Symbolic Convergence Theory

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION VOL. 24, NO. 1, JAN-JUN 2014

Symbolic Convergence Theory: Revisiting its Relevance to Team Communication HEM RAJ KAFLE Kathmandu University, Nepal ABSTRACT Survival of a team underlies effective communication among its members. Communication that involves sharing of stories and dreams towards building collective visions determines the team’s survival. Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), a theory of rhetorical communication, provides a set of guidelines to explain how sharing of narratives and goals can help build consensus among team members through identification of mutually complementary personalities, awareness of collective actions, and sharing of common work settings. The theory also emphasises that compliance with common working guidelines, use of shared metaphors and ownership of collective achievements complement the process of consensus building thereby consolidating the team. This paper seeks to highlight the application of SCT’s basic components in the sustainability and proper functioning of a team, and discusses its relevance to the idea of compatible leadership.

Keywords: Rhetorical communication, symbolic convergence, fantasy themes, leadership INTRODUCTION The formation of a team usually has two bases. The first includes the desire of a number of like-minded individuals to initiate collective tasks. In such collectivity, which often takes roots in spontaneity and volunteerism, formal working guidelines are

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defined after the team comes to life. The sustainability of teams of this nature lies in the members’ ability to “share a common goal or purpose, assume specialized roles, have a sense of mutual belonging, maintain norms and standards for group membership, and interactive communication” (Harris & Sherblom 2008: 5). The second base of team formation involves a formal institutional setup, where a team emanates within established policies and guidelines. Such team includes a number of individuals with identical qualifications and matching competences. Their goals are formal; the members are “assigned specific duties to achieve specific goals” (Raman & Sharma 2011: 206). In particular, team members work with the mission of what Gerson & Gerson (2006) call “corporate success, customer satisfaction, and quality production” where institutional assignments “encourage shared visions, better work environment, a greater sense of collegiality, and improved performance” (p. 11). In other words, the working guidelines and tasks are predefined in the institution’s established norms and periodically added as assignments from a higher authority. The life of any team whether it is the first or second type mentioned above, depends on the members’ ability and intention to keep relationships intact. The relationship naturally demands understanding and sacrifice beyond members’ personal spaces. This is where communication has utmost value; only effective communication maintains both individual and institutional spaces. This is where rhetorical communication, which adheres to maintaining critical yet productive association among discourse partners, claims its relevance in the life and progress of a team. This paper aims to discuss the relevance of Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), a theory of communication developed by American rhetorical theorist Ernest Bormann, in defining the nature of communication within teams. Here I dwell upon team communication with reference to SCT in general and try to draw issues both from personal and institutional domains. The focus of this discussion is to show how communication in individual and group levels helps ensure institutional goals.

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A NOTE ON SCT SCT takes communication as means to seek common grounds among discourse participants. The term “symbolic” suggests the presence of language and fantasies or narratives while ‘convergence’ refers to the experience of an “exhilarating meeting of the minds” through sharing “the same opinions and emotions” (Bormann 2006: 724). Symbolic convergence, thus, involves a situation when “two or more private symbolic worlds incline toward each other, come more closely together, or even overlap” to create “group consciousness, cohesiveness” through mutual understanding of common social reality (Griffin 2011: 252). This is to postulate that human communication underlies constituents of realities in the form of symbols, which partners in communication identify with and conceive as their own experiences and ideals through “consensus or general agreement on subjective meanings” (Foss 2009: 97). SCT has its roots in the rhetorical studies of small group communication. According to Bormann, the root of consensus lies in group interactions, where individual messages emotionally charge team members and prompt them to extend communication with participation of more individuals. In this process, they share stories that dramatize issues concerning a common memory of the past or a common ideal for the future. Bormann terms such shared stories as fantasy themes involving familiar anecdotes, metaphors and identifiable dramatic attributes. Furthermore, the sharing of stories leads to a state of consensus among the group members leading to the construction of a set of shared beliefs called rhetorical vision. Such visions, which are owned by small groups of communicators, chain out to public discourses and then to mass media, and, finally, to the larger public (Bormann 1972: 398; Ball 2001: 217). The widely shared public discourses are then recaptured as the main guiding beliefs that help to “sustain the members’ sense of community, to impel them strongly to action ... and to provide them with a social reality filled with heroes, villains, emotions, attitudes” (Bormann 1972: 398).

