DIVISION TWO
RDT 2.0: DRILLING DOWN ON BAKHTIN’S CONCEPT OF DIALOGUE
4. COORDINATING MUTUAL PRIVACY BOUNDARIES
Co-owners of private information need to negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules about telling others.
© Eric Lewis/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 173 08/01/11 9:12 AM user-f472
gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 173 08/01/11 9:12 AM user-f472 /Volumes/208/MHSF227/and88357_disk1of1/0073288357/and88357_pagefiles/Volumes/208/MHSF227/and88357_disk1of1/0073288357/and88357_pagefiles
174 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
But the news comes as a real blow. When he was in college, Nate engaged in risky bisexual behavior that his wife, Becky, knows nothing about. He’s embar- rassed and dreads telling her. Yet even if his state didn’t have a mandatory partner notifi cation program, he feels morally bound to tell her if for no other reason than she needs to be tested and protected from his infection. He believes Becky will “stand by her man,” but fears rejection from anyone else who hears about his condition. He doesn’t want his extended family, friends, or co-workers to fi nd out. But once he tells Becky, she may have different ideas about who else should hear and how much they should be told. For the sake of their relation- ship, Petronio believes they need to synchronize their privacy rules.
Boundary Ownership—Who Should Decide?
We’ve already seen that co-ownership of private information involves a joint responsibility for its containment or release. But not all boundary ownership is 50-50. One person may have a greater stake in how the information is handled or feel that they should have total control of how it’s used. If so, that person is usually the original owner. When the confi dant agrees that the original owner has the right to call the shots, Petronio refers to that recipient as a shareholder who is “fully vested in keeping the information according to the original owner’s privacy rules.” 14 Nate obviously hopes this will be the case, but it doesn’t seem that Becky fi ts well into the shareholder role. So if Nate clings to the belief that he alone should make the rules about how to manage the information, he will lose the chance to negotiate a mutually satisfying agreement with Becky, almost guaranteeing a turbulent future.
Petronio’s description of how a person becomes a confi dant sheds light on the degree of control this recipient has. 15 The deliberate confi dant intentionally seeks private information, often in order to help others out. For example, doctors, coun- selors, attorneys, and clergy solicit personal information only after they assure clients that they have a privacy policy that severely limits their right to reveal the information to others. As a general rule of thumb, the more eager people are to take on the role of confi dant, the less control they have over what they hear.
Conversely, a reluctant confi dant doesn’t want the disclosure, doesn’t expect it, and may fi nd the revealed information an unwelcome burden. Picture the hapless airplane travelers who must listen to their seatmates’ life stories. Even though reluctant confi dants often feel a vague sense of responsibility when they hear someone else’s private information, they usually don’t feel a strong obliga- tion to follow the privacy guidelines of the discloser. If the reluctant recipient comes across the information by accident, he or she will be even less likely to cede control of revealing/concealing to the original owner. So if someone comes across our private thoughts jotted in a journal or encoded in an email, those thoughts may become quite public.
As for Becky, her role as Nate’s confi dant probably shifts when he makes his startling revelation. She didn’t initiate this health conversation and, like many long-term partners, she may at fi rst listen with half an ear out of a sense of obligation. But once he drops his bombshell, she’ll be all ears and deliberately probe for more details. Given Becky’s probable fear, hurt, and anger that Nate never told her of his possible exposure to HIV, we might expect her to follow her own privacy rules rather than being constrained by his. If she later discovers that Nate has infected her with HIV, his rules will be history.
Boundary ownership The rights and responsi- bilities that co-owners of private information have to control its spread.
Shareholder
A confidant fully com- mitted to handling private information ac- cording to the original owner’s privacy rules.
Deliberate confidant A recipient who sought out private information.
Reluctant confidant A co-owner of private in- formation who did not seek it nor want it.
gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 174 07/01/11 9:33 AM user-f469
gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 174 07/01/11 9:33 AM user-f469 /Volumes/208/MHSF234/gri34307_disk1of1/0073534307/gri34307_pagefiles/Volumes/208/MHSF234/gri34307_disk1of1/0073534307/gri34307_pagefiles
CHAPTER 13: COMMUNICATION PRIVACY MANAGEMENT THEORY 175
Boundary Linkage—Who Else Gets to Know?
