A simple, “Hey, you!” can express more – and give a myriad of meanings – than only a basic greeting or acknowledgment in communicating with others.
That was the focus of the recent 29th Annual Frankel Lecture: Addressing Americans. The event was presented by the Houston Law Review and drew more than 100 attendees in person and 228 online.
Opened by Law Center Dean Leonard M. Baynes and moderated by Peter Salib, assistant professor of law at UHLC, the event featured New York University School of Law Professor of Law Richard R. W. Brooks. Brooks was joined by commentators Richard H. McAdams, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, and Helen Norton, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School.
Keynote speaker Brooks provided his take on the significance of how even the most basic in-path of communication between two or more people can sway the construct of conversation. Brooks is the Emilie M. Bullowa Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School.
Brooks discussed the racial segregation in early 20th-century cities, migration patterns, and the influx of immigrants after the World Wars, noting that communication between communities was often strained or nonexistent. He explained that people from different backgrounds didn’t know how to interact with each other, and organizations like the NAACP and Urban League had to educate people on basic social norms, such as sitting next to someone of a different race.
Though much has changed over the years, some challenges persist. Brooks emphasized the importance of addressing people respectfully and, drawing parallels to the French Revolution's concept of "gentle power."
“The power of address, the first law of address is that when you are called, you turn. And when you turn, you create common ground. And then things go from there,” said Brooks.
He highlighted the complexity of these interactions, noting that politeness can be misinterpreted, and both sides may feel misunderstood, complicating efforts for societal change. Brooks gave the example of calling a woman “ma’am.”
“Why are you making such a big deal about it?’ A ma’am, I meant it politely. And here’s the really puzzling and troubling and difficult thing. It’s not about microaggression. It’s not. It’s society. There aren’t these people who use ma’am. They’re not trying to be aggressive or under. They’re being polite and kind and you’re being picky. And both are true at the same time, which makes it so complicated and will resist the change and people will punish people who speak up about the change.”
McAdams began his response by saying, “As I read Professor Brooks in his chapters and his lecture today, he claims that there is something both distinctive and pervasive about the power of address. Distinctive meaning unlike ordinary language. The ordinary power of language is pervasive, meaning that it influences us almost every day and almost every interaction with another person. As Professor Brooks says at one-point, absent address, society retreats. I am not sure I’m fully convinced.
“Start with the question of whether the influence of address is pervasive. I think that address-free communication is more common than what Professor Brooks implies. And here, remember that address is not just the fact that someone speaks in your vicinity even where the context makes clear that you are the intended target of their speech. That’s not address. Address is more narrowly a verbal reference to the person as by a name, the person spoken to, as by a name, a title, a descriptor or a pronoun.
“Example one, you buy a meal at McDonald’s, you step to the cashier and say, ‘I’d like a Big Mac, medium fries, small soda.’ The cashier says, ‘Anything else?’ You say no, she states the price and hands you an empty cup for you to fill at the beverage station. You hand over cash or credit card and ask, ‘Can I get ketchup?’ She hands you ketchup packets. All of that is a highly coordinated exchange and it requires no address, no term where one person uses the other person’s name or title or descriptor or pronoun,” McAdams concluded.
Norton shared a recent test of Brooks’ theory about the leverage address has on everyday interactions.
“Professor Brooks is exploring the power of address to shape and influence our encounters with each other. Yet the role of address in human interactions is one that’s so common that it often remains unnoticed. And because I hadn’t spent much time or attention on this dynamic myself, I confess that I initially wondered if Professor Brooks had overstated addresses power. So I undertook an experiment after I read his draft. I thought that for a while I’d try not to respond when addressed. I’d try not to stop, not to turn, not to engage. I would defy and disprove the first law of address. And I failed quickly and completely. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it with my students and my colleagues. I couldn’t do it with the clerk at the grocery store checkout counter. I couldn’t do it with the receptionist at the veterinarian’s office. I didn’t try it with my husband because I love him. And I abandoned my experiment because it felt so uncomfortable, so rude and hurtful to refuse to turn, to refuse to respond, to refuse to engage when addressed.
“So Professor McAdams and I started out from a point of both sharing a point of skepticism about the first law of address, and maybe we ended up in different places. In theory, we could resist or ignore address. But as a practical matter, as Professor Brooks reveals and is confirmed by my short-lived experiment, it’s not easy to resist address.”
Original source can be found here.