Here are two excerpts from an article in The New Yorker. The article is entitled Words on Trial, and its author is Jack Hitt. It appears in the June 23rd, 2012 issue.
The key idea is that words, by themselves, are necessary but not sufficient to create meaning. The listener creates meaning through hearing the word, passing it through a filter composed of her prior experiences, and then interpreting the cues that are coming from the speaker, such as voice, and body language.
We all know this, I think, and accept it, because we work on voice and body language in order to bring our spoken words to life. But these excerpts provide a clear lens into the strange partnership between spoken words and the expressive power of the voice and body language.
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“Most people assume that meaning is embedded in the words they speak. But, according to linguists, meaning is far more vaporous.
Meaning is teased into existence through vocalized puffs of air, hand gestures, body tilts, dancing eyebrows, and nuanced nostril flares. The transmission of meaning still involves primate mechanics worked out during the Pliocene era.
Context is crucial. When we try to derive meaning from words alone, we are capturing only part of the gestalt of that moment.”
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“…words serve as catalysts, setting off sparks of potential meaning that the listener organizes into more specific meaning by observing facial expressions, body language, and other redundant cues.
We then employ another powerful tool: prior experience and the storehouse of narratives that each of us carries –what linguists call ‘schema.’
To every exchange we bring unconscious scripts; as any given sentence unspools, we readjust the schema to make better sense of what we are hearing.”
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Knowing that people interpret what we say through their prior experience, we must tell them what we are NOT saying in addition to what we ARE saying. By anticipating how they might misinterpret us, and putting a halt to their misinterpretation, we have a better chance of being heard and understood.
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