I am subscribed to TED and occasionally watch/listen to talks by the big and famous. Once a year about 1000 people from around the world gather at TED conferences to exchange ideas. Today I watched Steven Pinkerv. He is a professorDepartment of Psychology at Harvard University, and used to teach in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition and this particular talk was about Steve's book from 2005 called "The Stuff of Thought".
He explains the nuances of communicating thoughts in a particular way and the subconscious characteristics that cause humans to choose one form of expression over the other.
I often wonder about communication problems between individuals. Some people seem to read between the lines quite OK, some don't get it, some get it wrong!! I just reached the conclusion that communicating a thought ought to depend on the recipient. You change the way you say comething based on who you are talking to. In fact this is one of our faourite open discussions in my house. Dh feels 2+2 is 4 no matter who you are communicating to. I agree and disagree in that the way you communicate 2+2 is 4 makes all the difference.
Part of my job is to be able to 'understand' what one party intends to do and communicate that intent to the other party ( without loss in translation, of course!) . On the face of it, it is really no big deal, but when I started researching it,I discovered among other things, Steven Pinker and the whole science behind language, articulation, perception, communication and conceptualization. Really 'Thought'-provoking stuff :)
He explains the nuances of communicating thoughts in a particular way and the subconscious characteristics that cause humans to choose one form of expression over the other.
I often wonder about communication problems between individuals. Some people seem to read between the lines quite OK, some don't get it, some get it wrong!! I just reached the conclusion that communicating a thought ought to depend on the recipient. You change the way you say comething based on who you are talking to. In fact this is one of our faourite open discussions in my house. Dh feels 2+2 is 4 no matter who you are communicating to. I agree and disagree in that the way you communicate 2+2 is 4 makes all the difference.
Part of my job is to be able to 'understand' what one party intends to do and communicate that intent to the other party ( without loss in translation, of course!) . On the face of it, it is really no big deal, but when I started researching it,I discovered among other things, Steven Pinker and the whole science behind language, articulation, perception, communication and conceptualization. Really 'Thought'-provoking stuff :)
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