About communication
Ferdinand de Saussure argued in his Course in General Linguistics (1916) that when communicating we have a signifier, the subject being discussed, and the signified, the encoded representation of what we are talking about. The signified can be anything, from specific vocalizations, written shapes, and even music, so long as both the sender and receiver are sharing the same code, or language, to communicate.
This is easy to understand when it comes to simple, physical objects. If I write apple here, then you dear reader will picture an apple. It may not be the same apple that I am picturing, but it is an apple all the same, and unless we were discussing the specific flavour profile of a specific kind of apple, then it is good enough for the purposes of communication.
If I wanted to be more precise, however, I could add further details to my description to better communicate the signifier I am picturing to my audience. I could specify an ambrosia apple, picked from a tree at peak ripeness three months ago and frozen from that moment, thus cool to the touch. The more detail I express, the closer the image my audience is going to have in their mind to the one that is in mine. And for the most part, that is all that is needed.
Things get tricky when it comes to defining less physical aspects and enter more the subjects of logic and philosophy. Unless we all agree on the definitions of subjects beforehand, every person may have a slightly different definition of a concept which, over time, is certain to result in miscommunication.
For instance, when it comes to gender identity and sexual preference, the Queer community has developed a plethora of definitions for discrete and continuous identities for many different ways to be. Often the community finds itself struggling to accept that when one person defines themselves as something, they may not necessarily mean the exact same thing that another person might when using the same word.
To seek clarity, and to seek messages to be received accurately, requires thorough explanation of the code being used to transfer the message. But, at the same time, extensive detail can lead to purple prose at best, and legal documents that extend beyond what anyone could reasonably read through in a timely manner. Communication getting lost in the weeds of technical language discussing the specific definition of words using only words that have been previously defined.
Thus, defining the encoding of the message being shared becomes an encoded message unto itself.
However, this does not mean there is no hope of being understood, or of being able to share a message with a wide audience. What this calls for, like with many things in the human experience, is patience. Setting expectations and base definitions in ways that the current audience might understand, so more complex ideas can be expressed while sharing common ground that minimizes error, without spending too much time rethreading old ground. As a Mexican saying goes, no need to reinvent black thread. Or in English, to reinvent the wheel.
In the game The World Ends With You (2007), a character states the title, explaining that our personal worlds are limited by how far we can reach, and that only through connecting with other people, even if those connections are imperfect, can we learn more beyond our limits, and more about ourselves. Through communication and teamwork, we can accomplish far more than we could ever hope to achieve on our own.
In the process of sharing ideas, we not only learn more about these ideas as we explore them by explaining them, but we also learn more about the audience we have, for we see where they may have different approaches and definitions, which in turn may aid the exploration of our own concepts. Through this sharing, re-defining, exploring and mutual exchange of information, we learn more about the world, our concepts and each other.
Communication is difficult, but it will always be worth it to try and reach out and share, and by doing so trying to make the world a friendlier place.
The only way to a better future is together.