Boundary linkage is the process of the confi dant being linked into the privacy boundary of the person who revealed the information. When Nate discloses his HIV status to Becky, she’ll share responsibility for what happens in the future with that information. As for Nate, his privacy boundary will morph into an expanded, joint boundary of a different shape. He clearly wants his condition to remain the couple’s secret, but will that happen?
The major consideration in boundary linkage is the nature of the pair’s rela- tionship. When the revealer and recipient have a close, trusting relationship, there’s a good chance that the recipient will deal with the new information the way the discloser wants. But even though Nate and Becky would both say they’ve had fi ve years of a loving marriage, news that her husband is HIV pos- itive is likely to rock Becky’s world. Her fi rst question will probably be, How did this happen? and she won’t be satisfi ed with a vague answer or a claim that it came from a blood transfusion. As Nate reveals a sexual past that he always felt he alone owned, Becky’s trust in Nate may take a big hit. From her perspective, she had a right to know about anything that could so profoundly affect her life and their relationship. She might indeed be committed to stay with Nate “in sickness and in health as long as we both shall live,” but that doesn’t mean she’ll agree to a shroud of secrecy.
If the couple follows Petronio’s advice to negotiate who else gets to know, they might bring up the following considerations, each of which is supported by research on the privacy and disclosure of HIV status. 16 Becky might insist that she can’t live with the stress of keeping Nate’s infection secret; she’s willing to keep her father in the dark but needs to tell her mother. She also wants the ongoing social support of at least one close friend who knows what she’s living with and can help her cope.
For his part, Nate voices his fear of the prejudice that he knows HIV victims encounter. 17 When people fi nd out that he has HIV, he’s apt to lose his job, his insurance, his buddies, and the respect of others. He can’t possibly tell his folks about the diagnosis because they know nothing of his bisexual past. Nate imag- ines his shocked father bemoaning, “My son’s a homo,” and then slamming the door on him forever. As for Becky telling her mother, he’s seen her close-knit family in action. If his mother-in-law fi nds out, he’s sure the rest of the family will know by the end of the day. At this point, Nate and Becky aren’t even close to agreeing on who else can know what they know.
Boundary Permeability—How Much Information Can Flow?
Boundary permeability refers to the degree that privacy boundaries are porous.
Some boundaries are protected by ironclad rules with those in-the-know sworn to secrecy. These barriers are impervious to penetration. Petronio refers to such informational barriers as closed, thick, or stretched tight . Often that information is quarantined because public revelation would be highly embarrassing for those in the inner circle.
At the other extreme, some boundaries are quite porous. Petronio describes them as open, thin, or loosely held . Information permeates them easily. As bar- riers to disclosure, they are a façade. To the extent that privacy rules are supposed to check the fl ow of insider information, they are honored in the
Boundary linkage An alliance formed by co-owners of private in- formation as to who else should be able to know.
Boundary permeability The extent to which a boundary permits private information to flow to third parties.
gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 175 07/01/11 9:33 AM user-f469
gri34307_ch13_168-180.indd Page 175 07/01/11 9:33 AM user-f469 /Volumes/208/MHSF234/gri34307_disk1of1/0073534307/gri34307_pagefiles/Volumes/208/MHSF234/gri34307_disk1of1/0073534307/gri34307_pagefiles
176 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
breach. As the movie Mean Girls illustrates, some confi dences are meant to be spread.
Permeability is a matter of degree. Many coordinated access rules are crafted to be fi lters, letting some private information seep through, while other related facts are closely guarded. You may wonder how this could apply to Nate and Becky’s situation. Isn’t HIV infection like pregnancy—an either/or thing? Bio- logically, yes, but Petronio describes a number of ways that disclosure could be partial. For example, Nate might talk about movies that sympathetically portray AIDS victims, enthusing about the Oscar-winning performances of Tom Hanks in Philadelphia and Sean Penn in Milk . Or, similar to the sexually abused children that Petronio interviewed, he could drop hints about his condition and watch for signs that others would handle further disclosure well. Along that line, some gay and lesbian victims reveal their sexual orientation to others fi rst, later speak- ing of their HIV status only if the response to the fi rst disclosure is nonjudgmen- tal. As with boundary linkage and boundary ownership, collaborative boundary permeability doesn’t happen by accident. The practical takeaway that CPM offers is an insistence that disclosers and their confi dants need to negotiate mutual rules for possible third-party dissemination.