Gestures, Languages, and Information: How We Divide Reality and Understand Each Other
Almost every human action is based on communication—using various signs, we define the world around us and interact with others. People are capable of conveying information clearly, even when speaking different languages, but can also unintentionally mislead someone using the same words. Why is communication important to us, what challenges do we face, what is it built on, and what revolutions has it undergone?
This article is part of the project “The World of a Special Child.” Project partner: the charity foundation “Absolute-Help.”
What Is Communication and Why Do We Need It?
Researchers have identified over a hundred definitions of the term “communication.” In general, it is synonymous with interaction, but one is more scientific and narrow, while the other is more everyday and broad. Broadly, communication is understood as the process of creating and interpreting messages through interaction, which elicit a certain response. There is no form of social behavior without information exchange, nor is there a system of information transfer that is not, in some sense, social. When a person performs an action that changes someone else’s behavior, we can speak of communication. Even when alone, not talking to people, we communicate with nature, animals, objects, or ourselves.
Information is transmitted through sign systems—languages. With them, we define reality, breaking it into pieces and giving each a name. This also helps us adapt to new conditions. According to one theory of the origin of human language, early humans began inventing words after leaving their familiar forests for previously unexplored savannas.
Besides human languages, information is also transmitted through formal languages and sign systems, each carrying different meanings.
In a communicative act, several functions are distinguished: the emotive function—directly expressing the speaker’s attitude toward what they are saying; the conative function—influencing the recipient; the referential function—relating the message to context; the phatic function—maintaining communication; the metalinguistic function—establishing the meaning of the statement; and the poetic function—choosing the form of the message.
When we say that humans are social animals, we mean that communication is essential to us. Through it, people learn, explore the world, share ideas, relax, and maintain both mental and physical health. Lack of communication increases the risk not only of anxiety disorders or depression, but also of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, or dementia in old age.
What Is the Basis of Our Most Familiar Form of Communication?
A baby, before mastering speech, already knows how to communicate. For example, they point at objects, directing others’ attention and conveying complex social intentions—the desire to play, eat, or rest. Later, children can “crack the code” of human language only if they have other means of communication or at least ways to interact with language speakers. Adults provide clues that help codify even the simplest gestural communication and develop more complex concepts.
Natural pointing or pantomimic gestures are effective, though specific, means of communication. These two main types of signs generally correspond to two types of movements in great apes. Pointing gestures are similar to attention-getting signs in primates, as both aim to show something nearby. Human pantomimic gestures resemble intentional movements in apes, as both simulate a specific action.
However, gestures alone would not help people achieve mutual understanding. This is possible thanks to our basic psychological structure—the ability for shared intentions. Within this framework, a person uses their natural gestures, thereby creating a whole new world of communicative objects.
What Can Hinder Communication?
Although sign languages are codes, linguistic communication largely relies on uncoded forms of communication and the ability to think similarly to the interlocutor. The language code is based on a non-linguistic basic structure of understanding intentions and shared context. For effective communication, interlocutors must understand what they mean by the terms they use.
Any language is connected to our surroundings and will contain names for familiar objects. Interlocutors may have different concepts and ideas about these objects, but this does not disrupt communication as a whole. However, the higher the level of abstraction we use in speech, the more likely misunderstandings become. We all talk about love, freedom, or the economy, but almost certainly explain them differently. Differences can be individual, gender-based, national, and many others. The definition of a word also depends on the context in which it is used. Measuring the degree of understanding or misunderstanding is very difficult; it manifests itself in the communication process itself.
The situation where we perceive intangible concepts differently is completely normal and common. However, it can lead to regular mistakes, misunderstandings, or pseudo-misunderstandings, because interlocutors assign completely different meanings to the same statements.
How Communication Influences Our Behavior
The communication process depends on the speaker’s motives. These may include the desire to correct or change a situation, punish someone, or share something. Often, the motive is the desire to become popular, which is related to the phenomenon of social comparison. This was described by American psychologist Leon Festinger in the mid-20th century. Social comparison is inherent to all people and is not a special clinical condition. By evaluating ourselves against others, we choose strategies for behavior and communication to become more successful in a particular social group.
