Language – Mind Maps             Communication

Ted Elden / Anvil Club /  7 March 1996     6 Pages

 

Ambrose Bearsley defined:  Language is the tool by which we use our gelded tongue to beguiles the treasures of another.

 

Language is the media to perceive, recall, communicate, essentially to think.

 

Language frames our consciousness.

Is language a measure of the intellect ?

To distill thought to convey, goals, feelings to commonality of words, symbols.  It is our form of perception, memory & communication.

 

Language:  - is symbols; media; spoken, written, images..

Language involves:

- an audience; family, friends, associates, strangers,

- an environment;   comforting or threatening,

- a situation:   in travel, relaxation, .. situation;

- a goal;  need, trade, conversation, situation,

- an attitude;   service, need, equality, ..

 

Language is

- interactive with individual, family, culture,

- consistent with dress, demeanor, life style, peers,

- mode, style, person,

- subject, popular mode, conventional thinking

It may embrace many modes:

visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, taste, intuition,.. other perceptual dimensions, other insider reference - brokers, financiers, thoroughbred owners, sports car drivers, lawyers, plumbers, intellects, scientists,   ...

 

Language is Symbols, icons, words, drawings, images

Language helps to perceive,  recall, think & communicate.

Language is limits of thought, reflection, memory, and communication.

Language lets us manipulate knowledge and memory to communicate old and new things in old & new ways / methods..

Language to tell / teach or to write / learn or read can freeze time.  Unlike spoken words, which are both simultaneous and interactive with audiences, written and other recorded languages can be conveyed to audiences distant in place or time.  Interactive media - like CD Rom, and some computer programs - can resemble an interchange – an interaction with the speaker / programmer / gamer.  Broadcasting to remote people and or times is provided through publication or broadcast - which can reach audiences that the speaker cannot personally reach, passing limits of time, space, distance, building dispersed and special audiences. Language facilitates things, ideas & actions for publication, transmission, discovery, review.

 

Language is Progressive, meaning one thing initially, but at each further encounter, we mix the original meaning / experience with the subsequent experiences and the aura of events that surround them.  Developments, and further circumstances give further meaning, significance and implication by the cascading development of a situation.  Language is learned and experienced as a relationship between symbols observed & used and their effect and or results with other people and or circumstances.  Its meaning is derived from associative experiences, repetitions, learning.  Language is not only a system of symbols, but in fact, they are symbols of agreement.  Unless the audience / reader (book, photo, gestures …) understands the language & or symbol, i.e. agrees with its meaning, there is little information transmitted.  Agreeing or understanding the terms or symbols is the base point of communication and interaction.

 

Grooming the language for more durable recall

All information, however frail, ill-defined can be expanded to longer, more clear statements to be relearned, rediscovered later.  Who makes such an effort ?  What happens to our notes ?  Repeating anything in any way, sound, sight, (advertising) tends to strengthen impression & or memory

 

Language is symbols, forms, meaning, status, agreement, common experience, evolution of a word, a shape, a feeling to illustrious words. People participate with language that they understand and can manipulate.  With a partner in agreement, conforming minds, similar experience yields similar bias:

Partners: wife, child, friend, business assoc., pet, computer, piano,

Stories. We are echoes of our friends/ assoc. desiring to be accepted

Our vocabulary is built around our interests: music, architecture, science ...

Consistency of goals, method, value.

We participate in forms we understand, like those we can recognize, produce, replicate, or animate.

People, common in an event, circumstance, in time share an attitude, goals, situations, conditions & become comrades, friends.

Friends are those who understand words we use, what we mean.

 

Vocabulary: single words for complex things, adjectives, conditions.

Complex words embrace an assembly of parts, mood, environment,.

Increasing vocabulary allows more efficient handling of complex information. (learning new words, symbols, forms, paintings, works, languages, …)

 

Beyond language is communication.  It is subject to the variables that effect both speaker & audience; mood, attitude, relevancy, prejudice ...

 

Communication is influenced by:

- the speaker, - the audience,      - the conditions, the environment

- the situation / urgency

- the current & history of interaction of the speaker/ listener / subject.

