low self-monitors 64
perception 48
perceptual sets 65
predicted outcome value theory 66
prejudice 67
Pygmalion effect 59
selective attention 49
selective exposure 49
selective perception 49
selective retention 49
self-awareness 52
self-concept 53
self-disclosure 61
self-esteem 53
self-fulfilling prophecy 58
self-image 53
stereotype 67
stigma 58
unconscious bias 67
4 Communicating With Words: Helping Minds Meet
iStock/shapecharge
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
4.1 Define language, and explain the triangle of meaning.
4.2 Explain the factors at work in the communication of meaning.
4.3 Identify problems experienced when attempting to share meaning, including patterns of miscommunication.
4.4 Discuss the relationship between culture and language.
4.5 Discuss the relationship between gender and language.
4.6 Explain how power affects language use.
4.7 Explain how incivility affects language use.
4.8 Analyze how technology influences language use.
4.9 Apply techniques for improving language skills.
Whatever we call a thing, whatever we say it is, it is not. For whatever we say is words, and words are words and not things. The words are maps, and the map is not the territory.
Harry L. Weinberg
In the film Arrival, a linguist stands inside a spaceship separated from two aliens by a glass-like partition. She approaches the aliens, placing her palm against the partition. Her plan to save Earth from presumed annihilation is to communicate with them. Their language, she realizes, is unlike ours. It is based on a nonlinear perception of time, a perception she was able to gather by listening, empathizing, and talking. The linguist used words—not weapons—to save the world.1
Language is Alive: We Use Words to Share Meaning
The English language contains over 1 million words, and a new word enters the vocabulary about every 98 minutes. In 2015, the Oxford Dictionaries named as its “word of the year” an emoji titled “face with tears of joy.” They say that for the first time they recognized a pictograph as word of the year because of the symbol’s ability to transcend linguistic borders.2 In 2016, their new word of the year was post-truth—a term signifying that appeals to emotion and personal belief are more important than objective facts when it comes to being able to influence us. A contender, but not the winner, was chatbot—a computer program that engages in conversation with human users.3 What do these choices say about the value we place on words or verbal language?
We depend on words to help us share meaning. By understanding how language works, we can improve our ability to do that. In this chapter, we define language and explore the roots of miscommunication. We consider how aspects of our society affect our word choices and conclude with guidelines for developing our ability to make word choices that help others understand us. Although most Americans know about 20,000 words, each of us actually uses only about 7,500 of them on any given day.4 On what basis do we choose our words? And what happens when we select the wrong ones?
Words, Things, and Thoughts
Language is a unified system of symbols that permits the sharing of meaning. A symbol stands for, or represents, something else. Words are symbols, and thus words represent things. Notice that words represent and stand for rather than are. This is an essential distinction. Words are spoken sounds or the written representations of sounds that we have agreed will stand for something else. By mutual consent, we can make anything stand for anything.
The process of communication involves using words to help create meanings and expectations. However, as important as words are in representing and describing objects and ideas, meaning is not stamped on them. Meanings are in people, not in words. The goal when communicating is to have our meanings overlap, so that we can make sense out of and understand each other’s messages.
The Triangle of Meaning
Language fulfills its potential only when we use it correctly. The triangle of meaning developed by two communication theorists—C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards—helps explain how language works (Figure 4.1).5
Figure 4.1 The Triangle of Meaning
In Ogden and Richards’s triangle of meaning, the three points are thought, word, and thing. The broken line connecting word (a symbol) and thing (a referent or stimulus) indicates that the word is not the thing and that there is no direct connection between the two. Thus, when we use words, we need to remind ourselves that the only relationships between the words we use and the things they represent are those that exist in people’s thoughts (including, of course, our own).
Frequently, even the existence of an image or a physical object does not establish meaning. Some time ago, a public service commercial depicting a rat and a child living in a tenement was shown on television. The child was seen beckoning to the rat as she repeated, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Although this example may seem bizarre, its meaning is clear: It is possible for us to look at the very same object but give it very different meanings. This is because the meaning of anything is inside each person who experiences it.6 If we are to be successful at communicating, we should understand the relationships that exist between words and people’s thoughts and their reactions.7
Problems with the Communication of Meaning
The communication of meaning is a key function of language. The factors identified in this section relate to problems we may have when attempting to share meaning.
Ethics and Communication
Looking at Language
The following is a joke that language scholars share:
Q: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?
A: Trilingual
Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual
Q: What do you call a person who speaks one language?
A: American
1 In the book Language Shock, author Michael Agar notes that a commonly held stereotype is