide information about the interlocutor's (Wr).
The world dynamics presented above imposes a diversification of face2 as (Fp), public face, (Fr) -real face, and (Fc) common face - the intersection between the previous two, which puts the hearer's decoding communicative competence to the test. The farther apart (Fp) and (Fr) are, the greater the risk of face loss. (See Fig. 2)
Lesser ^^ ™ ^^ Greater
Estimation of risk of FACE loss
Fig. 2
We think that the two concepts, World and Face contribute to a more thorough and nuanced description of an MP (model person) at a given moment.
7. The Model Person (MP) and the Self
Voulez-vous savoir l'histoire abrflgfle de presque toute notre misure? La voici. Il existait un homme naturel: on a introduit au-dedans de cet homme un homme artificiel; et il s'est fllevfl dans la caverne une guerre civile qui dure toute la vie.
Diderot, Supplflment au Voyage de Bougainville (La Plfliade, 998)
A model for the analysis of human communication cannot disregard important gains in psychoanalysis such as the disturbing coexistence of a false self and a true self, the latter being sometimes dormant until it is provided a medium for growth [Lomas 1987: 84]. With Freud, we start witnessing the fascinating construction of the self through communication, a process often blocked by the enforced or deliberate adoption of a false self, resulting in apparently well-integrated social chameleons, or intruders who adopt the specification of the world they find themselves in.
Another breakthrough in psychoanalysis which had an important impact on human communication was the recognition that «our perceptions are
2 We adopted Brown & Levinson (1987) definition offace.
colored by an inner world of which we are largely unaware» [Lomas 1987: 3]. It is assumed that adaptation involves changes in the organism's representation of this inner world so that the balance between conflict and cooperation may be optimized in relation to the organism's representation of an existing or imagined possible outside world.
This double dichotomy, conflict-cooperation versus existing-imagined worlds has actually made possible the emergence of our Homo Thematicus. By developing the theme of the bios, i.e. reduce conflict and increase cooperation, Homo Thematicus is able to imagine and build up worlds to which he is already adapted. Furthermore, he made the great innovation of combining the two until then incompatible evolutionary strategies: he decided to adapt where he could do it easily (adapting strategy) or to change the environment when adaptation would have been too difficult to accomplish (changing strategy).
The latter strategy has eventually become predominant for the modern man. However, in order to propose a world to which he is already adapted the human being has to get to know his (W'r) - see Fig. 1, and therefore needs better self-investigating tools.
Thus, the human agent in our model - the Model Person (MP), seems to be a combination between cognitive, connative, social and affective elements, positioning itself among Brown and Levin-son's cognitively polite rational man, Nuyt's functional cognitive agent and Verschueren's holistic agent.
8. The Pragmatic Model
The proposed model aims to link the above data in a coherent whole, basically presenting the human agent, MP, having an inner world (W'r and Wr), being endowed with face(s) and acting in different possible worlds (see World and Face above). It offers an approach which, in addition to oral or written messages, could interpret both acoustic and visual signals, kinesic and proxemic elements, as well as silence. We started from the premise that at production level, from the speaker's point of view, the message is virtually coherent. Lack of coherence at the comprehension level is to a great extent due to wrong modeling.
In this light the coherence of a message must be seen within the triad speaker-message-hearer, where the message is «one third of the communicative trinity, the other two thirds consisting of the speaker (or writer) and hearer (or reader), both of whom participate by virtue of certain mental capaci-
ties» [Levy 1979: 184]. Thus the proposed model will take into consideration the triad Speaker-Text/Message-Hearer with the important amendment that the text/message must be considered in two hy-postases.
PRODUCTION: SPEAKER - Message -
(Hearer's Model in Speaker)
COMPREHENSION: (Speaker's Model in Hearer) - Message - HEARER
The human being's double macro-strategy -
trying to adapt to a World the way he sees it and trying to modify this world the way he sees himself -
has been and will probably remain the man's basic challenge. Which of the two strategies prevails and what is the right balance between them is given by each individual's history of interaction and by the ratio of his successful vs. failing pragmatic acts. In light of the above formula, Brown & Levinson's (1987) MP - 'rational agent with face' could be groomed into accounting for communicative instances where the message received is different from the produced message.
