Practical focus on interpretation:
- Present a talk
- Lead guided tours
- Design an exhibit
- Produce video or audio programs
Interpretation is strategy:
"the purposeful design and delivery of communication that stands a better chance of making a difference on purpose with the kinds of audiences most interpreters encounter."
TORE model (aka EROT framework)
It's what the audience does (think), not what the interpreter does (communicate information), that tells us when we've achieved excellence in interpretation.
Question: What are the verbs in the 100 most common words? 1,000 most common words?
Interptetation traditionally involves communication with a "pleasure-seeking audience"; set apart by an "openness to learning"
Intended outcomes:
- Enhancing the experiences of people's connect to a place
- Encouraging a positive attitude about the things interpreted (caring, mattering, liking, loving); facilitating an emotional or affective response
- Promote "proper or preferred behavior" (influencing behavior)
National Park Service (2012) "People will only care for what they first care about."
- Interpreter
- Interpretive encounter
- Interpretive product
National Association of Interpretation (NAI):
Interpretation is a mission-based communication process that forges emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and meanings inherent in the resource.
Book definition:
Interpretation is a mission-based approach to communication aimed at provoking in audiences the discover of personal meaning and the forging of personal connections with things, places, people, and concepts.
Captive and conceptive audiences are different.
TORE:
- Interpretation has a theme (T)
- Interpretation is organized (O)
- Interpretation is relevant (R)
- Interpretation is enjoyable (E)
Resource: NAI Definitions Project
- Themes are not topics: a theme captures a single whole idea
- Themeless interpretation is doomed to infotainment (e.g. "Fun Facts" about architecture); a theme not only tells you where to start, it tells you when you're done
- "The story's the thing" (Tilden, 1957)
- Your theme answers the "so what?" question (a.k.a. the big picture, the moral to the story)
- Makes your job easier: "gives you a clear view of the information you should include and exclude"; "makes it a lot easier for you to research your topic and gather information"; Bill Lewis (1980): "if you have a clear theme in mind, you'll find that most everything else will fall into place."
Note: I hate the word infotainment here.
Wilbur Schramm (1971):
Probability that a conceptive audience will pay attention = Reward (potential benefit) / Effort (amount of work required)
Information must be attached to organization, imagine velcro or tape to stick an idea or fact to a bigger idea.
Magical number four
Don't go looking for sub themes, they'll come to you.
Note: I don't think this section is explicit enough about organization. Here are a couple key concepts alluded to in the examples:
- grouping
- layering (hierarchies)
- pattern
Relevant information has two qualities:
- meaningful
- personal
Meaningful: build a bridge between something unfamiliar and familiar, using:
- examples
- analogies
- contrasts
- similes
- metaphors
"Common everyday things make the best bridges."
Note: I'd love to write up a collection of just the metaphors and analogies that are useful in thinking about Baltimore architecture and neighborhoods.
Personal: Connect presented information not just to something people know about but something they care about.
Tilden (1957):
Any information that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
NPS (Larsen, 2003) advanced idea of universal concepts:
- Emotions: love, hate, fear, elation, sorrow
- Basic biological imperatives: birth, death, hunger, thirst
- Human fascinations: uncertainty, cosmos, mystery, suspense
Techniques for making interpretation personal:
- Self-referencing: ask people to think about themselves and their own experiences as you give people new information; simple phrases that often increase interest level in communication.
- "Think of the last time you..."
- "Have you ever ...?"
- "At one time or another, most of you have probably..."
- Labelling: a statement about a "kind" of person or group of people in relation to some idea, point, or object an interpreter is trying to describe
- can be positive, negative or neutral (people will either associate or disassociate from the label)
- select labels that are important to the audience
- To be entertaining or engaging, interpretation must be enjoyable and organized and relevant
Ways of making technical information more enjoyable:
- Smile
- Use active verbs
- Show cause and effect
- Link technical stories to stories about people
- Exaggerate size
- Exaggerate timescale
- Use an overriding analogy
- Use a contrived situation
- Use personification: give selected human qualities to non-human things
- Focus on an individual
Envisioning the endgame of interpretation gives it a purpose and a destination.
Three archetypes for good interpreters:
- provoker: "leave people thinking and discovering their own meanings and connections."
- teacher: "leave [people] knowledgable; informed about the facts surfing a phenomenon, place or thing; and capable of remembering those facts later."
- entertainer: "stresses the act of interpretation more than its outcome, where providing enjoyment and holding attention are the main evaluative criteria," hope that "audiences will leave satisfied and with a fond memory of time well spent."
Provoker: See Tilden (p. 32-33, 36); interpretation needs relevance and revelation.
Teacher
Thus, in so many cases that we have observed, the provocation to the visitor to search out meanings for himself, and join in the expedition like a fellow discoverer, was sometimes submerged in a high tide of facts, perfectly accurate, perfectly ineffectual... And as a participant in such groups I have so many times had my enthusiasm wilted by an interlocutor who mistook information for interpretation—who became a poor instruction when he could have been an inspiring guide. (Tilden, 1957, p. 36)
"encyclopedists" succumb to desire to tell everything they know
success is an audience learning, recognizing, or being able to remember the facts presented during an interpretive encounter
Entertainer
- Defined by holding attention
- Feedback (attention or applause) is irresistible and motivating
Archetypes correspond to indicators of success:
- Correct recall of facts
- Knowledge recognition
- Amount of enjoyment
- Attention capture and holding power
- Number and kinds of thoughts provoked
Provoker is the most indispensable of these archetypes:
Experience, it has been argued, is nothing more than what a person thinks. That is, your experience with something resides within the thoughts you think about it. Therefore, provoking members of your audience to think will simultaneously enhance their experiences (provided, of course, you give them pleasurable thoughts to think).
What kind of difference is interpretation said to make?
- Enhance audience experience
- Impact attitudes and promotion appreciation about a place, thing, or concept
- Strengthen protection of important resources by influencing how audiences behave with respect to them
Three-step process: "People think; they make meaning; they remember"
How do people remember?
- semantic memory v. episodic memory
Attitudes
- attitude object: "the thing you want your audience to have an attitude about"; "unless the thinking people in an audience do focuses on that specific attitude object there would be no reason to expect their attitude about the object to change.
- sentiments like liking, loving, or appreciating
Beliefs
"describes a person's perception that a given thing has some attribute, characteristic, or quality" v. attitudes "describes that person's evaluation of the thing, whether it's good or bad, desirable or undesirable, positive or negative"
principle of compatibility: to have a "strong and enduring impact on an audience's attitude about virtually anything, that interpreter must first impact the beliefs those people have about that same thing"
- Reinforcement
- Change
- Creation of new beliefs
Note: I need to come back and take more notes on this section.
- provocation (or strong) path
- quick (or weak path
Influencing...
- general behaviors
- specific behaviors
Note: I need to come back and take more notes on this section.
- Normative approach
- Reasoned action approach
Myths about interpretation's ability to influence behavior
- Poof theory
- Omnipotent interpreter theory