Inquiry Project Final

Kyle Anson
Prof. Andrews
English 1102
12/12/12

Inquiry Project

Language at its roots is used to present what someone is thinking about in a manner that is understandable to those around him/her. We use language everyday to express our thoughts, feelings, etc. We sometimes use language to indulge in conflict. So what happens when our intention is to use language to manipulate others into our way of thinking? What happens when we try to persuade others? Does it really work, or is it just coincidence when they comply. In its simplest form this question can be examined using this very introduction. The whole purpose of introductions is to persuade the audience into continuing to read. You have one paragraph to convince someone you may have never met into giving you their attention and time. That’s a pretty tall order don’t you think? It’s hard to imagine that we could do something like that without a little manipulation. That’s why I believe we use language as a tool to manipulate people and situations around us in everyday life in multiple ways. We have to manipulate others or else nobody would take the time to read past the introduction. Without persuasion we wouldn’t have a reason to dive into the mind of another to hear what they have to say. So, tell me, did I persuade you?

The idea of manipulation is most likely not too far fetched to many people. Many professions work in a way that requires such skills (lawyers, psychiatrists, therapists, etc.). However, there is more to the situation than the mere existence of feasible manipulation. There is not just attempted manipulation, but also subconscious manipulation. With regards to the body and biology it has been researched whether or not outside elements have effects on an individual. It is even found that words written in journals correlates to the amount of visits to the doctor (Pennebaker 90). The study presented that having participants write about traumatic experiences for 3-4 consecutive days reduced the amount of visits to the doctor in the following months. In addition, “Multiple labs have reported relative improvements in immune function, hormonal activity, and other biological markers of stress or disease in the emotional relative to the control writing condition” (Pennebaker 90-91).

This is more than mere correlation now. Language has some effect on us biologically verbally and non-verbally. In addition to the study on writing, Mythbusters tested the non-verbal idea of contagious yawning. The conclusion presented, “No stimulus they [subjects] yawned 25% of the time. When they got stimulus they yawned 29% of the time” (Mythbusters), further backs up the idea that biological manipulation is possible. The most important finding is that these things are happening without our knowledge. It is likely that, in addition to these examples, we allow ourselves to be manipulated on a daily basis by any number of things without a means of telling when or why. These are just the manipulations of things we cannot determine under normal conditions. Difficult to say whether or not it’s completely fair to project the idea that these manipulations exist based on correlations. For this there are other forms of manipulation that are much more common to us.

 More noticeable methods of manipulation are present in most conversations in daily life such as sarcasm. Sarcasm is in essence the saying of something that means the opposite. The idea behind the manipulation is in the language spoken itself. With just the tweaking of your tone of voice or the inflection with which you present a word someone can take what you said the complete opposite direction. But that’s not all; statements made sarcastically are also perceived as “more verbally aggressive, and yet more humorous” (Katz 187). So with just the raise of an eyebrow or the grin on a face a statement can be perceived in a completely different way and this happens every day! While sarcasm itself is just the manipulation of language to convey your intended meaning clearly it can be used in another way. By using similar methods to sarcasm in manipulating your tone of voice, facial expressions, eye contact, etc. you can predict and control the feelings of the audience. This is a politician’s specialty. The goal politicians seek is “to produce compliance voluntarily–by getting followers to want to do what their leaders want them to” (Searing 677). This is the root idea of the manipulation discussed in this essay: The ability to manipulate the people and situations around us. We are capable of this persuasion and we actively and subconsciously do it.

Everyone has been in those situations that they have attempted to twist the scenario in their favor. We push the buttons of others to get a rise out of them. We appeal to someone’s sympathy in times when we want support. We do these things because we have learned to use language as a manipulation tool, because that’s what it has always been at the core, and it works. Language has been used for manipulation for centuries, and will continue to acquire more and more ways of accurately projecting one’s self. Within the last few decades with the boom of computers and cell phones emoticons have become a popular form of expressing emotion through simple symbols; All this in an attempt to lessen the gap of the individuals that are using language to communicate. In every conversation in every situation we are using our language to project ourselves onto others. So are we using body language and verbal communication to express ourselves to others? Or are we using it to pull others closer to our way of thinking and understanding?




