On Communicating

Otherness, Meaning, and Information

Klaus Krippendorff, Fernando Bermejo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415978606
• eBook ISBN: 9781135865702
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Klaus Krippendorff is an influential figure in communication studies widely known for his award-winning book Content Analysis. Over the years, Krippendorff has made important contributions to the ongoing debates on fundamental issues concerning communication theory, epistemology, methods of research, critical scholarship, second-order cybernetics, the social construction of reality through language, design, and meaning. On Communicating assembles Krippendorff's most significant writings – many of which are virtually unavailable today, appearing in less accessible publications, conference proceedings, out-of-print book chapters, and articles in journals outside the communication field. In their totality, they provide a goldmine for communication students and scholars. Edited and with an introduction by Fernando Bermejo, this book provides readers with access to Krippendorff's key works.

Part 1
Communicating

Introduction

The five chapters in Part 1 introduce the central threads of this book, and constitute the fundamentals of Krippendorff’s approach to communication. They provide an alternative paradigm for the study of communication—supported by a specific epistemology—and a perspective on language and metaphor that allows for an enhanced understanding of everyday conceptions of communication, and opens the door to a full reconsideration of communication theory.

In contrast with the “positivist” or “naturalistic” paradigm that has shaped science for centuries and still dominates the field of communication, Chapter 1 develops an alternative paradigm for communication theory and research. The limitations of the prevalent paradigm—which is based on two main premises, i.e. “observers shall accept only one reality,” and “observers shall not enter their domain of observation”—are exposed through an examination of Russell’s theory of logical types, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Popper’s falsification criterion as responses to paradigmatic challenges. Krippendorff articulates an alternative around five ultimately ethical imperatives that stress the constructed nature of knowledge, replace representational truth with viability, encourage self-reference, and take otherness to be a central concern for communication studies. These imperatives serve as a guide for the remainder of the book.

As the paradigm proposed in the first chapter calls for researchers and theorists to include themselves in what they observe and theorize, it follows that ontological concerns should give way to epistemological ones. Thus, Chapter 2 introduces an epistemological foundation for communication that is derived from the proposed paradigmatic alternative and, drawing from cybernetics, is based on the twin operation of drawing distinctions and creating relations. This epistemology takes knowing and communicating to be processes in which circularity and self-reference play major roles.

What the first two chapters develop is then applied in Chapter 3 to an examination of common communication metaphors. The chapter starts with a brief theory of metaphor that goes beyond mere rhetorical formulations and links language to perception of realities. Next, the six most pervasive metaphors of human communication in everyday life are distinguished, and their entailments explored in view of the social realities their use creates. Finally, the pervasiveness of these metaphors serves as the basis for several constructivist reflections, touching upon the role of language in the social construction of realities, the cognitive autonomy of individuals, the constraints on and the viability of enacted constructions, and the need to recognize oneself in these constructions in order to move from a first-order to a second-order understanding. The role of the mass media and the state of communication research are woven into these reflections.

The three previous chapters crystallize in Chapter 4, in which a recursive framework for communication theories is proposed. It renders self-reference as a central feature of communication, claims humans to be cognitively autonomous, and considers that “human communication constitutes itself in the recursive unfolding of communication constructions held by participants (including of each other) into intertwining practices that participants can recognize and explain in terms of communication.” As a framework, it does not propose a definition or a particular theory of communication, but an approach to coordinate the theories of participants in communication into a fundamentally social, locally managed, embodied, and reflexive process.

The framework proposed in the previous chapter is applied in Chapter 5 to issues of theory comparability. This chapter aims at showing how privileging any one theory of communication as the general one, one that subsumes all others without consent by those theorized therein, is likely to lead to intellectual imperialism. The chapter puts forward a series of alternative propositions for constructing communication theories in conversation, and for making comparisons among them communicable. The social implications of theorizing serve as a link to issues of otherness and power addressed in the second part of the book.

Chapter 1
An Alternative Paradigm^*

Figure 1.1. Abstract: Draw Others Like Yourself¹

Introduction

We are witnessing many cracks in the foundations of the established and largely naturalistic paradigm of scientific inquiry. They show the received view of science to be in trouble and suggest revolutionary changes to be imminent if not timely. I am convinced that our pre-paradigmatic or naive experience in studying communication leads to a new paradigm and that communication scholars are or could be the avant-garde of this paradigmatic revolution.

