Assigning Positive Intent

I’m getting a little irritated with the frequently incorrect use of “assigning positive intent.” It’s used often willy-nilly in AP circles to unintentionally shut down discussion. “Assigning positive intent” (API) means that you as the receiver assumes that the sender of a message means only the best but is ignorant of or unable to do the best thing.

Now, I assume that those of us who are using this incorrectly mean well but are merely uninformed.

Now, as luck would have it, my chosen scholarly expertise has a vocabulary for API too. Kenneth Burke would say that in comedy you treat your Other as your adversary rather than your enemy. You should assume s/he’s uninformed or mistaken rather than evil. This is a better stance because the ignorant must simply be corrected whereas the evil must be expunged or destroyed.

But still blindly accepting everything in a “can’t we all get along?” pluralism is not API or Burkean comedy. We still must be discerning. The difference is that assigning negative intent comes with condemnation whereas assigning positive intent comes with education. To assign no intent is permissiveness.

So this means “Assigning Negative Intent” is not:

• Venting. Often the “assigning negative intent” accusation comes in the middle of vent. Nothing could be more unsupportive.
• Critiquing. If I see a connection between behavior A and behavior B, pointing it out is not assigning negative intent. It’s seeing a connection that might better hone my correction.
• Stating a hunch as a hunch. I’m often perturbed by how the “I have a hunch” is leapt on as assigning negative intent. No, it’s a hunch. It’s not a declaration or even a fact. It’s a hunch.
• Encouraging conversation. Ironically, what happens is the accusation of “assigning negative intent” is usually assigning negative intent to the actions above. Grrrr. . . .

I’ve spent decades learning how to see connections among dissimilar things, learning how to make my Others my adversaries and not my enemies, and learning how to create new common ground. That’s all what API is.