Dark Side- Making Sense of The Metaphor: Week 2

PERSONAL REFLECTION-Who I am as a Dark Side Communicator

The first prompt asks us to incorporate who we are as dark side communicators into our reflection. I'll confess, I did not see this prompt when I first wrote this post, and my personal reflection is focused mainly on making sense of the metaphor. However, when I think of myself as a dark side communicator, a number of things come to mind. Perhaps that which intrigues me the most is my personal bias toward "talking things through". Throughout my life, I have always been complemented on my ability to articulate my thoughts and perspectives well. This has served me well both personally and professionally, leading to interpersonal respect and promotional opportunities in the workplace, strong friendships and relationships in both professional and personal settings and the ability to emerge as leader in many contexts. All bright and sunny, right? Well, not always.

As a wife, this has been both bright and dark. It has served me well in helping Jason (my husband) and I talk through issues inherent in the marriage, raising children, making life decisions, etc. But with this talent comes responsibility that I often forget in the heat of the moment. Sometimes, Jason tells me he feels lost in the discussion, unable to articulate his thought as quickly as me and therefore not able to refute a point I make that he disagrees with during the course of a discussion. Frustrated, he may begin getting defensive and this leads to a fight. And that's a good outcome. Because, when he doesn't express frustration (presumably to avoid an argument), he feels as if he's lost his voice in our relationship. That's dark, particularly when you're talking about marriage as a partnership. Communicative skill and knowledge is a major source of interpersonal power, one I often forget to be mindful of in my interpersonal interactions. Though not strategic in attempting to secure voice in my interactions, it happens naturally because of the skill and knowledge my education and profession have afforded me. I need to be mindful all the time of making sure I accept the responsibility of using my skills to enable voice of all those with whom I interact. So, my communicative skills often are lauded as positive, good, bright and shiny attributes for my relational and professional success. However, there is a clear dark side that is often unacknowledged.

As a parent, this bias has also manifested as both bright and dark from my perspective. I see my role as fundamentally an educator (certainly more than that, but that's my metaphor). As such, I look for opportunities to explain things/educate my children, offering a good amount of detail when I do so. This serves me well much of the time, but there are times it backfires and creates problems. I could list a thousand examples, some of them really funny and others pretty troubling. For the sake of space, I'll discuss one that really sticks out for me. When my daughter (then 8 years old) asked me about making babies, I sat her down, talked her through it (with my 4 year old daughter at her side), used the correct terminology and explained what sex was both functionally and from my moral perspective.  It went well. She didn't get most of it, and, while much of it went over her head, it served what I would consider to be a "bright" purpose in our relationship. She trusts me to be honest with her, to take her seriously and she's not uncomfortable asking me about sex. However, it simultaneously functioned in darkness in so much as, at age 8, she knew more than your average 8 year old about the act of sex.When talking with friends, she was clearly well educated in the matter and used the correct terms, and was initially made to feel uncomfortable for not using slang. I equipped her with information that I felt would benefit her as a person, and while it did in many ways, it also served to (temporarily) isolate her from her peer group--a potentially dark component, at least in my view. She had to communicatively negotiate that chasm. The implications of this for social construction of sex and masculinity/femininity is something that I think has seriously dark implications as well.

PERSONAL REFLECTION- Making Sense of the Metaphor

As I sort through what the dark side of interpersonal communication is and come to terms with the functional ambivalence notion of the metaphor of the dark side, I am focusing on what Cupach and Spitzberg highlight in The Dark Side of Personal Relationships II (p. 8)-- a concept that permeated our readings-- when they talk about the two dimensions of the dark side. This is the scheme that is presented as helpful in "delineating varieties of darkness that further illuminates the relationship between dark and bright" (p.8). As such they assert that darkness is a function of two dimensions: The first is what is considered normatively and morally appropriate versus inappropriate (as determined by society) and the second that which is functionally productive vs functionally destructive (the degree to which an activity promotes or prevents the survival or thriving of a person or social system).

As I grapple with this, I can't help but call to mind this movie clip from A Few Good Men. Granted this is an over-used movie clip, classic and perhaps a little tired. But, it is where my head first went as I began making sense of the metaphor. In it, Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) clearly demonstrates his understanding of his very existence as functionally ambivalent, serving a much needed purpose for national security that all of us need (functional role), but that he understands to be socially viewed as morally repugnant. This movie clip is likely to guide my understanding of the dark side of interpersonal communication and I hope will be a beacon of understanding for me as I immerse myself in the study of the dark side of communication, keeping me grounded in the idea that what we are discussing this semester is one element of the larger construct of interpersonal communication, inseparable from a larger, more comprehensive understanding of IPC. My blog reflection will continue below the clip.