According to Thomas Kuhn (1962), a paradigm is a unity of (1) methodology, that is, the formal rules governing scientific practices, and (2) the kind of scientific problems to be solved against the background of (3) consensus on what counts as acceptable explanations. Probably the most important property of a paradigm is that it contains its own justifications. It defines rationality and objectivity; sets conditions of truth by means of rational procedures; and prevents false or otherwise inadmissible elements from entering the knowledge generated under the aegis of this paradigm. Paradigms are self-sealing in the sense that empirical evidence which is considered acceptable within a paradigm cannot challenge its validity.

Because paradigms are neither established nor challenged by empirical evidence—see Maruyama’s (1974) paradigmatology—I invite you to participate in an epistemological journey. It entails constructing with me a world, a reality that the existing paradigm might consider unacceptable (unreal, crazy, or outrageous, and in any case not worth pursuing), entering this world by applying its premises to our own experiences, particularly in communicating with others, and then asking whether the explanations it offers are more compelling and useful than those provided by established practices. At the end of this journey, I hope you find that the world that I construct with you is not so crazy after all and that the design principles for this reality are applicable not only to understanding communication as an interactive process but also to the scientific efforts of acquiring knowledge about human communication, social processes, and, if you prefer to treat it as something different, nature.

The Existing Paradigm

The mind derives its limits not from nature but from its own prescriptions.

(Immanuel Kant)

To characterize the currently dominant paradigm, from which any new paradigm must depart, let me start our journey with some of the metaphors used in accounts of scientific practices. Philosophers and linguists have suggested that metaphors play a central role in communication, thought, and action (Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Ortony, 1979b; Sacks, 1979; Salmond, 1982) and provide the key to the realities in which their users live and work.

Scientific discourse relies heavily on agricultural metaphors. Anne Salmond (1982) termed this the “knowledge is landscape” metaphor. Indeed, we divide knowledge into separate fields in which we work, we define areas of study, draw boundaries, and defend ourselves against intrusions by those that have no business doing work where we have established roots. Some fields are productive and yield fruitful insights; others bear few fruits or are fruitless. A second, related body of metaphors is called “understanding is seeing.” We take positions in the field, have outlooks or points of view, choose between micro- and macroscopic perspectives, look at things more closely, employ a narrow focus, survey a wide range of phenomena, or approach a problem with an open mind. Common to these metaphors is the assumption that reality exists separately from the scientific observer.While work is undeniably needed to tend to a field, the nature of the crops we harvest is governed by another metaphor that Salmond calls “facts are natural objects.” We refer to facts as hard, solid, concrete, or tangible. Facts are raw, original, simple, uncontaminated, or pure. Facts are searched for, discovered, found, picked up, collected, gathered, and sampled from where they are or uncovered, unearthed, dug up from below the surface. Once researchers have obtained such tangible facts, they may record, sort, examine, weigh, balance, arrange, tabulate, analyze, and process them in the form of data, preserve them for subsequent explorations, and ultimately describe them as findings.

Metaphors like “understanding is seeing” and “facts are natural objects” not only set observers apart from what they observe, they also provide the metaphorical grounding of the notion of “objectivity.” Facts are objective when they are discovered in their natural form and habitat. In everyday talk, the assertion “this is a fact” settles the question of their validity, because facts are considered inherently undeniable, unquestionable and irrefutable; they speak for themselves and therefore cannot be doubted or argued with. In scientific discourse, it is their a priori and independent physical existence that makes facts and everything derived from them “objective.” Re-search, literally “repeated search” or “repeated examination” of scientific facts, brings forth, reveals, unveils, or unwraps uncontaminated truths—much like peeling a fruit or extracting a substance—and shows, displays, or describes its objective core.

The consistent use of such metaphorical expressions in scientific discourse as well as in everyday talk characterizes the working of an extremely powerful paradigm that governs the production of knowledge in contemporary society, guides much of social research, controls many inquiries into human communication, and must serve existing institutions well.

The key to the dominance of this existing paradigm lies in the metaphorical grounding of objectivity: in the conception of a world composed of tangible objects existing outside and independent of being attended to. Two basic premises seem to characterize the ontological commitments of its users. The first locates the objects of scientific inquiry in a unique and preexisting empirical domain where they can be found, distinguished, and referred to according to what—objectively—they are. This premise commands:

Observers shall accept only one reality.

The universe implied by this premise affords only one unique explanation. According to the above, researchers may choose their metaphorical fields expecting to find the metaphorical objects of their interests—without questioning, however, the fundamental ontological premise of a unique reality: that no object can be two different things at the same time and no two objects can occupy the same space within their fields. It follows that conflicting explanations are seen as defective and evidence of human error, biases of perception, interest, or ideology, or as artifacts of language, which need to be corrected at all costs.²

The issue of bias leads to the second premise of the dominant paradigm. Heinz von Foerster (1979: 7) suggested it in these words:

The properties of observers shall not enter the descriptions of their observations.

