Atmospheres of Human Communication
The utterly familiar
Atmosphere has proven to be a useful concept within aesthetics in various ways. Interestingly, individual analyses initially involved examples in which atmosphere is encountered externally, as it were: the atmosphere of church spaces, the atmosphere of dusk, the atmosphere generated on stage, or the atmosphere of a city (Böhme, 1998a). Again and again, however, these analyses made use of the fact that we know atmospheres close up, amongst us as it were, that is, in the social sphere. Thus, we talk of the tense atmosphere in a meeting, the gloomy atmosphere of an assembly, the merry atmosphere of a birthday party. In politics, too, atmospheres are frequently mentioned, as when, for instance, the meeting of two statesmen is said to have improved the atmosphere, or a discussion reportedly took place in a friendly atmosphere. Investigations in which atmospheric phenomena appear to emanate primarily from the environment, then, seem to be underpinned by the fact that we are so familiar with atmospheres in the social realm. All the more important, it seems, to figure out what is involved in the social experience of atmospheres.
I did not explore social, interpersonal atmospheres at the outset for a particular reason: all the atmospheres in the examples provided still have a quasi-objective aspect; one can end up in them, or one can elude them. Although it is true to say that such external atmospheres, too, are co-determined by the subject, it is only correct insofar as the subject represents something like a sounding board for them. That is different in the case of interpersonal, social atmospheres: the subject or, better put, the participating subjects constantly co-produce an interpersonal atmosphere. Objectification, consequently, is difficult. Further, the participating subjects themselves would find it difficult to provide a description since their embeddedness in the atmosphere makes the situation appear overly complex. This impression is likely to result from the fact that participants in an interpersonal atmosphere cannot really see themselves as fixed elements, because this atmosphere constantly co-determines them in their being. There is no question that there are excellent literary descriptions of interpersonal situations, and they can be meaningfully analysed in this context. If, however, it is generally true that atmospheres can only be experienced through exposure, then literary examples of atmospheres can at most be play things; what we really need to find out is what interpersonal atmospheres mean to people when they are affected by them, that is, when things get serious.
Provided the difficulties of this exploration have become sufficiently clear now, it is also clear why I shall not try my hand at the description of interpersonal atmospheres. Instead, I ask how atmospheres can be changed by behaviours – already assuming the various atmospheres into which people are entangled.
FIGURE 6.2 Jacopo Pontormo, The Visitation (1528–29), Florence / © The Yorck Project, Wikimedia.
Interpersonal communication is always embedded in a particular atmosphere; put another way, there is a specific mode of communication that amounts to the production of a common atmosphere. In saying this, I have already taken up opposition against dominant communication theories. I will briefly characterize those theories now in order to clarify the particularity of communicative atmospheres.
Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action (2014) is likely to be the most important theory of communication at the moment. Habermas builds on Austin and Searle’s speech act theories, which regard communication as a linguistic interaction, that is, as mutual speech acts. In this perspective, the currently widespread view of communication as an exchange of information is preserved (aufgehoben) and embedded in a wider context. Linguistic utterances, insofar as they name facts in some way, indeed always also have an informational aspect. However, it is the act of linguistic utterance that determines whether such facts are being claimed, desired, threatened, ordered, and so on. Linguistic utterances are therefore understood as acts within communicative events, and they are consequently called illocutionary acts. The particular type of speech act is, while it can also be articulated in the utterances themselves, usually determined by the context. For example, when I say, it is raining outside, this can be pure information, as when someone previously said: have a look outside – what’s the weather like? However, the utterance can also express regret, or it can constitute an amplified request, as in: put your boots on! When the illocutionary character of speech acts is made explicit, they take on the form of I say that it is raining outside; I order you to put on your boots; I regret that the weather is so bad, and so forth.
The theory of communicative action is undoubtedly relevant for the question of communicative atmospheres. Nevertheless, it seems that it actually excludes the phenomenon of interpersonal atmosphere. For the theory creates the impression that subjects are what they are, independent of the way they express themselves, and that they remain unchanged in their being by others’ forms of utterance.
Taken by itself, communicative action conveys the impression of a parlour game – and, indeed, it is underpinned by Wittgenstein’s theory of language games. Dieter Mersch, therefore, correctly argues in his critique of these theories that they both emphasize and assume the speaker’s perspective (Mersch, 2007). In contrast, he argues the importance of taking seriously that participants are always already entangled in a conversation, and that speaking presupposes hearing as much as it is an answering. Consequently, he returns to Austin in order to strengthen the notion of perlocution. Speech acts are illocutionary insofar as speaking itself involves action, but they are perlocutionary insofar as they have an effect. These two aspects cannot be neatly separated, yet Austin’s original examples nevertheless demonstrate the difference. The example he provides of an illocutionary act is:
In saying I would shoot him I was threatening him.