Festinger identified several types of motivation for comparing oneself to others:
- Self-evaluation. The more uncertainty in a person’s life and social environment, the more likely they are to evaluate themselves through the achievements and indicators of others.
- Self-improvement. Someone else’s achievements can, for example, motivate a person to make an important decision.
- Self-esteem enhancement. We may feel joy because we see ourselves as more successful than those around us.
Festinger also argued that people prefer to be in agreement with other members of their group. Therefore, our behavior and judgments depend on whom we communicate with. The people we choose as interlocutors determine our models of communication and interaction with others.
Social comparison has become especially noticeable with the advent of social networks, which have made access to other people’s lives as easy as possible. They satisfy a basic human need—the feeling of safety and security. Social networks create the impression that we are surrounded by many people and can count on help if needed. They also expand the user’s communicative spectrum and introduce new forms of interaction.
How Communication Has Changed
Communication largely depends on the historical period and cultural context. Belonging to a particular culture shapes the interpretation of various concepts and events, and also plays a role in creating unique rituals. However, belonging to a certain territory does not create such global and fundamental differences that make it impossible to understand each other.
In the past, geography had a greater impact on communication. For example, if people around you used papyrus, it placed you in a specific time and place—Ancient Egypt. Today, we live in a globalized world, so a person at a computer can be anywhere.
There are also forms of communication that depend not on time and space, but on individual characteristics. For example, inner speech, which is still poorly understood. For some, inner speech is highly verbal—they are constantly talking to themselves internally. For others, it is nonverbal and may consist of images or fragments of phrases. The form of inner speech also varies—it can be a monologue or a dialogue.
However, the way we exchange information is most influenced by time. At first, people did this using sounds, signs, and gestures. Then came the first and most important communicative revolution—the emergence of spoken human language. To this day, there is no clear answer as to how it was created. Even in the early 20th century, people wondered about this. There were attempts to identify simple sign systems from which language evolved. Hypotheses emerged that language arose as a result of labor or sound imitation. Today, we know for sure only that the process of creating language took thousands of years, and the spoken form appeared first.
The next communicative revolutions were linked to the transformation of information transmission channels. The second was the emergence of written language, a process that also took thousands of years. We moved from drawings and pictograms to hieroglyphs and letters. At some point, people realized that individual images were connected to specific words or their parts, which they began to record. Thanks to writing, the essence of communication changed—information could now be stored and transmitted across space and time.
From then on, a series of inventions for transmitting text on physical media began. At first, this was done on clay tablets, birch bark, or papyrus, and later on paper. But all texts were written by hand, which was slow and did not allow for many copies. The printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg made it possible to mass-produce books. Since then, information has become more accessible and durable. To show the connection between communication methods and a specific era, it is important to focus on written language, as technological progress changes it more than spoken language.
The most significant invention was the internet. Since then, the process and structure of communication have changed dramatically. On social networks, language formally remains written, but in its structure and syntax, it more closely resembles spoken language. The device we use for communication is tied to the person, not the place, as with a landline phone. We create the illusion of an instant conversation with the interlocutor, even though we do not see them in front of us. Therefore, we try to find ways to convey not only meaning but also emotion—we add emojis, GIFs, stickers, or use capital letters to indicate loudness. Traditional written language turned out to be too dry for such communication.
The written-spoken language emerged because, for everyday communication, we chose a form—written—that was not the most suitable. This led to competition between written and spoken language. The older generation is used to “live” conversations, while young people, due to messengers, use texting more. Spoken language has become more valuable—now, before calling, you need to ask permission to disturb someone and make them talk. This competition continues, as seen in the popularity of voice messages, podcasts, and audiobooks.
We are now living in a unique time with a high rate of change in language and communication processes. Previously, revolutions in forms of communication did not happen as often or spread as quickly.