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The main aspect of SCT’s relevance to team communication involves its interpretive scope “beyond an analysis of individual”. Since SCT focuses on “how people communicating with each other develop and share stories that create a ‘convergence,’” its major concern is “group identity that is larger and more coherent than the isolated experiences of individual group members” (Rothwell 2010: 189-190). Harris & Sherblom’s (2008) definition of small group communication corroborates SCT’s relevance. They take such communication as “transactional process of using symbolic behaviour to achieve shared meaning among group members over a period of time.” The key concepts “transactional process,” “symbolic behaviour,” and “shared meaning” bear identical semantic value with SCT’s postulations on communication process, use of symbols in stories and construction of shared realities. Of these, the notion of symbolic behaviour involves the process of “simultaneously sending and receiving both verbal and non-verbal messages.” Thus, apart from speaking up at appropriate moments, “remaining silent during an important meeting is as much a communication as speaking” and would come in the process of creating and sharing meanings (p. 5). In many cases, therefore, choosing a particular seating location, tone of voice, gesture, posture, and company as well as feigning certain kind of facial expression during team activities reflect team members’ attitude and thereby define their relationships. SCT AND TEAM COMMUNICATION As stated above, a fantasy theme is SCT’s main interpretive unit. It is a dramatizing message that depicts characters engaged in action in a setting that accounts for and explains human experience. And a “dramatizing message” describes “past, future, or outside events [as] creative interpretations of there-and-then” (Griffin 2011: 248). The word “fantasy,” with its etymological root in the Greek word phantastikos, is a referent for a symbol “which is able to present or show to the mind, to make visible” (Ball 2001: 218). In this sense, a fantasy theme is “the creative and imaginative shared interpretation of events that fulfils a

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group’s psychological or rhetorical needs” (Griffin 2011: 250). It is a discursive unit including polysemic signifiers of individual and collective value, rather than what common lexicons describe as a referent for the unreal and imaginary. In connection with a team, fantasy theme signifies what majority members are familiar about and identify with. For example, for a team of faculties in a newly established department of a university, the concerns for launching new programs and acquiring institutional visibility are the main fantasy themes. These concerns underlie a level of agreement between faculty members, and bear relevance to their individual experiences and future goals. These or similar themes speak of their involvement in the life of the team and commitment to the organization for which the team functions. A fantasy theme underscores a number of structural elements of rhetorical visions. These elements include: dramatis personae, plotlines, scenes, and sanctioning agents” (Shields & Preston 1985: 105). The first three of these elements, also referred to as characters, actions and settings, function as constituent fantasy themes suggesting that communication is a drama. The dramatis personae may be depicted as “heroes, villains and supporting players.” A character fantasy theme may describe personal attributes of people involved in a narrative, “assign motives to their actions, portray them doing certain things or manifesting certain behaviours and place them in a given setting or scene” (Shields 1981: 6) and hence the correlation between the three constituent themes. In other words, “character themes describe the agents or actors” in a communicative drama, “ascribe characteristics and qualities to them, and assign motives to them” (Foss 2009: 99). Team communication is between and about familiar characters. This is where the concept of heroes and villains appears pertinent. Naturally, team members regard themselves as heroes with specific missions and commitments. They identify with people considered to bear heroic attributes. Among the people considered to have such attributes is “a team player who can get along with people” and also works to “accommodate the larger interests of the group.” Heroes are epitomes of good deeds

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and successes and therefore are role models within an organization. But, members in a team show certain degree of repulsion for those generally recognized as villains. The villain includes any “individualist who is always fighting to save his/her ego” (Rizvi 2005: 174). Departments and employees within an organization may earn disrepute of villainy behaving as if “they have no responsibilities outside their areas” since they “build bunkers around themselves, failing to collaborate with others” and “act as if no other department’s concerns or opinions are valuable” (Gerson & Gerson 2006: 9). A group of such people is negatively attributed as a coterie, not a team committed to larger institutional goals. The fantasy themes they share do not contribute to construct institutional rhetorical visions which the majority owns and works for. Characters determine the life and vibrancy of a team, and therefore of the institution to which they belong. A functional team underlies the presence of positive, optimistic individuals where one identifies with others in that everyone bears transparent and identifiable personality. Effective team communication, therefore, requires the understanding of personalities. This is to emphasize an environment where there is mutual promotion of ethos through acknowledgement of one another’s contributions and sacrifices. Communication ensures respect for one another with recognition of clear interpersonal openness, boundaries and knowledge of personal differences. Plotlines, also called scenarios, refer to the actions performed by characters. These can be about personae (heroes and villains) about which the message has been framed. Action themes help explain “whether the rhetorical vision is passive or active, a comedy or tragedy, a quest or surreal... and indicate the time of the vision (past, present or future orientation)” (Shields 1981: 6; Foss 2009: 102). The actions also reveal whether the reality portrayed through a communicative drama is palatable or unpalatable, righteous or unrighteous, practical or impractical. In communication among team members action themes generally incorporate activities involving institutional achievements. In the level of the team as a body, action themes include the narratives of coordination and collegiality as well as

