The Microanalysis of Political Communication

Claptrap and Ambiguity

Peter Bull

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134480517
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This analysis of political speeches and televised political interviews in the UK, based on the Annual Party Conferences (1996-2000) and the last five general elections (1983-2001), evaluates the interview skills of politicians and political interviewers, investigates how and why politicians equivocate and handle interruptions and examines the nature of applause, both invited and uninvited, in political speeches.

1 The microanalysis of political communication

Introduction

During the twentieth century, research on communication underwent a revolution. Central to this new approach was the belief in the value of studying social interaction through the analysis of film, audiotape and videotape recordings of behaviour. Because such research is based on the detailed (‘micro’) analysis of both speech and nonverbal behaviour, the author has referred to it elsewhere as the microanalytic approach (Bull, 2002). In Communication under the Microscope (Bull, 2002), the author set out to trace the development of microanalysis. In this book, the author presents a series of original empirical studies conducted by himself and his colleagues on the microanalysis of political communication.

Microanalysis represents not only a distinctive methodology but also a distinctive way of thinking about communication (Bull, 2002). Undoubtedly, the analysis of film, audiotape and videotape recordings has facilitated discoveries which otherwise simply would not be possible. Indeed, the effect of the videotape recorder has been likened to that of the microscope in the biological sciences. Without recorded data which can repeatedly be examined, it is simply not possible to perform highly detailed analyses of both speech and nonverbal communication. But microanalysis did not develop simply as a consequence of innovations in technology. Film technology had been available since the beginning of the twentieth century; two of the earliest pioneers of cinematography, Muybridge and Marey, had a particular interest in analysing and recording movement patterns in animals and humans (Muybridge, 1899, 1901; Marey, 1895). The extensive use of this technology in the study of human social interaction has only really developed in the past few decades; its use reflects fundamental changes in the way in which we think about human communication (Kendon, 1982).

The introductory chapter to Communication under the Microscope (Bull, 2002, pp. 1–23) traces the intellectual influences that contributed to the development of microanalysis as a distinctive mode of thought. It also seeks to specify the key features of the microanalytic approach. The introductory chapter to this book is divided into three parts, the first two of which are based to a substantial extent on Communication under the Microscope. Part I outlines different approaches to the analysis of communication, which have contributed to microanalysis. Part II specifies the key features of microanalysis, and then seeks to show their relevance to research on political communication. Part III summarises the programme of empirical studies to be presented in this book.

I. Approaches to the analysis of communication

The structural approach

Two early pioneers of communication research were Ray Birdwhistell (a linguist) and Albert Scheflen (a psychiatrist). Their collaboration was based on a number of shared assumptions, which made their approach highly distinctive. Thus, Birdwhistell and Scheflen regarded communication as a tightly organised and self-contained social system like language, which operates according to a definite set of rules. They saw the task of the investigator as to identify and articulate those rules. As such, their research has been referred to as the ‘structural approach’ (Duncan, 1969).

For example, Scheflen (e.g. 1964, 1973) studied psychotherapy sessions in great detail using a technique which he called Context Analysis. The method he recommended was a natural history one: through repeated viewing of videotape, the researcher can identify which of the nonverbal cues are ordered in sequential arrangements (Scheflen, 1966). One of his most important insights concerned the significance of what was termed ‘postural congruence’ – the way in which people imitate each other’s postures. He observed that when people share similar views or social roles in a group, they often tend to express this by adopting similar postures (Scheflen, 1964). Conversely, dissimilar postures can indicate a marked divergence in attitude or status. Posture mirroring may also be used as a means of establishing rapport; a person may imitate another’s postures to indicate friendliness and togetherness. Thus, posture mirroring may be indicative of the relationship between people.

Birdwhistell’s principal concern was also with the study of nonverbal communication. He coined the term ‘kinesics’ to refer to the study of body movement, arguing that it could be analysed in a way that paralleled structural linguistics. In particular, he proposed that body motion is a learned form of communication, that it is patterned within a culture, and that it is structured according to rules comparable to those of spoken language. Those elements of body movement which are significant in communication he termed ‘kinemes’. Of course, kinemes do not occur in isolation, they occur in patterns or combinations, referred to as ‘kinemorphs’ (by analogy with the linguistic term ‘morpheme’). By the same token, kinemorphs can be organised into more complex patterns, referred to as ‘kinemorphic constructions’.

