Communication consultants' perspective suffers from an interesting blind spot - maybe because they run the constant risk of harbouring dubious cross professionals, one aspect of communication remains notoriously underexposed: to remain in the picture, its shady side. We can understand by that ethically dubious or even immoral actions. And it is all the more interesting, as the consulting clients, often enough induced by career motives, expect valuable hints right here: How to mob someone? How to manipulate a person? How to denigrate a competitor? Consultants often balk at these questions - officially. Inofficially these mean tricks do become an issue by organizing seminars meant to protect the participants against them (and implicitly giving insight into how meanness works).
And as taboos will be - they will arouse the highest interest. But should we really leave being insiduous to the naturally talented? Is it not high time to conceive communication solely to two or more parties being involved, not to whether what is communicated actually is morally all right? Beware - manipulation! Advocatus diaboli is fond of Rhetorical Questions. Therfore the reader ought to keep in the back of his/her head the author is acting very unethically - but revealingly.
Take for instance the scheme - a very captivating topic which has at best been reluctantly added to the textbooks of managing social contacts since the days of Machiavelli (who, by the way, was subjected to a similar mistrust). And this is although communication psychologists teach us a phantom which has become a topic is no longer a phantom at all. Schemes are quite ill reputed, probably because they are closely linked with lies, as can be seen from Shakespeare's plays as well as German tragedies of Enligthtenment. However, this is only partly true. Lies are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scheming - presupposing we are referring to the content of what someone is blamed for. But lies do play a part when they are meant to dissimulate the scheme. But let us proceed by turns. Advocatus seems to be carried away by the insight potential the topic involves. Sorry.
Schemes are quite a complex form of communication, because unlike the standard cases we have to take as basis there are not two participants (speaker 1 - speaker 2; he - she; writer - reader) but three, namely 1) the schemer, 2) the victim, 3) the audience. The schemer is the person to put the meanness into work, to plan and practice it. The victim is the person to sustain the plot; he or she is the schemer's target. The audience takes no part in planning the plot, still it indispensable for its success. That is, the audience is the force which, induced by the schemer, punishes the victim. As is not difficult to see, this is a very abstract model. And it has to be, unless we want to close our ears in the first place, motivated by ethical disgust, and scream 'My heart is pure'. So these three functional roles need not be identical with single real persons; without further ado we can imagine the roles are filled with groups of people. It depends on the situative constellation.
The determining factor is the displayed and the concealed intentions are strictly detached. The schemer has the concealed intention to denigrate the victim - for instance, because he or she wants to occupy his or her post within an organization and must get the competitor out of the way. This aim remains secret. The schemer constructs an offence which is serious enough to justify the audience's sanction. Construction can but need not mean lying. It plays no part for the production of a scheme if the reproach is based on facts or not. That at best will have its impact on the prospect the plot may have. The exact kind of offence is variable, too. But as it aims as doing damage to the vistim's reputation, it is meant to undermine his or her credibility. This means the reproach concerns either the character disposition or the competence the victim has. In the first case the schemer indicates to the audience the victim is a schemer (!), in the second the victim is incompetent. But this indication (or denigratiuon) is anything but concealed. Quite the contrary, it must be as open as possible, so that the audience, maybe a little slow, will understand the offence is really worth sanctioning. The next steps are open as well: the indignated measures the audience will take, the victim's desperate struggle for self-defense. In other words: The schemer can behave open as long as his or her motivation is not at issue. Information is free, but the ulterior motives are concealed.
And it is just that difference between what is factually said and what is implicitly meant which makes scheming a typical form of communication. Common language use levels out this difference between, as pragmalinguistics calls it, the locution, the utterance, and the illocution, the speech act, or, as the theory of social systems puts it, between the information and the message as far as possible - it has to, because talking would cease completely for the sake of speculation what might be meant. Nonetheless, the difference still remains.
Modern schemes characteristic of media democracies increasingly fall together with scandals which display a similar three-piece structure. After all, the very concept of audience implies the public component. However, the public of today is not a cultivated gathering of culturally inclined citizens who watch the actant present the victim from an aesthetic point of view, but it has to act as a judge and punish the victim, too. The public means are entirely about changing the victim's reputation. The victim will count less than before the scheme. The schemer triggers off a loss of credibility, of face. The victim cannot show him- or herself in public without seeing accusing fingers pointing in his or her direction - fingers whose possessors do not want to realize it is them who as the audience factually decide if the scheme will be successful, thus potential victims of their own.
After all, only on a more abstract level the functionality of schemes reveals itself entirely. They serve as a permanent medialization, a dissolution and recombination of seemingly constant forms of occupying social positions. To put it differently: By making someone bearing a function attackable they help detach the function from the bearer. No matter how the merry-go-round of personnel may turn, no matter how many specimens of circumstantial evidence are gathered for the day of reckoning - the post itself will not be doubted. It will be merely filled by another person. The more candidates compete with each other the more probably it will remain intact. And schemes actually serve to maintain the systemic difference between position and person by pretending to warn against their entanglement. So personal replacement seems to be the only way to import a minimum of dynamics into predominantly static organizations. The respective scheme victim will take only a small amount of consolation from it, but after all we have gotten accustomed to thinking big, have we not?
Needless to say, there are various techniques of scheming. The author likes to put forward the thesis schemes can as it were form a recurrent interlocked network. It works in accordance with the principle of level skipping. An office-holder who wishes to protect himself from a scheme conceived by his direct subordinate will be well-advised to induce the latter's immediate subordinates in turn to plot and scheme, thus converting the potential schemer into an actual victim. If he acts particularly skillfully, the executors will believe to be the schemers rather than the audience. Like any organization of a modest complexity the answer to the question of who is cheating who only refers to circular structures. And it is exactly that kind of structure which eases moral indignation. Basically all that remains is the question if someone has deserved to be a victim to a scheme.
