purush_tiwari
Purshottam Tiwari
Communication as Relationship and Response
Anand Sukumaran - Faculty IMDR
The act of Communication is primarily understood through the Transmission metaphor, where a message is drafted and sent by a Sender to a Receiver. This view historically, primarily derives from the act of communication across geographical distance, where a tangible message in the form of a letter, document or missive originating from a Sender was sent to a Receiver through some form of transport, whether human or animal. The advent of electronic communication technologies in the 19 century, namely the telegraph, put paid to the need for a tangible message to be sent; instead an electrical signal was sent across a channel to a receiver who was stationed elsewhere. The metaphor still remains even though no physically tangible message is involved. This metaphor is today broadly applied to all forms of human communication, even in human communication where speech or utterance occurs between people in the same physical location. So we talk about sending and receiving, of a channel and medium, of noise and feedback, even when communication occurs between two or more human beings in the same spatiotemporal plane.
From this viewpoint, in speech, what is sent and received is not a physical message, but instead ideas, where the intent of the sender is to duplicate the ideas in the receiver's mind. The words that we use represent abstract concepts or ideas and the emphasis is on making sure that the words are sent across to the receiver with maximum clarity and minimum disturbance. Thus the content of communication in the form of words, which are containers for ideas and concepts, becomes important, and as long as the content is received, the meaning would automatically be made. This could be termed as a representational-referential understanding of communication where the sender and the receiver are stand alone, self contained thinkers, who then send to and receive ideas from each other, using words as containers. This is a cognitive understanding where the sender and receiver are objects who exchange abstract frameworks, which are rational and representational. The sender and receiver are observers, who are "outside" the act of communication and link the forms or representations contained in words to the corresponding shapes and forms of reality, which are always external to them.
In contrast to this, speech or utterance could be understood as responsive-relational where instead of senders and receivers, we have participants who are embedded in the continuous, spontaneous and unceasing flow of conversation and speech, which is relational and responsive. By relational and responsive, we mean that as a person's utterance occurs, we spontaneously respond to it with our own answering words and expressions, which may or may not be clearly articulated as another utterance, and which then leads to further responsiveness and relationality between and amongst participants. Thus the participants are continuously intertwined. Even if the utterance does not occur in terms of speaking out loud, the responses form in the participant's Reference; and are expressed through the body of the participants simultaneously through gestures and expressions; what I would like to call the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue. Even before any linguistic contact is initiated between participants, responsive relationships already start establishing themselves through the unfurling of the body; we glance at them, they glance at us, we check to see whether they are seeing us seeing them, and this is carried on even as utterances and speech enter and join in the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue. This Unfurling is continuous and the expressions, gesturing, and reciprocally responsive movements that occur open up and point out possibilities that may emerge as future connections and relations. This we experience as special moments of communion when we as human beings are in a direct and living relationship with others and ourselves. Communication is therefore not seen only as a conscious, deliberate and extremely cognitive act between self contained individuals to achieve a specific rational end, but instead as a participative, experiential, interconnected, epiphanic experience where a sudden, instantaneous realization of the essence or meaning of reality and existence is perceived.
In my teaching, I try to illustrate this through playing recordings of a ghazal sung by Begum Akhtar and a reading by Dame Judi Dench of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet XLIII from the work, Sonnets from the Portugese. The ghazal I chose this year was "Mere Humnafas, Mere Humnawah" by Shakeel Badayuni and the music was composed by Begum Akhtar herself. The Ghazal is an extremely sophisticated form of poetry with a particular form and rhyming scheme , but within the basic form and structure, the poet is free to explore themes of any nature. The form of the Ghazal does not require the poet to write succeeding couplets that follow a logical sequence.
The Sonnet is a lyric poem in a single stanza consisting of 14 lines written in a definite rhyming scheme, abbaabbacdcdcd. The poem by Elizabeth Browning is a very popular poem in the English language, and was some years ago voted the best Love poem in the English Language, by listeners of BBC Radio.
