TY - JOUR
AU - Lawton,, Rebecca
AB - Abstract The conduit metaphor is the primary expression of linguistic communication in our culture (M. J. Reddy, 1979). It structures theories and frameworks based on the “Code Model” (from C. E. Shannon & W. Weaver, 1949) such as the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (R. E. Kasperson et al., 1988; N. Pidgeon, R. E. Kasperson, & P. Slovic, [Eds] 2003). The conduit metaphor structure objectifies source, receiver, and messages, which are talked of as “objects” or “substances” passed along a conduit to a receiver to be recovered. Metaphor analysis of 6 semistructured interviews with laypersons about terrorism and the media showed how the conduit metaphor structures a subjective process of reification, quantification, comparison, and judgment. This interpretation suggests that the demands of the conduit metaphor structure for the transferred message to be “invariant” and “pure” can influence relationships of trust and blame between media and public. The authors suggest that a notion of interactive communication between the media and the public should take into consideration the power of the conduit metaphor structure to shape understandings. The conduit metaphor is a formidable adversary of effective communication. Its main advantages are stealth and pervasiveness, and its main appeal is psychological comfort. (Axley, 1996, p. 47) Although many studies have focused on media coverage of terrorism, there is relatively little work on how ordinary people interpret these media reports. For example, a search on the Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts database (ASSIA) database (March 2007) with the keywords “terror* and discourse” returned 578 peer-reviewed articles, of which only 8 focused on laypersons’ accounts. Recent work on media communication suggests that people are active in their media consumption and adapt messages from the media into their own personal frameworks (Edy & Meirick, 2007). This article aims to investigate how people respond to media coverage of terrorism. It shows how the participants’ language about the communication of terror and the media can be interpreted as interactive only within the constraints of the conduit model, and so poses the question as to how important everyday language is to our understanding of communication and vice versa. It also suggests that everyday language structures can be important in our understanding of trust between communication source, mediator, and receiver. In posing such questions, this article offers an example of how linguists and discourse psychologists may contribute to the issue of the communication of terrorism and the media. The conduit metaphor The notion that, when communicating, we put ideas into words, move them along a conduit, and have them unpacked at the receiving end by another is sometimes called the “conduit metaphor” (Reddy, 1979). This is a metaphorical structure of communication common in our culture. It is pervasive (Rasmussen, 1991), common (Day, 2000), and claims for its influence in the structure of communicative language are controversial (Eubanks, 2001). Reddy argued that the conduit metaphor of the ontological relations of information, source, and receiver so shapes understanding that we are not aware of its action; we only become aware of it if we try to construct another metaphor to bring it into relief. Reddy commented that: Practically speaking, if you try to avoid all obvious conduit metaphor expressions in your usage, you are nearly struck dumb when communication becomes the topic. (1979, p. 299) The conduit metaphor is illustrated by such commonplace and idiomatic remarks as: “I’m trying to get my message across,”“do you get my meaning here?” or more subtly: “those ideas carry no weight.” In these examples, the message, the messenger, and the inferred receiver are talked of in an active, objectified relationship. This requires inferences to be made, such as to whom the message will be delivered, that a particular meaning is transferred from the speaker to the listener, and that heavier ideas are more important, respectively. Note that any reference to a “conduit” in these remarks is inferred; indeed, it is the inference that identifies it as metaphorical. Conduit expressions may have important consequences for our understanding of communication, particularly of issues such as trust and blame. The conduit metaphor is worthy of investigation because not only is the “everyday language” of communication structured around this metaphor (Reddy, 1979) but also social theories and frameworks of communication make extensive use of it, particularly those based on the “transmission” or “Code Model” of communication, that is, based on information theory and information science (Day, 2000). For example, the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (Kasperson et al., 1988; Pidgeon et al., 2003, etc.) through its adoption of an amplification metaphor structures its understandings of communication around conduit expressions of sender, receivers, and transmitted messages. Most published work with the conduit metaphor is in the area of management and technical communications (e.g., Axley, 1984, 1996; Abbott & Eubanks, 2005; Day, 2000; Rasmussen, 1991), however, this study concentrates on the everyday language of the lay public. Systematic metaphors The idea that metaphorical expressions structure communication is not new and has been a key finding of cognitive linguistics (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Social psychologists have also become interested in how systematic metaphors structure particular discourses (e.g., El-Sawad, 2005; Oberlechner, Slunecko, & Kronberger, 2004). Although taken individually, many of these metaphors are ordinary or everyday, they form systematic groupings that provide a framework for discourse. This is based on the creation of an “ontology” of “things” (making the abstract “concrete” as Lakoff & Johnson [1980] claimed), and we are able to consider these communicative ontologies not as mere words, but as structural devices, allowing us to “recover” meanings, packaged and sent by the conduit structure. This action of creation, or reification from inference, is unconscious (Gibbs, 1999). The conduit metaphor is just one of many systematic metaphors that have been identified through the study of “everyday” language. Other examples include LIFE IS A JOURNEY and ARGUMENT IS WAR. (It is conventional to write systematic metaphors in capital letters to distinguish them from individual examples of metaphors in normal type.) The conduit metaphor structure at work The commonality of the conduit metaphor has several consequences for assumptions about communication. Reddy (1979) explains that it implies communication is “…success without effort” (p. 295), and we can deduce that communication problems could be caused by a violation of this assumption. This model assumes that the message exists as a bounded entity to be transferred along a conduit, as with the commonplace expressions: “I get the message” or “tell it to me straight.” One can refer to the traveling information “package” in terms of quality and quantity in order to make judgments about it, or the source, messenger, or receiver. After all, “if you are not telling me straight,” you may be “hiding something,” or more prosaically, “throwing me a curveball” (all conduit-structured metaphorical phrases). In these examples, assumptions of the principle of honesty (or “sincerity conditions” in talk [Turnbull, 2003]) may have been violated. This article suggests that talk about communication of the risk of harm from terrorism involves such inferences because the conduit metaphor structure constrains people to assume that there is (through inference) a “pure” state of a message. This inference, from the “metaphor of invariance” (Poore & Chrisman, 2006, after Shannon & Weaver, 1949) helps us understand how “distortions” and hence judgments of trust and accountability are continually adjusted and maintained. For example, Frewer (2003, p. 126), discussing trust in risk communication, states that: “Distrust is associated with perceptions of deliberate distortions of information.” A distortion infers a “normal” communicative state of communication success: message transmitted, message (invariant) received—but wait, what has happened to the message on the way? Might we infer that what we have “received” has been distorted? If so, by whom, and for what purpose? Terrorism, media communication, and the conduit metaphor Despite the difficulty of a consensual definition of terrorism that has hindered researchers (Tuman, 2003; Weinberg, Pedhazur, & Hirsch-Hoefler, 2004), terrorism needs no introduction as a topic of communication or risk research, nor its links with media “promotion” (Althiede, 2007). Studies involving “lay” persons’ understandings of the subject are underrepresented, however, particularly in comparison with studies on political discourse and the media (see above). Petts, Horlick-Jones, and Murdock (2001; [see also Murdock, Petts, & Horlick-Jones, 2003]) conducted an extensive study on “lay” understandings of risk and the media, which can illustrate the conduit structure at work. Participants felt that the news should be a reliable and unbiased source of information, but they also felt they could not believe everything the newspapers said. This active process of dealing with the media led Petts et al. (2001, p. 89) to state that “…rather than thinking of people as ‘receiving’ media ‘messages,’ we need to see them as actively interpreting and judging media materials,…” The analysis that follows will show how such active interpretation is commonly expressed with the conduit metaphor structure, constraining it. This structural shaping of the “interaction” between media and person is often achieved with the common metaphorical device of personification. By preserving “objects” with invariance, personification allows those to be manipulated discursively in the same way as “real” material objects are. Therefore, media messages can be prized, bought, sold, lost, broken, stolen, cherished, fought over, and so on; a personalized and emotionalized relationship. The analysis also suggests that personification and the conduit metaphor structure can work together to position the participants in active or passive relationships with the media and the state of message. The aims of the article, therefore, are to present an interpretation of six “lay” persons talking about terrorism and the media in terms of the conduit metaphor structure, highlighting how this shapes and constrains communicative understanding, with particular reference to trust and interaction. Following Petts et al. (2001), the article aims to help satisfy the need for: “a more detailed understanding of lay interpretative practices” (p. 93) relating to the communication of terrorist risk, especially from mediated information. The study Participants There were six participants, four female and two male, aged between 21 and 50 years. Five participants were White, of British origin, and one is of Jamaican origin. All were British citizens and native English speakers. Three live in London and three in the north of England. All participants gave informed consent in line with British Psychological Society guidelines and have been given pseudonyms. Participants were all lay people; that is, they did not work in security, policing, or other jobs related to dealing with the threat of terrorism. Five were of “professional” occupation status and one of “manual” occupation status. They were chosen through personal contacts on the basis of their proximity to London (on July 7, 2005), in that a contrast was sought between those living in London and those living elsewhere in England at the time. This contrast is not directly relevant to the analysis in this article. Procedure Semistructured interviews were conducted in 2006, one with each participant. Interviews lasted approximately 1 hour. The questions centered around risk and terrorism, including such issues as travel, personal safety, the media, and location. The questions included: “What does the phrase ‘9/11’ mean to you?”