January 15, 2025 • 27 mins
How do we communicate in a time when even people speaking the same language can’t seem to understand one another? In today’s episode we take a big picture view of language and communication: mining everything from the origins of language to how we adapt our language to navigate each facet of our lives, to how language is used for persuasion in marketing, politics and the workplace.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hello, I'm your host David Newsonand welcome to Coated in Gold.
Inspired by Kintsugi, the Japaneseart of repairing broken pottery with Gold.
This podcast explores the fractured, yetbeautiful
pieces of our modern lives.
Drawing on my diverse careerand deep curiosity about business
and the philosophy of modern living,I dive in to compelling stories
(00:25):
and speak with high performing,multidimensional individuals
to uncover momentsof insight and learning.
So let's get started
as we are recording this episode.
There are so many unknownsabout the future of this country.
(00:46):
One thing that is absolutely clearis that it is increasingly difficult
to speak with people that you disagreewith.
In today's episode,we will be discussing language,
communication and the difficulttask of trying to understand one another.
It's my hope to get through this episodewithout directly
talkingabout the current political climate.
(01:09):
I'm recording now in mid-November 2024,
and this episode is set to releasearound the New Year.
I know it's the elephant in the room,
but my interest in talking about languagecompletely pre-dates this election cycle,
and it will continue to bean important topic for the years to come.
So yeah,
(01:29):
it's harder and
harder to talk to people you disagree withor even be certain
that when you are talking with someonethat your words carry the same meaning.
This this even happensin my own relationship.
My husband is Chinese and speaks Englishas a second language.
When you live together for so long,you start to have shortcuts with language.
But every once in a whileI'll be moving fast
(01:51):
and drop words and forget to add contextto what I'm saying.
And he'll have to, like, stop me.
Like, time out.
David, What are you even talking about?
Suddenly, all my shortcutstake us on a detour, as I remember that
we have to bridge the gapsbetween languages in moments like this.
I think it's important to take a step backand remember
(02:12):
what language really isand what purpose it serves in our lives.
Language permits human beings to shareand process information
about the world around us, what we see,what we hear, what we feel.
It's so much more than just the abilityto speak.
As we communicate with signs and otherphysical ways of communicating, meaning,
(02:33):
it's about how to let someone elseknow what you're thinking, feeling
and conveying what is importantfor us to share in that moment.
Recently, I've been thinking a lot
about the evolution of languages,and I know it might sound a little random,
but like how live Latin became Frenchand Italian and Spanish and Portuguese,
and then how each of those languagessplintered off into different dialects.
(02:57):
And yet I know another Mormon story,but when I was a mormon missionary,
I was assigned to go to Brazil.
So I started learning Portuguese.
I really studiedtrying to master the language
because I was supposed to be communing,waiting to them what I thought
was the most important messageI could at the time.
And then I got to Braziland they were speaking in regional
(03:19):
Sao Takis, the Brazilian wordmeaning accents or dialects.
Later, when I was in Portugal,I noticed that people who were speaking
Portuguese with Brazilian accents weren't
exactly being treated as equals.
They were somehow different.
When I was onmy mission, I was placed on the outskirts
(03:41):
of Fortaleza,a city on the north coast of Brazil.
And as I traveled south to Brasilia,
Rio, Sao Paulo, I kept hearing the accentsshift and I had to keep adapting
my beginner understanding of Portugueseas words started to shift, meaning
It's fascinating to me
(04:02):
to think abouthow for most of human history,
language was mostly shaped by geography.
People in one pocketcommunicating with their community
and then slowly evolving into their ownlanguage, shifted and shaped it
by their environment, neighboring groups,
(04:22):
and even with earlier colonization.
Language was morphed by the peoplespeaking it.
But with the rise of mass communication,the telegraph to the telephone
and now the Internet.
Our globalized world has kind of conformedaround teaching English
as the primary common languagefor business and media.
(04:44):
Currently,
55% of all text online is in English.
This language conformity onlineis also changing slang in youth culture.
While some terms used to betotally specific to certain communities,
think hella from Northern California,they have spread everywhere to seem
to be evolving so much more rapidlythan generations past.
(05:07):
It can be incredibly hard for parents.
Teachers even like to catch up towhat their kids are saying to one another.
We've also seen
the Internet dispel regional communicationin our political landscape.
With media shaping so much of the worldyou interact with now,
blue dots and red dotsall over the country communicate much more
(05:29):
like other blue and red communitiesrather than with neighbors nearby.
The languages we speakand the ways we communicate
can alter our perceptions of the world.
I was blown away by this story
from Radiolab about the color blue.
Did you know that the ancient Greeks
(05:51):
didn't have a word for the color blue?
In fact, most languages, the word for blue
didn't develop for thousands of years.
And it turns out that our words for colorsdidn't typically develop
until we could reasonably producethe color for dyes or paints.
(06:12):
Does that mean they couldn'tsee blue in their worlds
until they could produce dyesor simply have a word for it?
Well,
the answer is like kind of.
What researchers foundwas that having a term or a category
opened up our minds to noticeblue in the world in a different way.
(06:33):
We have this effect all of the time.