Both poems are about Love; not romantic love as we understand it, but what the Greeks understood as a fusion of Eros and Agape, a love which is at once both erotic and aspirational to a State of Bliss, a love that is and transcends. Poetry is meant to be read aloud and savored, either by oneself or in a group. When read aloud it is human speech that is not concerned with achieving a specific rational end, unlike the current dominant understanding of speech, where one speaks only to achieve or complete a transaction.
In the conventional representational-referential understanding of communication, meaning would be made by the receiver, by paying attention to the content of the communication, that is the words used, both in the sonnet and the ghazal. But almost all of the students are not familiar with Urdu, the language of the Ghazal, and also the type of English used by Barrett Browning. But still, they are able to perceive or comprehend a meaning; a meaning, which is not really cognitive, but an indefinable something, which cannot be clearly articulated or expressed. Some are moved to tears, for some, the recordings evoke a tremendous yearning for an unarticulated but constantly felt need. I have had students from France , who have come up to me later and said that they had been really struck by the voice and the reading, which had created a response, and tried to articulate what it is that they had felt in the moment of experiencing. All of us agreed on one thing; that definitely a response and a relationship had been created from a recording; in itself only a representation of the human voice. What then would have been the impact of listening to Begum Akhtar and Dame Judi Dench in the flesh?
The utterances by Dame Judi Dench and Begum Akhtar are utterances created by highly skilled communicators. But more than their skill and proficiency, it is the fact that their utterances are alive, alive with possibilities, expectancies, and aspirations; in fact with life itself, that creates a resonance and response in the participants in the communication process. It is not a mere cognitive, abstract understanding that the participants so strongly feel. Even if they did not understand a word of the content, they directly felt their own response. As participants all of us understand, that when this happens in communication, it does so spontaneously and not really through a conscious and deliberate choice.
This experience, this comprehension and understanding of reality is possible for all of us, and not only for the so-called skilled practitioners of communication. What it requires from us is a complete and total involvement in the act of communication and not just involvement for the sake of achieving an end that is deliberately and rationally chosen, as that would make us "outsiders" and not participants. We can exercise this choice of being involved in every act of speech communication, where the idea is to enter into the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue; a dance which has no deliberate reasoned ends, but which is responsive, relational, exploratory, and pregnant with possibilities. It is only in these moments that communication is perceived as integral to and indivisible from life; it is only in these moments that we merge into being and becoming simultaneously.
In the words of M M Bakhtin " An utterance is never just a reflection or an expression of something already existing and outside it that is given and final. It always creates something that never existed before, something absolutely new and unrepeatable…"
Speech communication then is always linked to Value and Purpose ; it is in fact indistinguishable from it. It is not only a means of exchanging representations of reality as formulated by our limited rationality, but is instead, an opportunity and a moment when we create new possibilities and revisit existing ones.
Footnotes:
Reference - The area where the participants' memory and context are indivisibly and seamlessly integrated in consciousness
Utterance and speech - Utterance and speech are fundamental and primary bodily expressions, though we tend to treat them as separate from other bodily expressions like gestures. To speak or to utter demands a complete involvement and integration of body and consciousness, thus the primacy given in Indian music to the human voice which is considered to be the supreme form of musical expression.
Begum Akhtar - Arguably one of the greatest Ghazal singers ever; her real name was Akhtaribai Faizabadi. To her admirers, she was Mallika - e - Ghazal. She has more than 400 recordings to her credit.
Dame Judi Dench - Dame Judi Dench is a famous Shakespearean actress and has also appeared in the role of M, James Bond's boss in the last few James Bond movies
Ghazal - Literally, conversations with the beloved.
Rhyming scheme - For more details of the rhyming scheme of the Ghazal, read Introduction to the Ghazal, by John Hollander, quoted by Aga Shahid Ali in his book, The Rebel's Silhouette.
Students from France - As part of IMDR's student exchange program with ESSCA.
