The Message and the Meaning

Communication is the effort to convey meaning. When we think of communication, we probably imagine people talking to one another, and maybe reading messages that the other one wrote. Those are good examples, but there are many more ways that we encode meaning. Some of the others include body language, tone and timbre and volume of voice, grammar (as the structure separate from the speech contents), context, meeting or defying expectations (for example, using accepted manners at a dinner, or signaling something is wrong to a loved one by acting out of character), and even silence.

The words we say have no inherent meaning. We build habitual meanings through experience. The first time we hear the word “dog,” we don’t have any reference for its meaning. When the word is repeated while someone points at a four-legged furry animal with sharp teeth, we slowly learn to connect them. At first, children may think that “dog” is only the name of that particular animal, or that it refers to any four-legged creature. Over time, they learn the other bits that calibrate that mental category with other people who use the word “dog,” so that when we hear or read it, we know what each other are talking about. Meaning, then, is something people make.

Speakers of different languages will distinguish these categories differently. Sometimes they more or less line up, but others, the lines will be drawn very differently. Takao Suzuki provides a classic example in his book, Words in Context. In English, a man has a “nose,” an elephant has a “trunk,” and a crow has a “beak”. In Japanese, however, “hana” means both the nose of a man and the long part of the elephant that we call “trunk.” Meanwhile, in both Russian and Turkish use a single word for a man’s nose and a crow’s beak. Contrary to popular belief, languages can’t often be translated one-for-one.

Within the same language, problems remain. We find it easier to agree on concrete nouns, but ask two different Americans to identify the difference between “jog” and “sprint,” and you may get answers that differ in miles per hour, or that ignore mph and base it on an individual’s heartrate, or perceived effort. My favorite fruit to illustrate concepts of perception, the humble apple, may be easy to agree on in form, but you may think of cider, your uncle’s trees, and Fall farmer’s markets, while I may think of crisp slices, the Book of Genesis, and Alfred Korzybski’s structural differential.

That is to say, our meanings overlap but they don’t match up point-for-point.

The Message

For the purposes of this essay, I’m calling the “message” those signs which we use to make meaning. They include spoken and written words, gestures, and anything else which we can interpret in multiple ways. Meaning doesn’t come with the message. We use the message to tease it out. Even if I respond to you by saying, “I think I understand, but let me confirm that this is what you were trying to say,” and you nod in agreement, there is still no guarantee that we’re on the same page.

Making and taking messages is a skill. It requires me to: 1) translate my inner feelings and nonverbal thoughts into words, for example, that approximate them, and 2) pay close attention to your feedback to see if you received what I was trying to tell you. If not, 3) there is a calibration effort required from both of us. There are potential errors in many places.

• I can choose poor words to convey my thoughts.
• I can use decent words but foul up my nonverbal signals, confusing you.
• You can take the words differently than I mean them (apples to apples, right?).
• You can fail to sufficiently demonstrate what you understood, and how it may have differed.
• I can fail to perceive your otherwise effective demonstrations of what you perceived.
• I can see that you don’t understand, but fail to calibrate because one or both of us can’t find the meeting place, or doesn’t care.

Communication is hard! Even two people with the desire to understand one another and the patience to work at it can muddle it. It’s important to note that while we often think of communicating as a game of words, there are many kinds of signs involved in the process, and it requires effective sign taking and making at all levels of firstness, secondness, and thirdness.

Addressing the problem in which our communication falls apart because we struggle with certain types of signs—for example, people on the autism spectrum have trouble recognizing body language cues—is a huge undertaking. It requires long, comprehensive training in signs, coupled with an intense desire to examine ourselves honestly and improve. If you made it this far, congratulations, you’re already working on that.

What I want to address right now is the bad habit of misconstruing meaning due to laziness, or a conscious manipulative effort.

Recall a time you’ve seen two people arguing, preferably when you had no dog in the fight. You may have noticed that certain words triggered out-of-proportion reactions. One person latched onto something the other said and ran with it to an extreme, while the other person countered, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”

Let’s not condemn the word-twister too eagerly. I’ve been that person, and you probably have, too. It’s much easier to take a message and create its meaning using our familiar definitions. Given that the other person doesn’t know the vast and irreducible personal connotations we have for every sign, they can be forgiven for choosing a poor one now and then.

It also relieves us of the responsibility to check that meaning with the other, play close attention to how they take what we say, and meticulously calibrate. When feelings rise, we want to rush to the familiar. If we have such different connotations of apples, how well do you think we align on abstract terms like love and hate, right and wrong, inflation, immigration, transcendence?

In a way, what we’re doing is lashing the person for failing to know what that message would mean to us. To look at another, put yourself in their shoes, grasp their thoughts and feelings, and behave sympathetically, means having compassion. When others misunderstand us greatly, it feels like a lack of compassion, and we have no desire to show compassion in return by sussing out how our words affect them.

This doesn’t happen because people are selfish, or spiteful. I’ll say it again: communication is hard.

Finding the Vesica Piscis

When we generate meanings for others’ messages that ignore as much of their personal connotations as possible while forcing as many of our own onto the situation as we can, we aren’t thinking, feeling, living for ourselves. We’re enjoying a narrow emotional reaction that refuses analysis and further information gathering, the zones of thirdness and firstness, and we are also stunting our capacity for compassion, in the realm of secondness. As we’ve seen time and time again in these essays, when we get stuck in a narrow range of signs instead of moving fluidly through all ten signs in all three categories, we end up stuck in a rut of craziness.

The solution, then, is to understand that communication between humans will always come with difficulties. Instead of trying to be right, or to force the conversation into familiar patterns that may not be shared, we should look for the meaning behind the message. While not everything can be shared, it’s precisely when we find those zones of overlap that we can connect with others most completely.

Instead of arguing whether that’s a trunk or a hana, or getting mad because the Japanese guy insinuated my nose looks like an elephant’s, we need to make the effort to find out what the other person means. Often, it’s as simple as asking for clarification before responding.

Or it may take the form of letting errors pass if we know the way they said it couldn’t possibly be how they intended. I’ve been guilty of correcting people for mispronouncing a word, or saying “it’s in the closet” instead of “cupboard” in a moment of fatigue, when I know which is the place I’m likely to find a frying pan. In this case, I should respond to the meaning, which still came across via other channels, not the garbled message.

Sometimes, it’s a lot harder, though. There may be exchanges where we truly don’t have enough common ground to work with. It’s OK to surrender and walk away. If we can, though, we will gain a lot from setting aside our own meanings long enough to search for the other person’s. That’s the thing we should respond to—not our lazy translations. Even if it falls short, others notice that we made an effort to see things from their point of view. If they’re reasonable folks, they’ll appreciate the show of compassion. Maybe we won’t come to terms on our politics, but there are other, deeper ways to share meaning.

Exercise

8. This week’s exercise marks our first venture into the social sphere. At least once per day, ask someone to clarify, elaborate, or further define their meaning. Then consider how you can best respond to convey your meaning, while being aware of how they receive it.

It’s best to do this in a friendly situation, rather than the heat of an argument, though if you can pull off the latter, more power to you. A great way to do this is to restate what you think you understood, then ask if that’s what they meant.

This can be done in person, over the phone, text, online, or any way you communicate.

The topic can be utterly trivial. If some says they don’t like apples, you can ask whether they really dislike every possible preparation of apples. If not, which do they tolerate? If so, find out what it is they don’t like, or when it first started. You’re likely to find they didn’t mean exactly what you first thought, but even if they did, you made a new kind of effort. The seed of that habit will surely bear out to your benefit in future situations.