“To what extent do you think London is a safe city?” and “Can you describe an image that comes to mind when I say the word: ‘terrorist?’” Related to the media and terrorism, questions included: “How do you know about the phenomenon of terrorism?”“What words or phrases would describe the relationship between the media and terrorism?” and “If you could change the way the media operate with reference to terrorism, what would you change?” Participants were also presented with some visual prompts. These were covers or extracts from newspapers with either strong visual terrorist-incident images or large terrorism-related headlines. The headlines were: “The Brit Bombers” (The Sun July 13, 2005), “Terror Laws: Tell Tony He’s Right”(The Sun, November 8, 2005), “Just How Many More of Them?” (including an image of “terrorists,”Daily Mail, May 12, 2006), and “Did They Foil A New 9/11?” (headline on an image of the burning “Twin Towers,”Daily Mail August 11, 2006). Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using metaphor analysis (Todd & Harrison, 2008). This involves identifying and coding all the metaphors used by the participants, not just those that fit with the conduit structure. Identification and coding of metaphors are based on Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Kovecses (2002). For the purposes of this analysis, salient sections of the text were then identified and coded in terms of their use of the conduit metaphor structure in talk about the media and terrorism. Other metaphorical structures were coded too. These metaphors were then interpreted into “systemic” relationships in the context of their expression (Todd & Harrison, 2008). These “systems” of metaphor use were compared between participants to draw themes and relations, which group under the conduit metaphor structure. Of particular interest in identification and coding for this analysis are the expressions and inferences of information as a “substance,” which travels between source “containers,” most commonly, the media as “source” and the self as “container” of received information. The inferences speakers and listeners make with common metaphors such as the conduit metaphor are not fixed and require contextual interpretation, therefore interpretation of inference helps the researcher understand how metaphors can shape understanding of issues such as trust and blame. Participants’ expressions of the conduit metaphor are presented below, with selected examples. Results Participants’ talk about communication was often structured by the conduit metaphor, sometimes in combination with personification. An ontology of source and message as objects was used, which enables participants to talk about the amount of information passed along the conduit. This is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows the information as separate from the source of the information (the media). The arrows represent the conduit along which the information (or potential response) is presumed to travel from one container to another. We receive information from the media and may respond. Metaphorically, what one physically could do to an object passed (or offered) along the conduit from one to another allows elaborations of quantity, weight, appearance (including concealment), comparison, potential for harm or benefit, and so on, to be applied to this information or action. Inferences of intent are also attached to the giver or source, such as honesty or deception, control, financial gain, and so on. Participants could experience a personal reaction to this. Thus, intent and trust are inferred too, passed back along the conduit, suggesting an interactive relationship of objects. This response is the speaker’s representation and does not mean a personal interaction with the media source itself. Talk about media coverage of the risk of terrorism is arranged into four main areas. The movement of information along the conduit is described at times as a shortage (Section 1) and at other times as an excess of information or action (Section 2). The relationship between media, government, and the population is personified (Section 3). The final section describes how these participants talk about the quality of information received (Section 4). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide A Systemization of the Expression of the Conduit Metaphor for the Participants. Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide A Systemization of the Expression of the Conduit Metaphor for the Participants. Shortage of information Participants quantified the information that they obtained from the media and often used the conduit metaphor to talk about a lack of information: “…as with all news items and parts of the media, we don’t get the full story.” (Linda) This quote refers to an awareness of a “missing” amount, which is a feature of all information of this kind, hence the information from this source is judged quantitatively. The shortage of information is seen as having consequences for people’s opinions. For example, Mary says: …I’m sure we only had a very small proportion of the information that people making the decisions had, and it’s very difficult to prejudge what you should and shouldn’t do when you don’t have all the facts… Here, the information is objectified as something that people only have a “small proportion” of. This lack of amount infers a judgment on the source (which is not necessarily the media), it is also used to provide a reason for action or lack of action; in this case, the lack of a judgment. The lack of information becomes a force of indecision. Linda