Value and Purpose - Understood as Truth, Beauty and Goodness (Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram)
References:
1. Inside Dialogic Realities: From an Abstract - Systematic to a Participatory - Wholistic Understanding of Communication;
John Shotter, Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire
2. Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse's Answer to the Question of the Age
Andrew Feenberg, San Diego State University
3. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society
Carey J W, New York / RoutledgeFalmer / 1988
4. On Human Communications
Cherry C; MIT press/ 1964
Anand Sukumaran - Faculty IMDR
The act of Communication is primarily understood through the Transmission metaphor, where a message is drafted and sent by a Sender to a Receiver. This view historically, primarily derives from the act of communication across geographical distance, where a tangible message in the form of a letter, document or missive originating from a Sender was sent to a Receiver through some form of transport, whether human or animal. The advent of electronic communication technologies in the 19 century, namely the telegraph, put paid to the need for a tangible message to be sent; instead an electrical signal was sent across a channel to a receiver who was stationed elsewhere. The metaphor still remains even though no physically tangible message is involved. This metaphor is today broadly applied to all forms of human communication, even in human communication where speech or utterance occurs between people in the same physical location. So we talk about sending and receiving, of a channel and medium, of noise and feedback, even when communication occurs between two or more human beings in the same spatiotemporal plane.
From this viewpoint, in speech, what is sent and received is not a physical message, but instead ideas, where the intent of the sender is to duplicate the ideas in the receiver's mind. The words that we use represent abstract concepts or ideas and the emphasis is on making sure that the words are sent across to the receiver with maximum clarity and minimum disturbance. Thus the content of communication in the form of words, which are containers for ideas and concepts, becomes important, and as long as the content is received, the meaning would automatically be made. This could be termed as a representational-referential understanding of communication where the sender and the receiver are stand alone, self contained thinkers, who then send to and receive ideas from each other, using words as containers. This is a cognitive understanding where the sender and receiver are objects who exchange abstract frameworks, which are rational and representational. The sender and receiver are observers, who are "outside" the act of communication and link the forms or representations contained in words to the corresponding shapes and forms of reality, which are always external to them.
In contrast to this, speech or utterance could be understood as responsive-relational where instead of senders and receivers, we have participants who are embedded in the continuous, spontaneous and unceasing flow of conversation and speech, which is relational and responsive. By relational and responsive, we mean that as a person's utterance occurs, we spontaneously respond to it with our own answering words and expressions, which may or may not be clearly articulated as another utterance, and which then leads to further responsiveness and relationality between and amongst participants. Thus the participants are continuously intertwined. Even if the utterance does not occur in terms of speaking out loud, the responses form in the participant's Reference; and are expressed through the body of the participants simultaneously through gestures and expressions; what I would like to call the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue. Even before any linguistic contact is initiated between participants, responsive relationships already start establishing themselves through the unfurling of the body; we glance at them, they glance at us, we check to see whether they are seeing us seeing them, and this is carried on even as utterances and speech enter and join in the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue. This Unfurling is continuous and the expressions, gesturing, and reciprocally responsive movements that occur open up and point out possibilities that may emerge as future connections and relations. This we experience as special moments of communion when we as human beings are in a direct and living relationship with others and ourselves. Communication is therefore not seen only as a conscious, deliberate and extremely cognitive act between self contained individuals to achieve a specific rational end, but instead as a participative, experiential, interconnected, epiphanic experience where a sudden, instantaneous realization of the essence or meaning of reality and existence is perceived.
In my teaching, I try to illustrate this through playing recordings of a ghazal sung by Begum Akhtar and a reading by Dame Judi Dench of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet XLIII from the work, Sonnets from the Portugese. The ghazal I chose this year was "Mere Humnafas, Mere Humnawah" by Shakeel Badayuni and the music was composed by Begum Akhtar herself. The Ghazal is an extremely sophisticated form of poetry with a particular form and rhyming scheme , but within the basic form and structure, the poet is free to explore themes of any nature. The form of the Ghazal does not require the poet to write succeeding couplets that follow a logical sequence.
The Sonnet is a lyric poem in a single stanza consisting of 14 lines written in a definite rhyming scheme, abbaabbacdcdcd. The poem by Elizabeth Browning is a very popular poem in the English language, and was some years ago voted the best Love poem in the English Language, by listeners of BBC Radio.
Both poems are about Love; not romantic love as we understand it, but what the Greeks understood as a fusion of Eros and Agape, a love which is at once both erotic and aspirational to a State of Bliss, a love that is and transcends. Poetry is meant to be read aloud and savored, either by oneself or in a group. When read aloud it is human speech that is not concerned with achieving a specific rational end, unlike the current dominant understanding of speech, where one speaks only to achieve or complete a transaction.