You buy a new carand suddenly you see your car everywhere.
You are primed to understand the worldin a new way.
For example,I recently read a book called Cultish
because I am fascinatedby how language is used by groups.
(06:53):
And when I started reading abouthow cultish language was used
not only by niche religious groupsor scammy
multilevel marketing schemes,but also in the corporate world.
I startedseeing this kind of messaging everywhere.
I remembered catch phrasesused all the time at previous shops.
(07:15):
You start to hear and notice new thingsabout what you hear all the time
and it almost retune your ear.
While the cultish languagetechniques can be used for manipulation
and more destructive intentions,there is also something beautiful
about how languagecan expand our perception.
(07:36):
Thinking about talk therapy.
There is a reason it can be so effective,right?
It's giving words to feelings
or acknowledging situationsto process them in the present moment.
What are we drawing attention to?
A past narrative or projection
once given a name, can losethe hold it's had over you.
(07:57):
My son is currently learning how to putwords to ideas in a more lighthearted way.
He's six years old and in the processof learning how to read.
His school has studentsdo what they call a book talk.
This is a much nicerand more kid friendly way
of describing our generation'sdreaded book reports.
(08:17):
During his book talk, he presentedhis favorite book to the class.
I have to say, he did a great job.
He picked a book calledWhat Will Build by Oliver Jeffers.
He had to learn what his genre wasand tell his class, okay,
this is a children's book.
It's about a father and a daughterwho use magical tools to build a house
(08:39):
and invite in magical creaturesand create fantastical inventions
while creating memories together.
It's a really beautiful book.
So my son describes the whole thing,and I started to reflect
on how your perception of what you consume
changes once you have to stand upand present something.
It forces you to understand your materialon a completely different level.
(09:02):
It changes how you internalizethe meaning of what you read.
I still use these skills when I presentat marketing conferences.
Presentations are never, ever easy,but it's become so much easier
since my twenties because I have a muchdeeper understanding of my craft
and I can be a little less scriptedand a little more confident.
(09:23):
That does not mean I don't still prepare.
I am still bringing a new contextto what I've been learning.
I'm also still very much learningand shifting my ways of communication.
Again, brought on by.
Yeah, raising my son.
I love reading Dr. Seuss with him.
And I know, I know. I can hear it now.
He's a complicated guywith some really bad racist ideas.
(09:45):
Like I do not impartthose aspects to my son
and he will never read those booksthat contain harmful ideas.
But there is no one better at teachingkids how to be flexible with language.
All his silly rhymes and made up words
helped to flex my son's creativitywith language.
By the way,
if you know of anyone else doing similarwork, I would love recommendations.
(10:10):
I want my son to continue
seeing language as fun and playful
as he enters into community at school.
We have already begun to be confrontedwith how language
can be used as a tool for harm.
This next story,I promise, doesn't have a dark turn.
Promise? Promise.
(10:31):
But it's an exampleof the changing standards
for how we talk about one another.
I was at a fundraising eventfor my son's school,
and a parent told metheir child had been called a toe head.
I was completely taken aback.
I had never heard the term beforeand I was like, horrified.
Why would someone call a childa name like that?
(10:54):
I thought surely it was an offensive term.
Which also I have to say to. Right.
Like, doesn't it feel like increasingly
we are filtering,filtering, filtering our language?
Not all of this is bad.
Some filters are goodbecause check this out.
I later learned that it was simply
(11:15):
an older term for someone who's blond.
But this also goes to my pointabout filters and feeling uncomfortable
in public discourseor having conversations with other people.
To my knowledge, there are no actuallymalicious connotations to the word,
but it was assigned to me.
(11:36):
Of how much our approachto talking about one
another has changed.
It feels weird and wrong to meto call someone
a term that's only about their appearance.
I mean, we don't really call peoplefor eyes anymore.
Dewey.
They are becoming relics of a bygone era.
(11:57):
Our communication has adapted awayfrom this, even being useful.
Speaking of adapting language,I could not get this far into a discussion
on language and communication withouttouching on the idea of code switching.
This is a termI learned somewhat recently, and even if
you aren't familiar with the phrase,we all have definitely done this.
(12:18):
So let's define what code switching is.
Code switching is the practice ofalternating between two or more languages
or varieties of language in conversationto match the situation, you're in.
This can be conscious or unconscious,but we definitely all do it.
Think about going into the office.
You're a little less casual
(12:40):
and more thoughtfulwhen speaking with colleagues.
You might even have a company culturethat uses buzzwords or phrases.
For example, Netflix CEO ReedHastings has publicized
the Netflix culture memo and phrasedocuments in his book, and unlike
these terms, can get picked upin other organizations
because CEOs are always watchingand adapting their language
(13:02):
to align with one another.
A particular phrase disagree
and commit was one that made its wayinto one of my former workplaces.
The idea is that you can debate an ideaor a strategy,
but once a decision is made,you have to work the direction.
Even if you still personally disagree.
You can go home and tell your partneror friends about how much you dislike it
(13:25):
or wish it was different.
But when you show up at work,the expectation
is that you will work with the system.
Another way we Code Switch is withfamily members from different generations.
