CHAPTER ONE
FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES
This is not another book about civility. "Civility" suggests a superficial,pinky-in-the-air veneer of politeness spread thin over human relationslike a layer of marmalade over toast. This book is about a pervasivewarlike atmosphere that makes us approach public dialogue, and justabout anything we need to accomplish, as if it were a fight. It is atendency in Western culture in general, and in the United States inparticular, that has a long history and a deep, thick, and far-ranging rootsystem. It has served us well in many ways but in recent years hasbecome so exaggerated that it is getting in the way of solving ourproblems. Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere ofunrelenting contention--an argument culture.
The argument culture urges us to approach the world--and the peoplein it--in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumptionthat opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best wayto discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is tofind spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views andpresent them as "both sides"; the best way to settle disputes is litigationthat pits one party against the other; the best way to begin anessay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're reallythinking is to criticize.
Our public interactions have become more and more like having anargument with a spouse. Conflict can't be avoided in our public livesany more than we can avoid conflict with people we love. One of thegreat strengths of our society is that we can express these conflictsopenly. But just as spouses have to learn ways of settling theirdifferences without inflicting real damage on each other, so we, as asociety, have to find constructive ways of resolving disputes anddifferences. Public discourse requires making an argument for a point ofview, not having an argument--as in having a fight.
The war on drugs, the war on cancer, the battle of the sexes,politicians' turf battles--in the argument culture, war metaphors pervadeour talk and shape our thinking. Nearly everything is framed as a battleor game in which winning or losing is the main concern. These all havetheir uses and their place, but they are not the only way--and often notthe best way--to understand and approach our world. Conflict andopposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but thescale is off balance, with conflict and opposition overweighted. In thisbook, I show how deeply entrenched the argument culture is, the formsit takes, and how it affects us every day--sometimes in useful ways, butoften creating more problems than it solves, causing rather thanavoiding damage. As a sociolinguist, a social scientist, I am trained toobserve and explain language and its role in human relations, and that ismy biggest job here. But I will also point toward other ways for us totalk to each other and get things done in our public lives.
THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES
My interest in the topic of opposition in public discourse intensified inthe years following the publication of You Just Don't Understand, mybook about communication between women and men. In the first year Iappeared on many television and radio shows and was interviewed formany print articles in newspapers and magazines. For the most part,that coverage was extremely fair, and I was--and remain--indebtedto the many journalists who found my ideas interesting enoughto make them known to viewers, listeners, and readers. But from timeto time--more often than I expected--I encountered producers whoinsisted on setting up a television show as a fight (either between thehost and me or between another guest and me) and print journalistswho made multiple phone calls to my colleagues, trying to find someonewho would criticize my work. This got me thinking about what kind ofinformation comes across on shows and in articles that take thisapproach, compared to those that approach topics in other ways.
At the same time, my experience of the academic world that hadlong been my intellectual home began to change. For the most part,other scholars, like most journalists, were welcoming and respectful intheir responses to my work, even if they disagreed on specificpoints or had alternative views to suggest. But about a year after YouJust Don't Understand became a best-seller--the wheels of academiagrind more slowly than those of the popular press--I began readingattacks on my work that completely misrepresented it. I had been inacademia for over fifteen years by then, and had valued my interactionwith other researchers as one of the greatest rewards of academic life.Why, I wondered, would someone represent me as having said things Ihad never said or as having failed to say things I had said?
The answer crystallized when I put the question to a writer who Ifelt had misrepresented my work: "Why do you need to make otherswrong for you to be right?" Her response: "It's an argument!" Aha, Ithought, that explains it. When you're having an argument withsomeone, your goal is not to listen and understand. Instead, you useevery tactic you can think of--including distorting what your opponentjust said--in order to win the argument.
Not only the level of attention You Just Don't Understand receivedbut, even more, the subject of women and men, triggered the tendencyto polarize. This tendency to stage a fight on television or in print wasposited on the conviction that opposition leads to truth. Sometimes itdoes. But the trouble is, sometimes it doesn't. I was asked at the startof more than one talk show or print interview, "What is the mostcontroversial thing about your book?" Opposition does not lead to truthwhen the most controversial thing is not the most important.
