Communication

I've been thinking a lot about communication lately: why situations make communication more difficult, why we choose to communicate some things and not others, how things can be communicated without us intending for them to be, why some people are better communicators than others, how communication depends so much upon timing, how social conventions sometimes restrict effective communication, and what we can do to communicate effectively in spite of social barriers.

I'm in a Technical Communication class, and we've been doing presentations on research topics. I did mine yesterday, and I think it went pretty well, but I'm also quite sure that I talked too quickly and too quietly. Also, I probably said "um..." too many times. But it's hard to explain Carbon Sequestration well in only 8 minutes.

In other communications, I've been thinking lately about how much things are said without the use of words. Why and how we communicate without speaking is fascinating to me. It's amazing how much is said in facial expressions and body language, and in the signals we give off that somehow are almost universally understood. It's the almost part that gets tricky, though. Because what if signals are read incorrectly, or not read at all? Considering the great difficulty that comes in these situations, it's a shock that we bother to use signals at all. Why don't we just say what's on our minds? Probably because, like it or not, sometimes honest communication is frowned upon in our society. Social conventions say that it's somehow better to use vague, confusing signs and expressions than to state outright what we are thinking or feeling. So much for valuing honesty... or maybe not. Maybe we rely on physical communication so much because of how easy it can be to lie with your lips. Expressions are often more reliable than words. As I exhibited earlier today, for instance, it's easy to deny something out loud, but much harder to keep your face from going bright red as the corners of your lips sneak upward into a smile. And so, deny as I might, those silly people could not be kept from the truth.

In spite of the confusion that comes from relying so heavily on signals, it sometimes works out that people read the right signs in the right way, and act on them to make life quite more than bearable!