His example for a perlocutionary act is:
By saying I would shoot him I alarmed him. (Austin, 1962: 121)
In the latter example (the perlocutionary act), we actually get closer to the theme of communicative atmospheres: it shows how an utterance can modify the mood of a partner in communication. On closer consideration, though, even the first example of an illocutionary act proves to be atmospherically effective: it changes the constellation between the speakers. Thus, the utterance of a threat generates a tense atmosphere between them. We can see that the performance of speech acts is in no way simply a move in a language game but always has, we might say, a performative effect, that is, an effect on the conversational atmosphere. An utterance can relax or tighten the conversational atmosphere, making it serious, threatening, and tense. The allocation of different roles, as an effect of the respective linguistic utterances, simultaneously changes the participating speakers. They are turned into underlings or expected to participate in a feeling, like a disappointment; or they may be pushed into the role of having to justify or know something. Language psychologists have therefore correctly emphasized the difference between the informational and the relational aspect of linguistic utterances. This difference cuts, as it were, across the earlier one, for its informational aspect not only includes the propositional content, that is, the so-called factual situation, but also the illocutionary character. A command, too, is in a certain way information, after all, insofar as I tell someone that I am giving an order. It is through the relational aspect of an utterance, on the other hand, that a new constellation between speaker and listener is established.
Obviously, then, one can usefully draw on the theory of communicative action for questions of communicative atmospheres, but only when (in part against it) the perlocutionary and relational aspects of linguistic utterances are strengthened. On the other hand, one has to say that, for speech acts to be able to take place, and for illocutionary acts to be adequately understood, communicative situations always have to be presupposed already. This is easily demonstrated in the above example. For an utterance like it is raining to be understood as an urgent reminder to put on one’s boots, the situation would presuppose certain earlier interactions and thereby imply a hierarchical difference between speaker and listener and so on. On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive of a situation in which the utterance it is raining would be understood as an assertion. In the aforementioned example, I introduced it as a pure piece of information in response to a question. Situations in which it is raining is understood as an assertion must be rare, even if I assert that it is raining is added, and would presumably imply that none of the participants in the conversation is able simply to look out of the window. One could imagine a situation, for example, in a closed space, in which the participants hear a pattering sound. The assertion would then presuppose a conversational situation characterized by insufficient information and, consequently, by uncertainty. Even if one says, then, that speech acts create communicative atmospheres and social constellations between participants, they can still be effective only if they are spoken into already existing communicative atmospheres and constellations. This leads to the principal question, might communicative atmospheres not be something prelinguistic?
With that, we turn to another theory of communication, which is, in a sense, the antithesis of Habermas’ orientation towards language games, namely Hermann Schmitz’ theory of bodily communication. It starts from the observation that an antagonism between tension and expansion characterizes the inherent sensing of the body. This sensing does not stop at the visible body’s surface, but it tends to reach out towards the whole world. Thus, objects or people can enter into this sensing and modify it. In this bodily communication, as Schmitz calls it (or, ‘communication by means of the felt body’, Schmitz, 2002: 492), the Other leaves, when intervening into the inherent economy of one’s body, in some way an imprint, a fascination.1 Depending on the type of fascination, Schmitz speaks of excorporation (Ausleibung) and encorporation (Einleibung). Encorporation is the displacement of the pole of tension from inside one’s body towards the outside, for example, by an object that carries one along (his examples are taken from tennis and soccer) or a person by whose gaze one is captivated. Excorporation is the diffuse slippage resulting from the fascination by something outside, for example, when getting lost in a sight.2 These comments, of course, only provide a formal framework for a theory of bodily communication. Nevertheless, the latter certainly succeeds in capturing the bodily sensing of presence – of other human beings or of objects. It can register something like movement impressions (Bewegungsanmutungen, see p. 49), perhaps also the synaesthetic characters of the environment, and, further, whatever we know about body language, eye contact and the like. Having said this, regarding our topic, communicative atmospheres, a similar critique is called for as Mersch’s, regarding the speaker’s perspective in Habermas’ theory. Quite naturally, one imagines bodily communication from the perspective of the participating subjects (embodied subjects, to be sure) and their interaction. By contrast, communicative atmospheres are to be found between subjects, notwithstanding that these subjects constantly coproduce these atmospheres.
