Words, Meaning and Communication

As I was preparing a speech this week I experienced a flash of revelation--an epiphany.  The context goes back deep into my youth.  I have been convinved for much of my life that a mastery of words, grammar, sentence structure and composition combined with an artful delivery would ensure communication.  I held on to this belief in the face of all sorts of evidence to the contrary.

When I failed to accomplish the communication I was trying for, I first held the receiver accountable; after all, I had taken far greater care than most in crafting my message.  Then (with more maturity) I assumed increasing levels of accountability.  I tried expressing my thought in multiple ways hoping to strike the target with one of them.  I tried using metaphor and stories.  As I became more experienced with the ways of people and life in general, I used stories and experiences from different cultural perspectives.  I tried to hit the point where humanity lived--the common denominator of experience as a human being without regard to culture, education or even intelligence.

Before I continue, let me say that I can successfully communicate even very abstract concepts when I am face to face with the receiver.  Careful observation of a person's eyes, expressions, body language and what they say or the questions the ask--all of these help me to communicate even within a group.  The written word is something else again.

My epiphany was this: words have little value in themselves.  Even when we link them together with art and experience the best that we should hope for is to separate the little bit of meaning that we're trying to communicate from all of the other meaing that's out there.  We should think of language as fencing materials--posts, boards, nails, wire, staples, etc.  Our goal (as a sender) should be to place the posts strategically to close off meanings that we do not intend.  Then we should use the rest of our materials to hold and direct the receiver's thoughts within the meaning we intend.  I will say that some words are more suitable fenceposts than others and, like any fence, the materials must suit the purpose.

As the receiver, we must cease getting caught up in the construction of the fence and instead give our full attention to what's inside the fence.  Inside the fence is where the real meaning lies.  We must read between and beneath the language with the idea that there is something there that we will be better for having understood.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the two political conventions we have just witnessed.  Clearly Republicans and Democrats have different ideas about communication.  The fences they build are very different in nature.  Of course the nature of national politics yields big ideas and the meaning that must be conveyed seems like the pioneers' perception of the Platte River--a mile wide and an inch deep.  Those who are involved in the parties and the political processes can perceive much more depth than the casual listener.  This is the weakness of the process, that understanding the communcations requires insider knowledge that most of us don't possess.

For this reason, the fences being built by the language of the speeches, advertisements, platfom documents... don't always seem well-constructed.  They may not appear to atually enclose anything and we begin to hear the words in contexts of our own making.  We become alarmed when we hear something we recognize as untruthful ("inaccurate" is the euphemism most often applied) and we focus on that single fence post to the exclusion of not only the rest of the fence but whatever the fence was enclosing.  My advice: hear the words but rely on observations of behavior to provide the meaning. 

No politician will knowingly fence himself in and this is wise.  National and international policy are a seething cauldron of competing forces and it's dangerous to try to reach in to isolate one ingredient.  It isn't reasonable to expect a government leader (or would-be leader) to limit his or her options for dealing with an issue that, when it arises, will be absolutely unlike anything that we have ever dealt with before.

When we do (unreasonably) demand that the candidate tie himself firmly to a future course of action it can never end well either for us or for the candidate/politician.  BUT, we can look carefully, not only at individual past behaviors, but past group behaviors to get some idea what to look forward to.