I guess I have a serious problem with performance-based, oral communication. There he/she is, up front, plastic and rehearsed. It is the death knell of the speech-act.
What do I mean? Well, when I walk into a church, a classroom, a meeting, I guess I want to see a person filled up with joy and brokenness, battling the immediate with transparency. What good does it do me to see the rehearsed outline?
I don’t live in the world of outlines and measured language. I live in the world of the here-and-now. When someone talks, generally I ask if what he or she is saying is reproducible in my own life. Does it resonate with my experience?
That is where ethos comes in. What is human is transferrable. What is authentic resonates.
If the rehearsed comes across like sanitized fluff, the distance is so great between what the speaker is saying and where I live that all the polish in the world can’t get me to relate.
Glitz, glamour, and a thousand ‘takes’ in media communication create the implied impossible. There is no way for me to replicate the beauty, the awe, and the oral rhythm when I live the world of the mundane, full of mistakes. That is why people need to be genuine when they speak.
If my ethos is sanitized or over-practiced, I create distance with those to whom I speak. I cast myself as someone above the common person.
It is not hard to be authentic, at least in theory. We intentionally cover up the authenticity with the plastic, hoping that no one sees the flawed me. In reality, that is what people are looking for. “Oh, Dan is broken too. Maybe there is hope for me.”
Ethos. Ethos. Ethos. Wherefore art thou ethos? Show me who you are, really. That is when I start listing. Otherwise I am saying to myself. Who is this guy trying to be? He is certainly not himself, at least not today. I know him. He is not like that. I’m not like that.
If, however, the person I am listening to laughs, cries, and pulls back the curtain, well at that point I am fully engaged. I see someone for who s/he is. It gives me hope. Maybe I can learn their lessons and walk in their shoes.