With our older family members,we try to be
a little more formaland polite with younger family members.
You're trying to keep up with the slangand youth culture to connect with them.
(13:46):
And with kids,we are trying to stay aware of
how our words might be picked up by themand be careful
not to teach them languagethey aren't supposed to be using.
I still occasionally catchmy son saying things like that sucks.
These are strong words for a six year oldand not something that we teach him.
(14:08):
But he picks things up at schooland brings them home because he hasn't yet
learned to code switch from the rowdierschoolyard to the classroom to home.
Going back in time when I learnedabout the idea of code switching,
I first became familiar with the termwhen I was organizing for the TED Summer
event in 2019.
One of our speakers was an incrediblewriter, Julian Delgado Lopate.
(14:33):
I hope to have them on a futureepisode of this podcast,
so I'll just briefly discuss their work.
Julian is a queer artistwho moved to Florida from Colombia
and quickly noticedthat while they learned English and spoke
the common combinationdialect of Spanglish in their community,
they ran into issuesonce they were in the education system.
(14:55):
They spoke about the idea of perfectEnglish
that we are all expected to use,and that the further away
you were from using perfect English,the more marginalized you became.
Julian was teased by other kidsand even reprimanded by adults
for having an accent and not conforming
(15:15):
to English as it is supposed to be.
Julian also has the added
identityof being a queer, non-binary person.
Code switching is also common and LGBTQplus community,
and I want to be clear that codeswitching is a neutral thing.
It makes sensethat around other people of your community
(15:37):
using language and slang of that community
makes you feel a sense of belonging,
and it makes sensethat using that language everywhere
doesn't always fit,but it can be mentally very challenging
to feel likeyou are constantly having to shift
how you present yourself as you movethrough the world and the more often
(15:58):
you have to do it for your mentalor physical safety can take a toll.
The issue of pronouns is one that I won't
get into too deeplybecause it is something deserving.
A much longer discussionwith the people actually
impacted by the way we talk about this.
However, I do want to talk
about the flexibility of languageas it relates to gender.
(16:21):
It used to be once upon a timethat we would call everyone Mr.
or Mrs.
and these gendered honorificswere a standard part of language.
In some places they still are.
But for many of us it feels like an overlyformal way to address someone.
So it's become less common.
The pronouns, they them are
(16:42):
used all the time to refer to individualsand not groups,
and have nothing to dowith nonbinary individuals.
All the time you hear a Where's David?
Oh, they're right there.
Pronouns being a gendered thing also isn'tstandard across all languages. And
it blew my
mind when I actually learned thisbecause like I've mentioned it before,
(17:03):
my husband is Chinese,so I've been trying to learn the language.
The word for you is the word for heris to.
The word for him is to.
It's all the same.
It only changes when you startto talk about groups of people.
You figure out who to isreferring to based on context.
(17:26):
And everyone just sort of gets it.
This is an issue that peoplelike to overcomplicate, but in reality,
our language is always fluid and evolving
and it's better to become more flexiblein your understanding,
then browbeat othersinto your way of thinking.
Okay,
moving on from thisand back to learning new languages.
(17:47):
As I mentioned, my husband is Chineseand moved to the UK and then to the US
and boy, was it hard for him to adapt tothe English language not once, but twice.
English is a weird meltingpot of a language.
Borrowing from French and Germanand some words.
We've made our own and somewe just take whole cloth
(18:08):
because they don't translate easily.
One of my favorite examples ofthis is the term schadenfreude.
But anyway, even though my husband isa fluent speaker and much stronger
in Englishthan I'll ever be in another language,
he can still find momentswhere he needs me to back up
and contextualize wordsthat don't translate literally.
(18:30):
I've also had this issuecome up with my team that works in Poland.
We are using technical languageto describe the wealth management space
and making sure that the contextof what a word means to me versus
the literal meaning can be challengingin learning Chinese and Portuguese.
Over the course of my life.
(18:50):
I've heard that the way you really knowyou've really internalized
it is when you startto dream in that language.
Dreaming and
thinking in a language meansyou're finally on the road to fluency.
One of my strategistsin Poland has said as much.
He said, When I am thinking in Polishand just translating
(19:12):
the words, they don't come out the wayI want them to.
When I'm writing, it's not as smooth.
He had to practice thinking in Englishto communicate the way he wanted to.
Trying to be funny in another languageis also incredibly difficult.
In fact, don't try itunless you're sure jokes don't translate
(19:33):
well across languagesbecause so much of what's funny
is that play with language that requirescontext in less literal thinking.
This is why in movies and TVmade for international
audiences,there is so much physical humor.
It is the thing that is universally
funny across cultures and languages.
(19:55):
Of course, translating isn'tjust a practice used across languages.
As a marketer,my whole job is trying to figure out
how to tailor my messageto speak to the right audience.
In the financial servicesindustry, for example.
Jargon has run rampant and people,quite frankly, are getting tired of it.
Maybe they've been tired of itfor a long time.
(20:16):
Maybe it's advisers
trying to prove their qualificationsby using overcomplicated language.
Maybe it's a fear of the risksof not being precise.
Either way,the unintended consequence is that
clients can't easily understandthe jargon being used,
and it can be off putting for prospectswho might want to use your services.