 

The greatest inducement of communication: Be patient, attentive, sympathetic understanding, silence, listening and encouraging. a subjective will, which is the sensitive, empathetic patient listener.  To listen, you must be silent.  (listen / silent – anagrams)

 

Speakers build & develop complex images, models, precept upon precept.  In rapport with their audience, they develop ever greater canvases, allowing single terms to mean complex things or events with precision.

Communication need not be direct.  It can be indirect from reading, TV or other external source:  - news - TV - movies - books - course.

 The internet is mixed sources, university professors next to high school students, unlike news / magazines which are sorted and indexed.

Today, public information is communicated in divergent ways, many publishing & broadcast media, TV & internet channels.  How are we reached - by telephone, mail, publication, broadcast, influenced by many background advertising and popular community ideas and conditions ?  What we experience, put inside our head (and our reaction to it), effects our perspective on things, people, events, and will affect our future choices.  Information has attitude.

We communicate in our person; in our dress, composure, style, habits, expression, gestures, intonations, pronunciation.  We communicate primarily developed habits from our exposure and experience, but we can feign towards new behavior, and, to some degree, escape our past.

 

Communication is nothing without an audience.  Does one focus on the message or audience or both ?  Does the information / presentation stand independent of either, is it current with popular or futuristic or ideal thinking or of another time or place ?

 

Word Communication, is stripped down version of more full, direct communications.  The person, his voice, his look, demeanor, attitude and persona are stripped away.  Yet personality, feelings, emphasis, and other factors can reenter the communication through enhancements such as typesetting, graphics, illustrations and newer forms of interactive video and CD ROM.  In Europe, Graphics, cartons, gesture logos without title, are keys to clue you in on the situation.  Graphics, images, icons and even heavily abbreviated words among frequent companions provide for telegraphic (complex) communications quickly, efficiently .

Word only communications are somewhat limited to their content - like written text or radio broadcast.  But imaginative and creative minds can hear/ read and weave a web - to reach beyond those seeming limits.

 

Language & communication bounces back & forth between people & events.  Others give us the meaning of a symbol, then we augment and propagate the meaning of the symbol.  Depending upon us, the circumstances or events around our use of the symbol, others may elect to also use the symbol, amend it or reject it.

After a word or symbol is understood, it is used.  As it is used, as it circulates, it begins to relate and therefore it connotes things related to the symbols use & or the use of those who use the word or symbol.  On occasion, a word, slogan, phrase or symbol outgrows its direct definition, and becomes a whole world in it’s self, alluding to or involving many other things - assumed or implied.  As the connotation propagates and is used and accepted, it hardens into an evolving definition of the word / symbol. 

Therefore language, words & symbols, and even customs continually evolve.  Written or static sources that echo themes, symbols and or traditions, tend to stabilize the shift of meanings, but many variables continue to augment and or change the meaning of symbols.

 

When we enter a place or situation, we search for clues that relate to similar experiences.  We go to see a musical or comedian expecting a certain type of event.  We modify our perceptions as the situation and aura unveil themselves and develop.  If we are in a foreign or threatening situation, our perceptions are quite different than if we are in a known environment and or among friends, within an environment we know to be safe.

 

The joy of a poem, or song, is that it parallels an experience of its listener.  From that commonality, it may predict an outcome desired but yet to be experienced.  It builds a feeling or experience, wherein another has gleamed a common feeling, the reader/ listener, having discovered this melodic or poetic expression of a similar feeling, slurs his own feelings to blend with the symbols of the story teller/ song writer/ poet.  In future reoccurrence of the theme, the symbol or the song overshadows the memory and entrances the listener towards a fantasy which he seeks to reach, or a rose colored (improved) memory that he enjoys remembering.  Memory alters under these magical powers.  Memory or experience alters to fit to the magic of the newly found symbol.

