Our only apparently unique invention is written language, and there’s lots of evidence that it’s the least effective form of communication we have, and the form most prone to misunderstanding
writes Dave Pollard in his recent blog post Turning Together Without Words.
Today, when using a local e-learning platform to get information about a course on “Interdisciplinary Communication” I learned the imperative way that interdisciplinary communication is inaccessible to guests. Even more so, it is forbidden.
There you learn. Faster than any course could do.
Words ought not to be trusted – you can never be sure if they mean what they say.
— Ashleigh Brilliant
Let’s assume that when people say something they generally mean something different. Then, the question “What do you mean?” generally makes no sense at all.
If you think that some people at least sometimes do say what they mean, well, I anyway do understand something different from what they say let alone what they mean.
So, what does it mean when someone says that she or he makes a lot of use of dictionaries and thesauruses searching for word origins? Like Dave Pollard just wrote? Or like half of my own blog?
What does it mean if someone is especially picky about words, if we try to be precise, if we try to avoid obfuscation and ambiguity, and if we moreover foster meaning with references?
Experts of wording driving away from their audience, burying augury of knowledge in wisdom, the paradox of communication, blatant honesty about lying.
Of course, this makes sense to us, anyway.
Concluding my recent praise of Stefan Böschen’s Praise The Paradox I wrote
He was lucky nobody listened to him.
Here are 2 excerpts from the transcription of an audio recording of the conferences final discussion:
To begin with, Stefan fosters his praise of paradox by stating that part and counterpart complement each other. He explains that thinking of any thing means to distinguish the thing from what it is not, its opposite. He then underlines the importance of this concept with a short reference to life’s essential interplay of order and chaos.
The next speaker replies:
What I am still missing is consciousness.
And he continues to tell a story of the demise of corner shops, small groceries and merchants, and how we are all involved.
At a second occasion, Stefan Böschen reinforces his praise of the paradox. He refers to its ambivalence and its inevitability. Finally, he reminds us to be sensitive to unintended side-effects of decisiveness and unambiguity, and that this sensibility should be one of the objectives of any educational system.
The next speaker (by the way, not the same) replies:
This, simply, is not enough.
He says, he misses analysis and perspective. And he concludes with “this will lead us nowhere”, cuts himself, and continues to reply to someone else.
