Communication Culture and Powerpoint

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Like the sociology of culture, the new sociology of knowledge, too, takes meaning as .... view that the earth is flat), but this “wrong” knowledge can guide ac- tions—with very real ..... Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Communication Culture and Powerpoint HUBERT KNOBLAUCH

Introduction The humanities have witnessed an impressive “cultural turn” within the last decades. Next to the establishment of the broad field of cultural studies, the study of culture seems sometimes to become synonymous with the humanities. Within the German tradition of the humanities, the cultural turn is much like a “déjà vu”: the Geisteswissenschaften had been preoccupied with meaning, and meaning lay at the very heart of the foundation of sociology in Germany. While Geertz (1973) argued for the necessity of interpretation and meaning at the beginning of the cultural turn, meaning and interpretation have constituted the basic categories ever since Max Weber’s foundation of the “verstehende” sociology (Weber 1980/1922). Like the sociology of culture, the new sociology of knowledge, too, takes meaning as its point of departure, translating it into knowledge in the sense of socially transmitted meaning (Knoblauch, 2005). Similarly to the recent developments in cultural sociology (Wuthnow et al., 1984; Bourdieu, 1980; Alexander, 2003), the sociology of knowledge does not reduce meaning and knowledge to a mere “cognitive” phenomenon but links it tightly to action and, consequently, to all results, products, and effects of action. This implies a broad notion of culture that includes all those features Parsons (1964) still had regarded as “social structural” rather than cultural. A similar extension had already been carried out by Berger and Luckmann (1966). Following Weber, they took meaning to define action and redefined it as “knowledge.” From the point of view of the sociology of knowledge, reality depends on knowledge guiding action: What is real is what we conceive of as real and hence realize in our actions. Realitiy, in this sense, is a meaningful phenomenon that is constructed by the

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social coordination and accumulation of actions. Sociology of culture, therefore, is sociology of knowledge.1 The last statement has to be read with caution because, as far as I know, there is no systematic investigation of the relation between the social constructivist sociology of knowledge and the notion of culture. For this reason, I want to sketch, in the first part of this paper, how the notion of meaning, which is so basic to theories of culture, relates to knowledge and to action. While meaning is constituted by subjective consciousness as, e.g., analyzed by phenomenology, knowledge is meaning turned social. Knowledge, in this understanding, is socially mediated meaning guiding action. Empirically, knowledge is objectivated in some form or another, and to the degree it is enacted, it turns any social action into communicative action. The institutionalization of communicative actions results in communicative genres, which form the core of what I call communicative culture. In the second major part of the paper, the abstract concept of communicative culture will be illustrated by using an empirical example: powerpoint presentations. I want to summarize various aspects of a more encompassing study on powerpoint presentations. The perspective of communicative action turns the analyst’s gaze from “presentations as document” (dominating in most contemporary research) to the “presentation as performance.” Powerpoint performances exhibit the crucial role of the body in its relation to the audience and to the technology. This embodied trias makes it possible to define powerpoint presentation as a communicative genre. The notion of communicative genre accounts for the diverse variations of the form, and it also allows us to address the ways in which the dissemination of powerpoint presentations (both as documents and as performances) contributes to the transformation of contemporary communicative culture.

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This is in contradiction to older strands of the sociology of knowledge, which took the sociology of knowledge to be a part of the sociology of culture. Cf. Scheler (1960/1929).

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From Meaning to Communicative Culture The sociological notion of culture is tightly linked to the notion of meaning. Following Weber (1988/1922, p. 180), culture encompasses those events in the world which are connected with meaning. As the world has meaning for us, as “cultural beings” we not only relate to meaning but also confer meaning upon the world. This conferral of meaning is what Weber calls action. Actions, therefore, are meaningful processes that require understanding before explanation. This holds true for social actions, i.e., actions oriented toward others. The character of meaningful orientation toward others, thence, defines the kinds of social relations, the kinds of social institution, even the kinds of social orders that are established; it constitutes as much an “order of meaning” as a material structure (Weber 1980/1921). As crucial as the notion of meaning has been to the definition of action, the term itself had not been defined sufficiently, as Schutz (1932/1974) bemoaned. Therefore Schutz attempted to establish the notion of meaning by employing the phenomenological method. From the point of view of phenomenology, meaning depends on intentionality: our consciousness is always consciousness of something. Intentionality is not static but forms part of a dynamic process which, therefore, exhibits a temporal structure, i.e., consciousness. As temporality engenders differences in intentionality, the reflexivity of consciousness allows us to relate the different experiences to one another: Schutz calls this process meaning. It is by reason of this “relating” that action is rendered possible: while experiences typically relate to other experiences made earlier, the meaning of actions consists, to Schutz, in their projection of experience into the future in a way he describes as modo futuri exacti). From the perspective of phenomenology, meaning, experiences and actions result from subjective accomplishments of consciousness. The subjectivity of these processes finds its boundaries when it comes to social action. For social action is characterized as a form of action oriented to others who themselves are considered as intentional beings. Although they are intentional objects of my experience, the intentionality of these beings is not any more identical with my intentionality. As opposed to the one-sided orientation of my action toward others, social action requires that I orient my behavior in its course 157