Furthermore, in order to have a real winning strategy, an important prerequisite would be that the speaker could not only build a correct representation of the hearer, but also have an accurate perception of his own representation in the hearer's mind. This mechanism of representations may perpetuate itself as shown in Fig. 3.
I want her to do 'X' which is in my interest.
The way I know her, she believes 'Y' about me. If I send her the message 'Z', I will make her believe that doing 'X' is in her best interest.
Fig. 3
The Individual's Pragmatic Model (PM) we put forward consists of an MP about himself as well as a sum of MP-s about the individuals with whom he/she has come into contact. One variant of the way this modeling works is when individuals even build up models about their own models in the interlocutors' minds. The MP may be further interpreted as in Fig. 4.
MPc = the conscious model
MPs = the simulated model
MPu = the unconscious model
Fig. 4
1. The conscious model - MPc - the part of his own MP of which the individual is conscious.
2. The unconscious (hidden) model - MPu -the part of his MP which the individual hasn't discovered yet.
3. The simulated model - MPs - the model the individual would like to convey about himself.
If we sum up the representations of the interlocutor in the individual's mind, we may distinguish:
1. PMP - perceived model person, which is the model an individual builds up about his interlocutor based on the information available to him.
2. SMP - simulated model person, which is the model an individual wants to build in his interlocutor's mind.
A summary of the model with its production and comprehension levels is represented in Fig. 5.
The simulation mechanism is often hard to be detected by less pragmatically competent individuals. Having access to both the SMP and the PMP of one's interlocutor will naturally be an asset which will give someone an upper hand in FACE and WORLD negotiation. In addition to pragmatic competence, professional knowledge of psychoanalysis may be required to distinguish between the conscious, unconscious, and hidden part of every PMP and SMP.
SPEAKER
message
1
I MPspeaker
SMP/PMPhearer 11 SMP/PMPspeaker
MPhearer
~ The speaker's model
^ about himself/herself
>
The speaker's model(s) in the hearer's mind
Fig. 5
As suggested earlier, the coherence of the message depends to a large extent on interlocutors' accurate mutual modeling.
In conclusion, an individual's pragmatic model is represented by the sum of sub-models operated by a set of Negotiating Strategies (NG) either experienced by the individual or created ad-hoc. The model could be represented by the following formula: PM = NG ◦ {(MP) U [y(PMP) U y(SMP)]context}
The formula reads: an individual's pragmatic model is represented by the individual's negotiating strategies operating the complex set of his own models and the sum of his models of other individuals, activated by a specific context in which the individual is situated.
9. Negotiating Strategies
To achieve their goal of increasing cooperation and decreasing conflict with the outside world, interlocutors resort to negotiating strategies (NG), especially when they fail to impose their own worlds. The absence of such a goal may be translated into refusal to communicate. Conversely, the willingness to communicate implies implanting or identifying a goal in a proposed (existing or imaginary) world, and concurrently building reciprocal pragmatic models (PMs).
The process of proposing new worlds of communication is continuously resumed based on the MP dynamics (changes occurring in model persons). Once a common world has been negotiated, 'communication' may start. The individual whose Fp and Fr are wide apart has a greater risk of face loss and potentially he will be less successful in world negotiation if his interlocutors become aware of this discrepancy.
In the light of the above models, the stages of successful communication could be formulated as follows:
1. Building up reciprocal pragmatic models (PMs) in order to get strategic advantages in negotiations;
2. Choosing/proposing a world in which both individuals may identify a goal;
3. Negotiating the proposed world (except in cases when worlds are imposed);
4. Negotiating an achievable goal in the accepted world.
All the above stages occur through pragmatic acts in the process of communication.