Works cited

Arney, William R. "Statistics as Language." Teaching Sociology. Vol. 6. N.p.: American Sociological Association, n.d. 173-77. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Farrell, Andrew, dir. "Is Yawning Contagious?" Mythbusters. Discovery. 9 Mar. 2005.Youtube.com. 27 Nov. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Katz, Albert N., Blasko, Dawn G., and Kazmerski, Victoria A. "Saying What You Don't Mean: Social Influences on Sarcastic Language Processing." Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol. 13. N.p.: Sage Publications, n.d. 186-89. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

Pennebaker, James W., and Graybeal, Anna. "Patterns of Natural Language Use: Disclosure, Personality, and Social Integration." Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol. 10. N.p.: Sage Publications, n.d. 90-93. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

Searing, Donald D. "The Psychology of Political Authority: A Causal Mechanism of Political Learning through Persuasion and Manipulation." Political Psychology. Vol. 16. N.p.: International Society of Political Psychology, n.d. 677-96. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Tanenhaus, Michael K., Brown-Schmidt, Sarah. "Language Processing in the Natural World." Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences. Vol. 363. N.p.: Royal Society, n.d. 1105-122. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Annotated Bibliography

Kyle Anson

Prof. Andrews

English 1102

12/12/12

Farrell, Andrew, dir. "Is Yawning Contagious?" Mythbusters. Discovery. 9 Mar. 2005.Youtube.com. 27 Nov. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

            This is a video clip on youtube from the show mythbusters. The actual video in question covers only the latter half of the part about yawning but includes the important part I want which is the results. The results being that yawning can be manipulated and caused by a stimulus. This find transfers into the idea that we could be under the influence of any number of these kinds of manipulation throughout any given day without our knowledge, essentially proving my claim that manipulation is possible and is happening. However, the video only discusses the yawning claim which is something that is not testable under normal everyday conditions. In order to fully back up my claim I will need evidence of a testable noticeable situation of manipulation that happens often.

Katz, Albert N., Blasko, Dawn G., and Kazmerski, Victoria A. "Saying What You Don't Mean: Social Influences on Sarcastic Language Processing." Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol. 13. N.p.: Sage Publications, n.d. 186-89. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

            This source delves into the idea of sarcasm and its effects on language. A lot of the source is concentrated on the understanding of sarcasm as opposed to its effect, but the source is still helpful as sarcasm in itself can be a very strong method of manipulation. The point presented in the research is that sarcasm has been touched in many different researches as “one thing is said to express another” but not much has been specifically conducted on sarcasm itself. The idea was to shed more light on sarcasm that previous research has scratched at but never fully itched. Some of the research involves the understanding of sarcasm in contrast to social and cultural factors. Others involve the understanding of sarcasm as a whole and its uses. This is the part I will find helpful and relevant in my inquiry project.

Pennebaker, James W., and Graybeal, Anna. "Patterns of Natural Language Use: Disclosure, Personality, and Social Integration." Current Directions in Psychological Science. Vol. 10. N.p.: Sage Publications, n.d. 90-93. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

            Now this source is pretty interesting. Essentially the idea is that, through research, they found that certain words when spoken or written down could be related to health. This means that when people write in journals or talk in person, certain words that are used commonly by certain people can be related to their health. This proves to be very interesting to me and my essay. This essentially means for me that I have found a study that helps to prove that language can be tied to biological well-being. That is a very strong form of manipulation and is much more easily proven as fact. This will definitely help me argue my stance that language can manipulate people and situations in the world. One of the studies they preformed showed a relationship between writing and visits to the doctor. Those who wrote for 3 days consecutively about a traumatic event in a journal spent less time at the doctor in later months. Pretty remarkable that words and language can have that kind of effect on the body.

