Investments, Expectation, Silence, and Deconstruction or Hedgehogs, Foxes, Part II:

You may have thought, given my last post, that I prefer foxes.

Well, I may be a fox by temperament, but foxes don’t have it easy.

Look at Barack Obama.

Right now, he’s got these amazing poll numbers. People appear to understand the complexity of his mission; they appear to have patience; they appear to have a high regard for his capability.

But, people don’t just appear to have high expectations of him. They DO have high expectations of him, and all these expectations are different. That myriad of expectations is one problem; the other problem is that, for each of these voters, they value certain things above others, and they think that Obama shares the same hierarchy. He cannot possibly share the same hierarchy of values with everyone, and when all those folks who have an “investment” in him (“He’s the one I’ve been waiting for”) start to worry that he’s not who they are, his situation will get even more complex, even more difficult, because on the one side, the problems won’t go away quickly, and on the other, the expectations will become part of the problem.

Let’s follow this notion of expectations away from politics and back to speech and communication in general.

Up above, I talked about “investments” and “expectations”.

What if you’re speaking to someone, your words interest them, and you fall silent.

Well, if you’re an actor on a stage, and the folks in the audience think you forgot a line, they get anxious.

But, what if, like Harold Pinter, the recently deceased and revered “angry” British playwright, you build in silence as part of the play?

Anxiety is one audience reaction to silence; increased interest is certainly another, IF the speaker had their interest in the first place.

What has happened during the silence? Deconstruction.

Deconstruction, as a literary theory, tells us that the written text has an obvious, above the line meaning.

But Deconstruction also tells us that texts also are filled with below the line, hidden meanings.

When you, the speaker, have them, then hold them with silence, you are increasing their expectations…you are adding the words and meanings inside the listeners’ heads to the overt speech you have just paused during. Now, when you open your mouth and add words to the silence of your pause, you suddenly have a dialogue where you had monologue.

This moment of renewed speech is dangerous, yet full of possibility, not unlike the moment of truth Barack Obama faces.

Stay tuned.