(20:37):
I think people's tolerance of jargon
is also just waning after the pandemic,as we all found ourselves
hungryfor simple, straightforward information.
No one has time for uncertaintyor convoluted language.
I know I don't.
As a marketer,I am always trying to tailor a message
to the right audience,even for the same products or services.
(21:00):
The typical funnel looks like awarenessand people move from awareness
into considerationand then from consideration
into conversionand consideration to conversion, meaning
that they make a purchase, they b buythe product or thing or service.
Yet the conversion is like when someonethat's thinking about
buying something turns into actuallybeing an owner in marketing.
(21:21):
You're going to speak very differently.
You're going to speak differentlyto someone who's already retired
at 68 years old, wondering abouttheir financial strategy and retirement.
Right.
You might use certain wordswith that group.
And it's a function of,okay, where are they in the world?
Are they in the United States?
What part of the United Statesare they in?
(21:44):
Are they in Southern California
or are they in New Hampshire?
The type of language that you useis going to be different in both of those.
So geography matters.
The biggest shift that I ever saw was
when I went from Manhattan, New York City,to California.
Californianstalk different than New Yorkers or
(22:07):
Californians might say New Yorkerstalk different than Californians.
Even as I've moved to Oregon, the spread
of culture across the West Coastfeels more similar.
But still distinct.
And it's not just a vibein how people feel.
It's a vibe and how people talk.
We have to make sure that ourmessaging matches the target audience,
(22:32):
but it also has to continue to matchthe firm that we're writing it for.
You can't take the languagethat Wendy's uses
and apply it to McDonald's, for example,right?
It's not going to resonatewith a target audience.
It would actually be confusing.
So you need to make sure who's the targetaudience
(22:55):
that we want to attractor magnetize to us.
Then how do we move them from knowing whowe are to uncovering an unmet need?
What are they considering?
And the considerationprocess can be very messy.
So there's a report recently from Googlethat there's this messy
middle areawhere people come in and out of,
(23:17):
you know, this part of the funnelfrom awareness and consideration.
And there's cycling around doing researchand comparing similar items.
And this can go on for a long time.
As a marketer,we're trying all these different types
of strategies and techniquesand we're applying them across time.
We're also measuring and understandingwhat the signals that they're sending us
(23:39):
are so we know wherethey're at in the process.
We may even go out and
try to teach our languageto a set audience.
If you want to see a shift,
you could teach people the differencebetween you and a competitor
or their lives beforeand after your product.
You might be hearing this, but we reallythink this is what's on your mind, right?
(24:02):
So now you've potentially uncoveredsomething.
This podcast has been a wide rangingdiscussion.
Honestly, I think we will probably returnto this topic over
and over againto explore each point with more depth.
What I want to closetoday's conversation with
is an open question, but a pressing one.
(24:27):
How do we find common language?
Is there something about languagethat keeps you up at night?
I was on an airplane recentlyand I sat next to a gentleman.
He seemed like a nice guy.
But as I was talking to him,
he made a couple of commentswhere it was very clear to me
(24:47):
what end of the political spectrumhe was on.
It was so fascinating that I picked upimmediately on small, seemingly
innocuous signals that let me know exactlywhat this man's political beliefs were.
I'm sure he was ableto make some assumptions about mine.
I made a comment to him alongthe lines of yes,
(25:08):
it appears the system is inrough shape and it's broken.
Not knowinghim, I was honestly holding back.
I don't necessarily reveal exactly what'son top of my mind because I don't know.
We don't live in a country that feels assafe as it was just ten or 20 years ago.
But once I said that,he was completely unleashed.
(25:30):
And then, of course,I had to tell him, like, hey, you know,
I have a very different ideaor set of ideas about how to solve it.
It sounds like you have some ideasabout how you would solve it.
I think the way I think aboutthat is a little bit different.
But I think what we do agree onis that, like
(25:52):
we're not really headedin a great direction.
It seems, you know, quite broken.
But this is interesting.
At my son's school, you know,
one of the pillars of their educationis to educate for democracy.
And I think part of that educationfor democracy is knowing
and understanding different views.
(26:13):
It's almost like advanced diplomacy.
We need we need a crash course in advanceddiplomacy where you're listening
and you're listening more for commonality,then you're listening for difference.
And when you hear difference, you note it,
but you don't act on the feelingof what it brings up for you.
I talked to my husbandpretty often about this.
(26:36):
We think we want our kidsto be really resilient,
but it feels as though maybe this is,you know, like with all of this technology
and all of the things going on thatwe are less resilient, we're more fragile.
We respond
so strongly to someone else's view
(26:57):
as an attack on ourselves and who we are.
And almost like we take it as a mortalthreat against our very existence.
When someone expresses a view,
we're all, I think, quite guilty of this.
So then how do we begin?
You know,that's the million dollar question.
(27:18):
How do we begin to change
the way that we speak to one another,to slowly signal
that we are more alike than differentin so many ways?
I hope that you all will join mein trying to answer this question.
It will be critical in the coming yearsto try to find ways
to communicate with oneanother beyond literal language.