elaborates on the media as a (personified) giver, using “information-as-substance”: …they don’t want to release as much, or there are blocks on what they can release, but…I think there’s a lot that we don’t hear. This is interesting for two reasons. First, the resistance is seen as affecting the amount of information released in a way that suggests that the substance has its own momentum along the conduit. This extends the conduit metaphor structure. Second, it implies that the movement of information from media to people is interfered with by an inferred authority (interpreted as government). This is a three-way relationship that affects her understanding of both the media and the source of the interference. Although the previous example showed information moving from the government to people via the media, the flow of information also worked in another direction, from government to self. Another participant expressed this with a physical metaphor of the active media (“pushing”): …it’s things that they’re querying [the media], which is good, because we probably wouldn’t get enough details, if we weren’t, if the media weren’t pushing the government. In this example, the people (“we”) are positioned in a passive state in relation to the source and giver. The media is shown as a force on the (too heavy) weight of government (inferred) to provide information on the conduit. This expresses a relationship between self (or “us”) and media and is extended in this case to include terrorism and the government. Thus, the media can sometimes be talked of as a positive force, which increases the amount of information available about terrorism from the government, its positive value judged from a comparison of the amount received with the amount required for a “full story.” Excess of information and action Participants often described an excess of information or action. For example, referring to the media reporting terrorism: “…I think they’ve really overblown the terrorist threat, massively overblown it…” (Chris) and “…I think certain parts of the media overplay it,…I think they’re sort of fairly over the top…” (Linda). In this talk it is not the amount of threat or fear transferred along the conduit which is excessive. Instead, it is the actions of involved parties in the manipulation of that information that result in its excess, and this is described metaphorically as a force in the conduit. For example, Kirsten infers an excess of force for the media which needs to be “…put back in their place.” The common metaphorical idiom “fueling” was sometimes used to express the action of excess and infer its consequences: …so often I think terrorist attacks are in order to get attention for a particular cause, or to make people, to give power to a certain group, or make people feel vulnerable, and I think the media plays a part in fuelling that…(Fiona) These metaphors of excess sometimes use the past tense and sometimes the present tense. Thus, the metaphor can express ongoing object relationships rather than a substance (such as a threat), which has been delivered to its destination. Note that both Linda and Fiona use a theatrical metaphor (variation on “play”—“overplay” or “play a part”) to indicate the catalytic role of excess. Elaborating this metaphor suggests that these participants are aware that the media are concerned with action of the substance along the conduit and its manipulation from source to receiver. This manipulation is expressed by Linda citing the media (as a personified object/force) as having a direct effect on a certain group of people by a reference to their “use” of terrorist events (“these things”), and she introduces an example (a past-time container of events) to illustrate: They [the people] are aware of these things, the media highlight them, so…I think that escalates their awareness of them, I mean,…I have a theory of,…about the way the Bradford riots escalated is because the media fuelled it, and a lot of them were just copycats… The metaphorical relationship of “highlighting” and “awareness escalation” suggests the catalytic quality of certain mediated information (as a volatile substance), a particular effect, and an inferred responsibility on those indulging in this act. There is some circularity in the conduit metaphor here since the “fueller” of the flames is not expected to be the one who douses the fire. Some participants used the word “sensational” to describe the media reporting on terrorism. Mary reacted to a visual prompt (tabloid newspaper headline) by saying: …that’s what that headline is really trying to bring home to you, isn’t it? But I think the first thing that hits me about it is that its sensationalistic, so then I read it with an element of caution, when I come to it… Her adoption of the object/substance possession: “…an element of caution…” due to the force of the headline infers a force of judgment on its validity and the validity of the source. This force we might call a resistance. So we can see that the quantification of information or action (force) and its comparison with an inferred “correct” amount also allow judgments of its quality in terms of trust, validity, and the purpose of the communication. This is expressed by Mary in a personified conduit structure: “…that headline is really trying to bring home…” Personification and emotion as a force A personified relationship is used to talk about terrorism, the media, and government. Kirsten, commenting on a picture from The Sun on the Terror Laws, expressed the conversation she would like compared to the mediated one “we” experience: …it’s the newspaper again telling people what to say, which, I think for some people it’s, they shouldn’t have to be told by the newspaper what to say to their government. Surely it’s up to us, and the media should assist us, in telling the government, rather than them telling us what we should say. The personification of objects here allows a