10. Pragmatic Acts1 (PA)
Based on the above-described model, a pragmatic act (PA) could be defined as the smallest communicative unit which triggers a minimal change in the interlocutor's pragmatic model (PM), or an 'event in the brain' [Gauker 2003: 282]. Since the goal of
1 Instead of speech act, we adopted Jacob Mey's term pragmatic act, which is more appropriate for a holistic approach [Mey 1998: 702].
HEARER
communication is to increase cooperation and decrease conflict, the PAs may trigger two types of changes in the individual's pragmatic model (PM), which will result either in Redressive Pragmatic Acts (RPA) in case they increase cooperation and/or decrease conflict or in Threatening Pragmatic Acts (TPA) in case they decrease cooperation and/or increase conflict. Interestingly, these two types of PA can be addressed to both individuals' WORLD and FACE.
The proposed taxonomy of pragmatic acts and examples illustrating some of these pragmatic acts are given below.
MP
WORLD FACE
Speaker's PMP/SMP WORLD FACE
WT WR FT FR
PW PF
WORLD FACE —à.
WT WR FT FR
PW PF
11. Pragmatic competence
Since the adaptation of human beings is not only to nature but to an increasingly complex social world, improving one's communicative skills means being able to 'adapt to the system' and/or to 'modify the system'. As both these actions are done through communication with our fellow humans, being pragmatically competent to some degree has become a condition of survival.
This means that besides improving their communicative strategies, individuals will greatly benefit from enriching their knowledge of the interacting models, more specifically of the interlocutors' worlds and faces. Furthermore, acquiring the skills of imagining and proposing new worlds of interaction will also be a great asset in communication.
A comprehensive diagram of how pragmatic competence is viewed in the light of our model is represented in Figure 7.
f
Building the MP
Building SMPs/PMPs Building Wr/Ws -
■
The hearer becomes speaker
Adapting to a WORLD
Proposing a WORLD
Negotiating the WORLD
Communicating in a given WORLD
ing
Communicating in the negotiated WORLD
WTA = World Threatening act WRA = World Redressing act FTA = Face Threatening act FRA = Face Redressing act
PWA = Perceived World
change act PFA = Perceived Face change act
Fig. 6
1. World threatening acts (WTA) «Because of the recent merging, the company will be downsizing».
2. World redressing acts (WRA) «The hiring freeze is over».
3. FACE threatening acts (FTA) «In this organization cooperation is important» (to someone who is known to be confrontational).
4. FACE redressing acts (FRA) «You've done a great job» (when uttered ironically it becomes FTA).
Fig. 7
Thus, pragmatic competence can be defined at four different levels:
1. Modeling competence - the knowledge of building correct representations about oneself and about one's interlocutors;
2. World competence - the ability to imagine new worlds where one's goals may coincide with a group's goals;
3. Negotiating competence - the skills of negotiating a proposed world where the individual goal should appear as a group goal;
4. Communicative competence - the knowledge of the communicative principles and maxims and the ability to apply them within a commonly accepted world.
12. Applying the model
The highly subjective quality of individual modelling is difficult to illustrate in its entirety without running the risk of evoking controversial responses just as the staging, by different directors, of the same play does. However, the capacity to build models could be considered as a personal instrument of measuring and improving one's own pragmatic competence in relation to others.
What other role than blocking the building of a natural PMP (perceived model person) does Puck's magic flower have in A Mid-Summer Night's Dream along with inducing an SMP (simulated model person) in Titania's mind? Or what is the role of the Greek archetypes other than offering a reference library of models?
While Don Juan is trying to discover his (Wr) in (Ws) in which the only non-threatening elements are women, Faust's hubris consists in aspiring to replace his (Wr) with an eternal world which he mistakenly projects on (Ws).
In Annex 1 we exemplify how the model can be applied to business negotiations. As in any situation, the analysis starts with modelling the outside world (in this case the business market usually done through marketing research) as well as building the interlocutors' models (usually done through correspondence or phone conversations).
