Misunderstandings

 That's the goal of using language — to communicate ideas and desires in the clearest way possible.

Ross and Kathryn Petras, That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

That seems obvious, doesn't it? When we speak or when we write, we want to be understood. Yet it is amazing how often we misunderstand others and others misunderstand us. We seem to spend a good part of our lives clearing up misunderstandings or living with the consequences of those misunderstandings. How many people haven't spoken to each other for years because once one misunderstood another?

The presidential debate last week provided a number of examples of misunderstandings, not all of which were deliberate. When President Trump spoke of coyotes bringing children across the border from Mexico, he was using a fairly common slang term for human smugglers, yet many people, including some in the media, pictured animals dragging children across the border.

Was Joe Biden, the former vice president, just using imprecise language when he spoke on other occasions of ending fracking or on Thursday night of phasing out the oil industry? In both cases there have been attempts to clarify what he actually meant.

There are many reasons why language can be misunderstood. Here are just a few:

1. We tend to hear (or read) what we want to hear (or read). This is especially true in the political arena where everyone wants to interpret the other side's language in the most negative way possible, yet all of us are guilty of this from time to time.

2. Instead of simple, easily understood words, some of us tend to favor more pretentious ones, especially in our writing. Not everyone understands pretentious words.

3. One frequent consequence of the above is that we choose words that, as Ross and Kathryn Petras say in their book, don't mean what we think they mean. Thus we might say assure when we mean ensure or ensure when we mean insure or insure when we mean assure.

4. We are ambiguous when we should be specific. If on Wednesday you tell a friend, "I'll see you next Friday," should that friend expect you in two days or on Friday of next week? Just because something is clear to you, doesn't mean it is equally clear to the other person. I once showed up at a restaurant a week early for dinner with my sisters because of this very kind of misunderstanding.

5. Sometimes we simply mishear or misread what someone says. Even plain talk can be misunderstood by someone. Sometimes we don't give the spoken or written word our full attention.

6. Some comments made in jest are taken seriously, while other comments made in earnest can be taken as jokes.

7. Some statements are deliberately ambiguous. But this is a topic for another day.