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toward their behavior (Weber, 1980/1922, p. 1). In this case, I need to take notice of their intentionality, so that my social action becomes reciprocal (Schutz & Luckmann, 1984). For actors do not only perceive other actors, they also anticipate their “reactions” and respond to them. In this way, meaning acquires a new quality: To the extent that both actors are oriented toward the same meaning so that their actions are coordinated in time, one could talk about “shared intentionality.” It is this social aspect of meaning which we call knowledge.2 As opposed to everyday life or philosophy, the sociological notion of knowledge is not directly related to truth. Actors may be equipped with knowledge that is wrong from the standpoint of science (e.g., the view that the earth is flat), but this “wrong” knowledge can guide actions—with very real results. Therefore, knowledge cannot be reduced to “propositional” or “explicit” knowledge that can be articulated linguistically.3 Thus, Schutz and Luckmann (1984) stress that the basic conceptions of space and time form part of the subjective stock of knowledge, as do bodily skills, e.g., sitting, walking, or swimming.4 These skills may be automatized, but they have been acquired in a very intentional way. Our failure to remember the sequences of learning subjectively should not be equated with a lack of consciousness of this process of habitualizing embodied knowledge. As indicated by the reference to the sociality of meaning, to the degree that we orient toward others, the structure of meaning changes fundamentally. As Luhmann (1984) rightly stresses, meaning is not just “transmitted” from a “sender” to a “receiver,” as simple theories of communication suggest. Through interaction with others, meaning is no longer linked to the consciousness or the inner time of a single actor, but is related to expressions and the time of interaction, which is not at our subjective disposal (Luckmann, 1990). This cannot be accounted for                                                                                                                           2

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As Tomasello (2008) prefers to call it, following Searle. One should stress that the various processes of establishing reciprocity have been well analyzed by Cooley, Mead, and Schutz. For a detailed reconstruction of these processes, cf. Knoblauch (2011). However, it may also be misleading to assume an opposition between “tacit” knowledge and explicit knowledge, as Polanyi (2009) suggests, for language itself is defined by implicit knowledge (such as grammar), while supposedly tacit forms, such as gestures, may appear quite explicit in a culture of visual literacy. The famous example of swimming was provided by Marcel Mauss (1934).

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by mere “imitation” or “mimicking” of others (Latour, 2005). As the word “social intentionality” indicates, it implies a form of socialization that has been analyzed as “intersubjectivity.” Intersubjectivity refers to processes of consciousness such as the exchanging of standpoints, which we engage in when attempting to shake hands, “automatically” anticipating the other’s reaction, like a mirror-image (Schutz, 1964); the looking-glass effect (Cooley, 1909), by which we perceive ourselves through the reactions of others; the process Mead (1934) called taking the role of the other, which allows us to act in anticipation of the other’s action; and finally, the “reciprocity of perspectives,” which allows us to link motives for action, as exemplified by questions and answers (Schutz, 1964a, p. 14): a question is not just a question but a request for an answer, and the answer is not just an answer but a reflection of a question, thus inverting the “in order motive” of the one asking the question into the “because motive” of the answerer. All together, these processes account for intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity is a precondition of knowledge and, thus, of social action and its orientation to others. Schutz already made it quite clear that this orientation is not accomplished by consciousness exclusively. Rather, it requires a form of “expression” in what Schutz called the common “communicative environment” (Schutz & Luckmann, 1998, p. 319). Berger and Luckmann (1966) preferred the more general notion of “objectivation.” In the simplest case, objectivations are indeed bodily forms of expressions, such as gestures or sounds. Objectivations may be, however, also objects, such as smoke signals, ink letters, or hieroglyphs. Objectivations also refer to objects to the degree that we relate to them in some active way. Although signs and symbols have the advantage that their meanings are conventionalized, the objects also carry meaning by way of our active relating to them, even if this meaning can be far less clearly defined, distinct, or explicit (Luckmann, 1972). Stones, trees, doors, or clothes do not need to be part of structured systems of meanings in order to be objects of our actions. Because social action requires a form of objectivation allowing us to coordinate our conduct with that of others in a way that makes sense to the others, it is, in fact, communicative action. Or, to be more exact: communication is the kind of social action that is coordinated and synchronized by objectivations. Only if objectivations are related 159

