The Semiotics of Group Letters

With various group letters going around denouncing some of the evils of the Trump administration, and sure to be more letter requests to come, I thought I would try to sketch out some thoughts about how to understand them.

Let’s start here: I reject two common and simple views: one is the literal theory, where signing the letter simply communicates whatever the letter says, and you should sign it if you feel like you agree with it; another is the bluster theory, which holds that signing the letter is pointless or empty virtue-signaling that all serious people should reject.

The reason I don’t accept the literal theory is that signing a group letter does something more than just communicate the contents of the letter. As Albert Einstein may or may not have said when he was denounced by 100 physicists, if they were clearly right it would just take one, making a compelling proof. A group letter’s very point is to signal some meta-claims beyond the literal contents of the letter.

The reason I don’t accept the bluster theory is that I don’t think all signaling, or even all virtue-signaling, is necessarily pointless or empty or even bad. (Virtue is good, and often signaling it is too!) Group letters are a form of non-literal communication, so we need to explore more carefully what they communicate and whether and when we wish to communicate it.

It seems to me that there are two major things that a group letter communicates beyond its literal message:

One is this is a topic worthy of a group letter. There are many true facts about the world, many important facts about the world, and even many true and important facts about the world that are denied or contested by others in power. A big part of what a group letter tries to communicate is that out of all of these controversies, you should pay attention to this one.

This includes selectivity about topic — a group letter about the rule of law implicitly communicates that it is not a group letter about economic growth or climate change; a group letter about unconstitutional targeting of big law firms communicates that it is not a group letter about deportation without due process, etc.

And it includes selectivity about episode — a group letter written about attacks on the rule of law today implicitly raises the question about allegedly analogous attacks on the rule of law a few years ago: were those distinguishable, justified, simply more inconvenient to denounce, etc.? And of course the group may not agree about the answers to those questions. That is probably why there was no group letter on them last time. But this means that a group letter today condemning the actions of the government often does implicitly communicate: “some of us thought it was fine when the last administration did X; others of us did not think it was fine; and some of us don’t really want to talk about it publicly — but all of us are willing to say that this time is bad.”

Another implicit message of a group letter is this is a relevant group. A group letter by administrators across dozens of universities communicates a certain kind of solidarity: Don’t think you can pick off a few of us, we are all in this together, it implies. At the same time, that group letter from dozens of universities also communicates a certain kind of ideological hegemony or orthodoxy — especially when combined with the earlier point about message selection: Two relevant groups are Universities versus the Trump Administration, the letter implies.

The point generalizes beyond letters by academic leaders. A letter by the faculty at a particular school implies that it is relevant for the school to have a view — whether institutionally or individually collective (as when the vast majority of the faculty in a school collectively all sign a group letter in their “individual capacities”). A letter by a group of lawyers is an attempt to imply something about professional norms or legal expertise. A letter by a group of alums, colleagues, etc. is usually an attempt to imply either a constituency or a consensus about a relevant shared experience. Again, the very point of a group letter is to make some kind of meta-point about this group. A group letter is an implied assertion about the relevant category.

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Now some other professors respond to these complications by adopting the sensible practice of never signing group letters. The implied communications of a group letter are sufficiently complicated that it is often very hard to figure out what the letter actually implicitly communicates and then to explain to one’s friends or colleagues why one does or doesn’t want to implicitly communicate that.

I can’t say that I have adopted such a practice. On a handful of occasions I have co-drafted group letters or even signed group letters that I did not draft. But I try to be mindful that the very purpose of group letters is often a form of non-literal communication about the topic and the group. The rest of the time, I prefer to speak for myself.