Poets juggle words, searching, trying or awaiting inspiration to describe or relate feelings, ideas, situations.  Their magical expressions can entwine a common experience with more feelings, an improved memory or a divergent memory of a similar experience.  The poet finds words that embrace the spirit, become the wings & throne of emotions.  He juggles words, rhyme, rhythms towards harmony, focus & perfection. Through multiple trials, sensitive judgment, he models and crafts his art.  Intense in intellectual endeavor, he must be highly motivated, or experienced in his reward to achieve levels of complexity and perfection. Consider the 2nd life of the poem, created in passion, honed in sweat to meter, rhyme, sound and meaning, yet possibly published and reread and reinterpreted.

Empathy:  Before we love our eyes are dark, we only see in part.

Language is outsider entrance in.

Art is self serving, yet it may capture others interest.

Energy passion is contagious.

Life, encountering new experiences, is opportunity to learn, understand, and apply our knowledge, skills towards our goals. We learn from our own personal experience in work, life, and love. Learning, memorizing, building on the known.  Rote learning:  You can build an advanced platform to talk in more complex terms, understand & convey inside (subtle – refined) information.

Words, language, statements are rarely universally clear, common, absolute. Hence we have arguments, prejudice, lawyers.  Learning is not absolute knowledge, but simply accepting/ remembering/ confirming areas of agreement for mutual advantage; to communicate, cooperate, trade, etc.  Even religion is but the agreement of common terms, themes, understanding - learned and accepted (agreed) from another.  Multiple repetitions, with intelligent attention, or judgment and correction (i.e. learning) can yield a more and more proficient, sophisticated, complex or refined process.  Our responses usually arise from our expectation of tradition or association with situations.

Each speaks from his own perspective.  Each person may use their own terms which have a personal meaning.  Only in discussion, trial & error, & confirmation are assumptions clarified, understood & agreed. 

In close relations, language leaps the bounds of words, simple expressions, coupled with gestures communicate complex statements.  The attuned partner perceives much from little information.  Long time relationships, couples or tight business associates truncate their language, communicating more in fewer terms, as many conditions are assumed from common goals, pervious experience.  In watching movies, like City Hall, you get the fast pace, abbreviated jargon of special interest.  You find it difficult to understand the works alone, but grapple with the meaning given the setting and conditions that you pick-up from the story and situation.

My favorite comment on communications whether in family or work place, is the definition of an assumption: that which is convenient to me, but which, if discussed, might be diverted to some other conclusion. An assumption is what is convenient to one, yet possibly not the conclusion another would make in discussion.  It takes time to clarify details, actions, arrangement by talking or writing, so we constantly make assumptions.  Even in talking, it often takes many words to reach agreement, a blending of words, yielding of terms.

Language, with intelligence, builds commonality.

- common symbols         - empathy, self interest

Redefining the need, goals, and circumstance.  Often you have to be rather immersed in a situation until you realize all of the factors, or at least all of your own interactions.  First,  the terms must be understood, then the processes to manipulate information to a clear and focused resolve, be it a statement, a thesis, drawing, images, music composition or other work. 

Consider computer programs.  They echo the workings of a complex mind: an accountant, lawyer, other professionals.  To know a computer program empowers us with the skills and the tools of the programmer or of the reasoning & manipulation ability of a person or professional.  We must learn his vocabulary, strategies, objective, methods, to manage our information or data in effective & efficient was as would the one whose reason we are using.

Idea Fisher:  A computer program, like a combined dictionary, thesaurus, combines connotation, denotation, mixing words & intersections of overlapping concepts & sets, absorbs the reactions & thoughts of 200 individual people in establishing over 1/ 2 million word links.  The program nearly begins to simulate thought. Give it a word and it give related words in that field.  You can think more completely of any subject.  Click on another word and it opens a world to you from that perspective.  It is not a dictionary or thesaurus, but with related words in the field, it is a much broader, powerful, insightful program.

 

Musicians, converse, then jam in common spirit.  Music is emotion on a string.  Natural, logical or familiar melody allows you to predict the next note.

What is song without words ?  A carton without a caption ?

Music (or language) can effect others; motivate, energize, focus consciousness.

