Going Meta as Frame-Altering

Finally, we turn to the all important notion of frame-altering as a constituent feature of going meta. This essay's senses of frame and of frame-altering are taken largely from Bateson (1958/1972) and from Goffman (1974; 1981). Said Goffman, in his classic essay on "Replies and Responses" (1981:43): "...although a reply is addressed to meaningful elements of whole statements, responses can break frame and reflexively address aspects of a statement which would normally be `out of frame,' ordinarily part of transmission, not content -- for example, the speaker's duration, tactfulness, style, origin, accent, vocabulary, and so forth."

Central to Goffman's general point in these examples are the notions of frame-altering (including frame-breaking) and reflexive address. If the expectation is that one should reply to questions directly in a given situation, then respondents will have gone meta (and broken the frame of direct address) if they elect to step back from the immediacy of a question to question the questioner's motives, or tone, or premises, or right to ask certain questions, or right to ask any questions at all. Going meta will also have occurred should the respondent comment favorably on the question, or on the questioner's mode of delivery. We can find instances of going meta even in so seemingly routine a situation as one person responding to another's request for the time:

Shh, those mikes pick up every sound we make.

Your English is improving.

You're pretty compulsive.

Is that really the right question? (Goffman, 1981:69-70)

But two qualifications are in order. First, if the topic under discussion had been the previous speaker's English, then the respondent's attention to what Goffman calls transmission, not content, would not have counted as a meta-move. Thus, what is here called a meta-move is context-dependent.

Second, a response may be frame-altering without being reflexive. Asked the time, our respondent could provide greater specificity than was expected: "Almost 4:22 pm." Or give added meaning to 4:22 pm: "Almost quitting time." "Time for a Budweiser." These would not be meta-moves in that (in Watzlawick et al's words) the respondent did not make prior communications with the subject of communication.(9)

This still leaves a veritable goldmine of possibilities for reflexively challenging taken-for-granted frames. Thus, as Goffman suggests, merely by calling attention to how something is said rather than to what is said, the respondent typically breaks frame. And attention to particular features of transmission -- to duration, tactfulness, and the like -- offers myriad opportunities for further reframing. Moreover, communicators may comment, not just on immediately preceding utterances, but also on segments of interaction ("This conversation is getting out of hand"), on the interaction as a whole ("I didn't know this was to be a cross-examination"), or, for that matter, on multiple interactions involving different groups of interactants ("Why do you European Americans always seem to privilege your own cultural premises?"). All of these would be instances of going meta.

It is useful to conceive of any given message or message context, not as consisting of a single frame (e.g., content versus transmission; play versus fighting), but as offering up multiple frames for possible frame-altering. As illustrated in the foregoing example of varied responses to a request for the time, the frames of a question could be construed as including its immediate context, its place in a larger history or stretch of talk, its intent, its implicit premises, its manner of delivery, its type of speech act, its level of reflexivity (e.g., as talk about talk, or talk about talk about talk). Thus, for the message analyst to speak of the frame of the message or message context, is to engage in what is at best a useful oversimplification. More accurately, there are multiple frames, and frames of frames, to which the meta-goer might call attention.

Consistent with the foregoing, communicators may alter a frame rather than breaking it. Metaphorically speaking, they may bend it, shape it, enlarge it, constrict it. This happens, for example, when a speaker answers to a topic or theme rather than to an immediately preceding statement; the speaker in effect places the statement in a larger context (Goffman, 1974). Politicians frequently enlarge frames when they deflect questions, responding on their own terms while at the same time giving the impression that they are at least somewhat responsive to the question. This happened repeatedly when Bill Clinton was asked by television interviewers during the 1992 primaries about his alleged infidelities. On Donahue, for example, Clinton acknowledged that there had been "problems" in his marriage, he said the issue of adultery would not have been raised by the media had he and Hillary been unable to work out their marital difficulties, and he broadly hinted that there may have been an affair or two. When Donahue labeled Clinton's response a "deflection" (here going meta to Clinton), Clinton implicitly agreed with a head nod (here not altering frame), but then added: "Where would we politicians be with you interviewers if we didn't deflect some of the time?" This part of Clinton's response reflexively breaks frame (and thus goes meta) in so far as it substitutes a premise of justifiable self-interest for Donahue's premise of obligatory directness.

Rarely, even in radical rhetoric, is there a complete break with conservative values, as Scott (1973) pointed out. Instead, protestors have historically mocked or chastised leaders for dishonoring their self-proclaimed values (Tilly, 1979). A highly popular technique, says Tilly, has been to turn ceremonial events, such as a parade, into an opportunity for protest. A contemporary instance of this occurred at Columbia University in 1968. As Columbia Vice-President David B. Truman prepared to deliver a strong eulogy to Martin Luther King, Jr., slain five days before, protest leader Mark Rudd stepped between Truman and the microphone at St. Paul's Chapel and declared to those assembled that the event was a moral outrage. How, he asked, can the leaders of the university eulogize a man who died while trying to unionize sanitation workers when they have, for years, fought unionization of the University's own black and Puerto Rican workers? How can these administrators praise a man who fought for human dignity when they have stolen land from the people of Harlem? And how, Rudd asked, can Columbia laud a man who preached non-violent resistance when it is disciplining its own students for peaceful protest? (Avorn, 1969:28)

Here, quite clearly, Rudd was altering the frame set by the planners of the King memorial, but at the same time he was honoring King and his values, just as they had been. Perhaps this is another way of saying that a message or message context offers multiple frames for possible reframing, some of which the meta-goer will leave intact.