Verbal Self-Defense is even more important among friends than against enemies.
Take a minute and imagine the rest of the conversation…
If we want to learn how to avoid internal pie wars–and how to fight the external ones effectively–we need to better understand how we use language.
I actually went back and checked the early stuff– NO person actually made an attack like this. However, IF a person had cause to interpret the original diary as an attack, this is the flavor of attack that would have been perceived…..
Pattern-
#1: “If you REALLY X, you’d Y.” and the closely related
#2: “If you really A, you wouldn’t WANT to B.”
basic response-
- Identify the mode
- Identify the presupposition(s)
- Respond in NEUTRAL Computer mode TO THE PRESUPPOSITION ONLY
- Stay in Computer mode.
As a general rule, you don’t want to defend with more viciousness than the attack.
And now we get to the reason this is a new diary.
Had a complaint been posed as a verbal attack in the “Don’t you even CARE about…” format, it would break down thusly:
mode: Blamer.
presuppositions:
* You don’t care about women’s issues.
* You should care about them; you’re rotten not to.
* Therefore, you should feel terrible about this.
Two kinds of responses were suggested earlier
Leveler mode: “No. Why?”
Computer mode: some kind of technical query relating to the presuppositions
In this case, it could have been a question about why “women’s issues” should be more important than something else.
Kos responded as though to a complaint–but he ignored every rule in the book for effective self-defense. His response might be paraphrased as “Why should I care?”
Those who have read earlier diaries know that a basic truth of verbal interaction is “that which you feed, grows.” A response in either leveler mode or computer mode would not have fed the argument.
But kos instead shifted into blamer mode and went on the attack.
Note: cool down, everybody–this is not a rehash of the original arguments. I’m going to snip liberally, because I want people to think about the form of the interaction, not its contents.
In one sentence, kos wrapped his main point into a presupposition and added an irresistible bait:
“I find such … knee-jerk reactions, to be tedious at best….”
The bait words were “tedious, etc.” A lot of piscine kossaks swallowed them. Unfortunately, in responding to the bait, they let the presupposition alone.
Others responded to the attack itself. Next thing you know, mud (and smellier stuff) was flying faster than the original pies.
But nobody followed the rules!
- Identify the mode
- Identify the presupposition(s)
- Respond in NEUTRAL Computer mode TO THE PRESUPPOSITION ONLY
- Stay in Computer mode.
- mode: blamer
- presuppositions (“knee-jerk reaction” implies…what?):
a) the response to the ad was reflex, not thought out
b) the “offense” was trivial (the tap of a rubber hammer) and
c) the response was way out of proportion to the trigger.
Step 3, then, requires a decision–which presupposition to respond to.
We could have chosen a) — but most of us recognized that the negative reactions to the pie ad WERE reflexive. There isn’t much point in arguing with a truthful remark.
If we chose b) we would have had to tell kos that the pie ad itself was offensive to us–and many of us did not find it so.
Which leaves us with c)–and unless we find a better metaphor than “knee-tapping”, we aren’t going to get very far.
We need to find a metaphor where a thoughtless but not ill-intentioned action will trigger a strong response that takes the first person by surprise.
How about a slap on the back?
Under normal circumstances, even if the slap is uncomfortable, it is taken in good part.
There is one exception, however…. If the person slapped has some sort of injury.
A bad sunburn, dislocated shoulder or upper-arm injury would all earn the clueless back-slapper a royal dressing down.
Given such a sunburn, a reflex reaction to a slap on the back might range from a punch in the nose to a clobber over the head with any weapon at hand.
And that was kos’ mistake–he failed to recognize that a sizeable portion of his audience had been burned. People reacted, not to kos’ intent in posting the ad, but to its effect on them! I think it’s fair to say kos is not a sadist, and he would not deliberately hit a sunburned friend on a very sore back.
Had kos followed the rules for verbal self-defense, the pie wars would have quickly died out. But when he buried his real concern in a presupposition, and framed it as an attack, several bad things happened.
- His misperception of the protesters was not addressed.
- Many people who correctly perceived the protests then perceived kos’ response to be an unjustified attack. This is where the whole “respect” them was coming from.
- Finally, no one YET really knows what was actually going on inside kos’ head, to cause him to interpret the protests against the ad as an attack on kos, personally.
Which leads me to my final points:
- We REALLY are ignorant about Verbal Self-Defense
- Our ignorance is HURTING us and our cause
- Fixing our ignorance is easy, and IMPORTANT TO DO QUICKLY!
CategoryVerbalSelfDefense diaries are based on the work of Suzette Haden Elgin. (Crossposted at dKos.)
Thanks Coleen, very helpful and informative, a very good refresher for me and others as well. You always do such a good job.
(and I am not going to tell you how much I hate it when I take the bait and I know that I know better. . .)
Excellent diary. Thank you.
I suspect that Kos missed the sunburn because he hadn’t read the posts over the preceding 2-3 weeks that set the stage for our strong reaction to those pie ads.
By the time protesting emails started flying, much damage had already been done, and maybe he was reacting to a level of hostility that made no sense to him without a common context.
Had he read the earlier threads, he’d have seen that hundreds of women and men responded to the blatant misogyny and sexism expressed there with gentle patience and measured, well reasoned arguments. A great many of us tried very hard to politely recapitulate the scholarship of thirty years in a way that would include all of the left in a commitment to civil rights.
We were not granted even common courtesy in many cases. Had he done a little research on his own site, the sunburn, and it’s cause, would have been obvious.
I find this diary useful and interesting, but — also undergirded by several assumptions that I, for one, am not sure I can grant. For one, that Kos’ response was “not [an] ill-intentioned action” — especially in light of his comments both before and afterward.
It is a matter of perspective, of course; his intent in previously and repeatedly attacking women’s groups and issues as well as his invitation for posters to leave may not seem “ill” from his perspective and that of many others — but it does seem so to me.
I also find it curious that “the” bait words detailed above do not include “sanctimonious women’s set” — which seemed to cause more anger than any other. . . .
was to focus on the process of the conversation, not to rehash old and painful injuries.
and I am attempting to understand your explanation of the process, based on the examples — your examples, not mine.
Are there examples you can give that would not be based on assumptions, to put the focus more on the process? Thanks.
“Are there examples …not based on assumptions?”
You are entirely right that I made a tacit (and probably inaccurate) assumption that kos was not being a total jerk. However, my ultimate goal is to win hearts, not arguments. It costs me nothing to offer kos a face-saving way out of the mess he put himself in.
I don’t think I can offer a good response to a verbal attack that does not offer the other person an opportunity to save face if they reconsider. That is, not unless my goal is to destroy the other rather than co-opt them.
Thus, since kos is still more on my side of the political battle than not–and since I don’t want to waste my energy fighting him when we could both be going after BushCo, I need to offer him the out.
Not because he deserves the kindness, but because my being kind serves my ultimate goal. (After all, if Roosevelt & Churchill could make common ground with Stalin…..)
You can find a ton of info in any of Elgin’s books; and most of them can be read stand-alone.
Something to consider–turning the other cheek is a non-verbal message. It’s quite different from cowering or running away. The message is much more radical–it has two parts (I am not afraid…and …I do not need to attack.)
often, a process I understand all too well. . . .
But it is too often not the way to defend a program under attack in academe — a void in action enables others who do take action — and I will be again stepping into admin duties again soon . . . and of a program under attack (women’s studies) all too often.
So I am interested in communication styles that defuse — but also allow defense, as I will be in situations when winning does matter, sad to say, and it will be my job to win for students’ sake . . . or at least to not lose further ground in budget battles. (I would much prefer to just keep teaching and writing.:-)
I will look to Elgin if useful for winning strategies (as compared to, say, stay-sane strategies, much more my preference in daily life, in teaching, in dealing with editors, etc.).
Elgin has some on-target examples. Take a look at the final few chapters in The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. She’s done a business-oriented version as well.
Excellent . . . as some deans deal as do academics, some deal more like businessmen — to which I’m far more accustomed; thanks.
And then, before I have to deal with deans again, I must go reread some Amanda Cross mysteries. “Amanda” — Carolyn Heilbrun, professor at Columbia — kills off at least one dean per book, and in the most imaginative and satisfying ways.:-)
Thank you for this series. I may need to get some of Elgin’s books on this topic.
On a related note, David Burns, who’s written self-help books for people suffering from mild mental disorders, has had some useful suggestions for stressful verbal encounters. One of them: whenever possible, find some element of truth in an opponent’s statements, and start your response with an acknowledgement of it. So instead of responding to “You never do X!” with “No, I do X all the goddamn time!”, instead you say (something like) “I didn’t do X last time. I feel that I end up doing it too much/often/etc. What can we do about that?”
This is sort of like Elgin’s Leveler mode combined with Computer mode, but it also takes away a source of conflict. Rather than merely not feeding the fire, it tends to extinguish it. It is also really, really hard to do when you’re upset. I’m still learning to do it three years after hearing about it.
Unfortunately, this approach tends to work best with people who actually desire resolution, and are willing to work together to solve the problem. Pie fight on dKos, probably; no-holds-barred political debates, probably not.
I appreciate your excellent series of diaries on the art of verbal self-defense. I need your continued tutelage on these matters, and I think you do an excellent job of breaking down and packaging the concepts.
Thank you. Recommends help them get more attention.