Radiance
With that, it is time to turn to Hubert Tellenbach, an author who originally introduced atmospheres as an interpersonal reality. In Geschmack und Atmosphäre (Taste and Atmosphere 1968), he first made atmospheres the subject of a scientific investigation. As a psychiatrist, his prime concern was to develop an instrument for the identification of psychological dysfunctions. His investigation is notable for forging a connection between the sensing of atmosphere and the sense of taste. Strictly phenomenologically speaking, it must be noted that he dealt with the sense of smell – but for sense physiologists, these senses are the same. Atmosphere is for Tellenbach consequently smell, in the first instance, which emanates from a person – literally and metaphorically. He considers this smell as basic to communication, in the sense that people like one another (in German, einander riechen können, to like one another’s smell) or not. Atmosphere, then, is for Tellenbach primarily a person’s radiance, or his or her personal aura: ‘A person has and transmits atmosphere in more or less intensive ways as a characteristic radiance that marks his [or her] personality’ (1968: 48). The same objection to an excessive concentration on the subject, which was already raised against Habermas and Schmitz, could be raised here. But ultimately, it does not apply to Tellenbach: he does not stop at the concept of radiance. Interestingly, this is partly due to his productive engagement with the influence of his Japanese colleague, Kimura Bin (1995), who tried, in parallel with Tellenbach, to render Japanese experiences of Ki productive for psychiatry. Ki does not necessarily emanate from people; it can denote something that is in the air, an intensity of betweenness, in which individual persons can participate or be seized by. Tellenbach himself accessed the issue via developmental psychology: as an adolescent, one finds in one’s own family an already existing atmosphere; one goes with its flow, as it were. ‘The child initially accepts the existing family atmosphere, and needs to accept it, because no differentiation between person and environment has as yet taken place’ (1968: 52).3 Tellenbach observes an analogy here, between family atmosphere and nest odour for animals. Similarly, he develops the idea that communicative atmospheres represent the basis of interpersonal trust and a protective function of individual development.
Tellenbach’s psycho-developmental perspective made it possible to recognize the relative autonomy of interpersonal atmospheres vis-à-vis the participating subjects, as well as their precedence in relation to individual contributions. It would be a mistake, however, to restrict the relative autonomy and precedence of interpersonal atmospheres to childhood or even early childhood periods. To the contrary, relative autonomy and precedence also apply to adult communication. This recognition helps prevent the reduction of interpersonal atmospheres to something like individuals’ personal charisma. There is no denying, of course, that individuals do have a more or less characteristic personality, but they actually contribute to a common atmosphere in this way, even if they dominate it. Further, they contribute to this common atmosphere not only through their personality but also through their behaviour, their speech, their gestures, their presentation, their simple bodily presence, their voice, and so on.
Actualization and disturbance of interpersonal atmospheres
That interpersonal atmospheres are the basic condition for communication suggests one begin their investigation from the perspective of negative aspects, that is, looking at disturbances rather than attempting to grasp their constitution proper. And yet, there is a lot to say about atmospheres as something presupposed, namely from the perspective of behavioural patterns by which participants attempt to actualize presupposed atmospheres. According to Tellenbach, atmospheres secure basic trust and establish a base note for the solidarity of the partners in communication. The individual communication partners, for example the members of a family, do indeed feel that they rely on interpersonal atmosphere. They experience, for example, that it is difficult to feel cheerful all by oneself. People need a resonance for their own mood, and so their own cheerfulness will always lead them to attempt to brighten the general mood. The reverse effect, namely their infection by moods, is rather impressive. For example, there is a common observation that children who do not drink alcohol themselves nevertheless give a merry impression in the company of revellers. Conversely, a whole family atmosphere seems gloomy when one of its members is sad or depressed – even individuals who attempt to withdraw still suffer from the depressed atmosphere in the house.
In the case of interpersonal group atmospheres, one must distinguish between the atmosphere that is actualized at any one time and a keynote, which represents a kind of basic consensus and the mutual trust of the participants. It appears that the bulk of interpersonal verbal communication serves the actualization of atmospheres between people. This is what gossip, small talk and chitchat are good for. This is also where explanations using language game theories fall short: primarily at stake here are neither information exchange nor verbal interaction, rather, above all the act of talking itself. And this has, as it were, a procedural function – that is, its main purpose is the actualization of an underlying interpersonal atmosphere.
This is still clearer when the atmosphere is actually positively invoked. Such conjuring manoeuvres take place, for example, between people who have not seen each other for a long time or are threatened by mutual estrangement. They might call up memories in order to activate shared feelings; deploy keywords to conjure up a shared atmosphere; or use external resources like music, images, or places to revive mutual vibrations between the people involved.