The conviction that opposition leads to truth can tempt not onlymembers of the press but just about anyone seeking to attract anaudience to frame discussions as a fight between irreconcilableopposites. Even the Smithsonian Institution, to celebrate its 150thanniversary, sponsored a series of talks billed as debates. They invitedme to take part in one titled "The Battle of the Sexes." The organizerpreempted my objection: "I know you won't be happy with this title, butwe want to get people interested." This is one of many assumptions Iquestion in this book: Is it necessary to frame an interchange as abattle to get people interested? And even if doing so succeeds incapturing attention, clots it risk dampening interest in the long run, asaudiences weary of the din and begin to hunger for more substance?
THOUGHT-PROVOKING OR JUST PROVOCATIVE?
In the spring of 1995, Horizons Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, producedtwo one-act plays I had written about family relationships. The director,wanting to contribute to the reconciliation between Blacks and Jews,mounted my plays in repertory with two one-act plays by an African-Americanplaywright, Caleen Sinnette Jennings. We had both writtenplays about three sisters that explored the ethnic identities of ourfamilies (Jewish for me, African-American for her) and the relationshipbetween those identities and the American context in which we grewup. To stir interest in the plays and to explore the parallels between herwork and mine, the theater planned a public dialogue between Jenningsand me, to be held before the plays opened.
As production got under way, I attended the audition of actors formy plays. After the auditions ended, just before everyone headedhome, the theater's public relations volunteer distributed copies of theflyer announcing the public dialogue that she had readied fordistribution. I was horrified. The flyer announced that Caleen and Iwould discuss "how past traumas create understanding and conflictbetween Blacks and Jews today." The flyer was trying to grab by thethroat the issue that we wished to address indirectly. Yes, we wereconcerned with conflicts between Blacks and Jews, but neither of us isan authority on that conflict, and we had no intention of expoundingon it. We hoped to do our part to ameliorate the conflict by focusing oncommonalities. Our plays had many resonances between them. Wewanted to talk about our work and let the resonances speak forthemselves.
Fortunately, we were able to stop the flyers before they weredistributed and devise new ones that promised something we coulddeliver: "a discussion of heritage, identity, and complex familyrelationships in African-American and Jewish-American culture asrepresented in their plays." Jennings noticed that the original flyer saidthe evening would be "provocative" and changed it to "thought-provoking."What a world of difference is implied in that small change:how much better to make people think, rather than simply to "provoke"them--as often as not, to anger.
It is easy to understand why conflict is so often highlighted: Writersof headlines or promotional copy want to catch attention and attract anaudience. They are usually under time pressure, which lures them toestablished, conventionalized ways of expressing ideas in the absenceof leisure to think up entirely new ones. The promise of controversyseems an easy and natural way to rouse interest. But seriousconsequences are often unintended; Stirring up animosities to get a riseout of people, though easy and "provocative," can open old wounds orcreate new ones that are hard to heal. This is one of many dangersinherent in the argument culture.
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT
In the argument culture, criticism, attack, or opposition are thepredominant if not the only ways of responding to people or ideas. I usethe phrase "culture of critique" to capture this aspect. "Critique" in thissense is not a general term for analysis or interpretation but rather asynonym for criticism.
It is the automatic nature of this response that I am calling attentionto--and calling into question. Sometimes passionate opposition, strongverbal attack, are appropriate and called for. No one knows this betterthan those who have lived under repressive regimes that forbid publicopposition. The Yugoslavian-born poet Charles Simic is one. "There aremoments in life," he writes, "when true invective is calledfor, when it becomes an absolute necessity, out of a deep sense ofjustice, to denounce, mock, vituperate, lash out, in the strongest possiblelanguage." I applaud and endorse this view. There are times when it isnecessary and right to fight--to defend your country or yourself, toargue for right against wrong or against offensive or dangerous ideas oractions.
What I question is the ubiquity, the knee-jerk nature, of approachingalmost any issue, problem, or public person in an adversarial way.One of the dangers of the habitual use of adversarial rhetoric is akind of verbal inflation--a rhetorical boy who cried wolf: The legitimate,necessary denunciation is muted, even lost, in the generalcacophony of oppositional shouting. What I question is using oppositionto accomplish every goal, even those that do not require fightingbut might also (or better) be accomplished by other means, such asexploring, expanding, discussing, investigating, and the exchangingof ideas suggested by the word "dialogue." I am questioning theassumption that everything is a matter of polarized opposites, theproverbial "two sides to every question" that we think embodiesopen-mindedness and expansive thinking.