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to one another do they become meaningful to the actors. The kind of meaning involved in communication is what we call knowledge. Knowledge is what is expressed in or presupposed by the objectivations enacted in reciprocal social action. As knowledge need not be definite, distinct, or even clear, the reciprocal actions need neither to be performed face-to-face nor to be performed in temporal sequence. A person’s testament, but also buildings (Bourdieu, 1980) or clothes (Barthes 1980), may be considered as such objectivations, which derive their meaning from being part of communicative actions. This also explains a fundamental ambivalence of communication. On the one hand, objectivations relate to actors who produce them and pursue their goals, strategies, and intentions. On the other hand, objectivations are no longer dependent on the actors themselves but on others’ experiences and knowledge. For this reason we are not only communicative actors but also, simultaneously, participants in communication. Because communication is also and always a form of action, however, it requires coordination, synchronization, and objectivation of the coordination and synchronization. Communication or, rather, communicative actions, connect what Simmel calls culture: the subjectivity of the soul and the objectivity of its products. Culture is, by definition, communicative culture. Being built on communicative action, communicative culture is characterized by what we may call the communicative genres (cf. Knoblauch & Gunthner, 1995) and, more generally, forms of communicative action. As institutions of communication, communicative forms result from the routinization of communicative actions (conceived of as actors’ knowledge). Like all institutions, communicative forms result from goals and are routinized if they serve a more or less specific function in that they solve certain action problems. Moreover, communicative forms exhibit what Giddens (1984) calls the “duality of structure.” They are not only forms of action but, simultaneously, enacted objectivations that are part of an order. More specifically, communicative culture is the order of such forms.

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The Communicative Culture of Powerpoint5 The conceptual framework is undoubtedly, and by nature, very abstract. Thus, it seems necessary to indicate what it refers to empirically, particularly because it is derived from empirical work. Let me therefore sketch an empirical analysis of an element of communication culture: powerpoint presentations. Powerpoint presentations are an excellent example of communication culture because they are basically forms of communicative actions, including objectivations of various kinds. Moreover, powerpoint presentations are part of a communicative culture that is not cut off from other cultures; rather, they constitute a communicative form found across the most diverse social worlds. Finally, powerpoint presentations are an example that is very close to the life world of those who are writing and reading this text. The following analysis is based on a more extensive study of powerpoint conducted by a research group (Schnettler & Knoblauch, 2008). It is presented in detail in a book recently published (Knoblauch, 2013). The analysis cannot be reproduced in this small space. Rather, the analysis of powerpoint presentations will be used to illustrate some of the basic features of communication culture.

(a) Performance, Space, and Participation structure Powerpoint is a good example because it refers to the very basics of the approach taken here. Anyone who remembers preparing and giving a powerpoint presentation for the first time will immediately realize the degree to which social action is communicative action. Whatever the project pursued by the presenting actors (giving a paper, persuading people, probably even entertaining them), it is social by virtue of being oriented toward others. These others may be personally known to us, schoolmates in front of whom we are giving the presentation. Or they may be anonymous attendees at a conference whom we have never seen before. As this orientation may be social, it becomes                                                                                                                           5

As opposed to the trade mark PowerPoint, the word “powerpoint” refers to all presentations using computer-supported presentation software and projectors.