Birdwhistell also devised a highly detailed system for categorising body movement (Birdwhistell, 1971), although it has never been clear how successfully this system could be applied in practice. In a very real sense, his work was programmatic: he was putting forward a plan for research, rather than actually carrying it out. Nevertheless, Birdwhistell was a highly influential figure. In particular, he focussed attention on the culturally shared meaning of certain forms of body movement. This meant that the significance of body movement could not be understood purely in terms of a narrow psychological approach concerned exclusively with its role as a means of individual expression (Kendon, 1982).

The significance of the structural approach can be usefully appreciated when set against the so-called ‘external variable’ approach (Duncan, 1969). This referred to an alternative strategy of attempting to relate communication to features external to the social context. Thus, a researcher might seek to investigate whether particular nonverbal behaviours are associated with particular personality traits: for example, by correlating scores on a questionnaire measure of extraversion with duration or frequency of gaze. This approach at one time typified much psychological research on communication, and was rightly criticised for its failure to take account of the structural organisation of social interaction (Duncan, 1969). Almost all contemporary communication researchers would now regard an awareness of the importance of structure and context as axiomatic.

Sociological approaches

Closely related to the structural approach is that taken within sociology. In fact, there are two distinctive sociological strands of research of particular importance: conversation analysis and the work of Erving Goffman.

Goffman

Goffman’s principal concern was the study of social interaction. Of course, in this he was not alone, but there are a number of features which make his particular approach distinctive. One important innovation was that he regarded everyday social interaction as something worthy of study in its own right, rather as a means of studying more traditional sociological concerns, such as a primitive or sophisticated mentality, or the structure of kinship or power relationships (Burns, 1992). Another was his ability to take what might be regarded as commonplace observations, and to recast them in terms of a novel conceptual framework. Although he has had a profound influence, in no sense was his work based on the detailed analysis of either video or audio recordings. Rather, he worked from his own participant observations of social interaction, and from material such as etiquette books and advertisements. His significance was much more as a theorist, as someone who put forward a conceptual framework within which social interaction could be studied.

Thus, Goffman developed a theory to explain the ways in which people present themselves in daily life, support or challenge the claims of others and deal with challenges to their own identity (Goffman, 1959, 1961, 1971). A particularly good example of Goffman’s influence can be seen in the impact of his first published article, ‘On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction’ (1955). In this paper, he formulated a number of ideas concerning the importance of what he called ‘face-work’: strategies both for avoiding threats to face and repairing damage to face when it has occurred. Goffman’s ideas have proved remarkably enduring. According to one review, the intellectual roots of virtually all contemporary research on face can be traced to this ‘seminal’ essay (Tracy, 1990).

Most significant of these is the contribution of two linguists, Penelope Brown and Steve Levinson (1978; 1987), who were the proponents of what has come to be known as ‘politeness theory’. Following Goffman, they defined ‘face’ as the public image which every person wishes to claim. Face claims, they proposed, can be positive or negative. Positive face concerns the desire to be appreciated by others, negative face the desire for freedom of action. Brown and Levinson also attempted to show how strategies in conversation can be seen to reflect these two principal aspects of face. This concept of face has had an important influence on the studies of political interviews reported in this book (see especially Chapters 8–10).

Conversation analysis

The other major sociological contribution is what has become known as ‘conversation analysis’. This emerged out of a sociological approach known as ‘ethnomethodology’. Ethnomethodologists were highly critical of the way in which quantitative sociologists imposed what they perceived as arbitrary categories in their classification of sociological phenomena. Instead, ethno-methodologists believed in the importance of the participants’ own formulations of their everyday interactions, and advocated that these should be a principal focus of study. It was to these formulations that the prefix ‘ethno’ referred.

Many of the basic assumptions of conversation analysis stem from a series of lectures given by Harvey Sacks in 1964 and 1965 (Sacks, 1992). The innovative and striking feature of these lectures was the recognition that talk can be studied as an activity in its own right, rather than as a means of studying other processes. Other important features were the proposals that ordinary talk is systematically, sequentially and socially organised, and that no detail of interaction (however trivial it may seem) can be dismissed as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant (Heritage, 1989).

The idea that ordinary talk is orderly contrasted sharply with prevailing models of language at that time (Lalljee and Widdicombe, 1989). In seeking to analyse people’s capacity for language, Chomsky had argued for an important distinction between competence and performance. Competence represented an idealised model of people’s linguistic ability, whereas performance (what people actually do in their talk) was assumed to be a degenerate version of competence (Lalljee and Widdicombe, 1989). In contrast, Sacks argued that ordinary talk could be formally described in terms of socially organised, culturally available rules and procedures. It should be studied not as a deviant version of people’s competence, but as orderly in its own right.

Although Sacks’ lectures were delivered in the mid-1960s, conversation analysis only began to have a wider impact in 1974, following the publication of a paper on how people take turns in conversation (see Kendon, 1988). This paper (Sacks et al., 1974) identified a number of distinctive features considered to characterise turn-taking, and proposed a system of rules to account for the way in which it is organised.

In the paper by Sacks et al., details were also given concerning a novel procedure for transcribing conversation. The aim was to reproduce as far as possible both the sound and structure of conversation. In order to do this, standard spelling was frequently ignored. For example, ‘back in a minute’ becomes ‘back inna minnit’, while ‘lighting a fire in Perry’s cellar’ becomes ‘lightin’ a fiyuh in Perry’s celluh’. A number of conventions were also devised to indicate the sequential structure of utterances in conversation. A double oblique sign (//) indicates the point at which a current speaker’s talk is overlapped by the talk of another, while an equals sign (=) refers to what was called ‘latching’, where there is no interval between the end of one person’s utterance and the start of another. Subsequently, one researcher has even been concerned to devise highly detailed ways of representing different kinds of laughter (Jefferson, 1984). In one excerpt, a laugh is transcribed as ‘ihh hh heh heh huh’, while in another a different form of laughter is transcribed as ‘hhhh HA HA HA HA’. Thus, in conversation analysis, the transcription becomes an important part of the research. Through such faithful attention to detail, it was claimed that other analysts are given the opportunity to identify systematic regularities which might have eluded the initial investigators.

This method of transcription is highly distinctive, and constitutes one of the most characteristic features of the conversation analytic approach. It is also the point at which Schegloff ’s work diverged most clearly from Goffman’s. Although Sacks was a student of Goffman and clearly learned a great deal from him (Schegloff, 1989), their approaches were fundamentally different. Whereas Sacks analysed social interaction in the finest of detail, Goffman painted with a broad brush. Whereas Goffman’s influence was essentially that of a theorist, Sacks pioneered a methodology whereby it was possible to test empirically his own theoretical presuppositions concerning the structure and organisation of conversation.

Both Goffman and Sacks have had an enormous influence on communication research. If Goffman is open to criticism, it is because he failed to back up his observations through the analysis of either video or audio recordings. His contribution was to supply the theoretical scaffolding; the nitty gritty of detailed microanalysis he left to others. With Sacks, it is entirely the reverse. Sacks et al. (1974) wrote that the aim of a conversation analysis transcript was ‘to get as much of the actual sound as possible into our transcripts, while still making them accessible to linguistically unsophisticated readers’. The success of this procedure is seriously open to question. There are plenty of features of speech which such transcriptions omit, for example, tempo, pitch, loudness, vowel quality and voice quality. At the same time, there is also a problem that the attempt to reproduce the sound of speech can make the text quite impenetrable. So, for example, one of Sacks et al.’s (1974) extracts reads, ‘I’d a’ cracked up ’f duh friggin (gla-i(h)f y’kno(h)w it) sm(h)a(h) heh heh.’ How accessible this is to a linguistically sophisticated reader is seriously open to question – let alone to an unsophisticated one.

In this author’s view, a transcript is best used not as a substitute for the recording, rather as a form of assistance. If researchers work from the transcript alone, they may miss important points of detail which were not annotated on the original transcript. Indeed, Sacks et al.’s analysis of turn-taking has been criticised for precisely this point (e.g. Power and dal Martello, 1986; Cowley, 1998). The best technique is to view or listen to the tape in conjunction with a transcript, ideally in the form of a video-recording, so that researchers can not only hear what is said and how it is said, but can also see any associated nonverbal behaviour for themselves. This is the approach taken in all the empirical studies reported in this monograph.

Speech Act Theory

A parallel development in linguistic philosophy was the development of Speech Act Theory. Initially, these ideas were elaborated by John Austin in 1955 in the William James lectures at Harvard University, subsequently to be published posthumously in 1962 under the title, How to do Things with Wo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• 1. The Microanalysis of Political Communication
• Part I: Political Speeches
• Part II: Televised Political Interviews
• Summary and Conclusions
• References