The problem with language as a tool for communication is that it's a collaborative effort. No matter how much someone hones their speech or writing, for communication to be a success, the other person needs to have a high degree of comprehension and perhaps (some sort of) intelligence. They need to accurately interpret the intended message. To make matters worse, even someone intelligent can misunderstand his interlocutor's meaning if the words contain some sort of incidental cue that triggers a sore spot for him, according to the complex and scaffolded rules informed by personal history. Misunderstandings are everywhere.
So, accurate communication between people is not just a matter of linguistic sophistication but a social intelligence that can never ever be as precise as other tools, since the variation between people's social intelligence & hangups rest on factors like cultural context, mental health, personal history, subculture, neurodivergence and even mood.
Example of communication going wrong: your partner just bought you a necklace. You love it. A week later, you see your friend with her new necklace on. You say, "oh my goodness that has to be among the top 5 most beautiful pieces of jewelry I've ever seen. I have stars in my eyes!" Now, depending on your partner's personality, he could 1) assume that his gift to you is among those top 5 or 2) assume that it's not. He could also assume that you're lying to your friend to be nice. He could assume you would never say such a thing if you weren't sure that it wouldn't hurt your feelings, so just the very act of you speaking up means you definitely liked his gift. Or he could assume that you'd NEVER speak up if you cared about his feelings, and just the fact that you're gushing over another piece of jewelry so soon after your gift means that you're subtly communicating that you kind of don't like your gift but you don't want to say it (a common thought from possessive partners who harbor a deep hurt).
The fucked up thing is that all of those are true for different people in different places. Some people really WOULD be petty enough to subtly signal a dislike for their gift by complimenting another necklace. Other people would be so confident that their partner knows his gift was appreciated that they wouldn't feel self conscious at all about complimenting her friend's necklace so effusively. Still others would be self conscious about accidentally signaling that there could be possibly better necklaces out there, that they would keep quiet to not hurt their partner. But the only piece of information communicated here is "I love it! Top 5 pieces of jewelry I've ever seen!" Everything else has to be intuited from previous context, current context, personal understanding of how the world and other people work, etc. The mystery of communication is what makes it sexy and artful, but also what makes it dangerous.
I've noticed that the most insufferable political spaces are those where you need to be clarifying or providing context every 30 seconds so that people around you don't bite. "And so the best thing we can currently do for Africa is to encourage commerce and increase security so that they can have the opportunity to increase their GDP like east asia in the last 50 years.... but of course I'm not saying that colonialism hasn't played a big role in impoverishing the continent. And oh of course I'm not saying that capitalism can't create market failures that need to be accounted for. And oh of course I'm not saying that just because creating positive conditions for commerce is the best thing we can do, that means that charity work isn't needed. And oh of course..." etc. etc. Clarifications are of course (heh) often necessary and I love preemptively giving them myself, but I'm talking about a level of preemptive clarifying that takes up so much space because people know they will be destroyed if they step out of line too much with their particular group's Overton window.
This is why my favorite political spaces are those that are kind of "autistic." Autism can lead to difficulties with intuiting social nuance and subtle meaning. It can also lead to having too much faith that your fellow man won't accidentally take things too personally and can handle the truth. This sort of autistic politics leads to some of my favorite spaces on the internet, like the "change my view" subreddit where people are encouraged to be as accurate and precise as possible and where getting offended in lieu of an actual argument is not welcomed. It's not a coincidence that people are actually amenable to updating their beliefs under precisely those rules of operation. I love literature and poetry and good conversations for their double meanings and mystery etc. but something like politics has been corrupted by a sloppiness in communication. I don't want to talk about politics too much bc the truth is I became jaded by politics like 6 years ago and haven't been keeping up but regardless, politics is one of the best examples for where communication goes wrong in our world.
Deceptive leaders use the corruption and uncertainty in language to their advantage. When Trump talks about sending Iran back to the stone ages or whatever, he's taking advantage of his reputation for being the exact opposite of clear and precise with his words. He's communicating enough reasonable doubt to scare his enemies into making the wrong move, but his reputation also allows him to play with the possibility that it was all just jokes, bro. Well, not jokes but what is perceived to be exaggerated chest puffing. He can have his cake and eat it too because we all know that no one always means exactly what they say and some people even less than that.
tl;dr: there's mystery and beauty and humor in language and that's somehow tied to its own corruption but when accuracy is important, it pays to be autistic.
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