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realized only to the degree that we not only reflect on the presentation but also talk, show slides, etc., that is, produce objectifications that are part of communicative action. Objectivations need not necessarily include an elaborate technical chain like powerpoint presentations. The person whose presentation of a paper is exclusively oral is, of course, also communicating by means of objectivations (including the paper and the voice of the embodied actor). Powerpoint, however, differs from solely oral presentation. Thus, the famous information scientist Tufte (2003) holds the view that the use of powerpoint dramatically reduces the informational content of presentation as compared with the written text of other software programs. According to Tufte, even the Challenger shuttle disaster can be traced back to powerpoint (or, in his view, more specifically to PowerPoint): The software reduces the complexity of information and obstructs the ability to indicate the relevance of information. Powerpoint, he concludes, “makes you dumb.” As widely as his critique has been received (even by the producers of PowerPoint), one must be aware that Tufte focuses on only one aspect of powerpoint: he analyzes the slides as visual products and compares them with other visual products. The slides are certainly an important kind of objectivation intentionally produced by actors; if one recalls that powerpoint presentations are much more than the slides, one may not only get a taste of what is meant by communicative action. The reduction of powerpoint to the slides also is a systematic reason for the shortcomings of Tufte’s analysis, which ignores other ways in which slides and information may made relevant. When saying that powerpoint presentations build on communicative actions, we mean that a presenter shows slides by technical means (computer, projector, software) in front of an audience in a way that involves embodied actions (such as speaking or pointing), which I will call performance. Performance need not necessarily involve the physical presence of both presenter and audience, as presentations can increasingly be mediated. The notion of performance indicates that communicative actions cannot be reduced to objectivations. In the case of powerpoint, it is not the slides as presentation that perform the action and can be analyzed as to their “effects.” Rather, it is the performance of the actors—the presenters and the audience, as well as the technolo162

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gy. The performance includes the movement of their bodies in time and space, and in relation to one another and to the objectivations (e.g., computers and slides).6 Performance, therefore, indicates that communicative action is a temporal process. Time is not only a requirement for production of objectivations (e.g., linguistic utterances or slides); time is also involved in the coordination of actors and objectivations in such a way as to produce a certain meaning. As an example, slides are not just “shown” by the projector. The audience must be located in such a way as to be addressed by the projections, and in addition, speakers “do” the showing themselves by referring to the slides in their speech, by turning their body toward them, and by explicitly pointing at them. These various aspects are by no means accidental; to the contrary, the interplay among the presenter’s body, the slides, and the audience is constitutive of the content or, as Tufte puts it, the “information.” Obviously, the analysis of communication culture refers to the empirical process by which actors perform communicative acts. Therefore it is imperative to have access to data that allow us to analyze the temporal unfolding of communication, such as participant observation and audio or video recordings of natural situations (i.e., the situations in which what is considered the subject matter of a sociological study takes place). In our case, we have participated in and recorded by video more than 200 powerpoint presentations in institutionally diverse settings (universities, industry, administration, churches, etc.) so as to allow generalizations with respect to the wider social context of powerpoint.       Pointing with the hand

Pointing hand forming a U

Pointing hand forming a V

Figure 10.1: Pointing gestures

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The notion of performance draws on its understanding in the ethnography of speaking, cf. Bauman/Briggs (1990).

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As communicative culture is built on communicative actions, the analysis starts by focusing on specific actions, such as pointing. Pointing clearly is not dependent on conventionalized signs with fixed meaning, such as language. Nevertheless, in its different forms it is a way of acting communicatively, be it by pointing with the finger of one hand or with the hand and the arm, holding a laser pointer. Pointing gestures, therefore, do not have their meaning by virtue of their form (e.g., U-shaped or V-shaped) (Kendon 2004); rather, the meaning of pointing gestures is conferred on them by their very performance.

Figure 10.2: Triadic structure of powerpoint presentations (from Knoblauch, 2013)

When the presenter is pointing, the other participants are not only a background or mere addressees. As passively as they seem to behave, they nonetheless become participants in the situation of pointing by being part of the participation framework of the presentation.7 Activity by the audience consists in watching whatever happens on the front stage. Here we find not only slides, but also the presenter, who may sit, stand up, walk around, and point. The active role of the audience becomes particularly visible if we look at the presenter’s body. Pointing is accomplished not only by the finger but by the entire body, and the presenters are well aware how they must position their body in order to                                                                                                                           7

The term participation framework has been elaborated by Goffman (1981).