Searing, Donald D. "The Psychology of Political Authority: A Causal Mechanism of Political Learning through Persuasion and Manipulation." Political Psychology. Vol. 16. N.p.: International Society of Political Psychology, n.d. 677-96. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

            This is practically everything I really need. This is specifically about the use of manipulation in politics which is a cornerstone profession of the idea. I don’t really want to use this as too much of a source considering it roughly contains all the ideas I’ll express in my essay. Using this would be too close to trying to prove what I’m saying specifically as opposed to merely trying to validate the idea. Regardless the piece is incredibly helpful and is approached more casually than my other sources (not counting the video). Just like it suggests in the name, it attempts to be understood in a more casual way than a scientific experiment, at least that’s how a lot of parts seemed to be like to me. This makes it read more like a book to me which could potentially allow me to quote it in less terms of data results and more just helpful statements.

Presentation

I thought that the presentation went well. I got some ideas and someone mentioned the myth busters episode. After doing some research on the episode I found out that it was given a "plausible." I figure this is good because that means I could argue the overall idea that our physical and verbal language actually affects those around us. The results stated that they could not confirm that it was true based on their results. Other than that presenting also helped me grab a little more of a foothold in my idea. It was just an idea I was spitting around after I gave up on the politician approach and people seemed to like it and helped me grind out some details of what to argue and that for sure gave me more of a comfortable feeling with my question. Overall I think my idea is more refined now and it should be a lot easier to find more research now that I like the direction my project is going.

Research so far:

http://www.ted.com/conversations/6244/what_is_the_difference_between_6.html
http://www.ted.com/conversations/12909/how_do_you_manipulate_yourself.html

"Focusing more on situations most people are familiar with."
- Positive/negative thinking because expected negative/positive outcome.
- Shifting someone's opinion/emotions because of emotional expression.
- Sneezing and biological manipulation.

This I Think

Thoughts on writing.

QUOTE: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago everybody knew the earth was flat, and fifteen you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

This quote from Men In Black is a very powerful one to me personally. One of the biggest downfalls of human kind is our belief that we know everything. Many hold dear facts of science and law under the assumption that they are absolute truths because they are told so. The truth is that we can't know everything and things we knew yesterday might be undeveloped thinking 20 years from now. We must always be willing to adapt to new knowledge and peoples closed off ideas that facts are never wrong holds us back. That is what this quote means to me; we are not perfect and we cannot know it all. The writer of the scene uses the word "know" many times in order to beat it into our head. Tommy Lee Jones even draws out the "knows" when he says them in order to really drive the point home. They do this because the point is that we don't know. We use the word "know" in place of the word "assume" because most people don't have and don't want to have the capacity to think beyond our hollow truths.

This I Believe

I believe in smiles.

Questions of Inquiry

Topic Proposal:

How do we manipulate the world around us?


Original Inquiry Proposal:

I would like to research more about how our diction, inflection, and our body movement assist in the manipulation of others. There is some sort of science behind the words we use and the way we present them. There is a pattern involved with the effects of these certain things and I want to find out more about that pattern. I have always been really interested in psychology and as such I have a little bit of knowledge in this field already; in fact, most people already do they just don’t realize it. When I think to respond to someone I consider all aspects of my response: Not just what to say but how to say it. In what position should I be? How my face should look? In what manner and tone of voice should I speak? A lot of these things race through my head, and they probably race through a lot of others as well. It really interests me that we can find these subtle patters without thinking about it and change the way we behave in order to acquire the outcome we want. Children are seen learning this incredibly fast as they begin to fake cry when they want something because they know it will grab attention. I have a lot of the little examples already, as I've stated, but what I don't have is any research. The type of information I need would be that of a scholarly journal or a research project. Seeing the pattern is simple as we only have to look internally at how we behave in conversation, but tracing that pattern and digging deeper is harder. I want to know why some words have some effects and why a certain facial expression can alter an entire message. Specifically I want to look towards speeches. It's much easier to see the subtle things people do in person when they know who they are talking to and how they will feel about something, but it's not so simple when you are speaking to the masses. I want to understand how the great speeches of the world were constructed and who are the ones that create them. Why can the mere words someone says that knows nothing about you feel empowering? Is it because that’s what we wanted and we leaned ourselves in that direction, or is it because the words really did manipulate the way we thought and felt. I know there is more underneath the surface. An understanding of how language can be used as a means to impose our will onto others and a mastery of that ability. Nothing short of mind control.

Why and how do diction, inflection, and body language assist in the manipulation of others?