Why is communication important? You asked Google – here’s the answer
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Version 0 of 1. A fellow broadcaster recently told me of interviewing a twentysomething American woman who’d lost virtually all her words after collapsing after an aneurism. She spoke of an inner peace when she awoke as she no longer had an internal monologue. Can you imagine? But one of the hardest things for her to master when relearning language and how to express herself verbally was subtext. Something none of us ever think about – what people really mean when they are communicating. Through years of fine-tuning since childhood, we’ve tried to learn, as best we can, the social cues that allow us to derive what people actually mean by what they say or often, by what they don’t. If you aren’t face to face with your target, nothing gets a message across quicker than two minutes on the blower Communication is tough. There’s no doubt about it. That’s why people struggle with it and shouldn’t feel bad for doing so. I am in the professional business of it, hosting a three-hour live daily radio programme filled with what I call constructed conversation. Not all of it is like that of course. Breaking news happens and interviews pop up while I am on air that you simply can’t plan for. But when I have a politician booked, or my producers set up a debate about a complicated topic, I prep. Each twist and turn. Especially those big interviews. I game what the person will say if I ask X, to plot my next question. This is because speech journalism or talk radio, whichever you prefer, should be a conversation on steroids. The very best chatter we can muster for our listeners; the most memorable parts of a dinner party without any of the boring filler. That’s the ultimate aim. But don’t forget, unlike normal pedestrian communication – there’s an invisible team of people behind the scenes producing and conducting what goes out and when. There are timings to be hit, news junctions to navigate and answers my listeners expect me to get. I bring up what I do in reference to this question as another way of showing just how complex communication can be and how much thought goes into it by those working in it. This is important to raise because I suspect those asking “why is communication important?” are having a moment of low confidence about the whole messy thing of telling people how they feel. And that’s OK. Because communication comes in many forms and especially in the digital era, nuances are easily lost. I’m a huge fan of telephone calls. Call me retro, at 32 years of age, but if you aren’t face to face with your target, nothing gets a message across quicker than two minutes on the blower. However, nowadays too many people prefer to bury their message within countless indirect emails and text messages – rather than pick up and dial. Or even receive calls. I am not saying text messages or emails can’t be ruthlessly efficient or blunt – believe me, I’ve been on the receiving end of my fair share rude of missives – but I do worry that technological alternatives to communication in the real world (within which I include the phone) are eroding the skills needed for effective information exchange. Younger people can often seem shyer on the phone or in person when lifting their eyes to meet yours and request what they really want. I’m not talking about young children. My four-year-old niece knows no such bounds as she gleefully bounces up to me with all manner of charming imperatives. But from that moment where one becomes painfully aware of oneself, direct and meaningful communication can seem too much like hard work, especially when an emoji can be deployed instead. Tommy Edison, having been blind from birth, battles every day to ensure he is understood and crucially, that he understands the world around him. Better known online as the Blind Film Critic, he recently came on my programme and told me that he prefers accessing films without audio description. The describer does too much heavy lifting, and can take away from what the film is trying to achieve. As he beautifully put it, in a perfect piece of communication: “Nobody audio-describes my life.” Quite. When he hears someone sigh in the real world, he knows what it means. And that’s how he wants the films to be for those who are blind or visually impaired. Communication at its best can take you to new places – of understanding, feeling and emotion. But it is an art. And it doesn’t come naturally all the time to most people. Why else would so many being Googling the hell out of it? It requires concerted effort. Paintings and letters telling of the bohemian Bloomsbury Group’s existence give off an air of social fluidity and ease. Clever members of this set, like writers Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey just floated into each other’s lives and made fine conversation. But as a new exhibition of Vanessa Bell’s art shows (Woolf’s hugely talented and much-overlooked sister), there was a subtle social convenor to all this intellectual exchange. It was she. Silently and seamlessly she consciously made their now famous home, Charleston, the East Sussex postwar base for this group of thinkers, open for the business of communication. No mean feat. I suspect she, like most social orchestrators, found it tiring and thankless at times. But when her social tweaking and homemaking paid off? Wonderful dividends enjoyed by all – the fruits of which still influence us in print and on canvas today. Most people don’t have such a convenor and have to muddle on regardless. So know this: you are not alone in wondering how to communicate your internal monologue. But communicate it somehow you must. It’s the only way to live and live fully. |