In a word, the type of opposition I am questioning is what I call"agonism." I use this term, which derives from the Greek word for "contest," agonia, to mean an automatic warlike stance--not the literalopposition of fighting against an attacker or the unavoidable oppositionthat arises organically in response to conflicting ideas or actions. Anagonistic response, to me, is a kind of programmed contentiousness--aprepatterned, unthinking use of fighting to accomplish goals thatdo not necessarily require it.
HOW USEFUL ARE FIGHTS?
Noticing that public discourse so often takes the form of heatedarguments--of having a fight--made me ask how useful it is in ourpersonal lives to settle differences by arguing. Given what I knowabout having arguments in private life, I had to conclude that it is, inmany cases, not very useful.
In close relationships it is possible to find ways of arguing thatresult in better understanding and solving problems. But with mostarguments, little is resolved, worked out, or achieved when two peopleget angrier and less rational by the minute. When you're having anargument with someone, you're usually not trying to understand whatthe other person is saying, or what in their experience leads them to sayit. Instead, you're readying your response: listening for weaknesses inlogic to leap on, points you can distort to make the other person look badand yourself look good. Sometimes you know, on some back burner ofyour mind, that you're doing this--that there's a kernel of truth in whatyour adversary is saying and a bit of unfair twisting in what you'resaying. Sometimes you do this because you're angry, but sometimes it'sjust the temptation to take aim at a point made along the way becauseit's an easy target.
Here's an example of how this happened in an argument between acouple who had been married for over fifty years. The husband wantedto join an HMO by signing over their Medicare benefits to savemoney. The wife objected because it would mean she could no longersee the doctor she knew and trusted. In arguing her point of view, shesaid, "I like Dr. B. He knows me, he's interested in me. He calls me bymy first name." The husband parried the last point: "I don't like that.He's much younger than we are. He shouldn't be calling us by firstname." But the form of address Dr. B. uses was irrelevant. The wifewas trying to communicate that she felt comfortable with the doctorshe knew, that she had a relationship with him. His calling her by firstname was just one of a list of details she was marshaling to explain hercomfort with him. Picking on this one detail did not change her view--anddid not address her concern. It was just a way to win the argument.
We are all guilty, at times, of seizing on irrelevant details, distortingsomeone else's position the better to oppose it, when we're arguingwith those we're closest to. But we are rarely dependent on thesefights as sources of information. The same tactics are common whenpublic discourse is carried out on the model of personal fights. And theresults are dangerous when listeners are looking to these interchangesto get needed information or practical results.
Fights have winners and losers. If you're fighting to win, the temptationis great to deny facts that support your opponent's views and tofilter what you know, saying only what supports your side. In theextreme form, it encourages people to misrepresent or even to lie. Weaccept this risk because we believe we can tell when someone islying. The problem is, we cant.
Paul Ekman, a psychologist at the University of California, SanFrancisco, studies lying. He set up experiments in which individualswere videotaped talking about their emotions, actions, or beliefs--sometruthfully, some not. He has shown these videotapes to thousands ofpeople, asking them to identify the liars and also to say how sure theywere about their judgments. His findings are chilling: Most peopleperformed not much better than chance, and those who did the worsthad just as much confidence in their judgments as the few who werereally able to detect lies. Intrigued by the implications of this researchin various walks of life, Dr. Ekman repeated this experiment with groupsof people whose jobs require them to sniff out lies: judges, lawyers,police, psychotherapists, and employees of the CIA, FBI, and ATF(Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). They were no better atdetecting who was telling the truth than the rest of us. The only groupthat did significantly better were members of the U.S. Secret Service.This finding gives some comfort when it comes to the Secret Servicebut not much when it comes to every other facet of public life.
TWO SIDES TO EVERY QUESTION
Our determination to pursue truth by setting up a fight between twosides leads us to believe that every issue has two sides--no more, noless: If both sides are given a forum to confront each other, all therelevant information will emerge, and the best case will be made foreach side. But opposition does not lead to truth when an issue is notcomposed of two opposing sides but is a crystal of many sides. Oftenthe truth is in the complex middle, not the oversimplified extremes.
