Ideal Speech Situation Issues - Essay Example

bеrmаs’s ассоunt of an idеаl sреесh situаtiоn Name Institution Introduction People communicate in different gatherings, but some speeches are forced and intimidated by some psychological or physical forces, but not evidence and reasons. Ideal speech situation refers to the situation whereby the dialogue is uncoerced and free whereby there is no existence of any other force, but the better argument. It is where a person talks by giving the evidence and reasons without being forced to do so by any person. According to Jurgen Habermas, an ideal speech situation occurs only when individuals engage in a communication that is directed by implied and basic rules. In the situation, the motivation is the urge of getting some rational agreement because every participant communicates in an atmosphere that is free from any kind of intimidation, that is psychological or physical bullying. This paper seeks to explain and evaluate the Habermas’ account of an ideal speech situation. The content of the paper originates from a number of articles written about an ideal speech situation. Public speaking should be very sensitive and people should follow the require rules and regulation in order to communicate without any force, but through clear evidence and reasons, According to Habermas, those people who appear as a public sphere are freely allowed to act and speak freely, but they should be competent enough (Roberts, 2012, 398). It is apparent that, once a member of a public sphere is giving a speech to the public, the members of the public tend to question certain assertion that may appear in a person’s speech and they are free to do so because they try to look for evidence and reasons from the public speaker’s speech. As articulated by Kent (2013, 73), public speaking is very critical and sensitive and should be done with full reasons, as well as clear evidence of what a person says to the public. However, in every discourse, all participants listening to the speech of an individual are free to issue some accusations or charges depending with the reason behind the speech or conversation. All the participants or listeners of a person’s speech have a free chance of expressing their needs, desires, as well as attitudes free from any wavering. Speakers are left to speak freely without any pressure either from external or internal, but one should speak with all evidence and reasons associated to what one tends to communicate to the public (Breese, 2011, 136). Nevertheless, there should be no oppression in connection to a persons, talk to a group of people and argument should be free. A good example of an ideal speech situation is where Immanuel Kant who justifies his moral system using some transcendental disputes. It is apparent from the argument of Habermas that it is possible to test all presuppositions that are connected to all arguments and this is done through some performance contradiction where people tries to contradict the speakers conversation by arguing if it could be done in another way and trying to see the outcome of changing one’s argumentation. It is apparent that, people’s argumentation are associated with some critics whereby the presuppositions are argued centrally to the argument of the main speaker. This gives a person some understanding that object of their arguments do exist. There must be some contradiction or critic for the argumentation’s presuppositions to be identified in real existence. However, the argumentation presupposition might lead to some moral system especially if the presupposition exists. The objections issued by members of public regarding certain speaker’s argument are never let to go without receiving some thorough test because they might give sense to the speaker’s conversation or speech to the public. Neuman, Bimber and Hindman (2011, 23) argue that, speakers in public sphere or public gatherings should give their views and opinions regarding something and there should be a democracy that is involved to try and test the truth of the view issued by a certain speaker. However, it is only some individuals who are supposed to judge the conversation held by a person, but not some business or public institutions because they do not have some influence on what is positioned or questioned by a person. People hold conversations through the internet whereby there is exchange of some dialogue and release of information, but in most cases, the truth or evidence of such information and conversations are not tested to understand is they exist. Gillespie, Reader, Cornish and Campbell (2014, 74) argue that, free speech is one of the elements of democracy. According to the argument of Habermas, giving all people in the public a chance of raising judgments and have some opportunity to engage in arguments tends to reduce prejudice which is claimed to hinder access of democratic rights to the marginalized people. In public sphere, all members are claimed to be rational, they tend to have some agreement in order to make their arguments strong, and this should result from one’s self, but not pressure from other people. It is apparent that, the public offer enough attention to the speakers in order to grab everything said by the speaker and make some assertions. It is apparent that, in public conversation, it is the desire of every speaker to get some attention from the public in order to successfully deliver the message intended from the beginning of the conversation. Moreover, individual rights should work towards giving the community morale and strength to practice democracy at whatever means because it is according to the interests of people to hear what one thinks and prefers regarding a certain issue concerning the public (Roman, & Woodruff, 2011, 2156). It is clear that marginalized people have true local stories to tell the public and they should be given that chance of sharing what they think has some evidence and truth and might help the public. Minority