All Communications Have a Past, Present, and Future

To understand the importance of past, present, and future in a communication, let’s look in on Stewart and Chris, husband and wife, who are engaged in a heated argument. Stewart wants to go south for Thanksgiving; Chris wants to visit relatives instead.

It is impossible to understand this argument without knowing some history and how it affects what is going on now. During the last holiday (past), they visited Stewart’s parents. Now Chris is trying to get Stewart to be fair and visit her family. Knowing some future implications can also be helpful. Chris knows that for the next holiday (future), Stewart has already made plans to go to a professional convention in the South. This will mean two trips south and none to see her relatives in St. Paul. The heated argument (present) is occurring because Chris is feeling cheated. The past and future are affecting Chris’s ideas and feelings in the present. Stewart, however, seems to be ignoring both past and future.

Even if you have never met someone before, the past still affects your communication with that person – because your response to new people you meet is based on your past experience. You might respond to the physical type (short, tall, fat, thin), to the occupation (accountant, gym teacher), or even to a name (remember how a boy named Eugene always tormented you and you’ve mistrusted all Eugenes ever since?). Any of these things you call up from your past might influence how you respond to these people – at least at the beginning.

The future also influences communication. If you want a relationship to continue, you will say and do things in the present to make sure it does. (Thanks for dinner, I always enjoy your cooking.) If you think you will never see a person again, this also might affect your communication. You might be more businesslike, leaving the personal aspects of your life out of the communication.

Roles are parts we play or how we behave with others. And those roles are established by society or by individual relationships. For example, Carol, the student, is supposed to communicate in a particular way with her instructor, Professor Jones. Because she is in the role of student and he is in the role of teacher, she is expected to show him a certain amount of respect, not call him by his first name, and so on. Communication changes as roles change. When Carol later talks to her father, they will probably communicate from the roles of parent and child. When she goes to work, she will communicate with her boss in the role of employee.

As Carol plays the role of student, child, and employee, we can make some predictions about how she will communicate, since the society in which we live gives us some idea of what is expected in these roles. (Don’t talk back to your father. Let your boss know you’re energetic). In other cases the role is not so clear, and it may change according to how the participants define their relationship. Let’s say, for example, that Carol meets her boyfriend after work. As she comes out to the parking lot, he says, Get in the car. This sentence tells us a good deal about their relationship and how they have defined it. If, instead, he gets out of the car, walks to meet her, puts his arm around her shoulder, and says, Hi, honey, we have a completely different impression of their relationship. How we communicate, then, is based on our roles in relation to one another. That is why no two communications are the same; they change to meet the needs of each particular relationship.

The roles we play – whether established by individual relationships or by the society – are also perceived differently by different people. These different perceptions affect the communication that results. For example, Tom in his role of youth director is well organized and maintains tight control over the classes he teaches. The kids who take his classes know they have to behave, or they’ll be in big trouble. Therefore they speak to him in a respectful voice and stay quiet when they’re supposed to. To other kids, however, Tom’s discipline indicates rigidity and inflexibility. These kids don’t go by the Youth Center; they choose not to communicate with him at all.

Let’s see how the three principles of transactional communication work as we listen to a conversation between Jane and Stacy:

Stacy: (Folds her arms in front of her) What happened to all those new sweaters you got for your birthday?

We know right away in this scene that Stacy does not want to cooperate, even though she never says so. As Jane speaks, Stacy simultaneously and continuously sends out signals: she frowns, she steps back, she folds her arms in front of her - all nonverbal symbols of resistance. Jane reinforces her verbal symbols by stepping forward - a nonverbal way of showing assertiveness.

This scene between Jane and Stacy would probably take no more than thirty seconds in real life, yet it is filled with symbols – some of which non-participants would be unable to detect. For example, let’s speculate on the past and future aspects of this communication. How many times has Jane borrowed things from Stacy? How willing has Stacy been to lend them before? What has been their condition upon return? What is Jane and Stacy’s relationship? Do they get along? Do they respect each other and each other’s property?

We must also look at the roles that Jane and Stacy play. Their roles seem to be equal because they are friends. From their conversation, however, Jane is willing to play the role of borrower but Stacy is not willing to play the role of lender. The roles they play in this transaction will depend on the experience they have had with these roles in the past. If in the past Jane had returned a sweater dirty, this might make Stacy reluctant to continue in the role of lender.

When we look at this conversation between Jane and Stacy, we can see how complicated even a simple conversation can be. Still, we can never really understand what goes on in communication unless we look at it from a transactional perspective. Then we can begin to see the complexity and uniqueness of each communication event. As Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, once observed, we cannot step into the same river twice because not only are we different but so is the river. The same is true of communication.

There is something always different. And what is more there are usually many modifications and changes in the form of every transaction.

How do we manage to communicate then? Is there anything invariant, unchanging that underlies the vast sea of ever changing characteristics?

Let us consider the above description of communication again. The account of communication in it may seem to be exhaustive. Yet there are very important issues which it doesn’t cover at all.

Here is one of the most typical interactions. Each of us comes across dozens of them every time we communicate ourselves or watch others doing it.

The two utterances seem to be totally unrelated. There are no obvious and direct semantic or formal ties between them. How do we understand then that they form an interaction and that the second utterance contains a hint of where the dean might be. What directs us in our inferences that the dean may be at the staff meeting? The other communicant doesn’t say that directly.

Can the knowledge about continuality and simultaneity help us? Or that about past, present and future of all communications we have encountered? Do the above principles uncover what guides us both in the construction of our messages and in the interpretation of them? Most helpful and descriptive as they are, they leave certain important issues totally untouched. First of all the issues of what... and how...

1) What are the principles that underlie any role, any transactional event and either make them successive or most unhappy?

3) How do we manage to make an appropriate choice and achieve our goals when performing our communicative roles?

Think of a possible answer to questions 1-4 and then study the stuff below and try to answer the same questions again.

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