We love using the word "debate" as a way of representing issues:the abortion debate, the health care debate, the affirmative actiondebate--even "the great backpacking vs. car camping debate." Theubiquity of this word in itself shows our tendency to conceptualizeissues in a way that predisposes public discussion to be polarized,framed as two opposing sides that give each other no ground. Thereare many problems with this approach. If you begin with theassumption that there must be an "other side," you may end up scouringthe margins of science or the fringes of lunacy to find it. As a result,proven facts, such as what we know about how the earth and itsinhabitants evolved, are set on a par with claims that are known tohave no basis in fact, such as creationism.
The conviction that there are two sides to every story can promptwriters or producers to dig up an "other side," so kooks who stateoutright falsehoods are given a platform in public discourse. Thisaccounts, in part, for the bizarre phenomenon of Holocaust denial.Deniers, as Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt shows, havebeen successful in gaining television airtime and campus newspapercoverage by masquerading as "the other side" in a "debate."
Appearance in print or on television has a way of lending legitimacy,so baseless claims take on a mantle of possibility. Lipstadt shows howHolocaust deniers dispute established facts of history, and thenreasonable spokespersons use their having been disputed as a basis forquestioning known facts. The actor Robert Mitchum, for example,interviewed in Esquire, expressed doubt about the Holocaust. When theinterviewer asked about the slaughter of six million Jews, Mitchumreplied, "I don't know. People dispute that." Continual reference to "theother side" results in a pervasive conviction that everything has anotherside--with the result that people begin to doubt the existence of any factsat all.
THE EXPENSE OF TIME AND SPIRIT
Lipstadt's book meticulously exposes the methods used by deniers tofalsify the overwhelming historic evidence that the Holocaust occurred.That a scholar had to invest years of her professional life writing abook unraveling efforts to deny something that was about as wellknown and well documented as any historical fact has ever been--whilethose who personally experienced and witnessed it are still alive--istestament to another way that the argument culture limitsour knowledge rather than expanding it. Talent and effort are wastedrefuting outlandish claims that should never have been given a platformin the first place. Talent and effort are also wasted when individualswho have been unfairly attacked must spend years of their creativelives defending themselves rather than advancing their work. The entiresociety loses their creative efforts. This is what happened with scientistRobert Gallo.
Dr. Gallo is the American virologist who codiscovered the AIDSvirus. He is also the one who developed the technique for studying T-cells,which made that discovery possible. And Gallo's work wasseminal in developing the test to detect the AIDS virus in blood, the firstand for a long time the only means known of stemming the tide of deathfrom AIDS. But in 1989, Gallo became the object of a four-yearinvestigation into allegations that he had stolen the AIDS virus from LucMontagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who had independentlyidentified the AIDS virus. Simultaneous investigations by the NationalInstitutes of Health, the office of Michigan Congressman John Dingell,and the National Academy of Sciences barreled ahead long after Galloand Montagnier settled the dispute to their mutual satisfaction. In 1993the investigations concluded that Gallo had done nothing wrong.Nothing. But this exoneration cannot be considered a happy ending.Never mind the personal suffering of Gallo, who was reviled when heshould have been heralded as a hero. Never mind that, in his words,"These were the most painful years and horrible years of my life." Thedreadful, unconscionable result of the fruitless investigations is thatGallo had to spend four years fighting the accusations instead of fightingAIDS.
The investigations, according to journalist Nicholas Wade, weresparked by an article about Gallo written in the currently popular spiritof demonography: not to praise the person it features but to bury him--toshow his weaknesses, his villainous side. The implication that Gallo hadstolen the AIDS virus was created to fill a requirement of thediscourse: In demonography, writers must find negative sides of theirsubjects to display for readers who enjoy seeing heroes transformedinto villains. The suspicion led to investigations, and the investigationsbecame a juggernaut that acquired a life of its own, fed by theenthusiasm for attack on public figures that is the culture of critique.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Argument Cultureby Deborah Tannen Copyright © 1999 by Deborah Tannen. Excerpted by permission.
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