Greeting
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
One of Young's additional elements to deliberative democracy, "greeting" refers to, "The logical and motivational condition for dialogue that aims to reach understanding in which the parties involved recognize one another in their particularity" (129). In Communication and the Other Iris Young states that one of the basic elements of a communicative democracy is the element of the greeting. She states that the greetings "often lubricate ongoing discussions with mild forms of flattery, stroking of egos, and deference."(129) And that a greeting can "keep commitment to the discussion at times of anger and disagreement."(130) Greeting is said to stress the importance of non linguistic forms of communication such as body language. Young argues that greeting, along with rhetoric and storytelling will help to maintain the plurality that exists in a deliberative body.
With respect to "greeting" Gorgias plays on the human desire for flattery. A communication mode that leverages logical and motivational conditions of dialogue in an effort to recognize one another in their particularity. Young refers to this form of blandishment as a necessary prerequisite to deliberation. This is done in an effort to "speak across difference in the absence of significant shared understanding." (Young 129) Greetings have been a very basic principal of human societies, the first word learned in another language is often a greeting of some sort, and a greeting spoken in a common language serves and an instinctual indicator that the stranger approaching is not of the dangerous "other" category but that they share a common bond and should not be perceived as a threat. In a communicative democracy it is necessary to have a greeting in order to establish ties and a recognition of the coming together in the process as well as an acknowledgement of the participants of the process. Greetings also serve as a way to shift from the everyday life into the mindset of communicative democracy.
Within the context of the internet greetings play a different role depending on the context. In many places the internet is a timeless zone; where people log on and off without the complications of time zones or waking daylight hours. Forums have post at many different times and website have no time relevance at all. In counterpoint - real time activity on the internet has a very vital time element in the fact that it is real time and streaming; while all user may not be in the same time zone events are happening in the same amount of time for all users. A greeting usually is done at the beginning of a meeting and because of this greetings may or may not have applicability on the internet.Historically modes of communication have been personalized, for example the personal transmission of knowledge in the era of Gorgias and even today via lectures, town halls, community association meetings etc. The use of "nonlinguistic gesture" helps frame the connotation of the message, in the absence of this central component of communication interlocutors must rely on the written word, which in many cases can be a poor form of communication. In this way I question the validity of meaningful commutative or deliberative democracy afforded by the internet. ICT as it exists today increases access but not the quality of discussion, as it affords private, individual consumption of information. Majoritarianism could benefit from the inception of information technologies insofar the internet affords a larger aggregate number of participants, but in its current iteration can it be leveraged effectively for deliberation?
With no greetings or initial contacts in place it is likely that a community (even on the internet) will be made of much looser or less real-life time related relationships than those that start out with an initial greeting.