conversational elaboration on relations, which is still broadly a conduit structure. The information potentially moving along the conduit is the “what we should say.” It is interesting also to note her belief that ideally the media should be passing information from the populace to the government, rather than the other way around. The structure is used not just for information but also for emotion as transferred object. This is illustrated by Kirsten’s reaction to another newspaper cover prompt: “They’re just trying to, I think,…shock, they’re trying to get shock,…” She continues by expressing the reason for the attempt to provide this shock substance: “…in a way it’s [the newspaper] trying to unsettle everyone…” Kirsten elaborates on this personified relationship using common idiomatic expressions: “…I think they [the media]should know their limits, and they probably do. And every now and then they push them.” In this relationship, force (pushing) is used to express particular actions between objects, which are relational. Another example describes an emotional reaction to not having the required amount of information when necessary, in this case a reaction to “9/11”: …we just kept hearing snatches of bits of news…and I think that was the most scary aspect of it, was not having a full understanding of what was going on…” (Fiona) The knowledge that a full understanding is required but not available is expressed as an emotional force (fear). Fiona also infers an excess of action (force) when she expresses media as a personified force: “…I think the media does make people panic…” Hence, an expression of emotion as a force can be a result of the judgment of amount from the expectations of the conduit structure. Kirsten, as we have seen in her personification of the force of the media, expresses a lack of quantity of information, and she also refers to an excessive motion action of the giver and a concern for the quality of information transmitted: “…they go too far, in reporting too much, or maybe reporting the wrong thing.” The assumed invariance of the information substance leads her to question both the information object/substance and its purity but not her subjective judgment. Personification is the vehicle for the transformation of the objects reified by the conduit structure to a simulation of intersubjectivity: a relationship that often places participants in a passive position. Expressing the quality of information The quality of information provided by the media was also important to participants. The information is important because it is a tool for personal decision making: “…what I would like is information so that I can make a personal assessment as to how to assess risk whenever I go somewhere…” (Harry). However, it is the quality of the information he receives rather than the quantity, which draws his attention: …I think conjecture has creeped in and it’s become a lot of ‘maybes’ and what could happen…if there’s no weight attached to risk, the information becomes useless. You can suppose anything will happen, but it’s unlikely. And more and more if you’re told this could happen, and it doesn’t happen, I’ve begun to assume what I’m hearing is very unlikely, because there is no weight given to it…” (Harry) Harry expresses quality of information in terms of weight, inferring that the “heavier” the information is, the more useful a tool for his assessment purposes, that is, its quality is judged by its physical attribute as a quantity (“weight”). However, conjecture and “maybes”“creeping in” (an organic and/or personified metaphor of pollution of quality) has a detrimental effect on the weight (quality). Harry offers two outcomes of this judgment of the quality of information, first on his relationship with the media and “information”: …it’s disturbing that I don’t think of it as information, it’s almost entertainment, although the news shouldn’t be. That’s the impression I’m beginning to form. It hasn’t always been that way. Here, a comparison is offered to “contain” the particular action, in this case, past and present time “containers” (expressing time as space bound by and containing events, actions, etc., is a common metaphorical act, see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Again a comparison is made between quality of information as received and a potential “correct” set (“…the news shouldn’t be…”). The transformation of information to “almost entertainment” as a judgment of quality is sometimes seen as a feature of “tabloid” journalism (see Petts et al., 2001; Tuman, 2003). Second, Harry draws a conclusion from the judgment of information quality for his relationship with terrorism: …telling me ‘maybe’ isn’t giving me any useful information, that’s conjecture, so it has actually reinforced my detachment from terrorism… Harry expresses here a physical metaphor relationship with terrorism based on the transformation of received information; news: “useful” to conjecture: “useless.” This is an active process. As above, this also expresses a personified relationship with the media: “…telling me…giving me…” Hence, Harry expresses a relationship with news information using an extended conduit structure where he actively selects information on a basis of a quality judgment (a weight) itself based on quantification. This then can be used as a tool for further assessment. He describes this process: …I’m a lot better at sifting through the newspaper, I guess because I don’t,…it’s an active thing, I read the stories I want to read in the newspaper, whereas in the news, I hear everything, and have to decide what I’m simply, what I’m going to ignore as rubbish… The metaphor “sifting” infers a careful process of judgment of quality; the rejected is “ignored” as unusable objects such as one might disregard in a scrapyard when searching for a particular part. This is a good illustration of how two metaphors (“sifting” and “rubbish”) can express detailed processing of the information received on the conduit. The importance of quality of information can be seen in the nature of the transmission too. For example, Chris describes the relationship of media and terrorism as: …a symbiotic relationship, if the media didn’t exist, terrorism wouldn’t really have a platform to scare people, would it?