To finalize negotiations, a more accurate modelling is necessary, usually done through a face-to-face encounter. After the final modelling is done, one can pass on to the next step, which is the preparation of final negotiations. At this stage, one can build up a dynamic picture of the market: the description of the business worlds of the partners, the clarification of their goals as well as the expectations of both parties regarding the achievement of their goals.
Then a world negotiation may start, when both parties will try to impose their own world as the negotiation world. If this is not possible, and if the cooperation need still persists, both parties will consider a new world, a proposed world, where their interests can meet. Once this proposed world is accepted, interlocutors may start communicating following the cooperative principle and designing communicative strategies meant to achieve the commonly agreed goals.
Our analysis in the Annex 1, presenting an excerpt from a business meeting, captures the moment of world negotiation after both parties have gone through the stage of reciprocal modelling.
13. Conclusions
The present model reveals one of the major weaknesses of human communication - modeling -discovering one's own model and the models of one's interlocutor(s), which, in the view of the present article, consist of multiple faces and worlds. It also emphasizes the importance of negotiating a proposed world (existing or imaginary) as a prerequisite of successful communication. In our view, becoming aware of the uniqueness and the idiosyncratic nature of every model as well as being equipped with tools to build others' and one's own model is a process of pragmatic empowerment whose main goal is decreasing conflict and increasing cooperation of the individual with the outside world.
In this light, language may be seen as originating primarily in the need for negotiating possible worlds with a view to achieving goals; this process occurs through pragmatic acts whose perlocutionary effects on interlocutors' worlds and faces operate changes on the interactants' models.
Most often, when human beings do not consciously succeed in discovering their own (Wr), they 'appropriate' a world with a 'borrowed' specification, increasing their risk of being manipulated. We claim that the proposed model may help the individual gradually discover his own world as well as that of others through the interaction between world and face. If the individual gets acquainted with his model, his risk of face loss will be reduced and he will have the pragmatic competence to manipulate other individuals.
Annex 1
The model has been applied for preparing and managing business negotiations in Germany between a German company (as buyer) and a Japanese company (as seller). After the Japanese businessmen arrived in Germany, they were invited to a business dinner, a step normally used by business partners to get to know each other (equivalent to modeling in our view). The German company was represented by Mr. B, general manager and by Mr. L, international business consultant. The Japanese company was represented by Mr. Y, general manager of the machinery division and by Mr. W, director of the production department. Although English was not the participants' mother tongue, they all had a good command of English, except W, whose comprehension was good but rather limited.
The information obtained during this dinner by the German company representatives was subse-
quently used to finalize the modeling of their business partners and of the Japanese market - W(J): It was the first time this Japanese company was doing business in Europe although they had gotten previous inquiries from other European companies. They had been selling mainly in Asia where they had an important share of the market, and they were interested in penetrating the European market. In their view, Germany could have been a key market for them to enter Europe. Also, they were very interested in visiting the factory, a request which the German partners accepted reluctantly1.
Regarding their own market W(G), the German company was mainly interested in selling their products in Germany and obtaining the machines to produce them at the lowest possible price. At the time, there were two types of machines available: American-made machines, cheaper but with lower performance, and Japanese machines, characterized by better performance but higher price. The winning micro-world in W(G) would have been to buy the Japanese machines but at a much lower price.
The German company had two solutions for W(G) negotiation:
1. To impose the W(G) specifications where their goals could be best achieved;
2. To propose a new world with a new specification where goals of both partners could be satisfactorily achieved.
Since the Japanese company had taken the market from the American manufacturer, they were holding a power position in the current negotiations; hence they were very unlikely to accept W(G), which meant a significant price discount. On the other hand, the chances were high for them to impose their world model W(J).
The excerpt below captures the most interesting part of the encounter - the world negotiation -when the German partners succeeded in minimizing the W(J)'s advantage of having the best product on the market - by showing that W(J) and W(G) had no common goals and were therefore incompatible and by proposing a new business world W(N), which would eventually lead to a joint-venture company.