These efforts at actualizing interpersonal atmospheres show already how delicate and ephemeral this resource is, whose loss one has to fear. Consequently, one can learn the most about interpersonal atmospheres in situations where they are under threat or even being destroyed – that is, through negative examples.
The most serious disturbance is probably the collapse of interpersonal atmospheres. It can be so catastrophic that it features in the aetiology of emerging schizophrenia (Huppertz, 2000). But one can also observe this collapse in rather mundane events, like the materialization of a suspicion. This suspicion can, depending on its nature, arise in all human groupings. Perhaps the best known is the suspicion of jealousy which destroys the relationship between lovers. It seems entirely possible that Tellenbach arrived at his identification of atmospheres, as the basic function of ensuring trust, via this type of destruction of atmospheres. Another possibility of atmospheric decay is shock. This is usually passing, and the shock need not affect the fundamental tone of an interpersonal atmosphere, but it is likely to impact its actualized form. A shock can destroy both the merry atmosphere at a party and the serious atmosphere of a state ceremony. Interestingly, reactions to the collapse of an atmosphere can manifest in diametrically opposed emotional expressions, that is, in one case in hysterical sobbing and in another in hysterical laughter.
Another form of ruination of atmospheres is the corruption of meaning. This is the widely known experience of alienation, in which the world becomes utterly meaningless, people become strangers, and potentially even take on the character of things. I have merely described this process so far, which is very serious and verges on the psychopathological, without as yet hinting at possible causes for the destruction of atmospheres. It is probably impossible to name general causes, but the fact that the collapse of meaning is also called a disenchantment provides a clue. Indeed, the sharing of an atmosphere is something like a collective enchantment. It is possible to break away from this enchantment, more or less consciously, or to destroy it as a commonality. We recognize this effect in the exclamation of the small child in Andersen’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes, which released all those involved from their shared illusion. Another example is the Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, whose deliberate destruction of shared meanings in his self-reflections was performed to still his own and others’ fears. When everything is meaningless, there is nothing left to lose.
These examples of decaying atmospheres show that interpersonal atmospheres are capable of casting a spell on all those involved, possibly keeping them trapped in an illusion, but in any case securing an unmediated connection with others and the world. Their decay throws the individual back on him- or herself, and it throws into question the relationship with other people as well as with the world.
Less dramatic negative effects on atmospheres can be described as disturbances. These leave the matter itself intact but highlight its proper nature through irritations and actual endangerment. The faux pas is a characteristic example here: it is a form of expression, or an expression, or a type of behaviour that is out of line in a particular company and, when it happens, challenges these lines momentarily, makes the perpetrator stand out and somehow irritates everyone, so that spontaneous communication comes to a halt for the time being. A faux pas is not simply the violation of a rule – which it is also, of course; but rule violations can simply be detected and, if necessary, punished. The faux pas, on the other hand, is a perlocutionary act in an Austinian sense, that is, its occurrence has a direct effect on the interpersonal atmosphere.
A similarly disturbing phenomenon is the so-called wrong note, which could be considered, in a sense, as a mild form of faux pas. However, the wrong note is precisely not a step or an act, but only an error of judgement about the modality (Wie), the pitch, or the style of wording. When Kant says, about the tone in which a verbal expression is presented, that this tone ‘indicates, more or less, a mode in which the speaker is affected, and in turn evokes it in the hearer also’ (Kant & Walker, 2007: 157), he has struck on an important aspect of verbal communication: the tone in which an utterance is presented modifies the interpersonal atmosphere. Normally, one has to tune into this atmosphere to communicate successfully. To let a wrong note slip into one’s utterance effectively means disturbing the interpersonal atmosphere. In that case, one has to expect resistance, no matter what one says in terms of contents and language, because it is the shared atmosphere that makes communication partners willing to take up the other’s utterances.
The appearance of a stranger has to be considered another disturbance of interpersonal atmospheres, because she or he is not tuned into a common atmosphere or the community is not attuned to him. This case is interesting insofar as it opens up ethical perspectives concerning the theme of shared atmospheres. For, as is obvious in this example, an interpersonal atmosphere cannot always serve as the base of communication, and its preservation cannot be the ultimate goal of every action, either. It must also be possible rationally to distance oneself from a shared atmosphere and to act on the basis of reason – perhaps even in order to restore an interpersonal atmosphere following the disturbance, so that everyone may share in it. This leads me to the last example of disturbances, which I would like to call the tearing open of the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is torn open, it is not destroyed but becomes in a sense visible as such and transparent. Modes of behaviour that result in such a tearing open are, for instance, teasing and irony. They presuppose an interpersonal atmosphere but in a sense also break away from it; they generate distance and threaten to destroy the atmosphere. In some cases, this may well happen, and one therefore has to be careful about those practices, particularly in one’s relationships with children. However, these behaviours show, precisely, a potential in dealing with interpersonal atmospheres, so that individuals are not simply dependent on them but can, in principle, positively contribute to them. In the final section, therefore, I want to touch briefly on some possibilities of generating interpersonal atmospheres. They suggest, if one can put it this way, that more is possible than modifying the always already presupposed atmosphere, in one way or another.
