Building on the idea argued by Summers last week that context is key, this week’s readings remind us that every communication, whether it be in text, spoken, or image form, should be considered as merely a fragment of the entire message, and that our skills in rhetorical criticism will be necessary to make sense of it all. McGee stated that Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” oration is “trying to create or is seeking, its audience” (p. 284). The audience, McGee argued, is governed by the cultural context within which it operates. Historically, McGee makes a significant point. King was operating from a cultural context that had its roots in the civil rights movement—but where did those ideas come from?
We often point to Rosa Parks as an innocent instigator for the movement, yet we seldom teach or learn that Ms. Parks learned how to protest as part of her education at the Highlander Folk School located in New Market, TN. The school was originally founded by Myles Horton in 1932 as a social justice training school for labor leaders. Besides Ms. Parks, it trained King and many other leaders in social justice and non-violent approaches to activism. The civil rights movement was not a movement that began in the trenches, and found leadership. Instead, Highlander trained leaders, and from there those leaders went in search of an audience. Ms. Parks found hers on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Even this historical setting is a fragment of the events occurring within the world. The Highlander School was founded at a time of worker unrest due to unemployment, lack of good working conditions, and the Depression. Adult educators who were concerned about the rights of all citizens deliberately started a school to train people in the principles of activism leadership. Horton based his ideas on schools in Europe. Each of the ideas within King’s monumental speech built upon a foundation laid early on by many great thinkers. King often gave credit to Ghandi. Ghandi gave credit to many religious traditions, including Jain, Buddhism, and Hinduism, among others.
This brings us to Carey’s argument that both the transmission and the ritual views of communication build upon a religious foundation. That foundation, when not taken into account as part of the cultural context of a communication fragment, leads to glossing the communication act itself. As Carey pointed out, when this happens, things become too familiar to us and we overlook the significance of what we are doing. I am reminded of a hit song when I was younger, “Is That All There Is?” from the Broadway play, Cabaret. We assume that all we are experiencing in the communication process, either as creators or receivers, is all there is to experience, so we write it off as irrelevant. We take no notice of the fragmentary nature of our act, nor to its potential significance as a fragment.
Next, McLuhan reminds us of the fragment created by the medium itself. If the word is merely a representation of an idea we have that is the actual reality, how many of us are able to completely express an idea? We have all had the experience of thinking some great thought, and not having the words to capture the full essence of the idea. At best, we come up with an approximation of the idea; a mere fragment of the notion we hoped to convey. The medium we use to frame that idea determines the nature of the fragment. Realizing the way our media use affects our fragmental communication helps us choose from our options, or suggests that we look for other less-obvious approaches.
Finally, I am reminded of a talk I gave in church last Sunday. I was asked to speak on a topic most members would know: the events of the founding of the church. Given the time constraints I had, I selected to focus on some background history of that period of time to help put the founding events in some context. I only provided fragments of information specifically related to the actual founding of the church because I knew my audience was very familiar with those events. However, were I to give the same talk to any other audience, the communication experience would have been very muddled. They would not have been able to place my fragment into their world view.
This returns us to McGee’s argument that today communication is challenged by the fracturing of a homogenous culture into pockets of ever-changing discontinuous cultures. The challenge posed by this fracturing requires understanding where and how to look for the fragments to piece together the communication puzzle confronting us daily. Truly, as McGee states, the “skills of a rhetorician” (p. 288) are required.