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point. In this way, they account not only for their body but also for the relation of their body to the bodies of the audience members. The positions of the performer’s body play a part in pointing. If we look at the specific body positions, we can detect that the body is of some relevance during other parts of the presentation, too. One of the most prominent positions in powerpoint consists in what one may call the middle position. Presenters position themselves between the audience and the screen or the wall on which the slide is being projected. Instead of forming a line, the three elements constitute a triangle, as illustrated in Figure 10.2. The triadic structure demonstrates the relation between the presenter and the audience, mirrored in her body posture; it also places the technology in the role of actor. To be more exact, it is the projected slide that deserves the embodied attention of the speaker, but, from time to time, also the computer. This triadic relation very much resembles a formation of faces (Kendon, 1990), yet it includes the presenter’s entire body, the orientation of the bodies in the audience, and the technology.

Figure 10.3: Body formation (from Knoblauch 2013)

With respect to the spatial framing of the presenter’s body, the triadic structure resembles the interaction between human actors: As in the interaction rituals between human speakers, who orient toward the three spatial areas (R, P, O), the movements of the presenter with respect to the other two participating parties also serve to basically frame the whole presentation. Moreover, in combination with speech 165

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and slides, the movement of the body does more than add to the meaning; as we can only suggest, it is by virtue of the embodied performance that meanings can be produced, meanings that are not articulated in speech and not presented on the slides (see Knoblauch, 2009). The role of the body refers to the role of space in the performance of communicative action. This pertains to the space enacted in between the bodies present, and it also is applicable to the space prepared for the action beforehand, which provides the setting for the presentations. Despite its diversity, one can observe a number of common features of the space of presentation. Typically, presentations are held in spaces prepared for communication, known from educational settings. By the position of the seating arrangements, audiences are oriented in spatial orders of what Goffman (1963) calls focused interaction. The spatial orders of focused interaction as represented by things arranged in space are dominated by two formats: First, there is the format of the seminar, which puts presenters on an equal level with the audience, with only the projected slide on the front stage, and second, the lecture format, which has the presenter and the audience confronting one another.8

  typical spatial order of lecture format

and

seminar format

Figure 10.4: Two spatial configurations

Both formats are related to different kinds of presentations, although they do not determine them: Participatory presentations can occur in the lecture format, while frontal presentations can be per                                                                                                                           8

Given that the presentation entails technology, there is also a chance it will turn into a demonstration; this happens in cases in which the digital technology (e.g., software) is itself the subject matter of the presentation.

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formed “against” the seminar format. Typically, however, spatial formats correlate to two kinds of presentational styles, which may be called formal and informal.9 Presentations exhibit a peculiar time structure, much more specific than the trajectory of beginning, main part, and end. Presentations entail a serial order of slides that serve as a reference for speech and follow a predetermined order. The serial order is typically characterized by a speech of an argumentative-instructive type (as opposed to the narrative style predominant in family photo slide shows).10 Moreover, the presentation forms part of a communicative event that extends far beyond the presentation itself, including series of presentations, discussions, decision-making, etc. As some elements of presentations (such as pointing) are situative and others extend beyond the sitation (architecture and objects, such as chairs, stools, projectors, etc.), the presentation also transcends the mere situative coordination of action in talking, pointing, and listening. Far from being just a “social situation” (Goffman, 1963) consisting of fleeting interactions, they are situated events that have been arranged and organized in advance. The fact that this presupposes some kind of permanent organization will be addressed later. With respect to communication culture, it must be remarked that presentations are performative events, i.e., events in which certain actors act in the focus of the audience’s attention (by means of spatial order, their bodily conduct, the primary right to speak, and visual devices such as projectors). Presentations, therefore, are performative in three respects: First, they are performative in that they consist of bodily actions in the triangular structure; second, they are characterized by a stage format that is quite specific, as it typically revolves not around the presenters but rather around the relationship between and among presenter, slide, and audience. Finally, they perform an action the meaning of which is defined by the communicative genre.