"My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives". In my view, Colonel Jessup's understanding of himself along with his view of how others understand him is the embodiment of the metaphor for the Dark Side. He sees himself as functionally and morally productive-someone who provides a blanket of protection for those not able/willing to defend the country. He sees the manner in which he provides this protection as morally acceptable/justified given the functional importance of his position, though he recognizes that society rejects the manner in which he provides or carries out his function. He has a clear recognition that others recognize the functional value of his role as they benefit from it, but reject the moral implications of it, often distancing themselves from it as they minimize the existence and necessity of this role in their day-to-day interactions.There is a clear discrepancy in the perception of what constitutes darkness between him as the provider of protection and society as the benefactor of that protection. And I guess this observation in the metaphor guides most of my response/critique/reaction to the readings.

As a researcher, this metaphor seems like a great opportunity to see my work in more nuanced and complex ways. It encourages me to challenge myself to see that which is ignored or thrown out or disregarded as insignificant and look harder at it. It reminds me to listen to my own instincts and to pay attention to the interactions and experiences I have in my "lay" existence so that these can inform my research trajectory.  In Duck's (1994) chapter, he says that "teachers and their graduate students relentlessly pursued the clarification of established topics, without looking over their shoulders to see if real people were following them at all" (p. 17). While an important observation, I see it is falling a bit short (and this was written in 1994, so perhaps it was pioneering in moving us toward a less academy-centric notion of research). We should be less concerned about what real people are following us and much more concerned about following real people. Let them guide our research pursuits so that what we study remains salient beyond the academy.  It reminds me of when I first read research on the study of silence and began to see it as an important part of the communicative process--this recognition was essential and seemed sort of like "no-duh"...but it truly was an "a-ha" moment in my understanding of our discipline. It really shed some light on a central phenomenon that, for me, was  something that existed in the shadows. Silence was always there...always communicating...always working within our relationships and interactions. But I wasn't paying attention to it until I read Organizing Silence by Robin Patric Clair.

Building on this, in the chapter written by Duck (1994), I began to see an ethical responsibility we bear as researchers to explore the balance between the light and dark side of communication given the polarized understanding of what constitutes "good" and "bad" communicative processes within the lay discourse. When you consider the social oppression associated with maintenance of a simplistic understanding of communication as entirely light or entirely dark, you begin to see how our failure as a discipline to link both sides of communication together clearly has served to perpetuated norms that perpetuate oppressive environments for those whose "normal" communication tendencies align with that which lies in the shadows. This could be one important way for us to use our research to broaden the lay understanding of communication to include processes that heretofore have been perceived and disregarded as deviant.

Additionally, we need to think about how what we choose to research, and that prioritization of the phenomenon, is interpreted in the lay discourse. IF our research does reach lay audiences, and we hope that it does, what role will it play in creating a lens for them to see the act through? Will they see the lens for what it is, or will the interpret the lens in a more dualistic/polarized manner (ie...all light/all dark)...and what are the ramifications of this? Does/ how does this change our ethical orientation toward choosing topics of study and translating our findings?

In this clip, there is even the beginnings of a rhetorical analysis of these differences when he says "We use words like code, honor and loyalty. We use these words as a backbone of a life spent defending something, you use them as a punchline".  The very words that promote a life of sacrifice spent defending a country in service of fulfilling an essential societal function are the same words that serve to legitimate an uncritical response to an immoral order in a new context--where light has driven it from out of the shadows.  As a researcher, I think about how the words we use serve so many different functions with different populations in different contexts, and how they can be simultaneously bright and dark--as in this example, these words are productive/moral (bright) for the Colonel and the majority of his military unit and productive/immoral (dark) for the attorneys who represent the perspective of the public at large. I'll keep working on this metaphor--but for me, this clip/movie is a good exemplar through which I can work with some of these concepts.

CRITICAL REFLECTION

 As I think about the readings in a critical way, several questions come to mind. First, I was initially struggling with the typology offered by Duck (1994), particularly how "spoiling" behaviors such as infidelity could fall under good intentions--until I read Cupach & Spitzberg (2007) where they explain more clearly (for me, at least) that spoiling is emergent from inherent difficulties, like conflict and bickering. Duck makes this clear as I look back on it, but, having read Duck first, I think perhaps I was wrapping my mind around it and was not able to fully grasp it upon my initial exposure to the concept. Having said that, I think it's important to be careful about categorizing behaviors and attitudes as inherent versus emergent. Perhaps this was clear in the readings and I have not yet picked up on it (you can see that I have a tendency to do that once in a while) but I it seems to me that thinking about inherent versus emergent behaviors can be overly simplistic in that, while it accounts  for some choice, I'm not entirely comfortable with its representation of that choice. So, I'm going to walk through it here as I think it through. What happens when inherent conflict does not result in spoiling? How is this studied? What about when bullying behavior does not result in sabotage? Is that still dark? Does it still fall under the rubric of the dark side? If not, where would these kinds of behaviors fall on Duck's functional/moral dimensions?  As I think about this, it's clear that the choice made influences the emergent behavior and how/where that falls on the typology, so, I see how choice is accounted for...but I'm still suspicious of its simplicity.