(27:42):
Thank you for listening to Coded in Gold.
Please share this podcastto continue to grow our amazing community
and follow us on social mediato keep the conversation going.
Take care.
Hello, I'm your host David Newsonand welcome to Coated in Gold.
Inspired by Kintsugi, the Japaneseart of repairing broken pottery with Gold.
This podcast explores the fractured, yetbeautiful
pieces of our modern lives.
Drawing on my diverse careerand deep curiosity about business
and the philosophy of modern living,I dive in to compelling stories
(00:25):
and speak with high performing,multidimensional individuals
to uncover momentsof insight and learning.
So let's get started
as we are recording this episode.
There are so many unknownsabout the future of this country.
(00:46):
One thing that is absolutely clearis that it is increasingly difficult
to speak with people that you disagreewith.
In today's episode,we will be discussing language,
communication and the difficulttask of trying to understand one another.
It's my hope to get through this episodewithout directly
talkingabout the current political climate.
(01:09):
I'm recording now in mid-November 2024,
and this episode is set to releasearound the New Year.
I know it's the elephant in the room,
but my interest in talking about languagecompletely pre-dates this election cycle,
and it will continue to bean important topic for the years to come.
So yeah,
(01:29):
it's harder and
harder to talk to people you disagree withor even be certain
that when you are talking with someonethat your words carry the same meaning.
This this even happensin my own relationship.
My husband is Chinese and speaks Englishas a second language.
When you live together for so long,you start to have shortcuts with language.
But every once in a whileI'll be moving fast
(01:51):
and drop words and forget to add contextto what I'm saying.
And he'll have to, like, stop me.
Like, time out.
David, What are you even talking about?
Suddenly, all my shortcutstake us on a detour, as I remember that
we have to bridge the gapsbetween languages in moments like this.
I think it's important to take a step backand remember
(02:12):
what language really isand what purpose it serves in our lives.
Language permits human beings to shareand process information
about the world around us, what we see,what we hear, what we feel.
It's so much more than just the abilityto speak.
As we communicate with signs and otherphysical ways of communicating, meaning,
(02:33):
it's about how to let someone elseknow what you're thinking, feeling
and conveying what is importantfor us to share in that moment.
Recently, I've been thinking a lot
about the evolution of languages,and I know it might sound a little random,
but like how live Latin became Frenchand Italian and Spanish and Portuguese,
and then how each of those languagessplintered off into different dialects.
(02:57):
And yet I know another Mormon story,but when I was a mormon missionary,
I was assigned to go to Brazil.
So I started learning Portuguese.
I really studiedtrying to master the language
because I was supposed to be communing,waiting to them what I thought
was the most important messageI could at the time.
And then I got to Braziland they were speaking in regional
(03:19):
Sao Takis, the Brazilian wordmeaning accents or dialects.
Later, when I was in Portugal,I noticed that people who were speaking
Portuguese with Brazilian accents weren't
exactly being treated as equals.
They were somehow different.
When I was onmy mission, I was placed on the outskirts
(03:41):
of Fortaleza,a city on the north coast of Brazil.
And as I traveled south to Brasilia,
Rio, Sao Paulo, I kept hearing the accentsshift and I had to keep adapting
my beginner understanding of Portugueseas words started to shift, meaning
It's fascinating to me
(04:02):
to think abouthow for most of human history,
language was mostly shaped by geography.
People in one pocketcommunicating with their community
and then slowly evolving into their ownlanguage, shifted and shaped it
by their environment, neighboring groups,
(04:22):
and even with earlier colonization.
Language was morphed by the peoplespeaking it.
But with the rise of mass communication,the telegraph to the telephone
and now the Internet.
Our globalized world has kind of conformedaround teaching English
as the primary common languagefor business and media.
(04:44):
Currently,
55% of all text online is in English.
This language conformity onlineis also changing slang in youth culture.
While some terms used to betotally specific to certain communities,
think hella from Northern California,they have spread everywhere to seem
to be evolving so much more rapidlythan generations past.
(05:07):
It can be incredibly hard for parents.
Teachers even like to catch up towhat their kids are saying to one another.
We've also seen
the Internet dispel regional communicationin our political landscape.
With media shaping so much of the worldyou interact with now,
blue dots and red dotsall over the country communicate much more
(05:29):
like other blue and red communitiesrather than with neighbors nearby.
The languages we speakand the ways we communicate
can alter our perceptions of the world.
I was blown away by this story
from Radiolab about the color blue.
Did you know that the ancient Greeks
(05:51):
didn't have a word for the color blue?
In fact, most languages, the word for blue
didn't develop for thousands of years.
And it turns out that our words for colorsdidn't typically develop
until we could reasonably producethe color for dyes or paints.
(06:12):
Does that mean they couldn'tsee blue in their worlds
until they could produce dyesor simply have a word for it?
Well,
the answer is like kind of.
What researchers foundwas that having a term or a category
opened up our minds to noticeblue in the world in a different way.
(06:33):
We have this effect all of the time.
You buy a new carand suddenly you see your car everywhere.
You are primed to understand the worldin a new way.
For example,I recently read a book called Cultish
because I am fascinatedby how language is used by groups.