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the need of fighting conflict-inducing situations. In my own work environment in Nepal, where I attend a weekly meeting of a team of Heads of Departments under a University’s Engineering School, the principal action themes are related with enhancing quality of a classroom, maintaining disciplines of students and upgrading the performance of faculties. These are often juxtaposed with actions of people outside the team. These include external political interferences through student rebellions, conflict with the local community, disruption of academic activities and dearth of resources due to external disturbances. Thus, the plotlines we dwell upon in our formal interactions are marked by binaries of good and evil, which we consider to determine the level of our team’s successes and failures. Subsequently, our practical actions before and after the meeting aim involve measures of facing challenges, or resolving crises. The most important among these are constant negotiation with outside agents of possible disruption, and vigilance against potential detractors from inside. A team owns positive individual gains, and makes these a part of a team’s achievements. The team equally disowns and enforces prevention of subversive activities. Also, in the level of action, communication underlies equal participation of team members, which also means equal sacrifice in crises and just distribution of credits in matters of achievements. Active team members advocate that institutional incentives correspond with high-level performance and productivity, and inaction or zero productivity with the deprivation from such incentives. Thus, the notion of plotlines in team communication bears relevance in the fact that positive actions help ensure productivity and general well-being, while the negative potentially downgrade the ethos of the team and of the institution it represents. Scenes, or the setting themes, embody “where the action takes place, the place where the characters act out their roles” (Shields 1981: 6; Foss 2009: 102). In some communications, the scene becomes crucial as it “appears to influence both the qualities attributed to the actors or characters and the plotlines within the vision” (Shields & Preston 1985: 107). For a team, as such, settings may involve both physical locations and social,

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cultural spaces. A physical location would literally have to do with a place “where the communication is happening” such as a “tea meeting room, a conference venue, video teleconference, a boardroom ...,” whereas a space refers to “the shared social and/or professional context that exists between the people who are communicating” (Whitcomb & Whitcomb 2013: 15). A setting in general can be as small as the seat where a group member chooses to place himself during important meetings and activities (Harris & Sherblom 2008: 5). In a broader sense, settings of communication are strategic locations where team members find themselves comfortable together despite personal differences, where they feel maximum sense of belonging. This sometimes entails the fact that some or all of the members associate themselves with the location for certain historical events, and personal memories. Even one member’s feeling of repulsion for a meeting space might be a problem in matter of team cohesion. Besides, being in a particular setting embodies the value of availability and presence and assurance of commitment and input. Team interactions leading to symbolic convergence are guided by an overarching belief or authority known as sanctioning agents. The sanctioning agents involve “the source which justifies the acceptance and promulgation of a rhetorical drama” (Shields 1981: 7; Shields & Preston 1985: 108), which is related to giving legitimacy to an action, to the participation in an act of public visibility. The sanctioning agent can be a higher power such as “God, justice, democracy,” and sometimes “a legitimizing or moralistic framework” such as the Constitution (Shields & Preston 1985: 108). A team functions under at least two forms of sanctioning agents. The first has to do with a number of universal norms such as feelings of empathy and sympathy among the team members, the sense of propriety in interpersonal and institutional relations, respect for one another’s rights and privileges, and the awareness of mutual promotion. Also, apparent in this category are the sense of service to the clients outside the team, and the awareness of leadership within and above the team. The second forms of sanctioning agents are contextual. These include both constant