This premise amounts to a commitment to construct a universe without observers, effectively denying that the act of observation has anything to do with what is observed. It claims an epistemological impossibility: the ability to observe without being an observer.

Although I am trying to avoid big names for various forms of -isms and of famous philosophers of science, it is obvious that the ontological commitment entailed by these two premises describes logical positivism, neopositivism, and the kind of empiricism that conceives all knowledge as built upon elementary sensations through which the world reveals its structure and appears to disembodied scientists as what it “in fact” is. Anthony Giddens (1989) prefers the term naturalistic paradigm to refer to the same.

Before our journey takes us to issues of human communication, let me show how the proponents of the established and uncritically adopted paradigm manage to preserve their ontological beliefs in the face of obvious challenges. Two examples may suffice, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Logical Types. A third, Karl Popper’s Falsification Criterion, will be addressed later.

Heisenberg’s (1958) Uncertainty Principle recognizes that in quantum physics every measurement requires an exchange of energy and disturbs the natural condition of the measured object. It states the impossibility of accurately measuring the position and velocity of atomic particles simultaneously. The principle is stated for observations in the microcosm of quantum physics. Such a limit may be less problematic in everyday (macro)physics, including astronomy, where the act of observation may not noticeably alter the observed, but it certainly has its analogue in the social sciences where observer influences over phenomena of interest are common, not the exception. A generalization of Heisenberg’s principle could be: the more the act of observation (measurement) affects the variables of an observed (measured) system, the greater is the uncertainty about what the data about these variables mean. There is no way to distinguish the effects of observation on a system from the nature of the unobserved system. In other words, the more scientific observers probe and prompt, the less information their data provide about what the observed was like before its observation.

Note that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (and its generalization to social phenomena) stays entirely within the existing paradigm. It preserves the ontological commitment to an objective reality by affirming the ideal of representing its objects without observer involvement. It merely recognizes a limit: Objectivity is unachievable when observation (measurement) is not a strictly one-way process.

The standard response to this principle is for adherents of the existing paradigm to withdraw to situations in which their observations are unproblematic and about which they can assure their scientific peers that they have not entered their domain of observation. Scientific literature is full of such recommendations. A good deal of measurement theory addresses ways to detect and avoid spurious influences on the measuring process. Textbooks call attention to the dangers of experimenter biases, the frequently demonstrated experience that preconceptions and intentions, even by minor laboratory personnel, may influence the results of scientific experiments. They warn that inappropriate choices of analytical techniques could create artificial findings. Social scientists are taught to avoid at all costs the well-known interview biases, the effects of interviewer characteristics, interviewing situations, and ways of asking questions on the kind of responses obtained and recorded. The widely promoted use of Unobtrusive Measures (Webb et al., 1966)—content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004), for example—in preference to experiments with subjects, opinion surveys, and field research, in which individuals cannot but react to the inquiring scientist’s manipulations, is evidence of that effort. Such measures are undertaken not to increase scientific knowledge but to preserve the dominant paradigm. This is particularly troublesome where the acquisition of knowledge and practical action go hand in hand, for example, in psychiatric work, management, community development, political communication, design, and, of course, dialogical forms of communication.

Omitting observers from the picture that traditional scientists are expected to paint also entails declaring observer-dependent knowledges irrelevant to science. This accounts for the customary distinction between two categories of knowledge, propositional and objective, and value-laden and subjective or biased. The idea that it is impossible for observers to escape a position from which they observe, that seeing and knowing requires human bodies practicing their living with others, has no place within the naturalist paradigm. Accordingly, observers qualify as scientific observers only where their claim of being able to assume a disembodied and positionless God’s Eye view of the world is not questioned, that is, within a community of adherents to the existing paradigm. I maintain for the purposes of our journey toward a new paradigm that the privileging of positionless knowledge severely limits our understanding of human communication.

Russell’s Theory of Logical Types (Whitehead & Russell, 1910) reveals a second limit of the existing paradigm. The theory was invented literally to end two thousand years of puzzlement over paradoxes in logic, mathematics, and most recently the social sciences. In the scholarly community, paradoxes have been a perennial source of intellectual entertainment but have not been taken too seriously. For example, did Epimenedes, the Cretan philosopher lie or tell the truth when he claimed, “all Cretans are liars?” Can the command, “disobey this” be follo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by Fernando Bermejo
• PART 1 Communicating
• PART 2 Otherness
• PART 3 Meaning
• PART 4 Information
• References
• Permissions