(06:53):
And when I started reading abouthow cultish language was used
not only by niche religious groupsor scammy
multilevel marketing schemes,but also in the corporate world.
I startedseeing this kind of messaging everywhere.
I remembered catch phrasesused all the time at previous shops.
(07:15):
You start to hear and notice new thingsabout what you hear all the time
and it almost retune your ear.
While the cultish languagetechniques can be used for manipulation
and more destructive intentions,there is also something beautiful
about how languagecan expand our perception.
(07:36):
Thinking about talk therapy.
There is a reason it can be so effective,right?
It's giving words to feelings
or acknowledging situationsto process them in the present moment.
What are we drawing attention to?
A past narrative or projection
once given a name, can losethe hold it's had over you.
(07:57):
My son is currently learning how to putwords to ideas in a more lighthearted way.
He's six years old and in the processof learning how to read.
His school has studentsdo what they call a book talk.
This is a much nicerand more kid friendly way
of describing our generation'sdreaded book reports.
(08:17):
During his book talk, he presentedhis favorite book to the class.
I have to say, he did a great job.
He picked a book calledWhat Will Build by Oliver Jeffers.
He had to learn what his genre wasand tell his class, okay,
this is a children's book.
It's about a father and a daughterwho use magical tools to build a house
(08:39):
and invite in magical creaturesand create fantastical inventions
while creating memories together.
It's a really beautiful book.
So my son describes the whole thing,and I started to reflect
on how your perception of what you consume
changes once you have to stand upand present something.
It forces you to understand your materialon a completely different level.
(09:02):
It changes how you internalizethe meaning of what you read.
I still use these skills when I presentat marketing conferences.
Presentations are never, ever easy,but it's become so much easier
since my twenties because I have a muchdeeper understanding of my craft
and I can be a little less scriptedand a little more confident.
(09:23):
That does not mean I don't still prepare.
I am still bringing a new contextto what I've been learning.
I'm also still very much learningand shifting my ways of communication.
Again, brought on by.
Yeah, raising my son.
I love reading Dr. Seuss with him.
And I know, I know. I can hear it now.
He's a complicated guywith some really bad racist ideas.
(09:45):
Like I do not impartthose aspects to my son
and he will never read those booksthat contain harmful ideas.
But there is no one better at teachingkids how to be flexible with language.
All his silly rhymes and made up words
helped to flex my son's creativitywith language.
By the way,
if you know of anyone else doing similarwork, I would love recommendations.
(10:10):
I want my son to continue
seeing language as fun and playful
as he enters into community at school.
We have already begun to be confrontedwith how language
can be used as a tool for harm.
This next story,I promise, doesn't have a dark turn.
Promise? Promise.
(10:31):
But it's an exampleof the changing standards
for how we talk about one another.
I was at a fundraising eventfor my son's school,
and a parent told metheir child had been called a toe head.
I was completely taken aback.
I had never heard the term beforeand I was like, horrified.
Why would someone call a childa name like that?
(10:54):
I thought surely it was an offensive term.
Which also I have to say to. Right.
Like, doesn't it feel like increasingly
we are filtering,filtering, filtering our language?
Not all of this is bad.
Some filters are goodbecause check this out.
I later learned that it was simply
(11:15):
an older term for someone who's blond.
But this also goes to my pointabout filters and feeling uncomfortable
in public discourseor having conversations with other people.
To my knowledge, there are no actuallymalicious connotations to the word,
but it was assigned to me.
(11:36):
Of how much our approachto talking about one
another has changed.
It feels weird and wrong to meto call someone
a term that's only about their appearance.
I mean, we don't really call peoplefor eyes anymore.
Dewey.
They are becoming relics of a bygone era.
(11:57):
Our communication has adapted awayfrom this, even being useful.
Speaking of adapting language,I could not get this far into a discussion
on language and communication withouttouching on the idea of code switching.
This is a termI learned somewhat recently, and even if
you aren't familiar with the phrase,we all have definitely done this.
(12:18):
So let's define what code switching is.
Code switching is the practice ofalternating between two or more languages
or varieties of language in conversationto match the situation, you're in.
This can be conscious or unconscious,but we definitely all do it.
Think about going into the office.
You're a little less casual
(12:40):
and more thoughtfulwhen speaking with colleagues.
You might even have a company culturethat uses buzzwords or phrases.
For example, Netflix CEO ReedHastings has publicized
the Netflix culture memo and phrasedocuments in his book, and unlike
these terms, can get picked upin other organizations
because CEOs are always watchingand adapting their language
(13:02):
to align with one another.
A particular phrase disagree
and commit was one that made its wayinto one of my former workplaces.
The idea is that you can debate an ideaor a strategy,
but once a decision is made,you have to work the direction.
Even if you still personally disagree.
You can go home and tell your partneror friends about how much you dislike it
(13:25):
or wish it was different.
But when you show up at work,the expectation
is that you will work with the system.
Another way we Code Switch is withfamily members from different generations.
With our older family members,we try to be
a little more formaland polite with younger family members.
You're trying to keep up with the slangand youth culture to connect with them.