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and dynamic factors. Institutional missions, visions, Acts, codes of conduct, guidelines etc. are constant factors. Periodical plans, assignments and targets count among the dynamic. Two other important concepts of SCT are symbolic cue, and saga. These in fact are both corollaries and composites of fantasy themes and thereby represent the presence of one or more communicative dramas containing characters, actions and settings. A symbolic cue, “a cryptic feature of the verbal and nonverbal communication” provides evidence that stories have chained out or that a community has shared common experiences. In the context of interaction among team members, a cue functions as a “shorthand indicant or code that stands for a fantasy theme such as a sign or symbol or an inside joke” (Bormann, Cragan & Shields 2001: 283). It works as an “agreedupon trigger” and encourages the team members to “respond as they did when they first shared the fantasy” (Griffin 2011: 251). A symbolic cue dwells in the language of a team. It emanates from shared experiences and communicative contexts. So, presence of symbolic cues indicates that the team has lasted for an extended period of time, and has accumulated diverse levels of semantic awareness. In Nepali offices, for example, the word “above” is a popular symbolic cue with a number of implications. A common signifier for hierarchy in relation with a position below, “above” is sometimes used to satirize an ineffective higher authority and other times to impose strict norms on behalf of the same authority. In my own university, “slides” has become a notorious metaphor for a number of conditions including avoidance of library books, lack of rigour and excessive dependence on computer technology. A saga is a referent for “achievements in the life of a person, group, community, organization, or nation” representing “symbolic consciousness of an organization as culture and in so doing may tie together organizational members who participate in diverse rhetorical visions” (Bormann, Cragan & Shields 2001: 284). In relation to organizations and constituent teams, a saga concerns “important historical events, failures as well as successes” and also “mission statements, histories, personas who are heroes and those who are villains” (Bormann 2006: 725). In

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other words, a saga is an occasion owned and celebrated by team members. It symbolizes revitalization of ownership and mutual respect, and productive blurring of hierarchical boundaries to establish commonalities. IMPLICATIONS The principal relevance of SCT lies in explaining how communication can best shape the functionality of teams. This is to credit the value of good communication as a means to “convey and preserve corporate vision” as well as to “sharpen, embody, and help enact that vision” (De Pree 2004: 107). The theory equally lends reference to defining how team members should communicate in order to establish a good working culture. Thus, the imperatives of good communication can be summed up in as many points as the basic components of SCT. With respect to the idea of characters, team communication pertains to the recognition and inclusion of individual personalities, memories and aspirations in determining collective goals. Regarding plotlines, communication is about setting collective actions in correspondence with individual actions. In other words, it refers to ensuring that collective actions are within individuals’ access and ability to contribute to the team’s overall success. Similarly, the idea of settings takes delineating a working space where team members best adjust and be able to communicate substantively. It is a comfortable, collectivelyowned point of convergence. Awareness of an appropriate setting underlies the motive to “give a space to grow” where team members are free to exercise their diversity, so that they “may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing and inclusion” (De Pree 2004: 16-17). Then the inside cues can best be defined as the means to bind the team emotionally. It embodies communication in a medium that contains such metaphors and symbols that represent shared stories and experiences thereby reflecting team members’ “commitments to a convention, a culture” (p. 102). Sagas are epitomes of collective achievements. A team that celebrates the records of victories and successes encourages ownership to

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institutional goals. The awareness of sanctioning agents, on the other hand, entails the presence of well-defined institutional norms that keep balance between shared visions and individual aspirations. SCT’s major relevance in team communication also involves its postulation on rhetorical vision as a composite of shared ideas and intimate narratives. In this sense, the goal of communication is to make shared beliefs the main visions of the team, and to help team members adapt to the established goals. A broader implication of this notion is that visions that evolve from within are sure to sustain, while enforced ideals collide with institutional settings, individual aspirations and actions. This is to say, visions get legitimacy when norms of actions are defined or individuals own them under minimum limitations. Here, the theory reveals its application in defining leadership. Let us take a case of leadership change in a team or an institution. For example, entry of an outsider – someone not groomed in the culture of the institution – as a leader raises a number of questions within the institution. Will the new comer adapt to the institution’s vision? Will his ideals not collide with those of the institution and the existing workforce? Will the person identify with insiders or vice versa? Will the sanctioning agents (norms) of the new setting bind him, and he abide by them? What if he starts to modify more binding norms into more lenient in order to facilitate his presence, subsequently discomforting other members? What if the person does not share the metaphors of the new setting, or tries to impose his own myths and metaphors? What if the new leader fails to respect the institutional sagas and tries to enforce new ones? A situation like this explains the value of preparing delegates for future leadership. The idea of a teamwork involving construction, sharing and continuation of long-term visions justifies why certain organizations prefer transfer of leadership from within. The belief in the maxim “right person in right place,” therefore, underlies that life of a team depends on the compatibility between its fixed visions, and oft-changing leaders and members. Overall, SCT guides us about the value of consensus leadership, which emphasises recognizing individual