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This has been analyzed in more detail in Knoblauch (2007). For an analysis of family slide shows, cf. Keppler (1994, pp. 186ff)

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(b) Communicative Genre and Outer Social Structure The relevance of the participation structure for the presentation is seen in the fact that the types of presentations can be distinguished by the stress they lay on each aspect: While manuscript-oriented presentations come close to lectures in that they focus on some kind of document (represented by paper or by the computer monitor), some presentations focus on the slides and their representations; finally, some presenters focus on the audience. All three types can be found in the data; they are typically mixed and form part of what may be considered a communicative genre (Luckmann, 1992). Communicative genres are communicative actions that exhibit certain forms. These forms are constituted by their very performance, on the one hand; on the other, they guide the expectations of actors in that they are part of their knowledge of what is to be done. In a way, they correspond to the “duality of structure” as suggested by Giddens (1984), stressing, however, the fact that actions need to be material, embodied, i.e., objectified in order to allow for social coordination. Powerpoint presentations are not just structures; they are built of meaningful things and bodies that are part and parcel of actions. As routinized patterns that allow actors to coordinate their actions, communicative genres rather correspond to institutions. In fact, communicative genres are typically related to certain roles, e.g., presenter, audience member, or technician. These roles seem almost naturally related to certain types of communicative action. Thus, there is asymmetry in the participation structure between the presenter, who has the right to speak and provide the slides, and the task of the audience, which is to watch and listen. It is this asymmetry which appears to be the institutionalized “function” of the genre. As one party delivers something that is mostly talk and visuals, framed in the codes of knowledge, the asymmetry of the presenting situation presupposes an asymmetry in what is presented; this is what is considered the “knowledge” transmitted by the presentation (with respect to the presentation as document, it is instead called “information”). The association of talk and slides with knowledge is framed by the communicative forms adapted: the style of the slides draws on educational, scientific, and “informational” genres, while the type of talk typically follows the register of teaching (“docere”), although in a very informal way (even in formal settings). 168

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In addition to the functional aspect of institutions, which contributes to solving a more or less relevant social problem (such as knowledge transmission), communicative genres guide the course of action in more or less detail. In this respect, degrees of formality can be distinguished by the degree to which the course of action is fixed and conventionalized. The degree of fixation and conventionalization is not just a situative aspect of the performances; it is typically linked to the organization (often expressed in the settings and the degree of fixed elements) of presentations as events. The sponsoring organization provides spaces, buildings, and technologies, and arranges for audiences and presenters with the knowledge or lack of knowledge relevant for such events. In this sense, communicative genres are not substantial units of performances but relate to a context to which they themselves contribute. This relation is produced quite materially, as presentations can be transformed into other media: slides may be printed on paper, sent by e-mail, or put on the Internet. The presentation as an event may be recorded by video, linked to the slides, and presented as a podcast and “virtual lecture.” These genre “corollaries” (Yates & Orlokowski, 2007) testify to the prominent role of media and technologies, which seems to mark the difference between “old school” lectures and digitalized presentations. However, one should not forget that lectures also rely on forms of objectivations, such as manuscripts, and even spontaneous “fresh talk” can be recorded and made accessible on the Internet or intranets. Owing to their objectivation, all forms of communication can be considered as “mediatized” (Krotz, 2001) beyond the face-to face situation. There are various aspects of mediatization in powerpoint presentations. First, they are performed by means of special technologies, such as computers, projectors, and laser pointers. Although these technologies are very actively involved in the performance, they are not just “actors” in a network but, rather, part of the communicative genre called presentation.11 Although still linked to the body, the fact                                                                                                                           11

The question whether technologies are “actors” (as raised by Latour, 2005) seems to me to relate to legal questions rather than to sociological ones (which must account for the legitimation apparatus of law); sociology defines not actors but actions (by which actors may be defined by themselves).

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that technology allows, e.g., words to be shown to the audience rather than read aloud, makes a difference; like legal communication, they are not only “represented”; actors know that they are part of information systems, and the words presented are documented. This observation is not trivial, because it is one way in which the presentations (as documents) are processed into and out of the situation. In fact, the data of many “information systems” of organization contain a large number of powerpoint presentations (Schönborn, 2004). Powerpoint, in this sense, mediates communication by way of information technology. Against this background, the conception of powerpoint presentation (slides) as information and the critique of its informational capacity are as plausible as the one-sided bias of this perspective. Powerpoint presentations are mediated in another way. They are performed by presenters after having been prepared in advance, in a way that makes them comparable to “products” (available at least in the shape of digital data). The very performance of the presentation testifies to the difference of the “data” and thus to the incompleteness of the product; at the same time, it clearly demonstrates that, and how, the data are related to the performing persons; these individuals may be mere “loudspeakers,” “authors,” or representatives of an authoring collective or an organization. By relating information to information, they lay claim to some form of “authority” and turn it into knowledge or “ideas.” As persons with their “ideas” temporally transcend the situation, the presentation is mediated in a spatial sense as well: Presentations take place in specific architectural locations, such as universities, congress halls, or meeting rooms, i.e., real buildings and elements of more encompassing building structures. This is by no means trivial, as the architecture of office buildings has been adapting to the requirements of meetings and presentation in the last decades. The spatial order makes reference to some form of organization. The notion of organization must not be restricted to refer only to formal organizations, such as the university; the minimum requirement for the organization of powerpoint presentations is to get audiences, presenters, and technology into one (built) space. The organization of events also relates to formal organizations in charge of the organized event, such as advertising agencies, universities, and administrations. Their massive dissemination demonstrates 170