Second, from whose perspective is this typology situated and how are various perspectives within one interaction accounted for within it? So, if you look at this from the bully's perspective, it will fall quite differently (and for different bullies, this will fall differently, right?) So, those that see themselves as bullies may view the behavior as falling at one point across these dimensions while someone who does not see themselves as a bully but who engages in bullying behavior may view it as falling quite differently (so, identity is key here). Then you consider the victims of the act or of the bully and whether they perceive themselves as victims. Where does the behavior fall on the dimensions for them? How does the typology help us construct research questions that deal with these various perspectives within an interaction? I'm sure it does, it's just not clear to me how--so discussing this would be of great benefit to me, I think.

So the BIG question that jumps out for me from all this is--From what point of view should we approach our research? From the victim? From the bully? Is there room or even benefit in rectifying the perspectives as far as how it is perceived in falling on this typology? I don't know. All of these questions are really interesting to me.  I'm curious to see what other people think. Ethically, as in all research, we have to think about what perspective we take and what that does to those perspectives unattended to...and the study of the dark side seems to highlight that. We cannot continue to privilege that which is deemed normal versus that which is deemed deviant. In our research, we need to legitimize that which is perceived as deviant because in reality it is normal. The struggle here, as was highlighted in the readings and discussed in class, is that when we take a more realistic approach to the study of communication processes that includes that which is perceived as positive communicative processes resulting in negative outcomes and that which is perceived as negative communicative processes resulting in positive outcomes, we run the risk of either (1) legitimizing communicative processes that are destructive in many contexts and/or (2) de-legitimizing the value of our work in the eyes of the lay public, or as Duck refers to them, as "real people". How do we combat that?

Well, I think as in all research, it needs to be contextualized and translated as contextual rather than a-contextual, an observation made by Perlman and Carcedo (2011, p. 25) when they talk about how most of the data analysis uses an individual rather than a dyadic approach, even as researchers recognize the influence of dyads and groups on individual behaviors.  They indicate that most of the research on the dark side is quantitative, though they recognize the value of qualitative research for understanding the dark side. For the work to be truly translational as we discussed and read about on the first day, it must be presented as dependent on relational and social context, which is a struggle--this requires the use of at least some qualitative methods in a world looking for quantitative answers.

Going further, is it useful to think of inherent and emergent as distinct all the time or are there times/situations when they can be usefully conflated in understanding communicative behavior? In other words, the emergence of behavior necessarily perpetuates the inherent relationship and the experience within it. The emergent choice that results from the inherent attitude or relationship necessarily influences what is presumed as inherent. While I see the value in studying these as distinct, can there be value in viewing them as conflated? Perhaps not. But I think it's important to recognize that they are often conflated in the lay understanding of these processes. So perhaps its the articulation of them as distinct that is important as we translate this type of research.

Identity is essential in the process of studying the dark side of communication. Are you a deceiver or did you deceive? Who perceives you as a deceiver? Why? Who perceives you as a good person who simply deceives now and then? Why? Which viewpoint is socially dominant?  What role does sociocultural, socioeconomic, historical, and relational context play in this? What are the ramifications for the distribution of power? How do discrepancies in perspectives influence inherent versus emergent behaviors across the typology offered by Duck (1994)?

Finally, the study of the dark side often blurs the lines  of good and evil (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1998), which I take to mean social expectations of what constitutes good and evil. This, for me, along with the centrality of identity and the need for incorporating relational, group and social contexts, offers an opportunity for intergroup scholarship. Darkness is characterized by Spitzberg & Cupach (1998) as a contrast between who and what we are versus who and what we ought to be. This, to me, is a nice contrast between micro-level understandings of individual identity and macro-level social expectations. Given that I am trying to locate my own research as a connection between micro/macro level processes, I can see the dark side of communication as an entry point to study these processes in this way. Based on the overview of research offered by Perlman & Carcedo (2011), I don't see evidence of much IG theorizing as they list six theories that are most prominently used in the study of the dark side (attachment theory, uncertainty reduction theory, inconsistent nurturing as control, safe ground theory, and communication privacy management theory). It would be interesting to see how an intergroup perspective in dark side processes can help illuminate the mutual influence (duality of structure?) of individual identity and social expectations. So one critical observation I have that is likely to be answered as the course goes on is to first wonder what work has been done from an intergroup perspective on the dark side of communication, and second, if not much, highlight that as an important lens to pursue within the dark side construct.