And as taboos will be - they will arouse the highest interest. But should we really leave being insiduous to the naturally talented? Is it not high time to conceive communication solely to two or more parties being involved, not to whether what is communicated actually is morally all right? Beware - manipulation! Advocatus diaboli is fond of Rhetorical Questions. Therfore the reader ought to keep in the back of his/her head the author is acting very unethically - but revealingly.
Take for instance the scheme - a very captivating topic which has at best been reluctantly added to the textbooks of managing social contacts since the days of Machiavelli (who, by the way, was subjected to a similar mistrust). And this is although communication psychologists teach us a phantom which has become a topic is no longer a phantom at all. Schemes are quite ill reputed, probably because they are closely linked with lies, as can be seen from Shakespeare's plays as well as German tragedies of Enligthtenment. However, this is only partly true. Lies are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scheming - presupposing we are referring to the content of what someone is blamed for. But lies do play a part when they are meant to dissimulate the scheme. But let us proceed by turns. Advocatus seems to be carried away by the insight potential the topic involves. Sorry.
Schemes are quite a complex form of communication, because unlike the standard cases we have to take as basis there are not two participants (speaker 1 - speaker 2; he - she; writer - reader) but three, namely 1) the schemer, 2) the victim, 3) the audience. The schemer is the person to put the meanness into work, to plan and practice it. The victim is the person to sustain the plot; he or she is the schemer's target. The audience takes no part in planning the plot, still it indispensable for its success. That is, the audience is the force which, induced by the schemer, punishes the victim. As is not difficult to see, this is a very abstract model. And it has to be, unless we want to close our ears in the first place, motivated by ethical disgust, and scream 'My heart is pure'. So these three functional roles need not be identical with single real persons; without further ado we can imagine the roles are filled with groups of people. It depends on the situative constellation.
The determining factor is the displayed and the concealed intentions are strictly detached. The schemer has the concealed intention to denigrate the victim - for instance, because he or she wants to occupy his or her post within an organization and must get the competitor out of the way. This aim remains secret. The schemer constructs an offence which is serious enough to justify the audience's sanction. Construction can but need not mean lying. It plays no part for the production of a scheme if the reproach is based on facts or not. That at best will have its impact on the prospect the plot may have. The exact kind of offence is variable, too. But as it aims as doing damage to the vistim's reputation, it is meant to undermine his or her credibility. This means the reproach concerns either the character disposition or the competence the victim has. In the first case the schemer indicates to the audience the victim is a schemer (!), in the second the victim is incompetent. But this indication (or denigratiuon) is anything but concealed. Quite the contrary, it must be as open as possible, so that the audience, maybe a little slow, will understand the offence is really worth sanctioning. The next steps are open as well: the indignated measures the audience will take, the victim's desperate struggle for self-defense. In other words: The schemer can behave open as long as his or her motivation is not at issue. Information is free, but the ulterior motives are concealed.
And it is just that difference between what is factually said and what is implicitly meant which makes scheming a typical form of communication. Common language use levels out this difference between, as pragmalinguistics calls it, the locution, the utterance, and the illocution, the speech act, or, as the theory of social systems puts it, between the information and the message as far as possible - it has to, because talking would cease completely for the sake of speculation what might be meant. Nonetheless, the difference still remains.
Modern schemes characteristic of media democracies increasingly fall together with scandals which display a similar three-piece structure. After all, the very concept of audience implies the public component. However, the public of today is not a cultivated gathering of culturally inclined citizens who watch the actant present the victim from an aesthetic point of view, but it has to act as a judge and punish the victim, too. The public means are entirely about changing the victim's reputation. The victim will count less than before the scheme. The schemer triggers off a loss of credibility, of face. The victim cannot show him- or herself in public without seeing accusing fingers pointing in his or her direction - fingers whose possessors do not want to realize it is them who as the audience factually decide if the scheme will be successful, thus potential victims of their own.
After all, only on a more abstract level the functionality of schemes reveals itself entirely. They serve as a permanent medialization, a dissolution and recombination of seemingly constant forms of occupying social positions. To put it differently: By making someone bearing a function attackable they help detach the function from the bearer. No matter how the merry-go-round of personnel may turn, no matter how many specimens of circumstantial evidence are gathered for the day of reckoning - the post itself will not be doubted. It will be merely filled by another person. The more candidates compete with each other the more probably it will remain intact. And schemes actually serve to maintain the systemic difference between position and person by pretending to warn against their entanglement. So personal replacement seems to be the only way to import a minimum of dynamics into predominantly static organizations. The respective scheme victim will take only a small amount of consolation from it, but after all we have gotten accustomed to thinking big, have we not?
Needless to say, there are various techniques of scheming. The author likes to put forward the thesis schemes can as it were form a recurrent interlocked network. It works in accordance with the principle of level skipping. An office-holder who wishes to protect himself from a scheme conceived by his direct subordinate will be well-advised to induce the latter's immediate subordinates in turn to plot and scheme, thus converting the potential schemer into an actual victim. If he acts particularly skillfully, the executors will believe to be the schemers rather than the audience. Like any organization of a modest complexity the answer to the question of who is cheating who only refers to circular structures. And it is exactly that kind of structure which eases moral indignation. Basically all that remains is the question if someone has deserved to be a victim to a scheme.
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