opinion is very important, but the public let to stories told by marginalized people to remain into the darkness because the majority groups require continuing with their practice of diminishing the minority groups. People should get equal say through the conversation process where participation and inclusion of all people in conversation is allowed since genuine democracy has to be connected to some free discourse (Neumann, & Emmer, 2012, 227). There should be some agreement regarding the truth of the conversation from all the participants and this should be done through characterizing one’s views as true and with the required evidence. Ideal speech situation do not distinguish people with their gender or sex because public sphere members can either be males or females. It is good to allow all people participate in public conversation as per their interest and they should be guided accordingly rather than getting some coercion from outside that might hinder them from saying the truth regarding the subject of conversation. Ideal speech situation is associated with some barriers, which influence coming up with some consensus regarding the truth of different people’s views. Some of these barriers include; self-doubt, fears, imaginations, vanities, respect to the current authority, vision limitations, and prejudices from the public. However, in order to reach to a consensus regarding the value of different views, a lot of time is spent because different discussions are held and some of the speeches could not be fully tested, but remain in conflict among the public members raising some assertions. It is apparent that, people have different interests and different meanings are associated with different arguments, thus it becomes hard to reach to a consensus of the value of one’s speech, as it is the requirement in the ideal speech situation (Vansieleghem, & Kennedy, 2011, 179). Nevertheless, agreement is not very important compared to understanding of the content of one’s argument; hence, there should be some rationality involved in making some agreements about an issue or view of public communication. It is clear that, the communication action require some formulations from the force, reflexivity, traditions, and the body theories, thus not necessary to focus only on men. The value and facts should take for granted the reality of one’s view because people can politicize different matters and fail to give the speaker a chance to engage in self-reflection and understand where one goes wrong and where one’s speech is not clear. In order to have some genuine democratic communication, there has to be some discipline practiced by the members of the public whereby they avoid distorting the communication held by members of the public sphere. Different issues are judged differently and it becomes hectic public to come to a rational agreement because of their differences in reasoning and judging things (Kennedy, & Kennedy, 2010, 394). However, the possibility of having some consensus in all assertion associated with a certain argument have some basis from the shared aims and the consideration of the participants in a respective conversation. Involvement of adults in coming up with some understanding and agreement associated with an argument of a person about a certain issue might involve some biasness. It is apparent that, there are some distorted speeches, that people come up with and it might be problematic to analyze the status of whether it is truth or just a speech without evidence from the real world (Wright, 2013, 11). However, it is very hard to prove ideal speech situation in circumstances where the speech is distorted and when trying to test, such presuppositions, the tests turn to be negative and the public expects giving no adequate outcome as it is. There should be no involvement of bureaucracy in testing of participant’s arguments because this might lead to chaos as the elites try to prove themselves being right and others not right. Critical power of the presupposition existence tends to overpower the agreement of the participants since they have to follow what is realizable from the speech of a member of the public sphere. Conclusion In conclusion, ideal speech situation is the situation where one is allowed to hold a conversation and communicate without nay internal and external coercion. The argument of the member of the public sphere must have real reasons and evidences in order to prove its truth even after being associated with some assertions and after going through presupposition tests. It is apparent that, public speech is supposed to involve democracy and the people from the marginalized groups have to be given chances to give their local stories were consensus about the truth of their stories should be reached by all participants. However, Habermas saw it being right for all people to be allowed to express their needs, desires, and the attitudes towards what they feel being right. References Kent, G. (2013). Evidence of Distorted Communication as Impetus for Use of Strategies to Achieve'Something Like'an Ideal Speech Situation. The University of Wales Journal of Education, 16(1), 70-83. Neuman, W. R., Bimber, B., & Hindman, M. (2011). The Internet and four dimensions of citizenship. The Oxford handbook of American public opinion and the media, 22-42. Gillespie, A., Reader, T., Cornish, F., & Campbell, C. (2014). Beyond ideal speech situations: Adapting to communication asymmetries in health care. Journal of health psychology, 19(1), 72-78. Neumann, H., & Emmer, M. (2012). Peace Communication: Building a Local Culture of Peace through Communication. Forming a Culture of Peace: Reframing Narratives of Intergroup Relations, Equity, and Justice, 227. Roman, N., & Woodruff, J. (2011). Intelligibility of reverberant noisy speech with ideal binary masking. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2153-2161. Wright, R. G. (2013). 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