In the conventional representational-referential understanding of communication, meaning would be made by the receiver, by paying attention to the content of the communication, that is the words used, both in the sonnet and the ghazal. But almost all of the students are not familiar with Urdu, the language of the Ghazal, and also the type of English used by Barrett Browning. But still, they are able to perceive or comprehend a meaning; a meaning, which is not really cognitive, but an indefinable something, which cannot be clearly articulated or expressed. Some are moved to tears, for some, the recordings evoke a tremendous yearning for an unarticulated but constantly felt need. I have had students from France , who have come up to me later and said that they had been really struck by the voice and the reading, which had created a response, and tried to articulate what it is that they had felt in the moment of experiencing. All of us agreed on one thing; that definitely a response and a relationship had been created from a recording; in itself only a representation of the human voice. What then would have been the impact of listening to Begum Akhtar and Dame Judi Dench in the flesh?
The utterances by Dame Judi Dench and Begum Akhtar are utterances created by highly skilled communicators. But more than their skill and proficiency, it is the fact that their utterances are alive, alive with possibilities, expectancies, and aspirations; in fact with life itself, that creates a resonance and response in the participants in the communication process. It is not a mere cognitive, abstract understanding that the participants so strongly feel. Even if they did not understand a word of the content, they directly felt their own response. As participants all of us understand, that when this happens in communication, it does so spontaneously and not really through a conscious and deliberate choice.
This experience, this comprehension and understanding of reality is possible for all of us, and not only for the so-called skilled practitioners of communication. What it requires from us is a complete and total involvement in the act of communication and not just involvement for the sake of achieving an end that is deliberately and rationally chosen, as that would make us "outsiders" and not participants. We can exercise this choice of being involved in every act of speech communication, where the idea is to enter into the Unfurling of the Dance of Dialogue; a dance which has no deliberate reasoned ends, but which is responsive, relational, exploratory, and pregnant with possibilities. It is only in these moments that communication is perceived as integral to and indivisible from life; it is only in these moments that we merge into being and becoming simultaneously.
In the words of M M Bakhtin " An utterance is never just a reflection or an expression of something already existing and outside it that is given and final. It always creates something that never existed before, something absolutely new and unrepeatable…"
Speech communication then is always linked to Value and Purpose ; it is in fact indistinguishable from it. It is not only a means of exchanging representations of reality as formulated by our limited rationality, but is instead, an opportunity and a moment when we create new possibilities and revisit existing ones.
Footnotes:
Reference - The area where the participants' memory and context are indivisibly and seamlessly integrated in consciousness
Utterance and speech - Utterance and speech are fundamental and primary bodily expressions, though we tend to treat them as separate from other bodily expressions like gestures. To speak or to utter demands a complete involvement and integration of body and consciousness, thus the primacy given in Indian music to the human voice which is considered to be the supreme form of musical expression.
Begum Akhtar - Arguably one of the greatest Ghazal singers ever; her real name was Akhtaribai Faizabadi. To her admirers, she was Mallika - e - Ghazal. She has more than 400 recordings to her credit.
Dame Judi Dench - Dame Judi Dench is a famous Shakespearean actress and has also appeared in the role of M, James Bond's boss in the last few James Bond movies
Ghazal - Literally, conversations with the beloved.
Rhyming scheme - For more details of the rhyming scheme of the Ghazal, read Introduction to the Ghazal, by John Hollander, quoted by Aga Shahid Ali in his book, The Rebel's Silhouette.
Students from France - As part of IMDR's student exchange program with ESSCA.
Value and Purpose - Understood as Truth, Beauty and Goodness (Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram)
References:
1. Inside Dialogic Realities: From an Abstract - Systematic to a Participatory - Wholistic Understanding of Communication;
John Shotter, Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire
2. Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse's Answer to the Question of the Age
Andrew Feenberg, San Diego State University
3. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society
Carey J W, New York / RoutledgeFalmer / 1988
4. On Human Communications
Cherry C; MIT press/ 1964