(13:46):
And with kids,we are trying to stay aware of
how our words might be picked up by themand be careful
not to teach them languagethey aren't supposed to be using.
I still occasionally catchmy son saying things like that sucks.
These are strong words for a six year oldand not something that we teach him.
(14:08):
But he picks things up at schooland brings them home because he hasn't yet
learned to code switch from the rowdierschoolyard to the classroom to home.
Going back in time when I learnedabout the idea of code switching,
I first became familiar with the termwhen I was organizing for the TED Summer
event in 2019.
One of our speakers was an incrediblewriter, Julian Delgado Lopate.
(14:33):
I hope to have them on a futureepisode of this podcast,
so I'll just briefly discuss their work.
Julian is a queer artistwho moved to Florida from Colombia
and quickly noticedthat while they learned English and spoke
the common combinationdialect of Spanglish in their community,
they ran into issuesonce they were in the education system.
(14:55):
They spoke about the idea of perfectEnglish
that we are all expected to use,and that the further away
you were from using perfect English,the more marginalized you became.
Julian was teased by other kidsand even reprimanded by adults
for having an accent and not conforming
(15:15):
to English as it is supposed to be.
Julian also has the added
identityof being a queer, non-binary person.
Code switching is also common and LGBTQplus community,
and I want to be clear that codeswitching is a neutral thing.
It makes sensethat around other people of your community
(15:37):
using language and slang of that community
makes you feel a sense of belonging,
and it makes sensethat using that language everywhere
doesn't always fit,but it can be mentally very challenging
to feel likeyou are constantly having to shift
how you present yourself as you movethrough the world and the more often
(15:58):
you have to do it for your mentalor physical safety can take a toll.
The issue of pronouns is one that I won't
get into too deeplybecause it is something deserving.
A much longer discussionwith the people actually
impacted by the way we talk about this.
However, I do want to talk
about the flexibility of languageas it relates to gender.
(16:21):
It used to be once upon a timethat we would call everyone Mr.
or Mrs.
and these gendered honorificswere a standard part of language.
In some places they still are.
But for many of us it feels like an overlyformal way to address someone.
So it's become less common.
The pronouns, they them are
(16:42):
used all the time to refer to individualsand not groups,
and have nothing to dowith nonbinary individuals.
All the time you hear a Where's David?
Oh, they're right there.
Pronouns being a gendered thing also isn'tstandard across all languages. And
it blew my
mind when I actually learned thisbecause like I've mentioned it before,
(17:03):
my husband is Chinese,so I've been trying to learn the language.
The word for you is the word for heris to.
The word for him is to.
It's all the same.
It only changes when you startto talk about groups of people.
You figure out who to isreferring to based on context.
(17:26):
And everyone just sort of gets it.
This is an issue that peoplelike to overcomplicate, but in reality,
our language is always fluid and evolving
and it's better to become more flexiblein your understanding,
then browbeat othersinto your way of thinking.
Okay,
moving on from thisand back to learning new languages.
(17:47):
As I mentioned, my husband is Chineseand moved to the UK and then to the US
and boy, was it hard for him to adapt tothe English language not once, but twice.
English is a weird meltingpot of a language.
Borrowing from French and Germanand some words.
We've made our own and somewe just take whole cloth
(18:08):
because they don't translate easily.
One of my favorite examples ofthis is the term schadenfreude.
But anyway, even though my husband isa fluent speaker and much stronger
in Englishthan I'll ever be in another language,
he can still find momentswhere he needs me to back up
and contextualize wordsthat don't translate literally.
(18:30):
I've also had this issuecome up with my team that works in Poland.
We are using technical languageto describe the wealth management space
and making sure that the contextof what a word means to me versus
the literal meaning can be challengingin learning Chinese and Portuguese.
Over the course of my life.
(18:50):
I've heard that the way you really knowyou've really internalized
it is when you startto dream in that language.
Dreaming and
thinking in a language meansyou're finally on the road to fluency.
One of my strategistsin Poland has said as much.
He said, When I am thinking in Polishand just translating
(19:12):
the words, they don't come out the wayI want them to.
When I'm writing, it's not as smooth.
He had to practice thinking in Englishto communicate the way he wanted to.
Trying to be funny in another languageis also incredibly difficult.
In fact, don't try itunless you're sure jokes don't translate
(19:33):
well across languagesbecause so much of what's funny
is that play with language that requirescontext in less literal thinking.
This is why in movies and TVmade for international
audiences,there is so much physical humor.
It is the thing that is universally
funny across cultures and languages.
(19:55):
Of course, translating isn'tjust a practice used across languages.
As a marketer,my whole job is trying to figure out
how to tailor my messageto speak to the right audience.
In the financial servicesindustry, for example.
Jargon has run rampant and people,quite frankly, are getting tired of it.
Maybe they've been tired of itfor a long time.
(20:16):
Maybe it's advisers
trying to prove their qualificationsby using overcomplicated language.
Maybe it's a fear of the risksof not being precise.
Either way,the unintended consequence is that
clients can't easily understandthe jargon being used,
and it can be off putting for prospectswho might want to use your services.
(20:37):
I think people's tolerance of jargon
is also just waning after the pandemic,as we all found ourselves
hungryfor simple, straightforward information.
