Nuclear Brinkmanship: A Study in Non-Linguistic Communication

Abstract

The article uses Goffman's distinction between expressions 'given' and 'given off' to advance the study of how nuclear bombs and military maneuvers are used to create meaning. The data is verbatim audio recordings from the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The analysis reveals that actions do indeed sometimes speak louder than words. Moreover, who is being spoken to is often a semi-visible thirdparty, such as world opinion. The analysis identifies a novel process of 'staging the other', that is, when one side tries to create a situation which will force the other side to act in a way which will create a negative impression on world opinion. In so far as the staging is not perceived by the audience and the target does indeed make themselves look bad, then staging is a particularly powerful form of impression management. We have said that we have a 100-megaton bomb. This is true. But we are not going to explode it, because even if we did so at the most remote site, we might knock out all our windows. We are therefore going to hold off for the time being and not set the bomb off. However, in exploding the 50-megaton bomb we are testing the device for triggering a 100-megaton bomb. But may God grant, as they used to say, that we are never called upon to explode these bombs over anybody's territory. (Adamsky and Smirnov 1994:20) It is now known that there was no second bomb. Although a second shell was created and displayed, it was empty. So why did the USSR 'waste' its most awesome military asset to create a 64 km high mushroom cloud? The explosion was a communicative dramatization of power (Etheredge 1992), which succeeded in creating an impression of awe and fear around the globe. which occurs when one party tries to create a situation which will force the action of the other party in relation to world opinion. Keywords Impression ManagementGeorge Herbert Mead (1910Mead ( , 1922 Goffman 's work (1959:14) distinguished between "two radically different kinds of sign activity," namely:the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. The first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and others are known to attach to these symbols. This is communication in the traditional and narrow sense. The second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of