One of the things we learn in a study of Linguistics and Risk is how people are influenced through: structure, strategy, stickiness, grammar, semiotic design, Discourse, framing and anchoring.
One of the tools we use is the SPoR Language Influencing Tool©. The Language Influencing Tool is a simple little pocket tool that can be accessed on site as a reminder of what was learned in the Linguistic Module. The tool itself is a Priming tool.
One of the first things to learn in communicating on site is to suspend agenda, this means not going out looking for safety issues but rather to engage, build relationships, develop understanding and listen. Over the many years I have been doing this course I find that most people in safety struggle with such a demand. If you can’t suspend agenda, then you won’t listen.
The next skill we develop is knowing the pitch. This means knowing at what level you want to communicate to the audience and what kind of dissonance one wants to create. Creating dissonance is one of the best ways to work out who wants to learn and who doesn’t. This saves an enormous amount of time so that one knows that genuine respondents want to learn. Those who run around like a duck quacking about their own agenda pretty soon quack back to their traditional safety pen to quack in higher volume about what they don’t know.
Framing is a selection process about what matters and what doesn’t in the messaging. It is a very challenging skill to know what to say and what not to say. It is also critical when undertaking Critical Discourse Analysis to work out what others say and don’t say in safety (https://safetyrisk.net/whats-said-and-not-said-in-safety/).
Priming is a skill that enables a message to stick. This often takes considerable time to develop and recognise. On most occasions in traditional safety such as HOP, the repetition of the language of ‘performance’ assures an audience that what comes next is orthodox safety: more systems, slogans and measurement.
Mirroring is not just about repetition but often what happens unconsciously in the text (visual, verbal, symbolic or written). Knowing how people are influenced in discourse unconsciously is foundational to and critique of safety messaging. Without skills in CDA much messaging of safety is contradictory and encourages the opposite of what is desired. For example, telling people that the first and second rule of safety culture is not to talk about safety culture from a book about safety culture, completely decomposes any sense-ability in discourse. Then to talk about it, one has to contradict one’s own rule and therefore lose all credibility simply because the mirroring not considered.
Finally, anchoring is complementary to priming and ensures that the message is consistent with one’s ontology, hermeneutic and ethic. If one hasn’t worked on these three prior to messaging then its most likely that the messaging will be accidental not strategic.
It helps too if one has a sound knowledge of the many social psychological influencing mechanisms at work in all social relationships. You can learn more about this here:
- https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-language-influencing-a-video/
- https://safetyrisk.net/mapping-social-influence-strategies/
If you are up for a challenge and want to learn about messaging and discourse in risk you can join the mailing list for the next course on Linguistics starting in September: email here to register admin@spor.com.au
Dr Rob Long
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Rob Long says
This from one of the participants:
I wanted to write and Thank you so very much for the recent Linguistics & Risk module, for challenging me, for guiding me and for sharing your knowledge and yourself with us.
I really enjoyed the sessions and the homework. I definitely feel I have moved in my listening practice. I have for a long time now been the one in meetings that seems to pick up on what a person is feeling and saying more than others in the meeting, and can often sense the frustration in the person who is not being ‘heard’. I now understand more why this is. Hmmm, I am also now pondering on a thought –I was often not the ‘Manager’ in the meeting, Perhaps because of this I was able to listen without agenda – I had no pressure to ‘perform’, no expectation I was required to fill. Wow – I’ve just realised that Suspend Agenda is in the plural sense. Multiple agenda, not just the agenda of an outcome, but also ones like what other agenda do I have – like how do I think I have to act, do I feel I have to appear knowledgeable rather than listening, do I feel pressure to come up with a fix – agenda’s conscious and unconscious. Like you repeated on Tuesday evening – ask ‘what do you want me to do’
I really appreciated the discourse analysis work too – I now look deeper at how something is written and structured – I found that really valuable.
I am super keen to do the Linguistics module again Rob. I know that I have so much more to learn and will relish the opportunity for more guided practice.