What Ludwig Wittgenstein can tell us about modern-day communication
Pictures, pictures, and pictures. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but who’s to say that those thousand words are common for everyone? We live in an era where communication is faster than ever. We can immediately disseminate information by a few clicks. We have WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. We have emojis, texts, and video-calling.
The problem with the rapid transmission of information, thoughts, and emotions is the speed at which interaction occurs. Speed is the keyword. Our global economy is so fast-paced that we fail to understand one and other; truly. Hashtag, tweet, retweet, text, call, message, Skype.
And isn’t the current state of communication today rather paradoxical in nature? If we’re able to communicate at such high speeds and through a variety of mediums, shouldn’t we all understand each other and comprehend the depth of conversation?
But we don’t. Emotional intelligence, I would say, is it an all-time low. Although raw intelligence and dexterity have been the social norms and expectations for a long time, the disparity between knowledge and emotion is wider than ever. I call for a more humane understanding of society and a deeper analysis of the social constructs that are created to posit a goal for us in our milieus.
But first, let us take a look at the philosophies of language and conversation that have inspired this article.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was an enigma. Born into the creme de la creme of Viennese society, Wittgenstein had money. Lots of it. When his father died, he inherited his fortune and proceeded to give donations to artists and gave away the entirety of his fortune to his siblings. Three of his brothers committed suicide which inevitably left an indelible mark on him. He worked in a variety of areas, from the battlefields of World War I to hospitals.
Then he arrived at the hallowed halls of Cambridge. Here, he was at the height of his intellectual productivity. He published papers and birthed theories so interesting, raw, and divine. At Cambridge, he also published his magnum opus, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Although Wittgenstein has influenced thought across the whole spectrum of philosophy, we shall examine his theories on the philosophy of language and logic.
The picture theory of meaning. You may have been expecting the metaphysical positivist theory of lexical constructs, but no, it’s that simple. I started this article with ‘pictures, pictures, and pictures’. That forms the essence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy on language.
He states that the reason relationships fail and how our networks of communication may sometimes break down is due to the lack of depth in language; essentially it’s just a superficial way to represent facts. The use of language may paint different pictures for different people and lead to a wide range of misinterpretations relational to the root of that strand of communication. Additionally, language can only be meaningful if it illustrates possible arrangements of a set of objects.
A pretty common example of language being skewed is the game telephone (or Chinese whispers). Telephone is a popular children’s game wherein a group of people line up and the first person whispers a message into the ear of the second person; so on, so forth. Yes, giggles and laughter are obvious catalysts of catastrophic communication, but think about how people approach the game. There is a very specific mindset in this situation. People purposely want to ruin the nature of the message. I mean, obviously. That’s the point of the game.
But from this example, we can further understand and analyze the structure of conversation. We can say that when a person interacts with another person they may have formed a priori assumptions about the nature of whatever information they are about to receive. As stated before, Wittgenstein states that language is contextual and delineates possible arrangements of objects.
The reason language can be misinterpreted is because of context. If language is relational, how do we know for sure how useful it has been in its task. Especially in this hyper-connected world, we may not, for sure, know the nature of a person’s surroundings is, their current emotional state, etc.
Because we are all unique agents, language can be rendered useless in certain spheres of communication. Even though it is the most important tool in our daily interactions, it is prone to errors. Each person has a different lens through which they view the world — so even if language is only a representation of facts as Wittgenstein said, those facts may not be duly registered and stored in memory (which is the ideal function of language).
Now, we’ll link this back to the concept of communication nowadays. As I stated earlier, communication is not appreciated as much as before. There is an inverse relationship between the modalities of communication and the actual quality of interaction. As the WhatsApps of the world increase, our face-to-face conversations decrease. Several studies have shown this relationship.
Language has become what Wittgenstein promulgated it to be. A cold, stoic function that enables us to get tasks done and ‘represent facts’. Language is, and always should be, relational. But in order to achieve that, we must seek to build a stronger rapport with the people surrounding us and consistently integrate the emotional and raw element of interaction into our conversation.
The goal of this article is to encourage everyone to put their phones down, take a seat, and engage in meaningful and emotive discussion. Let’s seek to paint a more comprehensive picture for each other, step by step.
