Ten percent of what people communicate is contained in their words, and even that ten percent can be confusing.
Words broaden our understanding and limit it at the same time. Words alone will never be enough to express our true depth, however words make understanding clearer than any tool we have. Words allow us to confirm our understanding. Words allow us to share our thoughts. Words allow us to transmit our knowledge to others. But remember, words are mere communication tools. They are not the communication itself. Don’t confuse hearing with understanding. Do not confuse speaking with communicating. Choose your words carefully because each word you choose is likely to have more than one meaning…
At least each word has a connotative meaning and a denotative sense. Denotative meanings are found in the dictionary; are the agreed meanings of words. Denotative meanings include the historical roots of a word, as well as its various meanings. However, few people learn their language with a dictionary, and even the best English speakers tend to assume the connotative meaning of a word before bothering to look up its denotative meaning.
Connotative meanings are subjective. They are the individual and incredibly personal definitions that people give to words. For example, I say “mother” and I see my mom. You say “mother”, and you see your mother. We both understand the word “mother.” It means someone who has given birth. But that definition only incorporates the denotative meaning of the word. Our individual experiences of our mothers will have created in each of us a connotative meaning as well. My mother never hits me; maybe your mother did. Our connotative meanings of “mother” can be incredibly different.
We all have emotional hot spots, words that make our blood boil. For me, it’s the word “skinny.” People compliment me all the time saying, “You’re so skinny.” But they don’t know all the times I’ve been told I’m too skinny, or all the taunts about my skin and my bones. Sometimes I react to their compliments as if they insulted me and they don’t understand why. They often try to explain themselves without realizing how deep my feelings run. His attempts to explain tend to make my bad feelings worse because now I not only feel insulted, but guilty for feeling insulted as well as defensive for how I feel. In the end, we stopped communicating because they still haven’t recognized my right to feel the way I feel. I guess some of my readers can’t get over the fact that I object to being called skinny. Such is the power of connotative meanings; we get stuck in our own meanings and stop really communicating.
“Love” means different things to different people. The meaning of “love” is constantly changing depending on a person’s experience of love. The same is true for many other words. Words like justice, anger, jealousy, smart, tall, fat, prejudice, stupid, generosity and life. If we want to communicate, sometimes we need to get past words and learn to respond to what people want. Until you start to understand the connotative meanings behind people’s words, you will never understand the meaning of their words…
