Do You Make These Mistakes in Semantics?

Semantics, in case you haven't heard, is the study of meaning.

Take an ordinary word like "button", say, and a semanticist would ask what sense of that word you are using, for most words have long histories.

He or she would also say that most of us are blithely unaware that when we speak or write using the most ordinary words in a common language, communication does not occur. The listener or reader of your ordinary words may perceive a different sense than you intended.

The mistake we make is assuming that we have, indeed communicated. That's why we depend on body language. That's why hasty email exchanges are fraught with danger.

And text messages! I bet there are some double meanings there.

What do you do if you get an electronic message that hurts or infuriates you?

I hope you don't reply. EFT it, instead.

I wish I had known EFT when I opened an email from my brother a couple of years ago after he had finished reading one of my novels.

The novel is set in a California beach city. My protagonist is a divorced man in conflict with his powerful father. The son has an affair with his married neighbor. Deliberately, I gave my hero human flaws.

My brother's email said nothing about the novel. He lives in Massachusetts. His message condemned the morals of people in California. I took his criticism as an assumption that since I wrote that novel I had those California morals.

I felt deeply hurt. He's an older brother. I wanted his approval, not condemnation. I wrote a defensive email in return saying that people in Massachusetts behaved the same way as everyone in my novel, that place has nothing to do with character, etc.

We had a few more exchanges before we understood each other and became friends again. He hadn't been condemning me in his first message as it turned out. Actually, he liked the novel and my protagonist. He was, I suspect, simply echoing his wife at the moment of that first email.

Had I known EFT I would have removed the hurt in a minute and understood the mistake we make in semantics.

To learn EFT, order "Your Right to Happiness" on this page of news about it.




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