1.  AUDITORY INSTANCE – SPEECH

We begin with the instance of speech to communicate with others in our surroundings. Speech served very basic essential requirements but was limited by distance and time.  Sound falls off with distance and no traces remained in time except for occasional short lived echoes.  It was much later that technology evolved beginning with the telephone, recording and playback devices, and eventually evolved into advanced technologies of radio, television, internet, and so forth.

2. VISUAL INSTANCE – ALPHABETS AND PICTOGRAPHS

The next instance was drawings or pictographs  followed by  the evolution of alphabets. The pictographs began as an attempt to draw a characterization of an object but led to insurmountable obstacles.  The alphabets on the other hand were built on a phonetic connection to components of the speech elements.  But most notably the visual instance of language transformed communications to being boundless in in space and uni-directional in time.  So an original manuscript could now be copied and the various copies could by transported anywhere and people could leave a valuable legacy for their decedents  thousands of  years later unlike speech lost in glimmer of a second and never heard beyond the close proximity of its fleeting moment of existence.

3. METAPHORS AND CULTURAL INSTANCES – THE UNSPOKEN WORD

As speech evolved people began to create terms and expressions that were far more than simple words.  These expression contained a short hand message of referencing a complete concepts, references, and so forth.  When I say 9/11 or 9-1-1 although they share the same numeric digits the messages are very clear and distinct.

4.  NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS – BODY LANGUAGE

There are times that a gesture, a facial expression, a hand motion speak volumes.  In Hebrew if a person hold his first two fingers to the thumb pointing in the air every Israeli will understand that the person just motioned “WAIT A SEOND” and nothing more need be said.

5.  TRANSIENT LANGUAGE – HOW LANGUAGE CHANGES OVER TIME AND GEOGRAPHY

The changes in language over time is seen in how the grandparents spoke followed by the parents.  And then your generation followed by your children and so forth.  But language also changes in language words, expressions, and pronunciations from one region to another with each of the local dialects and changes from one country to another.  Refer to the Spanish of Columbia as compared to Mexico and also remember that it began in Spain with a clear distinction in the various dialects of the language.

In this case speakers of a language may have grown up with important stories, writings, or expressions which are build on  knowledge in a verbal form of short hand.  For example if I were to see a man or woman in the most beautiful brand new suit or dress I might say תבלה ותתחדש (T’valeh VeTitchadesh) meaning “You should wear this garment out and replace it with a new one“.  So at first one might think that I am enormously rude insulting the person’s brand new beautiful garment.  But the real implicit  meaning of the expression  is “You shall be blessed with a long life as you outlive this brand new garment which is at its maximum life span and replace it“.  Now understanding the true meaning of the expression you realize that I was not rude and was offering a blessing of a long life to the person.

6.  UNIQUE PERSONAL USAGE AND ENHANCEMENTS

The usage of language achieves the highest levels with the usage of language by very gifted people in their crafting of expressions, use of humor, and making language an art form.  Mark Twain wrote “It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and seem a fool rather than opening it and removing all doubt.”  Groucho Marx said “I would never join a club that would have me as a member”.  Poetry is another example of linguistic art form.  

7.  MESSAGE AND INFORMATION MODULATION

There are times where the message is not only the linguistic content but the vehicle of communications.  The includes the tone, demeanor, volume, speed, intonation, and so forth.  There is also verbal shorthand using professional terms, acronyms, and overloaded words.  For example HELP, FIRE, ACTIVE SHOOTER, and 9-1-1 are overloaded terms which demand special attention and convey importance and demand attention.  There are other shorthand vocabularies such as professional terms, acronyms, well defined terms in specific societies and cultures, or instantiated by popular social and other media, sports, and politics into the linguistic keyword database.  Some of these might be Red and Blue [states], bulls and bears, “main street”, Hollywood, Walls Street, and Ground Zero referring to the World Trade Center and words conveying a whole massive body of information.

8.  AUDIENCE TARGETING AND TAILORING

Speech may be a bi-direction exchange with one or more people or a uni-directional speech to a  small or large audience.  In any case a good speaker will know his or her audience and tailor the speech to the educational, intellectual, and cultural characteristics of the specific audience.  This may also include elements of inflection, choice of simple or complex language, cultural specific terms and so forth.

9.  DUBIOUS SPEECH METHODS

There are politically loaded terms which use a premise to advance a cause where the premise may not be factually accurate and this becomes a subliminal method to imbed a political position in the mind of the audience  or opposition and “neutral” involved parties.  For example terrorist groups will use the term “occupation” to imply that they were the actual indigenous inhabitants of a country where this is factually wrong.  But they attempt to gain implicit unearned credibility but repeating the term massively with uninformed people and politicians echoing the term and unwittingly embracing the false narrative.  

10.  MESSAGE MODULATION IN THE WRITTEN MEDIA

The written media differs from speech in that it is offline and there is not active real-time connection between the producer and consumer of the message.  The speech methodology must be adapted to the written media.  So one might use the type of font, size, rendition (Bold, italics, underscore), size, vertical and horizontal spacing, positioning, graphics, etc. to fill in all of gaps of the literal content.

11.  THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT AND INTELLECTUAL DIRECTION

The mind is an amazing entity and often underestimated or overestimated.  There are people I know who are off the wall brilliant and others who have never ever used their brains and they still remain unopened in the original shrink wrap.  As the mind begins the dynamic process of ingesting communication data it begins the decoding and analysis processes and often projects the theme and concepts that are evolving.  A crafty information producer can use this either properly or improperly.  Nipsy Russel wrote:

Spring has sprung

Fall has fell

Summer has come

And it is hotter than usual.

Finally in linguistics work  there is a term called “poisoning”.  This is when a linguist is listening to a difficult audio possibly in a noisy context and cannot make out a word of a speaker.  He then asks a co-worker to listen to the audio and try to make it out.  If he says the word is right after ….  he has poisoned the mind of the co-worker and if he misheard the clue work he could taint the subsequent perception of the target word.  Therefore one should say the audio begins at 2:23 and tell me what you hear without injecting any extraneous information that can color the co-workers thinking and perception.

CONCLUSION

Advanced thought and language are two of the most important aspects of mankind elevating them to new heights and then there are those who fail the challenge and embarrass humanity before the more humble creatures. The evolution of language in all its forms is fascinating.  But I strongly encourage you to to continue to the introduction to Hebrew – The Holy Language- and see the most amazing language of all and its unique characteristics.