Y - Hm, [polite form of agreeing in Japanese perceived as WRA only by Mr. L, who is familiar with the Japanese culture] It is always better to be on the top with your products. An investment in qual-
1 The human tendency of obtaining as much information as possible about one's interlocutor while blocking access to information about oneself could be interpreted through our model as the attempt of blocking the building up of a PMP along with conveying the desired SMP.
ity today will bring you more clients tomorrow [proposes W(J) as a world for negotiations].
B - It is true, but if this tomorrow is too far, meantime I could go bankrupt [shows that it may take too long until the two worlds may have common goals; this utterance is at the limit of a WTA from the Japanese perspective; in the meantime, L asks for tea, in order to reduce the cross-cultural threatening potential of B's WTA.].
W - Sorry, [politeness form addressed to his boss as attention getter for taking the turn2] ... with the machines you have, you can manufacture only a limited range of products. With our machine you could improve your manufacturing range. [Makes the advantage of W(J) clearer to the German partners than his boss does.]
B - Yes, I know that [although this utterance is at the limit of rudeness from the Japanese perspective, this answer is part of a strategy meant to minimize the advantage of W(J)]. But you know, the German market is already saturated, so it is rather risky to invest now in new development. I would prefer to invest in productivity. This is the main reason why I decided to buy your machines. But the American machines have the same productivity [brings a new world W(Am) into discussion and purposefully suggests that W(G) may have more in common with W(Am) than with W(J)].
Y - Your clients will be faithful to you if your products would be more reliable: you will not lose the old clients and you will make new ones [insists on the common ground between W(J) and W(G): retaining clients and getting new ones is a common specification of the two worlds].
B - I know, I know. You see, Mr. Y. You have a long-term vision. I agree with your vision. The vision is true with only one condition: if I survive. [Since the Japanese partner's reaction had been foreseen, this was a planned move meant to diminish the illocutionary force of Y's utterance. This force is in fact almost annihilated since at this stage a successful world of negotiation needs short-term specifications.] This is why we asked you to come here (FTA3): we must find a solution because I would like very much to work with your machines. [This act is meant as a FRA but is perceived as WTA by the Japanese since they under-
2 This is perceived as FRA by his boss and L who is familiar with the Japanese culture, but just as a common politeness form perceived as WRA by B who was not used to the Japanese politeness.
3 This pragmatic act was perceived as FTA according to Japanese politeness rules, which B didn't know.
stand it as an indirect request to reduce the price. It may also lead to negotiation failure.]
L to B - What about if you'd export your products [opens the perspective of another possible world]? Sorry to interfere but this could be a good idea [politeness form meant to hide the manipulative goal of this false FRA addressed to B].
Y - Yes, in France the market is booming. [L's goal is achieved, and Y accepts to consider another possible world of negotiation.] What do you think, W-san? [Inquires whether his partner thinks that this world is worth being negotiated.]
W - French has American machines. No good. You can be much better. [The question refers to the European market, but W perceives it as referring to the French market only; nevertheless, his answer reinforces Y's perception that he intends to consider this new world.]
B - Well, export is always risky. From my point of view it is still a risky investment. [Accepts to negotiate this new world, but has objections as to whether his goals could be fulfilled in it.] What would happen if my German competitors buy American machines? They will be cheaper because I have to pay back my credit. I really would like to export but, it is very risky [explains his objections regarding W(N)].
Y - B-san, if you buy our machines, you'll have better quality and higher production compared with American machines. If you think on long term you will win. [Mr. Y has finally accepted the idea of two separate worlds: short-term and long-term. He also has indirectly accepted the idea that if the Japanese machines are suitable for the long-term vision, they might not be the best short-term solution.]
B - I already made my calculations. Do you know after how many years I'll pay back my investment? In 10 years. It's too long. [Rejects the Japanese long-term vision for the newly proposed world since a wait of ten years for a return on investment is not acceptable and represents a specification which is incompatible with W(G).]
L - You calculated in one shift? [Requests more information about the specification of the new world W(N); starting now the pragmatic acts are meant to gradually build the proposed world of negotiation which have actually been previously agreed upon.]
B - Of course [confirms W(N)].
