 In this video we're going to take a look at the use, misuse, and abuse of symbols and in particular how that relates to the area of persuasion. Before we get to that specifically though, let me ask you this. Run a little exercise here. What is this? Not a trick question. Just what is it? What would you say it is? Well, this video is in English and for the most part most of us watching this are going to probably automatically go to the English word for this particular creature, right? Which is cat. Not a trick question. Again, it's just a cat, right? So CAT cat. But where does that come from? I mean, that's not the only word for it, right? If we were to look in Spanish, we would see that it's a goto, right? Or if we were in Russian and I'm going to mispronounce this, but that collection of symbols in Russian is pronounced something like cut, right? And that's what they would call it. If we were in Russia and they saw an animal like this, they would say cut. But if we went, you know, slightly south of Russia to China, we would see that this is the symbol for this animal. And I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce how they would pronounce it. But that's the symbol, right? But okay, fair enough. This video is in English. We're probably all going to speak English. Why don't we just refer to it in English? But I've decided that, you know, I don't want to call it a cat anymore. Let's call it a fork. From now on, this animal shall be henceforth known as a fork. Not to be confused with the fork that you use to eat, you know, and that has the tines and things. But we're going to call it a fork, right? How does that sit with you? You know, probably not well, right? Well, why not? Well, because it's not a fork, right? It's a cat. It's a cat. So okay, fair enough. Let's go back to cat. But where does this come from? Why do we call it a cat? What does that mean? What special significance does that collection of letters come from? What does that collection of letters have that it would be representative of this animal? Well, that's just it, right? There's no magical formula that says, you know, this animal has to be called this because of such as... It's just something we decided a long time ago that this animal, you know, or animals of that type are going to be called cats. And it's going to be spelled C-A-T. And all of this is really just getting to the idea that communication is symbolic. There's no magic formula, but, you know, these are all just symbols that represent an idea. And so that's where we're starting at today. The idea that communication is symbolic, that all communication is symbolic. First of all, we have language, right? That's symbolic. These are made-up letters. And we just, you know, ours happens to come from the Phoenician alphabet, which is developed by the Phoenicians long ago. And so that's the one we use in our culture here in the United States. But as we've noticed in discussing that cat, other cultures use different languages, right? They use different alphabets and have entirely different systems of putting these symbols together. So these letters, though, are just symbolic. They're representative of something else. And they draw their shared meaning from just that, the shared meaning. They draw their meaning from our shared understanding of what they mean. So language in and of itself is symbolic. It's just representative of some other idea, but we have that shared understanding that brings us to that sort of central meaning. Language is not the only thing that's symbolic about communication, however. Nonverbal communication is also symbolic, right? We could take a look at some of our facial gestures or, you know, facial expressions or gestures or postures and things like that. And those are representative, but they're symbolic as well. Now, there are some that we now kind of have universal, we draw universal meanings from, but in a lot of ways, those change from culture to culture as well. And it's not just our expressions and things like that. We have symbols, other symbols that are representative of an idea. They are symbolic as well, right? They represent an idea and other things represent a specific type of brand or product or something like that. And are so specifically identified with that item that they also have become symbolic of that particular product or that particular idea, that particular service. So all of these things though are, again, underscore the idea that communication is symbolic. It's not predestined. It's not sent down from on high. It's not magical or anything of that sort. It's just, is what it is because we decided that's what it would be. It is symbolic. It's representative, but still those symbols have a real power. They have real power, but because communication is symbolic, because it's just kind of, we determined, we decided at some point this is going to represent this. There's also room for interpretation in there, right? There's differences in the way that we see these symbols and what they represent and how they should be interpreted. So symbols then are subjective. Many, many symbols, if not all symbols are subjective. The meaning rests in the person who is interpreting that and determining what it means. So as part of this, we need to understand that all symbols have both a denotative and a connotative meaning. The denotative meaning is what we would call the dictionary definition of that word or that symbol. What does it mean if we looked that up in the dictionary? What would it say? What's the kind of universally identified meaning of that particular symbol, that particular word, that particular graphic symbol, that particular expression? What would it be if we looked it up in the dictionary? That's the denotative meaning. We're all kind of singular. We're all on the same page with that, right? The other type of meaning is the connotative meaning. And really that depends on the person and how they interpret it. It depends on how it