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aspirations, respecting individual stories for collective identity, and using emotionally binding metaphors and symbols within the medium of communication. CONCLUSION A team is a rhetorical community comprising individuals who share common goals, visions and working conditions. A wellfunctioning team underlies a communication culture that ensures construction of and adherence to rhetorical visions, which is a reality best articulated in the theory of symbolic convergence. The theory’s basic explanation is that team members communicate with fantasy themes. This is to say, teams share and interpret stories that dramatize lived realities within and beyond the institution for which they work. They identify with and communicate about characters, actions and settings. Their everyday interactions involve intimate linguistic cues, which give one another a sense of familiarity and belonging. In the same way, a number of universal and contextual sanctioning agents monitor team behaviour and keep the institutional culture going. Sharing of sagas, the signifiers of common achievements, the team retains its history and maintains collegiality. Awareness of the value of characters, actions, settings, sanctioning agents, symbolic cues and sagas serves best in the formation and survival of teams. These concepts, for their potential to define the compatibility between individual actors and established visions within an institutional setting, help explain the value of preparing delegates and transferring leadership against the induction of strangers in leading positions. To conclude, application of the functional aspects of symbolic convergence theory, therefore, ensures the survival of a team and that of the institution for which the team works. REFERENCES    Antoine, T. J. S., Althouse, M. T. & Ball, M. A. 2009. Fantasy theme criticism. In J. A. Kuypers (Ed.), Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action (pp. 205-230). New York: Lexington Books.

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Ball, M. A. 2001. Earnest G. Bormann: Roots, revelations and results of symbolic convergence. In J. A. Kuypers & A. King (Eds.), Twentieth Century Roots of Rhetorical Studies (pp. 211-233). London: Greenwood Publishing. Bormann, E. G. 1972. Fantasy and rhetorical vision: The rhetorical criticism of social reality. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58, 396407. ——. 2006. Rhetorical vision. In T. O. Sloane (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Rhetoric (E-reference edition) (pp. 722-727). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——., Cragan, J. F. & Shields, D. C. 2001. Three decades of developing, grounding, and using symbolic convergence theory (SCT). In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 25 (pp. 271-313). London: Laurence Erlbaum Associates. Cragan, J. F. 1981. Rhetorical strategy: A dramatistic interpretation and application. In J. F. Cragan & D. C. Shields (Eds.), Applied Communication Research: A Dramatistic Approach (pp. 67-77). Illinois: Waveland Press. Foss, S. K. 2009. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. 4th ed. Long Groove: Waveland Press. Gerson, S. J. & Gerson, S. M. 2006. Technical Writing: Process and Product. 5th ed. Delhi: Pearson Education. Griffin, E. A. 2011. A First Look at Communication Theory. 8th ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Harris, T. E. & Sherblom, J. C. 2008. Small Group and Team Communication. 4th ed. New York: Allyn & Bacon. Pree, Max De. 2004. Leadership Is an Art. New York: Doubleday. Raman, M. & Sharma, S. 2011. Technical Communication: Principles and Practice. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rizvi, M. A. 2005. Effective Technical Communication. New Delhi: McGraw Hill. Rothwell, J. D. 2010. In Mixed Company: Communicating in Small Groups and Teams. 7th ed. Boston: Wardsworth Cengage Learning. Shields, D. C. 1981. A dramatistic approach to applied communication research: Theory, methods and applications. In J. F. Cragan & D. C. Shields (Eds.), Applied Communication Research: A Dramatistic Approach (pp. 5-13). Illinois: Waveland Press. Shields, D. C. & Preston, C. T. 1985. Fantasy theme analysis in competitive rhetorical criticism. The National Forensic Journal, 3, 102-115.

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Whitcomb, C. A. & Whitcomb, L. E. 2013. Effective Interpersonal and Team Communication Skills for Engineers. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

HEM RAJ KAFLE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY, NEPAL. E-MAIL: