The DE-VOICING OF SOCIETY: WHY WE DON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER ANY MORE - Hardcover

Locke, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684843331 ISBN 13: 9780684843339

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998

Synopsis

A candid look at how email, voicemail, faxes, and other forms of communication have reduced not only our need but also our ability to verbally interact suggests that humans need to relearn how to talk intimately again. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

John L. Locke holds a chair in Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield, England. Born in the United States, he was formerly Director of the Neurolinguistics Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Lecturer on Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Locke is the author of several books and numerous articles and editor of the journal Applied Psycholinguistics. He is married and lives in Cambridge, England.

Reviews

While cellular phones, e-mail and Internet services proliferate, opportunities for face-to-face contact and intimate conversation are shrinking, leaving an increasingly atomized society of insulated, TV-watching individualists, laments neurolinguist Locke in this disturbing, if not exactly surprising, report. A former Harvard Medical School lecturer who teaches human communications sciences at the Univ. of Sheffield, England, Locke traces the decline of social talk to a general withdrawal from community life, the proliferation of isolating technologies and amusements and a loss of places where people can assemble. Echoing points made by Robin Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, he argues that talking fulfills a biological need for species and group connection deeply rooted in our evolutionary past. This leads him to draw not always convincing parallels among human interactions, monkeys' alarm calls and our hominid ancestors' sound making. His witty analysis of the varieties of communication?gossip, self-disclosure, small talk, networking, bonding talk?reveals that talking is often not so much factually informative or intellectually complex as personal, intimate and emotional. But today, he warns, "the exchange of information is too often the reason for speech, the personal relationship relegated to a position of secondary importance." The solution? Locke suggests joining groups, curtailing time with the TV and computer monitor and opting for interpersonal activities over time-consuming jobs?possibilities that have already been much talked about.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Two largely disconnected books in one: a phenomenology of talk and conversation, and a broad-based if not very convincing presentation of the thesis that interpersonal conversation is dramatically on the decline in modern Western society. Neurolinguist Locke (Human Communication Sciences/Univ. of Sheffield, England), is fascinating on the history and nature of language, talk, and conversation. He delves into human speech's evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and neurology, and the nature of ``vocal, facial and gestural clues.'' Among the many dimensions of human communication he explores are ``verbal performing,'' the usually inverse relationship between pitch and power, and the hierarchical nature of gossip and self-disclosure (individuals almost always engage in each with someone of greater or at least equal status). Locke's argument in the second half, that intimate social conversation is progressively declining in modern Anglo-American society, may be correct but is presented here in a diffuse, largely anecdotal way. His writing contains much of the rhetoric of anomie found in such earlier, better books as David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Philip Slater's The Pursuit of Loneliness and is marred by self-evident generalizations (``individuals with few close relationships generally report feeling less socially supported than those awash in intimacy) and an often overwrought neo-Luddite tone (``Internet Addiction Syndrome, or IAS . . . is apparently affecting hundreds if not thousands of the cyber-crazed'') that presumes that if people werent online for hours each day, they would otherwise be engaged in meaningful interpersonal contact. Locke seems certain that the Internet (and E-mail in particular) necessarily diminishes social intimacy. It doesnt seem to occur to him that it and other new technological facets of contemporary life may undermine certain traditional mechanisms for achieving social closeness while offering new ones in their place. (First serial to Psychology Today) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For anyone, and that means everyone, who has been annoyed by one or another gadget in the technocopia of communication devices, Locke offers a pointed diagnosis of the isolated society created by disembodied interaction. Ever more atomized and shackled to video screens, modern people watch and type, rather than talk. The loss, argues Locke, can be discerned in the purposes of talk, specifically gossip, in creating relationships and social networks. Common belief ascribes the exchange of information as the purpose of conversation, but Locke explains that studies into linguistic behavior reveal that the subjects of most exchanges are quotidian matters, such as the weather, personal events, or commonly known people who are not present--in short, the grist of gossip. Not a pejorative word in Locke's lexicon, gossip creates a shared set of stories that underlies intimate relationships, friendships, or business partnerships. But instead of talking, we electronically communicate, which erases all emotional cues transmitted by voice inflection and facial expression. An insightful lamentation about a palpable social pandemic. Gilbert Taylor

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: The Articulate Heart

When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me."

David Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness

When Philip awoke from the surgery, his first reaction was that he must not have died because he was aware. He could see and feel and hear things. And if he was alive, he would see his wife and children again. In a few days he would be back home, resting, perhaps lying in the sun. Life would resume.

But it wouldn't be his old life. For what Philip never really banked on was the fact that while he could still hear and understand what others said to him, there would be no more responding in kind. For when the surgeon removed his cancerous larynx, Philip's voice went with it. Forever.

They had discussed this in advance. It was mostly a blur now, but Philip could remember talking with several medical specialists, each telling him something about the operation and the recovery process. One had mentioned the voice part, but it really hadn't made sense. How can a surgeon take away your...your personality?

This book is about a loss of voice. But it is not about the kind that occurs when physical disease destroys the vocal organs of a single individual. Rather, what we will witness here is a new and pernicious kind of social devoicing -- manifested most specifically and painfully as a loss of opportunities for intimate talking. And it is creeping, soul by soul, through the entirety of progressive societies.

It is important that we understand the etiology as well as the effects of this vocal deficiency on our personal lives and culture. To do so we must cast a glance backwards in evolutionary time and consider the ways in which our ancestors may have benefited from the capacity to create and maintain sociality through vocalization. We will also look at how our own present-day alliances were built up by previous social interactions. And we will see how these alliances now elevate trust, confidence, and personal security -- resources that oxygenate the human psyche and enervate a range of cultural institutions. Before we plunge headlong into these issues, though, we need to think about the way personal identities are created and maintained.

Who We Are

Each of us cares how we are perceived and judged. It has never been otherwise. The earliest humanoid forms lived in small bands under precarious conditions. Food and other resources were scarce, and competitors were many. So were predators. Survival required cooperation. Early humans were thus heavily dependent on one another. To thrive, each of these social beings had to be able to recognize the other members of his small band, to read their intentions, learn their habits, and recall which owed, and which were owed, personal favors.

Who we are is conveyed by our possessions as well as our behaviors. Anthropologist Polly Wiessner learned a great deal about this in the 1970s while studying the !Kung, a hunting and gathering people living mostly in southern Angola, Botswana, and Namibia. She found that !Kung arrowheads displayed two kinds of personal information. One identified the language and possibly the dialect of the arrow maker, as well as the band to which he belonged. The other kind of information was about the man who made the arrow. These personal facts mattered to the !Kung, who reacted anxiously when Wiessner showed them some arrows of neighboring tribes. If they happened upon an animal that had been felled by one of these other arrows, tribe members said, they would worry because a stranger might be lurking about, one who might prefer their territory to his own.

Although Wiessner's immediate interest was projectile points, she drew attention to a larger generalization about self-presentation and public relations: competition between people accentuates differences in style. That's right -- style. Ordinarily one equates style with fashion, with clothing and jewelry. Most of us have closets with skirts and ties of a dated length and width, kitchen cupboards with fondue pots and blenders. Surely these artifacts of yesteryear convey little about who we truly are or ever were, reveal little more about our underlying motivations in living life as we do. But there is a deeper meaning and significance to style, and it flows from the urge we were hoping to satisfy -- to be understood in a particular way -- when we acquired our personal belongings.

We residents of progressive societies are superficially unlike the !Kung. Except for the odd archer, arrowheads play no role in our lives, nor do we manufacture the objects that we use. But we are authorities on socioeconomic stress, and we have at least as much need for style. So we buy distinctive identities, showing off our purchases when we put on our clothes, walk out the door of our residence, and drive away in our car.

Martin Clarke, a professor at Leeds University in England, has found that automobiles say a great deal about the image we are seeking. "Your car locates you in our socioeconomic system," said Professor Clarke. "If you know the car, you know the person." The windows and bumpers of automobiles may also broadcast our personal views and philosophy. Not long ago, two professors drove around suburban Washington, D.C., in an attempt to classify bumper stickers. The messages, they found, either expressed affection for athletic teams, radio stations, and universities, or attitudes toward social issues and politics. There were strong correlations between the racial profile and economic status of neighborhoods and the content of stickers on the cars that were parked there.

Some of the loudest personal broadcasts are expensive and therefore must be justified to ourselves and our friends. So we play mental games. We claim that our BMW, Rolex, and Montblanc "work better" when we drive, tell time, and sign our names, but in reality these objects are visual displays. They call attention to our existence, not just our nature. And the benefits are direct and immediate, because these displays are omnidirectional; even when others aren't looking, we still see ourselves using these things.

These things. Clothes, cars, and houses, like watches and pens, are acquisitions. They help us to be seen as a person who is sexy or daring or living well. But who is the underlying person who has these attributes? A car is unable to tell anyone that we are introspective; a house cannot disclose that we are young or witty. Clothing usually says little about our mood, which changes more often than we can dress ourselves. Cars cannot truthfully declare that we are educated or courteous. Things are thus powerful, but unreliably so, and that is their allure.

What there is to be known about us is transmissible, of course, and for this we owe a great debt -- not to objects that we purchase like a suit of clothes or manufacture like an arrowhead, but to something that comes into the world with us. Something that moves and behaves with us, reflecting where we've been, are at the moment, and might be seeking to go in the future. It adorns and dogs each of our articulate steps. This rich source of personal information is our voice.

The voice is often thought of as a vehicle for speech, and with good reason -- one is unlikely to win elocution awards by mouthing or whispering words. But the voice carries useful information all by itself, even when the mouth is relatively still, as in the sustained aaahs we produce for physicians or the uuuhs we utter while formulating our next thought. Even this motionless voice tells stories about us, many that we want told, some that we would prefer to keep pri

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684843331
• ISBN 13: 9780684843339
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256