Granny Does It IV: More Morality, More Meaning

© KJ Hannah Greenberg, 2024

Granny Does It IV: More Morality, More Meaning
Seashell Books, USA.
Aut. 16, 2024. Buy it here.

More Morality, More Meaning

In the previous volume of Granny Does It, A Morality of Meaning, I suggested that when evaluating whether communication is compiled, i.e., gathered; created, i.e., made anew; or arrived at in some other way, we must, simultaneously, evaluate the legitimacy ascribed to its undergirding epistemology, think about how we assess both communication’s origins and human ingenuity.

Significant, contemporary, epistemic perspectives include cognitive objectivism, viewing being as independent of creature characteristics including reasoning; experientialism, viewing human continuation as “made possible by the body [including] abstract and creative reason, as well as reasoning about concrete things” (Lakoff, xv); and relativism, videlicet, viewing the real world as according to the mind’s parameters, not nature’s. Given this array, it’s unsurprising that divergent outlooks exist on invention.

All the same, whether we use a compilation-based, an innovation-based, or some other scale for weighing discovery, the act of weighing, itself, implies a weight. In recalling a weight’s relative quality, we can better grasp the negative ramifications of legitimizing only a singular starting point for creativity.

Hence, this volume of Granny Does It addresses multiple frames for communication and morality’s sway on human behavior. Unlike works structured for sophisticated audiences and well-grounded in contemporary communication theory, More Morality, More Meaning is patterned for readers with little or no training in these topics. The same, unlike works aiming to provide answers, More Morality, More Meaning purports to raise questions. This book outlines communication ethics as reliant on history, individuals, and institutions.

Like James Jaksa and Michael Pritchard’s Communication Ethics: Methods of Analysis, More Morality, More Meaning uses a holistic approach to illustrating the relationship between semantics and philosophy. Although both books discuss a variety of systems for elucidating rhetorical/philosophical interdependence, unlike Jaksa and Pritchard’s work, More Morality, More Meaning draws from Torah in addition to secular sources.

Moreover, like Richard L. Johannesen’s Ethics in Human Communication), More Morality, More Meaning emphasizes the historical significance of the ethical dimension of communication. Both manuscripts explore morality and meaning in a variety of communication contexts and use multiple examples and explanations to flesh out those concepts. However, More Morality, More Meaning presents communication ethics as both product and process. This book describes, not prescribes, communication norms, values, and virtues. Additionally, More Morality, More Meaning’s standpoint is more parsimonious than those of related books. Plus, More Morality, More Meaning’s premises enquiries about, not professes about, human interactions.

It’s sensible to fabricate multifarious references, across networks, that illuminate how and why we employ words to devise our veracities. For that reason, this final volume of Granny Does It: More Morality, More Meaning, hopes to provide judicious insights into the linkages among our principles expressions, and experiences.

In the midst of this book’s preparation, Operation Swords of Iron began. More than one thousand Israelis were massacred on Oct. 7, 2023. It was impossible for me not to respond to that atrocity. Although, originally, this book was meant to comment on “general” communication, given Israel’s existential crisis, the book’s content shifted. More Morality, More Meaning is, hopefully, now a perspicuous expansion of my thoughts. More exactly, while my words remain landed on everyday themes, large numbers of them have become contextualized in wartime maneuvers. That is, my ideas still address universal topics, but my examples have become specific.

Akin to how, when I was a young academic, I was interested in studying and teaching abstract topics, e.g., Rhetorical Theory and The Rhetoric of Identity, etc., but when I aged, I grasped my obligation to teach more grounded courses, e.g., The Rhetoric of Women’s Cycles: Discourse Concerning Menses, Maternity, and Menopause, and Media Ethics, when I started More Morality, More Meaning, I compiled ideas about communication’s mundanities, only, given the war’s advent, to comprehend my responsibility to write about determinate subjects, e.g., antisemitism and spiritual propriety. So, whereas More Morality, More Meaning remains a book about communication accountability, it’s grown into a book about horrific, international, wartime rhetoric and about the importance of cleaving to Hashem.

Preface: More Morality and More Meaning
Introduction: Rhetoric and Reason
1. Heavy Topics
1.1 Microrhetoric’s Impact on Society
1.2 Boundaries
1.3 War
1.4 Dancing in the Face of Evil
1.5 Not Little Boys and Girls, Anymore
1.6 Our Boys
1.7 What Not to Say to Families Experiencing War-Related Challenges
1.8 I Can’t Imagine
1.9 Woke Mob
1.10 Well-Placed Indignation
1.11 Relative Mental Health
1.12 Sinat Chinam, Baseless Hatred, vs Ahavat Chinam, Brotherly Love
1.13 “Them” and “Us” vs “Us” and “Us”
2. Lighter Topics
2.1 Artificial Writing
2.2 So Disappointed
2.3 Among Generations
2.4 Grow those Veggies
2.5 Slow Dining
2.6 The Great Matzah Heist
2.7 Medical Care and Then Some
2.8 Friendly Exchanges
2.9 Pampas Grass
2.10 Scan and Go, Go, Go
2.11 Hunger Artists
2.12 The Wedding
2.13 Another Wedding
3. Concerning Others
3.1 A Brief History of an Old Puzzlement
3.2 Levels of Communication
3.3 The Channels of Our Verbal Investments
3.4 A Round Peg: A Lament for a Silenced Friend
3.5 Instructional Communication Ethics
3.6 Paradoxes that Arise from Teaching Persuasion as Both An Object and A
Metalanguage
3.7 Explaining Communication via Semantic Screening
3.8 A Semantic Screen for Communication Ethics
3.9 Lecture Stories: Part One
3.10 Lecture Stories: Part Two
3.11 Lecture Stories: Part Three
3.12 Female and Intermittently Academic
4. Concerning Ourselves
4.1 Teshuva
4.2 Invention as Morality Making
4.3 Learning to Pivot
4.4 Success
4.5 Engaging in Blessings
4.6 Word Watch: Avoiding Baseless Hatred
4.7 By Dint of Need, not Merit
4.8 I am (Not) Okay
4.9 More Psychological Conundrums
4.10 Not (Having to) Turn off Sticky Keys
4.11 “Precious” vs. “Cherished”
5. Faith
5.1 Prayer as a Gift from Hashem
5.2 Cosmic Oxytocin
5.3 Uplifting Offerings
5.4 Wonderment
5.5 Steadfastness
5.6 Why Do You Live Here?
5.7 Echoes of Eden: Saving Our Collective Neshemot One Volume at a Time
5.8 Blessed
5.9 Simanim
5.10 A Pause from Worries
5.11 Endings
Conclusion: Heaven-sent Morality and Heedful Meaning
Glossary
Appendix One: Types of Communication Transactions
Appendix Two: Sample Responses to the Second Iteration of a Persuasion Assignment
Credits
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Books by KJ Hannah Greenberg