The words we use connect us.
Rather than understand speech as a purely personal skill, it may be worth considering our words as interpersonal tools. In this way the threads of ideas that connect us can become a web of shared experience, woven from conversation. Shared stories therefore become the thoughts that connect us. They thread through our relationships, uniting the social fabric of our lives.
Within groups, shared terms and phrases establish
common ground. Between groups, these domains may create a patchwork of fields
on the shared landscape. Smaller territories that anchor my existence to people
and place helps me think more clearly about my relationship with other groups.
From this perspective, shared terminology can be seen as part of the world in
which I feel comfortable. It is familiar. I feel at home. If my identity belongs
with a part of the landscape, then crossing boundaries becomes an act or
movement.
The way language connects us seems important here,
as different types of dialogue can be used in different ways. We could start
with the distinction between private and public. Things we say when we trust
another may seem inappropriate in public debate. We may not share with others those
ideas with which we privately struggle. Words are tools with multiple meanings.
Words are neither good nor bad. Like hammers, knives or spoons, they are
neutral: rather, it is their use that gives them power. I’ve listened to
awkward articulations of profound respect, using words that seemed to jar yet
said ‘I love you’ in the way that The
Princess Bride’s character, Westley, says, “As you wish”. Equally, I’ve
been insulted in the most politically correct terms and denigrated without any
resort to obscenity.
Conversations are not simply sequences of words. Through
body language, intonation and demonstration of feeling, we articulate intent
and belief in different ways according to context and relationships. I care
more about what people are trying to tell me than how they say it. When topics
are challenging, it’s hard enough to explain our feelings, without also feeling
compelled to use the correct term or grammar.
Time-served trust and understanding are reflected
in the ease at which short phrases and small gesture are understood by those who
have shared our journey. With such closeness, the implicit need not be made
explicit.
We have
already seen that as an interaction, words weave a web, a fabric that connects
people. And people make shared “personal languages creative, fluid, dynamic,
energetic, changing, fluctuating and varied in terms of functions, places,
contexts, personality, age, gender, groups, cultures, history and individuality”[i].
But what happens on the boundaries? Are we
explorers or visitors? Do we impose our ideas? Do our words impact on others? Or
can we sit expectantly, sensitively joining in at another’s pace? Are we willing
to hear those who believe we have earned the right to hear their story? We need
to be a respectful visitor,
demonstrating courtesy and empathy until we can share enough trust to walk the
path together and call the journey our own.
Service-led provision and inevitable inequality
… it is in those more equitable affluent countries where
people live the longest, where social conditions are most favourable, that
people are most likely to admit to not feeling so great all the time, because
they can afford to admit to it.[ii]
Society’s widespread consumerism influences what
we value in our lives. In acknowledging its impact we can reclaim some control
by declining direction by institutional procedures. For example, I understand
widespread materialism: I therefore try to limit my acquisition of shoes,
articulating my belief that excessive materialism is a problem. More specifically within services, the fixation
on the bottom line can prevent us from appreciating the value of human
experience. Making decisions based on cost-cutting in people’s lives may
prevent us from acknowledging the part of human experience that is fundamentally
more important: control[iii].
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