No one has time for uncertaintyor convoluted language.
I know I don't.
As a marketer,I am always trying to tailor a message
to the right audience,even for the same products or services.
(21:00):
The typical funnel looks like awarenessand people move from awareness
into considerationand then from consideration
into conversionand consideration to conversion, meaning
that they make a purchase, they b buythe product or thing or service.
Yet the conversion is like when someonethat's thinking about
buying something turns into actuallybeing an owner in marketing.
(21:21):
You're going to speak very differently.
You're going to speak differentlyto someone who's already retired
at 68 years old, wondering abouttheir financial strategy and retirement.
Right.
You might use certain wordswith that group.
And it's a function of,okay, where are they in the world?
Are they in the United States?
What part of the United Statesare they in?
(21:44):
Are they in Southern California
or are they in New Hampshire?
The type of language that you useis going to be different in both of those.
So geography matters.
The biggest shift that I ever saw was
when I went from Manhattan, New York City,to California.
Californianstalk different than New Yorkers or
(22:07):
Californians might say New Yorkerstalk different than Californians.
Even as I've moved to Oregon, the spread
of culture across the West Coastfeels more similar.
But still distinct.
And it's not just a vibein how people feel.
It's a vibe and how people talk.
We have to make sure that ourmessaging matches the target audience,
(22:32):
but it also has to continue to matchthe firm that we're writing it for.
You can't take the languagethat Wendy's uses
and apply it to McDonald's, for example,right?
It's not going to resonatewith a target audience.
It would actually be confusing.
So you need to make sure who's the targetaudience
(22:55):
that we want to attractor magnetize to us.
Then how do we move them from knowing whowe are to uncovering an unmet need?
What are they considering?
And the considerationprocess can be very messy.
So there's a report recently from Googlethat there's this messy
middle areawhere people come in and out of,
(23:17):
you know, this part of the funnelfrom awareness and consideration.
And there's cycling around doing researchand comparing similar items.
And this can go on for a long time.
As a marketer,we're trying all these different types
of strategies and techniquesand we're applying them across time.
We're also measuring and understandingwhat the signals that they're sending us
(23:39):
are so we know wherethey're at in the process.
We may even go out and
try to teach our languageto a set audience.
If you want to see a shift,
you could teach people the differencebetween you and a competitor
or their lives beforeand after your product.
You might be hearing this, but we reallythink this is what's on your mind, right?
(24:02):
So now you've potentially uncoveredsomething.
This podcast has been a wide rangingdiscussion.
Honestly, I think we will probably returnto this topic over
and over againto explore each point with more depth.
What I want to closetoday's conversation with
is an open question, but a pressing one.
(24:27):
How do we find common language?
Is there something about languagethat keeps you up at night?
I was on an airplane recentlyand I sat next to a gentleman.
He seemed like a nice guy.
But as I was talking to him,
he made a couple of commentswhere it was very clear to me
(24:47):
what end of the political spectrumhe was on.
It was so fascinating that I picked upimmediately on small, seemingly
innocuous signals that let me know exactlywhat this man's political beliefs were.
I'm sure he was ableto make some assumptions about mine.
I made a comment to him alongthe lines of yes,
(25:08):
it appears the system is inrough shape and it's broken.
Not knowinghim, I was honestly holding back.
I don't necessarily reveal exactly what'son top of my mind because I don't know.
We don't live in a country that feels assafe as it was just ten or 20 years ago.
But once I said that,he was completely unleashed.
(25:30):
And then, of course,I had to tell him, like, hey, you know,
I have a very different ideaor set of ideas about how to solve it.
It sounds like you have some ideasabout how you would solve it.
I think the way I think aboutthat is a little bit different.
But I think what we do agree onis that, like
(25:52):
we're not really headedin a great direction.
It seems, you know, quite broken.
But this is interesting.
At my son's school, you know,
one of the pillars of their educationis to educate for democracy.
And I think part of that educationfor democracy is knowing
and understanding different views.
(26:13):
It's almost like advanced diplomacy.
We need we need a crash course in advanceddiplomacy where you're listening
and you're listening more for commonality,then you're listening for difference.
And when you hear difference, you note it,
but you don't act on the feelingof what it brings up for you.
I talked to my husbandpretty often about this.
(26:36):
We think we want our kidsto be really resilient,
but it feels as though maybe this is,you know, like with all of this technology
and all of the things going on thatwe are less resilient, we're more fragile.
We respond
so strongly to someone else's view
(26:57):
as an attack on ourselves and who we are.
And almost like we take it as a mortalthreat against our very existence.
When someone expresses a view,
we're all, I think, quite guilty of this.
So then how do we begin?
You know,that's the million dollar question.
(27:18):
How do we begin to change
the way that we speak to one another,to slowly signal
that we are more alike than differentin so many ways?
I hope that you all will join mein trying to answer this question.
It will be critical in the coming yearsto try to find ways
to communicate with oneanother beyond literal language.
(27:42):
Thank you for listening to Coded in Gold.
Please share this podcastto continue to grow our amazing community
and follow us on social mediato keep the conversation going.
Take care.
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