happens to go through their psychological process and their senses and their frame of reference. So the connotative meaning can vary from person to person. Years ago, there was a representation put forth by Ogden and Richards called the semantic triangle. That kind of represents this idea of the different meanings that a symbol can have. And so the semantic triangle is just that. It's a triangle. It says there are three kind of aspects to every symbol. The first is the symbol itself. So if we just took the symbol H-O-M-E, put it together, it says home, right? That's our shared understanding that those symbols, when they're put together in that order, they are pronounced home and they mean home. And so a home could be, you know, this house, this structure that we have, that we live in. Four walls and a door and a roof and where you go at the end of the day and where you sleep and so forth. That's a home, right? That's the denotative definition. So we have the symbol, then we have the denotative definition of that, which would be, you know, this building, the structure that we live in is a home. But then for other people, home is, you know, home is where the heart is. Home is wherever your family's at. Home is, you know, where we find comfort and where we hang out with the people that we love, right? That's home. For some people, that's the connotative meaning though, right? Because that meaning is subjective. That may be true for some people, but for other people, they see the same symbol, home, and we have the same denotative definition, the structure where we live, right? But for some people, home is not that happy place where, you know, home is where the heart is. This is, you know, home is where mom and dad fight or home is where I don't feel accepted or don't feel wanted or loved or whatever. So home can have a different meaning for different people. And that's the connotative meaning of that. One last example here. If we said baseball, took the, took the symbols, baseball, all these letters constructed in this fashion pronounced this way of baseball. We would, we would think of both the, the ball itself and the game that people play, right? Nine players in the field, one at bat, three strikes, four balls, three outs burning, so forth. But then for, for, depending on who you ask for some people, baseball is going to be this really source of excitement and joy because we love baseball. And maybe that stems from playing baseball as a youngster. Maybe it stems from going to baseball games with your family or doing whatever. For whatever reason, we have all these, you know, internal connections to baseball. And other people are going to automatically think, oh, baseball's boring. I hate baseball. I just remember having to go to my siblings' games or forced to, it's just, it just takes too long and I don't like to watch it or whatever. We have all these connotative connections, the word baseball as well, right? So whether you like baseball, whether you don't like baseball, the denotative definition is something we could agree on. If we looked it up in the dictionary, whether you like it or don't, baseball is the ball itself and baseball is the game and it has those specific rules. That's the denotative definition. Then connotatively though, we're all on different pages. Everyone of us is going to have a slightly different interpretation of that symbol because it's subjective. Interestingly, language is, of course, in itself connected to a particular culture and a particular context. It is bound by culture and context to certain frames. So for example, if we just take a look at language, the symbols of that language can change. Now, some are going to be stable over time, but others are going to come and go, right? So we have, just for example, some of this pop slang from the 2000s. These are words that were very popular at different times in the 2000s, maybe for 15 minutes, maybe for a little longer than that. But there's stuff now we don't really use. We don't really use the term bootylicious anymore. Incredibly popular for the time that song was out. We don't really talk about, we don't use the term cray anymore. I wish we said awesome sauce more. I really like that one, but that one came and went pretty quickly. So these are just pop slang. They were bound to that time and that culture. They were bound by that context. They were appropriate at that time and understood at that time. Now they would be considered out of fashion and not very popular, not very useful. Again, subjectivity. These were popular at the time. Now they've been determined to be not so popular. So this leads us to an interesting discussion too about what's called the Saper Worf Hypothesis. The Saper Worf Hypothesis has to do with what we call linguistic relativity. The idea that you can kind of look at a culture and determine what's important to that culture by looking at their language. And what kind of words and how many words they have for something. For example, the famous example is that the Eskimos have however many words for snow. Some people say 50, some people say 100 and 150, whatever. They have a lot of words for snow that all mean snow, right? And why is that? Why do they have so many words that mean snow? Well, it's because snow is such an important part of their lives. They need to be able to differentiate between the different types of snow because it's going to have a real impact on what they're doing and it's going to have an impact on their day-to-day lives, right? And depending on where you live, that may be more or less true. I live in the Midwest and kind of the northern part of the Midwest. So we get a fair amount of snow here. We have several words. We don't have 100 words for snow, I don't think, but we have several. When you listen to the weather forecast, I want to know the difference between and I need to know the difference between the word snow and the word blizzard, the word flurry and the word sleet. Those are all different types of snow that are going to have an impact on my day the next day, right? What kind of driving conditions are we going to have? Am I going to need to plan on not going anywhere tomorrow? Do I need to order, you know, lots of milk and bread and eggs because we're going to be snowed in for several days because of a blizzard? There are different terms, but if you live in the south, the southern part of the United States, you might not have quite as many words for snow because it doesn't impact you quite the same way, right? So the same is true in a larger context in our culture. For example, how many words do we have for money that all represent money? I bet you we could come up with a couple dozen just off the top of our head words that all mean essentially money that represent the idea of money, right? But what about the word love? How many words do we have for the word love? I mean, not really very many, right? We use love kind of universally because I say I love my mom, right? Which is nice. I love my mom. I also say I love Taco Bell, which is true. I do love Taco Bell. Hopefully, I mean, my mom probably hopes that that's not true, you know, the same way, but I don't have a different word for loving Taco Bell than I do for loving my mom. I have one word, love, but if I wanted to explain money, I have all kinds of words, right? So what does that tell somebody who's not from our culture about our culture? It gives them an idea of the importance of money. You know, really, for better or for worse, the importance of money because we have so many words for it, right? So many ways to describe it. And yet only really one word that means love. So anyway, an interesting thought there about the Saper Worf hypothesis and understanding linguistic relativity. But these are all subjective. And you go to a different culture, money would have fewer definitions, and love would have more, right? More uses, more, maybe a variety of words that all mean different kinds of love, right? That what I could differentiate between the love that I have for my mom and love that I have for Taco Bell. So symbols are subjective. They are subjective. They don't mean the same thing to every person. So we need to keep that in mind when we're trying to persuade and when we're communicating in general, but for our purposes, when we're trying to persuade. So what are some of the effective use of symbols? What are some ways that we can use symbols effectively in our efforts to persuade and to understand persuasion? Well, first of all, we can understand the difference between precision and vagueness, right? We can use language with the specific amount of precision or vagueness that we need to. And sometimes we look at this as what we say, the ladder of abstraction, right? And we need to be very intentional about this, though. If we want somebody to have a very specific understanding of what we're talking about, then we should use precise language and precise symbols. If we are trying to be a little more in that gray area, then we can choose words that are a little more vague, you know? But we need to understand what other people are doing that as well when they're using precision versus vagueness and what that may imply and what that may mean and what we need to pursue as a result of that. We can also talk about imagery. You know, we can use symbols to create this imagery and to really, again, put a picture in somebody's head and to describe something and to understand something. So if I were looking at, if I were trying to describe this, for example, a scene for an audience, I could just say, you know, it's a wagon path in the middle of a cornfield. And that would be accurate. But if I'm going to create some imagery, I really want to put this into their soul. I could say the worn dirt path packed down from decades of faithful service divides row after row of tall corn stalks, each a part of the lifeblood that will fuel the world's food demands. That's a little different, right? We're painting a picture here. We're really pressing this into the audience's soul and giving it real life as opposed to just saying, you know, it's a wagon path in the middle of a cornfield. That's not very exciting. But man, we could really use language and use symbols to, and even just using this picture as opposed to saying a cornfield. We can use this picture. I mean, it's really kind of beautiful if you're in that kind of thing. It really puts the audience all in the same place that we can use this imagery to persuade. We also need to be aware that others are going to do that as well. So we need to understand the purpose of imagery in persuasion. Identification is one of the things, you know, Kenneth Burke talks a lot about identification. We mentioned Kenneth Burke earlier. Identification means connecting with that audience, using language to find common ground with that audience and find common ground with that person and use that as a persuasive tactic and, you know, inroads for persuasion there as well. We can talk about branding as an effective use of symbols. We can get away from language here for a little bit and just talk about symbols. What are some of the brands that you know just based on their logo? Just based on their logo. It's iconic, right? So, I mean, there's one of these that is recognizable and the other is not. Excuse me, right? One that we know and one that we don't. One that we care for and one that we trust and one that we don't. Same here. One that we know and we care for and we value that brand over some others and one that we don't necessarily, right? And these are just examples of iconic branding symbols that have value behind them, right? So, we can use these brands and different understandings of what those brands represent to persuade effectively. We can use unification. This is sort of connected identification, but we can unify an audience based on symbols. Again, not even language just based on symbols. What about