…other than word of mouth, in which case it would take a long time to spread… This expression uses the conduit structure in terms of inferred increased speed of transmission of information by the media, inferring that the possession of this “platform” is a catalyst for spreading fear and that speed of transmission is related to amount of fear. The transmitted substance is information about the terrorist act. The physical metaphor platform here is a good example of a historical/cultural elaboration from a physical source domain. Both Kirsten and Fiona expressed the mutual relationship of media-terrorist objects with an idiomatic organic/compulsive metaphor, in Kirsten’s words: …they feed off each other…without the media terrorists wouldn’t do the job they are doing successfully. But,…the media need events, ok, it’s a terrible event [‘9/11’], but they then get great ratings, so from a pessimistic view, yeh, they feed off each other. This “feeding” as a compulsive action structures the exploration of the relationship in this answer by expressing the need of the media for events to give them “great ratings”—still a conduit structure—and terrorists “doing a job,” which removes an emotional indicator from the force of their actions. Here again, the effect on the information transferred along the conduit is inferred from the actions of the mutually beneficial and compulsive relationship (i.e., information transfer is the job done successfully). We can see that expressing the quality of information can involve metaphorical elaborations, which give us a richer sense of the actions and relationships of the objects discussed. In sum, the analysis shows the actions of the “receiver” in creating (as an ontology), quantifying, comparing, and judging the information “package,” which is used to position the self in relation to the source (be it terrorism, government, etc.) and mediator. If the response of the actions of the receiver is a judgment of trust, it can be seen that a cyclical “relationship” potentially develops. To illustrate this process Linda, being presented with a cover of The Sun newspaper, described the quantification (and inferred comparison) of the information both literally and metaphorically: “…It’s there, it’s big, it’s in your face…,” she compares it (by inference): “…It’s over the top in the way that it’s so big…,” and in judging the quality of information (substance) she goes on to say: “…knowing what paper it comes from, it’s what you would expect from this paper, whereas in another one, it wouldn’t be, the phraseology would be different, wouldn’t it? Well, I think it would.” One can infer here that her knowledge of this newspaper and its “quality” of information is used as a tool to judge the information received in this context. Discussion Analysis of the conduit metaphor structure in the talk of these participants shows that a process can be attributed to the receiver of the information. This process objectifies, compares, and judges on the basis of quantity and quality with an inferred “pure” or “invariant” standard and often maintains a personified relationship of objects and forces. It infers trust and maintains relations. The conduit structure allows transformations: concealment, manipulation, excesses, shortages, biases of information, and so on, to be the result of this process, which can also be interpreted as a cyclical relationship. It is evident from this analysis that other metaphorical structures are used too, for example, PERSUASION IS A PHYSICAL FORCE and the tool of personification, which is common throughout the interviews. Abbott and Eubanks (2005), analyzing the conduit metaphor in technical writing, also found persistent use of the conduit metaphor along with journey and continuity metaphors (p. 208). How “interactive” are we with the media? Participants’ expression of the risk of terrorism with the conduit metaphor is similar to the processes in some cognitive risk models based on the transmission or Code Model (e.g., Renn & Levine, 1991). In such models, it is common to find communication described as “interactive.” For example, Kasperson et al. (2003, p. 39) claim risk communication to be an “…interactive process of exchange of information…” (a remark structured by the conduit metaphor). However, the use of the conduit metaphor reifies communication and thereby transforms a “signal” into a semantic package—a “message.”Poore and Chrisman (2006) comment that Shannon’s (1949) theory (on which Code Models are based) “implied nothing about the meaning of a message” (p. 510), but unfortunately people do: They infer. Though it is straightforward enough to criticize a Code Model for its lack of interaction or “shared meaning” (Carey, 1989; Poore & Chrisman, 2006), the conduit metaphor maintains confusion over what exactly a “message” is: is it a “transferred thing within which is a meaning” or an action of coding–decoding, or can it be both? The conduit metaphor structure would have us believe that messages themselves are sent along a channel to be received (Reddy, 1979), so that when we decode them, we partake in the sharing of a unilateral meaning, rather than accommodate and process a signal with the personal and cultural resources of our experience, that is, our participants used inference to receive and inspect the information “content.” But as Reddy (1979) states: “Signals do something, they cannot contain anything (p. 306, emphasis in original), so the conduit metaphor structure helps us understand how the “signals” in code models actualize in everyday talk: Signals are talked of as “semantic packages” when “communicated,” rather like we talk of a computer having a “memory.” As a metaphor, this allows us to understand and use it in a quasi-human fashion. The Code Model of communication allows repairs of misunderstanding and violation to happen in a two-way conversation (Turnbull, 2003), however, our relationship with the media is mostly not a “true” two-way communicative act despite the personalization of the language. It is interactive in the sense that we may choose to select, accept, reject, or process objectified information. The power to interpret a message is often given as an example of the empowerment of media audiences (e.g., Gillespie [2005]), however, the Code Model cannot account for intersubjectivity (Turnbull, 2003, p. 29) and our relationship with the media is not (usually) intercommunicative but more akin to Thompson’s “mediated quasi-interaction” (Holmes, 2005, p. 136). If communication really is interactive, we need a more interactive structure of talk to create and maintain it. This, perhaps, is the purpose of personification, to create and maintain an interactive relationship with the media. However, as this analysis shows, such a relationship is constrained by the demands of the conduit metaphor. Though Schiffrin (1994) claims that one purpose of the Code Model is to “achieve a shared message” (p. 392), quite obviously a code–decode system does not “share” a message, whether information or semantic interpretation. This system of speaking “as if” (i.e., metaphorically) is part of our idiomatic and conventional speech and, as Reddy (1979) and Moser (2000) point out, changing our most “automated” language behavior requires conscious effort and attention. In contrast, the unconscious assumption of unproblematic transfer of a “pure” signal built in to the conduit metaphor provides a template for inferential effort to be directed toward a comparison of quantity or quality of information transmitted. This (noninteractive) action could have consequences for the maintenance of trust between “sender” and “receiver.” The conduit metaphor and trust Stephen Axley (1996, p. 81) stated: Trust is the bedrock of any strong interpersonal relationship. And importantly, trust is shaped largely by communication. As we have seen, participants’ judgments of both the quantity and the quality of information were often shaped by a personalization of object relationships: talking as if in an interpersonal relationship. The conduit metaphor structure can be seen as one determinant of trust between laypersons, source, and media. Erosion of trust is inevitable if the message is seen as distorted, the result of the metaphorical structure not incorporating the subjectivity of communication (Axley, 1984, 1996; Reddy, 1979). Frewer (2003) suggests that “…the extent to which people trust or distrust risk managers may determine how people process risk information” (p. 124). We would suggest that, from this analysis, the opposite could also be the case, namely that the extent to which people understand or express communication as “information transfer” may determine how people trust the perceived source of risk information. The conduit metaphor structure of the participants’ talk suggests that they actively process information from the media, albeit often within a passive relationship. However, the “concretization” of relations the structure demands is a contrast to the lack of control over inferences people make with their own range of experience and knowledge through making comparisons and judgments as they talk about issues such as communicating terrorism and the quality of media information. This contrast helps maintain relations of mistrust. One ongoing outcome of a relationship of mistrust that the conduit structure can constrain us to is a cyclical passivity. This is particularly evident in the forms of personalization of the media–public relationship, illustrated here in Kirsten’s conduit expressions but not in Harry’s. This “passive through personalization” relationship may be a particular feature of the rhetorical framing of the tabloid media (Petts et al., 2001, p. 67). The reification of information demanded by the conduit structure gives the media a tool to maintain this relationship (and the inferred values people use), through rhetorical questions (e.g., Fowler, 1991), or focusing on conflict and polarities (Nelkin, 1989) or “monocausal” explanations (Tierney, 1999) as “bounded” objects, containers, and forces, which readers receive as possessions to quantify, compare, and judge against previously received “packages.” Harry’s resistance to media framing demonstrates an active resistance to this potential passivity. From this interpretation of lay talk on the communication of the risk of terrorism, we can see that inference and implication (arising from cultural knowledge and personal experiences) provide the “active” circularity of source (mediation) and receiver, which is structured by the conduit metaphor. This structure constrains understanding by preserving the bounded source, information, and receiver as separate ontologies (“things”). Thus, in this model, we would find it difficult to understand communication as a transaction, rather than an interaction. In Reddy’s (1979) terms, the conduit metaphor objectifies the subjectivity of risk, and in doing so, the interaction is preserved as manipulations of objects, limited to the giving and taking of messages. We transform, compare, and judge the message in our possession, an action that has potential for misunderstanding and suspicion. A transactive understanding of risk communication may be desirable, however, the conduit structure outlaws it when communication is the topic. Thus, we are left with a question. If communication is interactive and multidimensional, why do we persist with such an archaic structure of expression as the conduit metaphor? One answer, perhaps, is in the cultural value of information theory, with