Hi TOK Society,

  I woke up this morning with a research idea and found some cool stuff on it that I thought to share. The idea that popped into my head when I woke up this morning was that we needed a “science of talking.” Of course, there is linguistics and conversational analysis, but I was thinking we could do a theoretically informed science of talking that might be really interesting. So, I googled “the science of talk” and found this on YouTube. A lecture by Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe in October 2016 titled Why We Need a Science of Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eWg2KzWMZw It was cool and I encourage you to check it out.

Elizabeth Stokoe: Why We Need a Science of Talk www.youtube.com As part of the Digital Science Speaker Series we invited Professor Elizabeth Stokoe to give a talk on her fascinating work. Elizabeth Stokoe (Loughborough University ...

So, the frame that I would bring to bear on the science of talking can be considered the “j i i dynamic” frame. That stands for “justification investment and influence.” Dynamic refers to the fact that it would be in constant flux and feedback, as the participants worked to maintain certain kinds of equilibrium.

Here are the basic ingredients, as I see them. There are two general channels of information flow between people. One is overt action (including body position/posture), shared with other animals and generally referred to as nonverbal. The other, of course, is verbal. Talking can be defined as dyads or groups engaged in ongoing, reciprocal, verbal communication. (I would argue that actually, thinking linguistically generally is a form of inner speech/dialogue, but that is a separate issue).

So, according to the unified theory, verbal communication is first and foremost a way of conveying and sharing information. That is, the reason language evolves is because it allows folks to share more kinds of information easier and cheaper than nonverbal communication channels. It also opens up many different kinds of cognitive capacities. Of course, the capacity to talk is dependent upon many different kinds of capacities—so there is a chicken/egg relationship here between language and higher thought capacities (as well as some secondary motor capacities like control of the tongue and throat). Regardless, the basic cognitive capacities necessary for language include the capacity to mentally manipulate objects and events in time and symbolically tag objects as nouns, changes in object-field relations as verbs, and differences between objects and fields as adjectives. These kinds of words then need to be placed in some sort of grammatical/syntactical structure (all the subject-object verb stuff that linguists like Noam Chomsky and Steve Pinker deal with).

But talking is not simply about processing or sharing symbolic information, but fundamentally it is about coordinating investment patterns. That is the act of talking is an act of investment. And talking with someone by definition is a reciprocal process, a back and forth, for the length of time of the conversation. As a reciprocal process, that means it is also an act of social influence. Finally, we have the social context of justification in which the talking takes place. Thus, according to the unified theory, there will be three meta-frames that will box in or contain the flow of information that takes place when folks talk.

First, there will be the investment frame. That means that both individuals (let’s assume dyadic conversation) will need to be invested in the activity at least at some level. That means, the activity should have a shared beginning to orient both parties to the activity and there should be implicit calculations regarding costs and benefits (e.g., benefits of sharing time and connection with someone, sharing information, engaged in problem solving, planning etc, relative to time and effort and lost opportunity cost, etc).  

Second, there should be the social influence frame. That is, each partner in the dyad should be tracking their social influence/relational value in relation to intuitive self-other roles and expectations (e.g., dominance/submission; affiliation/hostility, etc). That is, they should be tracking their influence and relational value and the process dimensions of power, love and freedom mapped by the Matrix. And affect should be following and sparking in relation to those changes.

Third, there should be the implicit justification frame. That is the shared expectations of norms and values and roles—the context of justification and the systems of justification that legitimize certain actions, which stem all the way from macro-level social roles into shared understanding of roles among intimates.  

Harmonized communication occurs when these three frames are intact. That is, both partners share in the investment frame, the influence frame and the context of justification that implicitly frames the norms. As long as those frames are intact, then conversation can occur freely. The dyad will be in a symbiotic cooperative, mutually enhancing state, whereby information can be shared with mutual value. When these frames are intact, we should see very fast, engaging conversations, that have positive affective value (even if the content being shared is painful). In therapy, we call this relational flow.

  However, when the frames are broken, that should create static and then folks should work to re-establish those frames across influence, investment and justification. If those frames cannot be re-established, conflict will ensue and the exchange will lose flow and become broke and disjointed. Disagreements will then lead either to breakdowns in cooperating (i.e., the dyad stops talking) or escalate from competitive power displays and ultimately into attack, where the dyad likely stops talking with each other and only then talks at each other (i.e., screaming matches in extreme cases).   

   All of this is to say that one of the coolest ways to empirically study the unified theory would be via applying j i i dynamics to humans talking. I am reminded that this is what I did when I analyzed a clip from the movie Ordinary People via the lens of the Matrix and justification hypothesis. I also think this lines up very well with Dr. Stokoe’s presentation.

So, when engaged in conversations or watching conversations on TV or wherever else, if you are bored, shift into asking, “What are the justification, investment, and influence frames that are guiding this conversation? How do folks work to maintain those frames and what happens when they begin to break down?”

Just some random thoughts to mull over the weekend.

Best,
Gregg