Thursday 25 July 2019

Humpty Dumpty and the power of words


“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, chapter 6, page 205 in the 1934 edition

The answer to Alice’s question is “of course”. A chain of letters or symbols can stand for any meaning we choose. We can all choose any meaning we wish. If we choose something so novel that it amounts to a new language spoken only by ourselves and we cannot understand or refuse to understand other meanings, we will find ourselves unable to communicate and quite possibly at risk of being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. But the answer “of course” would not have helped poor Alice.

If Alice has said “The question is … whether we can communicate if you make words mean so many different things”, the answer would have been “of course not”. At the heart of communication is the belief that roughly the same meanings are being attached by whoever is using those words to communicate.

We see when this breaks down. I’m old enough that ‘woke’ just means ‘I was asleep and now I am not’. My teenager daughter has been trying to explain the meaning she attaches to the word. We fumbled around with her using her language and me using mine to find a point where we were both using words sufficiently similarly for her to communicate the meaning she attaches to ‘woke’. It took a lot of ‘Do you mean…?’ ‘Is it like…?’ ‘Well what would you say if you wanted to say…?’ and resorting to examples of TV scenes where ‘woke’ was being enacted.

Sometimes we don’t recognise that our belief that we are using words with roughly similar meanings is unfounded. Then we miscommunicate. We talk at cross-purposes, getting more and more frustrated because the other person or people seem to be being deliberately awkward. As an aside, I’ve found a great activity when this occurs in meetings is to go round the table asking what people are picturing when they use a word – that soon makes visible the different meanings being attached to that word.

Sometimes people create sub-cultures or establish language boundaries to sub-cultures by sharing a meaning for a word that is distinct from the meanings other people ascribe to the word. Crip has one set of meanings in the social world I spend most of my time inhabiting – it is negative, abusive, uncomfortable. It has a different set of meanings in one of the social worlds I visit – check out crip theory and crip culture.

The degree to which the meanings of the words overlap is about our culture. The more our cultures overlap, the more our meanings overlap. Where there feels a wide gulf between cultures, we are cautious about assuming that the meanings of our words are sufficiently similar for easy communication. Where we assume our cultures are similar, we are more likely to be caught out and miscommunicate.

And once we are talking culture, we get to Humpty Dumpty’s question. In a world where there are many overlapping but shared meanings within a given time and culture, and a world where meanings and usage of words change over time and across contexts and cultures, the significant question is not what does a word mean but “Which meaning is to be master – that’s all”.

The painful irony is that we can only discuss this using words, whose meanings are fluid and where we have no way to know for sure how your meaning relates to anyone else’s meanings, or to what extent that which is inside your head can ever be adequately configured and conveyed in words.  But in this word-focused world, try we must!

Sunday 14 July 2019

Talking coproduction - 2014 style


I wrote this in 2014. I didn't get round to posting it. 

I'm not sure what, if anything, has really changed in the last five years as it seems as relevant now as it did then.

Having said that, Barod is working on a more nuanced way to think about space - the Four Spaces. So watch this space for our new explanation later this year.

Coproduction is a buzz word. It gets used a lot. And it gets used to describe a lot of things.

We always start by thinking about power and control. I guess that's because we are used to not having either, despite being told we have been given them.

So, for us, coproduction is not a new type of engagement or involvement. Engagement and involvement always rely on someone else saying you can get involved. Usually the "someone else" is your service provider, local authority or government. As long as someone has the power to choose to involve you, they can choose to stop involving you as well. Same goes for empowerment, engagement and all these other buzz words for shifting how things work between the powerful and less powerful.

The hard reality is that the "someone else" really does hold the power and control. They have the money, the influence, the professional training, sometimes even the democratic right if they were elected. As long as "someone else" holds power and control, engagement and involvement are hugely important for improving the quality of services, policies and planning.

The problem for us comes when "someone else" holds the power but believes (or pretends) that we are all working as equals and we are coproducing.

We came up with a way of trying to explain the difference between involvement and coproduction. We call it "My space, Your space, Shared space".

Over the 18 months, the seed of an idea has grown into something we are ready to put out there as our contribution to the debate on the future relationship of public services and public.

Do watch the SlideShare show, and let us know what you think. 
https://www.slideshare.net/barodcic/shared-space-38530797

If it makes sense but leaves you wondering how to do it, you are welcome to talk to us about workshops, consultancy and action learning sets.

If you think it's a load of cobblers as a concept or completely impractical as a practice, we'd love to hear why. We love critical friends who help refine and challenge our thinking.