Often a task can be considerably simplified, and speeded in execution and or lowered in cost when given a new window of perception.  Some media, interfaces, methods are simply a new dimension, beyond our current understanding.  It takes some primortal factor for us to enter new arenas; as it will cost us time, possible financial or other tangible expenditure.  Must we know what we may gain, or may we gamble to learn and only hope it will help us.  Few take time to learn new vignette for curiosity only.  However, some things are only available to those who have crossed the line to the new technology, method, perspective.  Ideas, sometimes, are difficult to understand and or embrace to those outside the system of knowledge, technique, program.  Who is responsible to learn/ teach the new science ?  Buyer or seller ?  The curious, or he who may have financial or personal gain ?

We tend to speak and listen in the same format.  When we have invested in one form of technology, we’re bias to think that that is the primary and necessary method and begin to ignore other systems.  Those with pen, write, with computer, type, with fax, fax, with internet, ...We become deaf and blind to the modes and media that we are not currently supporting.  We become deaf to those who do not speak on our subjects and or of our concerns, or with our perspective, bias.  We seek those sources who link to our goals, movement, improvement.  We become blind to other divergent avenues, seeing them as irrelevant and distracting.

We participate in forms we can read & understand, produce, replicate, or animate. (play the game)  We ignore (devalue - are blind to - misunderstand) others forms in observation, appreciation, without response, action, involvement.  We are untrained in their value and in the proper or proportional / appropriate response.

To learn is to listen well.  The submissive person should be the best learner.  Think:  I am blind, deaf.  I can not see the world through your eyes.  Tell me what & how you see.  Communicate with me. 

Language may be the tangible limit of our perception, thought, communication, understanding, & memory.  Expanding our language (vocabulary, learning, experience) may allow expanding our minds & perceptions.  Language combines former experiences to build a new plane of consciousness, to illustrate, reveal, explain, predict, understand, forgive.

Time is a precious gift.  Give to another in patient presence, remote reflection / prayer, or in reflective & constructive thought and writing.

Creative minds may not limit their interpretation to what was intended, or meant.  Let the viewer/ reader/ audience  come to their own conclusions.  One presents so another might react.  Each, the creator, author or speaker and the receiver, listener or audience brings to their perception a history of experience and understanding, the window, of the eye of the heart through which he judges the things that he perceives.

In the beginning, God created …

In the beginning was the word, and the word …

Something exists, then a word is formed to describe it.  Later variations of existence are conceived, planned or created and a word is developed for the complex assembly. Language is outside - removed from thought and feeling, but it offers a window to the common thought that another might conceive or has experienced.  All things humans create are first born in the mind’s eye before they come into existence.  Things that God makes are born in His creation before our cognizance, observation, understanding or perception. 

Things of our creation or of God exist before we put a name to them.  As we grow conscious of them, things, forces, ideas, we name them.  As the name is used, it evolves as to the use and experience of those using the word or term.
Things exists, are described, then predicted or created.  Once named, the names can beget more.
Word & things are interwoven, cycling in both labeling and creating each other.

Of love: seeing & living in love, begets love, which often begets a child or a product (music, poem, play) which again begets love (or thoughts & feelings).  Like yin & yang, the flow between the physical & the spiritual, each begetting and or transforming into the other.  Languages, words & symbols, lead to new creations – physical, spiritual, intellectual & or emotional, each of which can beget a new term, word, symbol, which can lead again to other creations, feelings, etc.

Corinthians 13:  Before we love, we don’t see clearly, only in part.  With Love, we have full vision & understanding.

Language is the limit thought - of our ability to perceive, label, recall, project (speak).  It is far more than words; it includes symbols, images, sounds, feelings.  It can be expanded - finding new terms, as defined on or built from things we already know.

Unless you have a language, already learned or developed, to embrace something, to witness it, to experience it, to have a label and perception, you will not see, perceive, hear those things around you.  If you do not have the language in place, that part of the experience is transparent, you don’t perceive, recall and are not able to remember or describe it.

Expand your language, expand your world.  You can by learning, observation, reflection, reading, travel, dialect, meditation.