Recently, I have become increasingly aware of the difference between talking and communicating.
I am not sure what spurred this realization, but I have been paying much more attention to when people (myself included) are talking and when they are communicating.
There are two major revelations that have come from my recent “epiphany.” One: I strive to affect and be affected in conversation, and two: I now filter news media according to whether they are talking to me or communicating with me.
So what is talking and what is communicating? I like to think of talking as people saying statements to each other and the responses are not related to the previous statement.
Say we are friends and I run into you outside Morris Library.
If we are talking to each other, and assuming we have already introduced ourselves, our conversation might go like this: “So, I bought a new shirt today.” “Cool, I got a new pair of pants at the mall yesterday.” “Yeah, they were on sale so I was pretty sure I needed to have them.” “There was a sale at Macy’s the other day.” And the conversation would continue on like this.
Now, there is nothing wrong with this and I talk like this all the time. But what I am trying to convey is that there was no singular idea being expressed.
We were talking within a subject — shopping — but we were not discussing a central point related to that subject.
What if we were communicating with each other? Then our conversation would go something like this: “So, I bought a new shirt today.” “Cool, do you like it?” “Of course! That’s why I bought it, but it was also on sale.” “Hmm, when things are on sale, I feel like I like those things a lot more than if they weren’t on sale.”
We are still talking within the subject of shopping, but we are communicating about the subject of sales.
You cannot affect someone by talking to him or her. There is no idea being expressed, no opinion to be gained, no basis by which to change or reaffirm your beliefs.
To affect someone you don’t have to change his or her mind. If I say something to you and you disagree, then I have affected you in some way, or else you wouldn’t have disagreed with me in the first place.
If I said something to you and it didn’t affect you and you carried on with a statement unrelated to what I just said, then we would be back to talking again.
This is important to me because I quest to gain more knowledge. Any small amount of information I gain is important. If I am not going to learn anything, then what is the point in speaking with you at all?
Talking and communicating has quite a bit to do with the news media. Take Keith Olbermann for example: I try and watch his show a few nights a week. However, I pretty much agree with everything he says.
I do not disagree with him, nor does he make me reaffirm my beliefs by testing them in some way. Keith Olbermann does not communicate to me. Bill O’Reilly does communicate to me. This is because he makes me defend, and occasionally question, my beliefs.
Just because I frequently disagree with him doesn’t mean he exchanges ideas that affected me.
The next time you are watching a talk show, perhaps you should question if they are communicating with you, or talking to you.
And if it’s the latter, what good does listening to them even do?
Bucklin is a senior studying political science.