the flag? I mean, the flag unites us all, right? The flag is something that we feel proudly of and is representative of us as a culture. And so we know what it means. We know what it represents, this idea. And again, that could change from person to person exactly what it represents or what it means. But we have this idea of what this flag is and what it means and what it represents, right? So, unification is another effective use of symbols. Another way that we can use symbols to persuade. We can also use symbols in not so great ways. We can misuse symbols in many ways. And this happens frequently. So, when we misuse symbols, we're using it to more manipulate than persuade, but we need to be aware of these types of things as well. Things like doublespeak. When we use a term to kind of cover the real meaning of something or to soften something, almost euphemistically soften something. So, when we see images of tanks and things like that but politicians don't want to say, we need these war machines. So, they call them maybe instruments of peace. Instruments of peace, right? This is how we keep the peace with other nations is by having this type of technology. That's why we need a strong defense. These are instruments of peace. I mean, that's some pretty good doublespeak, right? Because these are machines of war and that doesn't make them any less necessary. But when we call them instruments of peace, that's not really an accurate description of what we're getting at here. So, we need to be aware of and cautious about using doublespeak. We also need to watch trigger words and be aware of trigger words, right? Words that will have intensified meaning for specific audiences and for specific people. So, for example, here recently, the QAnon thought process or I don't know what you want to call it. I would call it the QAnon conspiracy but the QAnon, you know, ideals have come to the forefront here in the last few weeks and months and they have some specific trigger words. Words that if you talk to somebody who's a believer in that type of thing, that will kind of have a special meaning to them. So, when we think about the QAnon, we think about words like fake news, socialist, patriot. The storm is one of their big ones. And oddly enough, pizza because they associate, you know, the pizza gate, Democrats and Hollywood people are running child sex rings out of pizza parlors. You know, pizza is kind of a trigger word when you talk to them. So, they have these words, though, that when you mention these, they get really fired up and they have significant meaning to them and people will use that to their advantage, too. People will use that, well, if you're a patriot, then you'll do this. And for QAnon people, that's really important. If you want to support the storm, if you want to bring the storm to the forefront, you know, saying things like that will get a specific and intensified reaction from people in that world. Hate speech is another misuse of symbols. When we use hate speech, it's a misuse of symbols. It's, you know, it's just a terrible way to gain attention and to really divert from your persuasive message, but really bring attention to something else. So, hate speech would be another misuse of symbols and then appropriation, right? For example, the swastika is one of the oldest symbols in the world. It's been used for thousands of years to represent a variety of different ideas. The swastika in different forms has different meanings, right? But the only one we really know anymore is this one, right? Because the Nazis kind of appropriated the swastika. That's certainly the most prevalent use of it. And the one with the most meaning for us in contemporary times is that we associate the swastika with Nazi Germany despite the fact that it has lots of other meanings, too. In many cases, I would argue that the American flag has been appropriated. Get up and go back to this kind of idea of the pro-Trump Patriots, so to speak, this kind of movement, the pro-Trump movement following the election in 2020. They stopped the steal and so forth. Really appropriated the American flags. You saw these people as they were storming the Capitol waving the American flag around appropriating it for their use, saying that we are patriots. This is why we are right because we are patriots. And then you see a guy using the flag to literally beat a police officer during that time. They've appropriated and taken over that flag and given it a different meaning in that sense. It doesn't necessarily totally diminish it for everybody, but, gosh, they really have in some ways tainted the use of that symbol. What do we do with all this? We need to be analyzing these symbols. As persuaders we need to use them wisely and use them ethically, but we also need to be on the lookout for these and be able to analyze different symbols. There are a variety of ways we can do that. One of the more famous one is what we call Burke's Pentad which is developed by Kenneth Burke who's a famous researcher and scholar in the area of language and persuasion in particular. And so he developed what he called the Pentad. The Dramatist Pentad. And it just looks like this. It has five points. That's why it's called the Pentad. And so his Pentad is made up of these five things and he says, well, first of all, there's an agent. There's a person or a group who take action in the scene. Whatever you're looking at, whatever you're reading, who's the person or the group that is taking action in that scene. That's the agent. Then the act is whatever they're doing, any motivated or purposeful action that they're taking in that scene. The agency is the tool or method or means that are used to accomplish their ends. What is it they're using to achieve that purpose? Their purpose then is the reason why they're doing what they're doing. And the scene is where all of this is taking place. So you have these five points of the Pentad. Right? So then we could take a look at just