Contributions
The discussion so far has demonstrated how important interpersonal atmospheres are for the possibility of communication. They connect communication partners before they address each other. An interpersonal atmosphere provides assurance that one moves, somehow, already on shared grounds. We need interpersonal atmosphere also as a sounding board for our own moods. By modifying the interpersonal atmosphere through our mood, we share this mood with others. On the other hand, an interpersonal atmosphere is also the source of our own feeling: we are affected by and enveloped in it, and we drift with it in our own feelings, so to say.
Given the importance of interpersonal atmospheres, it is remarkable how little explicit attention and interest they have received. It is worth noting that a concern with interpersonal atmospheres can be observed, of all places, in politics. If confidence-building measures are taken to improve an atmosphere in politics, one wonders why similar practices are not adopted in everyday communication. An awareness of everyday communication, and of skills required in this area, helps us to keep this communication as focused and factual as possible. In technical civilizations, these are valuable virtues, indeed. At the same time, however, we observe a decline of everyday culture and ritual. That is, for the sake of goal orientation and objectivity in communication, we neglect to nurture the performative aspects of communication and let the forms that could create space for it to occur go to waste.4 That something like interpersonal atmosphere is important becomes obvious to us only when something goes wrong, that is, through what I have called collapse, disturbance and tearing open. To place these modifications at the forefront of the analysis here was, after all, not just a methodical strategy. Yet, one way of nurturing interpersonal atmosphere as such emerged as chatting, gossip or small talk. Granted, this is a trivial way of nurturing interpersonal atmospheres, of which people may not even be conscious as they participate in it. Considering, though, that the cultivation of life consisted, for an author as dry and logical as Immanuel Kant, in the inclusion of others in one’s own feelings (see Böhme, 2005b) should give us pause. Even further, there may be something like a responsibility for interpersonal atmospheres, insofar as they make up the shared space of a common mood.
Therefore, in closing I want to ask tentatively in what way an individual can contribute to an interpersonal atmosphere. I choose the term contribution deliberately because here, too, atmosphere has to be presupposed, as something independent of an individual. In a certain sense, of course, we are actually quite well trained in the production of atmospheres today, that is, through the manipulation of external conditions such as furniture and spatial layout, music, and lighting. However, interpersonal atmosphere is substantially sustained by the behaviour of individuals, in the same way in which they, conversely, sustain their own behaviour through it. What matters here, above all, is the How of this behaviour, and less its intentions or content. As they say, it’s not what you say, but how you say it.5 That is, what matters is voice, intonation, speech melody, or pitch. What matters is the attitude one takes to one’s partners, the movement suggestions one exudes, closeness or distance expressed through posture and spatial vicinity; and besides, the play of glances, or vivaciousness. All that happens, of course, even by itself. One is not normally aware that these actions and behaviours can be conscious contributions to a common atmosphere. What can be done to let a creative atmosphere emerge; how can one contribute to a healthy atmosphere in a family; what is it that makes an atmosphere calming, hospitable, and beneficial for children? These questions are difficult to answer, but one thing can be said generally: a willingness is required to turn one’s attention to this interpersonal phenomenon as such, and a form of communication that is itself restrained, that is, in which people hold back their expressive and active intentions and confine themselves to contributing to something that has to develop.
1Since phenomenology does not question causes, this fascination is not pursued further. Accordingly, Schmitz does not discuss the possibility that something one encounters may not mean anything. Only situations in which a fascination takes place are studied under the heading of Leibliche Kommunikation (communication by means of the felt body).
2See Schmitz (1978: 242 and 1990, section 3.2, Leibliche Kommunikation, 135–140).
3The phrase in italics derives from L. A. Spitz (1950: 19).
4I have criticized this decline of everyday culture in greater detail in Briefe an meine Töchter (Letters to My Daughters, 1995b).
5In the German original: ‘Der Ton macht die Musik’, the tone makes the music, or what matters in music is the tone.