Public Discourse Ethics

Public discourse ethics “protects and promotes a place of conversation for diversity of ideas and persons. Public discourse ethics nourishes the public arena as a conversational space that provides a pragmatic welcome for difference. Private life, unlike public life, eschews difference, finding definition in commonality of interests and commitments” (Arnett, Fritz & Bell, 2009, pg. 100). Essentially public discourse ethics is the “marketplace of ideas” where plethora of beliefs and communicative behaviors compete for status within our public space. Public discourse ethics guards and promotes the public arena, a place where difference lives. When we try to make the public arena a private place of agreement and cohesion, we move private interactions to a public form of predictability, a form of extreme normalness, taking away their uniqueness and special nature of private conversations.

Throughout the chapter the author provides examples of the possibility for the public to invade the private, and the potential for the private to invade the public. For example, a “student intern who spends time text messaging friends while on the job is permitting “private” friendships to invade the “public” internship site. Both forms of communicative exchange- public and private- enrich out lives; however, when the wrong communicative space (public or private) invades the other, a fundamental communication ethics violation occurs” (Arnett, Fritz & Bell, 2009, pg. 107).  The frequent occurrence of text messaging both in public and private spaces makes differentiating the two difficult when infused together throughout the day. Additionally, this scenario provides an example of how our private life with close family and friends can quickly interfere with our public life very quickly.

For example, over the past weekend I went out with my boyfriend for a dinner at a local restaurant in Minneapolis. Currently, he doesn’t live in Minnesota, so when he comes back for a few weekends out of the month it’s important that we spend as much time together as possible. During our dinner date, his cell phone was bombarded with emails and text messages. His boss was inquiring about numerous client portfolios’ that needed to be completed. While this was occurring it was frustrating our date night was interrupted with the demands of work, and resulted in violating the public discourse ethics. Further, this example illustrates, “communication technology provides us with greater access to others than at any time in human history. If one is not careful, public commitments erode private time with family and friends as cell phones and text messages make contact with the office not only more possible, but more expected” (Arnett, Fritz & Bell, 2009, pg. 106). Public and private communication exchanges enrich our lives, but when the wrong communicative space invades the other, a communication ethics violation occurs. Taking away from what the author illustrates and the example above, it’s extremely important that our public and private lives have boundaries. Technology makes it difficult to balance the two, but for private and public relationships to flourish people need to make a distinct effort to keep them separate when necessary.