an ad, for example. It's an ad for Clariton. So you can see what's happening here. We have a man and his puppy. That's who's in the scene. We have the act, which is them playing outside. The agency is just kind of rolling around in the grass, and that's what they're trying to achieve. The purpose then is enjoying time with his dog and the man's trying to enjoy time with his dog. And the scene is the Parker field. But if we go back and we look a little deeper here, then we can see that the agent, again, is the man and his puppy, a cute little puppy. They didn't pick that for no reason. An adorable puppy. So the man and his puppy are the agent. The act, in addition to just playing outside, the act is the freedom to live life. Clariton offers you the freedom to live your life, to be outside, to enjoy the time with your puppy. Right? The agency, not just rolling around in the grass, but is that there are no restrictions or limits. That's the message you're trying to send here. You are not restricted. When you take Clariton, you are not restricted by being outside and by being around a dog and by being in the grass and so forth. The purpose here is not just enjoying time with your dog, but being uninhibited by allergies. Clariton helps you be uninhibited by allergies. And the scene, more than just being a Parker field or wherever they're at is wherever you want to be. That's the whole point, right? You can live your life with Clariton. You are not restricted. You don't have those limits. So you can be wherever you want to be. So we dig a little deeper here and Burke would then go into saying, okay, you have these what they call ratios between these two things. What about the, you know, between the scene and the agency? What's the connection there? And what's the divide? What's the balance between those things? And you could do that for all of these, these areas of the pentad comparing two of them at a time and so forth. But really just examining, okay, what's the deeper meaning here? What's the deeper sense of the act and the agency and so forth looking at each of these areas and trying to really understand what's happening. So Burke's pentad is one way that you can analyze symbols of any kind, words, you know, ads, any kind, any symbol whatsoever you could examine through Burke's pentad. You could also take a step back and use what we've talked about in a previous video, things like Aristotle's modes of persuasion, right? Ethos, pathos, and logos. When we hear somebody persuade or when we see some sort of persuasive symbol or any kind of symbol at all, we can look at it and say, okay, what's the ethos here? Who is the person providing this? What's the organization providing this? What is their character? What is their competence? What do they know about this? What do I know about them? We can look at the pathos. How are they trying to appeal to my emotions here? In what ways are they doing that? In what ways are they appealing to my logical appeals, to my, you know, to my senses, my sensibility in my mind? How is all this unfolding? And what does all that mean? Are they doing so ethically? Are they doing so in a way that's appropriate? Are they doing so in a way that's effective for me, but understanding those things is important? So we could look at it through the eyes of Aristotle's modes of persuasion. We could also look at it another one we talked about is Cicero's principles, right? Cicero's principles for persuasion. First, you know, the invention or discovery of evidence and arguments, where did these things come from for this person or this group? Where are their arguments coming from? Where did they discover this information? What's the background here? How did they organize this information? Are they are they doing so ethically? Are they organizing this information in an appropriate way? What's the stylization, the artistic stylization that they're using here? What kind of spin are they putting on it? Are they using memorization? And this is kind of an old-fashioned one, but are they using memorization? And then finally, are they delivering it in a skillful way? And is that persuading me more than the facts itself? Am I being persuaded because they seem to be smooth, because they seem to know what it's about, because they're wearing a nice suit or they're well put together? Is that having a stronger or heavier weight than it should? We could look at all these things and kind of dissect this persuasion and analyze it and determine whether or not we're being persuaded in an appropriate way or an inappropriate way or whether we should follow that persuasion in general. So all of this is to say that we need to remember that persuasion is really about symbols. It comes down to symbols and how effectively people are using them. And we need to be sure that when we are persuading that we are doing so in an ethical way, that we're using symbols effectively and also ethically and appropriately. And that when we are encountering persuasion that we are doing so critically and analyzing those symbols, what does that mean and what's the deeper meaning here or the sense of why they're doing what they're doing and who's doing this persuading and so forth. There are lots of things we can look at when we encounter persuasion. So we need to be aware of that and be critical receivers as well. If you have questions about any of this information, use and misuse and analysis of symbols or anything to do with persuasion at all, don't hesitate to email me. I'd love to hear from you from on email and communicate with you that way. So feel free to send me any questions to my email. In the meantime, do be on the lookout for that persuasion and do be aware of your own persuasive acts because they are very, very powerful. We need to be doing so responsibly and also be responsible receivers of that persuasion. So be on the lookout and be a more critical receiver of that persuasion as well as a more appropriate and ethical persuader.