Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
I often think of my brain as a dual-carriage highway. Every day there are the thoughts speeding along the fast lane, in a hurry to get to the destination. They are frenetic, focused on the here and now. On the flipside, there are always many more thoughts in the slow lane. Most days, these slow moving thoughts go unnoticed. They are humming along, blending into the background and simply taking in their surrounds. Occasionally, the roads get quiet. Momentarily, there are no thoughts in the fast lane; fast, noisy and taking up space on the road. The thoughts in the slow lane come into view, and we get to see the myriad views they have absorbed in their travels.
Today, the fast-moving thoughts in my brain disappeared for a moment and I became aware of the scenery that the slow-moving thoughts have been absorbing over the last few weeks. That scenery has been littered with thoughts about language.
I am a native English speaker — Australian English, to be precise. I don’t have a second language, although I’ve retained some of my school level French lessons and I’ve picked up a smattering of tourist-ready phrases from my travels.
I recently attended my local TEDx event, TEDxPerth, and was fascinated by a talk from Daniel Midgley, a linguist and host of podcast Talk the Talk.
Visual scribing by Gavin Blake
Daniel spoke about how people get grumpy about language. In his talk, he used words and phrases that language purists would cringe at. He told us how we can be quick to judge a person based on their use of language. These examples were there to support his point that language is ever-changing and that we should focus less on the words themselves, instead how we use the language to tell a story.
Daniel’s mission to un-grump us when it comes to the use of language resonated strongly, particularly as I’ve a paradoxical relationship with language. I’ve carried a couple of my own grumpy triggers into adulthood: I inadvertently spell check everything I read and I’m quick to spot the poor use of apostrophes. In line with my always be learning philosophy, I subscribe to “word of the day” emails to expand my vocabulary and (hopefully) improve my writing. However, I think I’ve always erred on the side of telling a story rather than obsessing over the correct use of language.
I’ve always felt somewhat “less than” because I don’t pay close attention to all the mechanics of writing and use of language. This feeling held me back for a long time from putting my writing into the world. What if people judged me on my use of language? What if someone considers me uneducated and unworthy of calling myself a writer? What if my ideas are dismissed because I am not a master of the mechanics of grammar?
I’ve been working on how to move past these concerns . Writing regularly and being part of writers’ groups has shown me that I can continue to learn and improve. Listening to Daniel’s talk made me reflect on my own thoughts about language and gave me comfort that I didn’t need to be perfect whilst putting my ideas and stories into the world.
This confidence was rattled last week while completing a work assignment for a client. This project involved interviewing a number of team members and writing up a report. One of the people I interviewed was not a native English speaker, having moved to Australia and taught herself English. She was exacting in her use of words and language and agonised over phrasing things correctly. She argued back and forth whether the notes reflected precisely what she had relayed. She felt that a verbatim transcript was the only way to capture her story and that there was no way possible to summarise her thoughts.
When my client received the final report, they proceeded to interpret this person’s thoughts and ideas in a different way again. Which made me wonder, whose approach to language is the important one? In this example, the pedantic concerns of the interviewee did nothing to change how the receiver of the message read (and heard) the language used. If we take Daniel Midgley’s view that it is less about the words and more about the story, how does this person ensure that their story is heard in the way they want it to be? I wonder if it is even possible.
Is communication always destined to be flawed based on our individual skills and worldview around language?
Do we need to focus on our perfect use of language, either in the written or spoken form? Or, on being the best listener we can be?
Perhaps if both, or all, parties communicate with the intent to do their best at giving and receiving language, is that enough?
I’m going to put these thoughts back into the slow-moving lane of my brain’s highway and continue my musings about language, storytelling and communication. I wonder where the journey will take me.