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that it is not only the service and knowledge industries that rely on powerpoint presentations. Industry and production companies, too, have adapted this communicative form. As Yates and Orlikowski (2008) demonstrate with respect to ad agencies, “knowledge” workers spend a good part of their working time preparing, performing, and post-processing powerpoint presentations. These aspects of mediatization are not external to the event; rather, they form an integral part of the event itself, e.g., the organization, the building, and the technology. Being “situated” rather than “situative,” they transcend the situation. This is particularly true of the technology, which “links” the situation by way of the data stored on the computer, the software enabling the presentation, and the data that are processed as a “powerpoint presentation” product. The very performance of powerpoint, therefore, is linked to the massive dissemination of these technologies, a process that has come to be known as the “digital revolution” or the “information society,” co-constructed by political organizations and private companies on a worldwide scale.

Communication Culture The observation that communicative forms are not just related to, but also constitutive for, social structural units such as organization, is of utmost importance for an understanding of communication culture. The culture of communication does not just consist of meaning hidden deep within the subjects, of “values” somehow working behind the surface of social structures, or of “symbols” representing a transcendent layer of reality; rather, communication culture consists of the very acts producing the meaning that guides the next actions and is guided by prior actions. It therefore resembles the “duality of structure” suggested by Giddens (1984), yet it also differs from it in a striking way. While Giddens cannot explain how action turns into structure, the notion of communicative action stresses the role of objectivations that make it possible to stabilize actions into forms, because they can be experienced intersubjectively. Because of objectivations (which include the body), actions are meaningful not only to the actors performing them but also to others: the performance of meaning becomes per171

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ceivable by others, and that is what makes them communicative, and the fact that the meanings are immediately relevant to others (even if not necessarily “shared” or “common”) is what allows to call them culture. Communication culture starts from the assumption that, to become socially relevant, a meaning must be objectified in a way that can be understood by actors. As its objectivation and its understanding constitute the basic aspects of communication (which need not necessarily be linguistic), its meaningfulness constitutes a basic aspect of culture. While meaningfulness refers to actors’ orientation and, thus, subjectivity, their objectivation implies not only imply the signification of meaning but also their materiality and the role of objects. In this sense, communication culture refers to performance as well as to material objects enacted in the performance (including the body) of communicative actions. It results from them (as a material product) and is made meaningful by them (e.g., a tree, the heavens, or our imaginary world created by linguistic signs). The social world by no means consist solely of communication; among other things, it requires actors who can recall what they have done, said, and seen, so that communication can become stabilized (including, of course, the materialities of communication). Reliance on what actors know (and its exchange via communication, of course) is, indeed, one prerequisite for the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). If social realities have been constructed, and once actors have been socialized into this reality (which, of course, is achieved by communication), then (stable) knowledge plays an important role in the functioning of society. Although contemporary society has been called a “knowledge society” (Stehr, 1994), its most pervasive feature seems to be not the maintenance of knowledge, but rather the “production” of new knowledge. Quite surprisingly, the fact that this implies an enormous multiplication of communication has been mostly overlooked. Instead of relying on knowledge, contemporary societies even try to make use of “implicit” knowledge and turn it into communication (as all knowledge production necessarily takes the form of objectivations within communication). The notion of communication culture, therefore, not only hints at the erroneously transparent process in which “meaning,” “norms,” and “symbolic realities” shine through. It also serves to indi172

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cate what may be considered a dramatic shift in contemporary society: the liquefaction of knowledge into communication.

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