L - So with three shifts you'll pay back your investment in about 3 years [defines - W(N) more clearly by adding new specifications].
B - L, you're a dreamer [false FTA addressed to L in order to prevent Y from suspecting the planned manipulative interaction]. Where could I find a market for 3 shifts production? [Rejects W(N).] If you give me such a market I'll sign the contract right away [would gladly accept the proposed W(N) but doesn't see it as a viable possible world].
L - Y-san, you said you have inquiries from France [tries to build W(N) with the Japanese partners].
Y - We have from all Europe. In France we are very advanced [confirms W(N) as a possible extension of W(J)].
L - Would you like to win the whole European market, not only the German market? [Continues building W(N).]
Y - What do you mean? [Asks for more specifications.]
L - Would you be ready to take a part of B-san risk to get the whole European market? [Continues building W(N).]
Y - What risk? [Asks for more specifications.]
L - The export risk [continues building
W(N)].
Y - Sorry, I don't understand. [Asks for more specifications.]
L - It is a crazy idea but may be it works. B-san has a financial problem. If this problem is solved, and if the return on investment is in about 3 years, then you could win Europe from here [continues building W(N)].
Y - I still don't understand [asks for more specifications].
L - I mean that instead of trying to convince European customers to give up the American machines which they may buy or which they have already and to buy your machines from Japan you build a distribution point here, in Germany. I mean a joint-venture for manufacturing the machines here and exporting the products, as a first stage, to prove the performance of your machines [offers a clear representation of W(N) for the first time].
B - This is really a crazy idea ... but ... I think I like it. ... What do you think Mr. Y? [Confirms his willingness to negotiate in W(N).]
Y - ..Hm, Hm ... I never thought of that ... [Starts considering W(N).]
The greatest challenge of any negotiation, where normally every partner tries to impose his/her own world, is to make one's partner gradually accept a newly proposed world. The strategy for a successful business negotiation, for example, is first to show the incompati-
bilities of the two worlds in discussion (we considered the case of two partners or two companies, but in real situations there could more than two worlds under consideration). The moment the interaction between the two worlds looks compromised and is about to fail, proposing a new world where the goals of all partners are likely to be attained seems to be a good solution. However, the success of this strategy depends to a great extent on the accuracy of mutual modeling.
This manipulative technique could be illustrated by the stages any talented salesperson would use to persuade customers to buy his/her products:
(1) modeling (builds up customer's model, identifies customer's world and the goal the customer wants to fulfil in his own world);
(2) proposing and negotiating the world
(gradually builds a new world where customer's goals appear to be better fulfilled);
(3) communicating in the proposed world (after the customer accepts this new world, the salesperson presents the product in such a way that it appears as the best possible choice for the customer).
Annex 2
WORLD FACE
Wr = the individual's real world Fr = the individual's real face Ws = the social world Fp = the individual's public face
Wp = the proposed world
MODEL
MP = model person
PMP = perceived model person (the model the individual builds about the interlocutor in his own mind)
SMP = simulated model person (the model the individual wants to build about himself in the interlocutor's mind) PM = pragmatic model NG = negotiating strategies
Pragmatic Acts - PA
RPA = redressive pragmatic act TPA = threatening pragmatic act WTA = world threatening act WRA = world redressing act
FTA = face threatening act FRA = face redressing act PWA = perceived world act PFA = perceived face act
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Дойна Лекка, Октавиан Лекка ОТ ТРИЛОБИТОВ К ПРОЛЕГОМЕНАМ СИСТЕМНОЙ МОДЕЛИ КОММУНИКАЦИИ
В работе предлагается прагматическая модель интерпретации сообщения говорящего, рассматриваемая с позиции логики биоса, по которой у говорящего и слушателя при выборе соответствующих стратегий общения оказываются одновременно задействованными физическая, ментальная и социальная реальности. Биос определяется как целое, отраженное в части - инте-ракциональной коммуникации, а тема биоса характеризуется как снижение конфликтности и расширение зон взаимодействия между коммуникантами и окружающим миром.