its origins in the electronic signal transfer theories of Shannon and Weaver (1949), and Weiner (1950), which spawned our current understanding of communication as information transfer. In the context of information studies, Day (2000) argues that our cultural understanding of information is based on the conduit metaphor (p. 806), and as we partake in an “information age,” this legacy offers a “natural” model of information transmission evident in cultural practice such as everyday talk of terrorism and media communication. To quote Day: “The question for us, today, is that of the limits of the claims of a conduit centred information theory for information studies in particular, and for knowledge, society and culture generally.” (p. 810). The analysis of the conduit metaphor in everyday talk helps to illuminate this question, and highlights how we may understand communication primarily as “information transfer” through common speech. Limitations and extensions In this research, the participants were subject to the discursive conventions of an interview situation. Because metaphor is ubiquitous in speech, this inevitably included some priming of answers. For example, the question “How safe is London?” offers a “frame” of a quantifiable comparison. Nevertheless, the commonality of such expressions suggests that these patterns of relating are worth investigation. There were only a small number of participants; in common with other forms of qualitative analysis, metaphor analysis is very detailed and time consuming, for example, in the six interviews of this study, more than 1,200 metaphorical words or phrases were identified and coded in total. Though it is always desirable to have more participants, the validity of this study lies in the commonality of the conduit-structured expressions in UK culture today when talking about communication in the context of the dominance of this structure when communication is the topic. The focus of this interpretation excludes a detailed investigation of other metaphorical structures and linguistic devices used by the participants apart from personification. The question of the conduit metaphor’s commonality across cultures has not been explored in this study either, but could provide a useful contrast, especially for expressions of information transfer in other languages. The research could be extended to include a comparison of media consumers’ expressions and a textual or televisual-based analysis of conduit-structured media expressions, especially with regard to particular terrorist-linked events. It should be emphasized, though, that this research is interpretative, and the identification, coding, and interpretation of metaphors were not subject to consensual agreement with other communication researchers. This could also be a useful extension to this inductive research too. Also, it should not be assumed that “the media” is the same “bounded” object across contexts (see also Murdock et al., 2003; Petts et al., 2001 for a discussion on the multiplicity of the media and risk). Though this analysis focused on the broad issue of the communication of terrorism and the media, the technique of metaphor analysis used here could be useful in tracking the relationship of individuals to the media on a topic over the time it was salient in the news, to detect consistency of pattern and value of meaning package within the conduit structure. As this analysis is interpretative, it is, of course, possible to interpret the participants’ remarks along the lines of a semiotic explanation, with an emphasis on social representations, for example, or a poststructuralist explanation, as well as with the versions of the “code” (or transmission) model, which include feedback and meaning (Fiske, 1990). The value of this interpretation is that it demonstrates that the linguist and psychologist studying metaphor can have insights into issues usually understood through sociology, communication, and media studies, and that these issues can be studied at the level of everyday language use. Conclusions Our analysis suggests that the participants in this study are active in their “processing of information”; however, this is constrained by the structure of the conduit metaphor, which allows judgments to be made, often on the source or mediator, and often inferred. Day (2000) calls this a “narrow linguistic and social range” (p. 811). From this interpretation, we can see how such talk helps maintain personified “relationships” which question how interactive we really are. The conduit metaphor helps us understand communication in terms of a Code Model and why this is intuitively appealing, but it also helps us understand the “failure” to communicate successfully, as it is presumed that, when talking this way, transmission success is “automatic” (Reddy, 1979), hence interpreting its use allows us to comment on the inferred consequences of such failures in terms of trust (and therefore related concepts such as cynicism, credibility, and confidence are open to analysis too). This analysis should not be taken as support for the conduit metaphor, nor refutation of it, but observation that its use in common speech can pose questions of our presumed interaction when communicating. Looking at the communication of terrorism and the media from a layperson’s perspective with the tool of metaphor analysis prompts us to “stand outside” our common sense talk about the subject and ask what the talk itself is doing metaphorically. 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TI - Talk About Terrorism and the Media: Communicating With the Conduit Metaphor
JF - Communication Culture and Critique
DO - 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2008.00031.x
DA - 2008-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/talk-about-terrorism-and-the-media-communicating-with-the-conduit-f2Ahj5xacR
SP - 378
VL - 1
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -