symbolic speech

symbolic speech

The Power of Symbolic Speech

1. The Definition and Importance of Symbolic Speech

Symbols themselves, as used in symbolic speech, can take any form that the creator of the symbol intends and that the target audience understands. The flexibility in the nature of symbols is essential to the concept of symbolic speech. This is due to symbolic speech aiming to communicate an idea or ideas, and if a person can choose any form of symbol, the likelihood of that symbol effectively communicating the desired idea to the intended audience is greatly increased. The less restricted a speaker is in choosing the way to best communicate their ideas, the more likely they will be able to effectively communicate those ideas. At the end of the day, it is the communication of ideas and the clash of differing interpretations about those ideas that lies at the very heart of human society and culture.

While some definitions stress the nonverbal aspect of symbolic speech, this is in fact not present in all forms of symbolic speech. A more accurate definition would be that symbolic speech consists of nonverbal, non-written forms of communication. These take the form of words or actions. An example of nonverbal symbolic speech would be unfurling a swastika armband outside a Jewish old age home, and example of the action type of symbolic speech. An example of the words type of symbolic speech would be the extremist popular slogans: “White is a code word for Racist” and “Let’s take our Country Back”; the former mentioned in a speech to a large public crowd, the latter mentioned in an internet discussion form with regard to the impact of nonwhite immigration to New Zealand. A more inclusive definition brings symbolic speech under the protective umbrella of the First Amendment, but it also brings it into the fray of criticisms that have been directed at the concept from the courts and general public opinion.

2. Historical Examples of Symbolic Speech

The section “Historical Examples of Symbolic Speech” might be better understood in the context of how religions have utilized symbolic speech. Smith and Roberson (1986:249-253) discuss how religious leaders have used symbolic speech through ritual and ceremony to incorporate spiritual effects into changes in the social and physical environment. Ritual and ceremony are generally very formalized and follow an enacted script that can convey meaning through prescribed actions. The best example of this was how Jesus Christ overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. This action was easily construed as a direct assault on Jewish religious leaders and symbolically it was meant to represent the change between the old covenant and the new covenant that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection would bring about. By overturning the tables, Jesus removed the money changers who were designated to convert money into a special temple currency and in so doing pay a half-shekel tax. This tax was used to maintain temple worship and the earnings of the chief priests and elders who were unwilling to convert to Christianity held a vested interest in maintaining the present state of things. By removing them, Christ was symbolically removing the old religious order and the significance of this act was understood by his disciples who recorded it in all four of the Gospels. This one act can be said to have represented a change in religious dispensations and remains a very powerful and concise example of symbolic speech.

3. The Legal Protection of Symbolic Speech

At the opposite end of the scale from this sort of case, a symbolic conduct can be sharply and incontestably defined as communication and no act. The wearing a black armband (“symbol of mourning”) may serve Johnson’s relevancy test more succinctly than any verbal elucidation of the same intended point. But precisely because the nature and content of the medium of symbolic expression is so manipulable then again the case will not always be so clear. Determination of the meaning and message inherent in any symbolic behavior will frequently involve an exploration of the context and events surrounding the act. This will also be an area where the communicator will frequently be at variance with judgment of his intent.

The first viewpoint would be the varying presumptions relative to speech and no speech in overtly expressive conduct as against pure speech. The Court has at times viewed the two as identical for First Amendment purposes. But such a mechanical application will hinder a judge from getting to grips with problems where the idea content of an act is of equal or greater significance than the overt act. A sit-in may be more potent as a demonstration that supporters of an unpopular cause will risk arrest than as a vocalization of opinion. And draft card burning might be utterly devoid of specific or general advocacy that draft avoidance is desirable, so that it would not be so much as a political advice having greater or lesser privilege tested under Schenck – but it may still be a very telling way of saying I condemn this legislation pressure and say that avoidance is now an accepted part of our social system.

But a great deal of this effectiveness may depend on circumstantial evaluation, going to the qualitative differences between different sorts of policy with respect to their narrowing effect upon legitimate speech. It will be important to be able to say at what point a policy has operated to command a general heading off of words of a particular sort, and to preclude their utterance in a context which would not discredit their author. And the effectiveness of constitutional limitations in the protection of speech will vary in accord with an ultimate Court determination as to the primary character of the intended communication. If a particular symbol will be held to partake of the nature of conduct more than communication, then little will be left of the guarantee to freedom of the symbolist. This brings us to the first viewpoint wherein problems of symbolic expression may anticipate and differ from those of verbal speech.

4. Contemporary Cases and Controversies Surrounding Symbolic Speech

Today, few cases remind us that acts of symbolic speech are as protected and powerful as are more traditional forms of speech, and this is a reality that sometimes tests the limits of the First Amendment. The issues tend to revolve around government restrictions on symbolic speech, upon the principle that such restrictions are in the interests of public peace, safety, or order. When is the government allowed to restrict protests, demonstrations, and other forms of symbolic speech? The Supreme Court has held that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner in which expression occurs so long as it is content neutral, narrowly tailored to advance a significant government interest, and leaves open ample alternative channels of communication (Clark 878). Such a test was applied in United States v. O’Brien (1969), involving the burning of a draft card to protest the Vietnam War, in which the Court upheld the conviction of a man who violated a federal law against the destruction of draft cards. The Court applied the intermediate scrutiny standard and held that the prohibition of the destruction of draft cards was not related to any suppression of free expression, but there was a valid interest in the law to have an effective and efficient draft system. Hence, the statute was upheld as constitutional. O’Brien’s six forms of narrowly tailored regulation provide a useful framework for analyzing when the government may legitimately restrict certain expressive activities so it has been relied on in many symbolic speech cases since (Code Civil Liberties).

5. The Future of Symbolic Speech and Its Impact on Society

Consider an example from a different communicative enterprise. Problems of literacy have led to a state of affairs in which an increasing volume of information is conveyed through pictures rather than through written words. Studies have been made in which the relative efficiency of pictorial and verbal presentation has been examined in various tasks. The upshot of this work is not entirely clear, but there is some indication that the development of better picture languages might be a worthwhile enterprise suited to some sorts of communication. And it can be excellent for us that even in written communication, there might be hope of future improvement through some more felicitous matching of symbol and referent than is now achieved. This is speculation, but to the extent that it seems even remotely a possible development, it calls for a reversal of the complex toward a situation in which the symbol system is more readily manipulated and thus more readily alterable. And although we cannot know what changes in man and his culture will do to symbolic devices of human guile, there may eventually be some degree of consent to an abandonment of present symbol systems. This need not imply loss of communicative ability. If man were to reach a state of very great facility in altering symbol systems, he might become competent in translating from one such system to another, just as it is now possible to translate between languages. Step by step translation may be awkward, and it is certainly never a complete success. But it is to be preferred to the situation now prevailing in which persons of different cultures can never quite be sure what their symbols mean to each other.

The development and improvement of techniques for altering the environment or the organism promise to increase the importance of non-verbal action to the total communication process. As that happens, human culture is likely to show increasing awareness of the relative costs of symbolism and more willingness to explore the possibility of advancing to a new level in human communication. It is understandable that no one would hope to return to a culture in which man could do little more than grunt at his fellow men. Yet awareness of the relative costs of symbolism might lead, not to abandon it, but to its improvement. It should eventually be possible to construct symbol systems which are more efficient in the transmission of information. And as we consider the longer run future, it is not inconceivable that man might begin to develop and deploy symbol systems which have the expressive capacity of present language with far less of a discrepancy between the expressor and the audience.