words like sonar: power and communication

Just like with evolution versus creation, there has been a long-standing argument in linguistics over the origin of language. Like why, linguistics ask, do we speak*? What is the use of language? The majority view for a long time has been that we speak in order to communicate, that there is some gap between you and I and language helps to bridge that gap. We speak in order to be understood. 

I am moved by a different belief, one that has been a minority view in linguistics* but is gaining in popularity. This belief says that we are like plants and animals; like the relatives who are our common ancestors. A plant puts out a flower to say I am here, smell me, know me, glory in my life! It is a wide open thing, an expression of self that is open to every life passing by. It’s a specific kind of communication, made up of organic compounds that, when mixed with air, produce a vapor that we call scent. And bees and bats like the scent and cuddle up to the flower to make other things happen. 

It’s a different thing to speak in order to be understood versus to speak to just express myself. It’s significantly different and the difference is mostly about power.

If I speak in order to communicate with you, in order to be understood, then I have done a good job speaking if you understand me, right? The responsibility is on me to communicate in such a way that you, a person who is not the same as I am, can understand me. This understanding, then, is like a validation. Yes, Susan, I understand you. We are good. And then I can let go of the communication because I am understood. It’s kind of transactional, isn’t it? I speak so that you can understand and you understand me which means I can stop speaking. 

I remember the first time I sat in conversation with someone who was not raised in the validation-heavy communication style that I have been raised in. By validation-heavy I mean active listening - I show I am with you by nodding, making affirming sounds and smiling while you speak. This person was raised with a culture where listening is a silent thing, something that is observational*. You show respect by sitting and listening until the person speaking is finished.  You don’t respond to their words unless invited to do so. If you have something to say, you then say it after they are finished. The first time this happened, I felt awkward. How do I speak if you are not showing me with gestures and sounds that my speaking matters? How do I know that I am being heard if you are not weaving my words back at me with your own?

If I communicate just to express myself, then the power balance shifts. It’s not like your understanding doesn’t matter: a plant is going to die if it puts out a scent that no bee or bat is interested in. It needs those bee legs to small-hair cover up with pollen and then lift that pollen over to another plant where the plant’s stigma can get all swollen in response and go through a series of steps that results in a plant ovum turning into a seed which makes plant babies. I speak and if no one comes near, if I can not eat, if you turn away or turn towards me, then there is information here, something for me to look at and learn from.

When I communicate, name what I believe or feel or sense or want or don’t want or need or any other thing, the question is this: do you owe me something, your understanding for example, or is my communication more like sonar, literal waves that are put out into the environment that then teach me something about the environment by how they bounce back?

There isn’t a right way to speak, a right way to do this. It is possible to be outside of transactional communication and be with a very active physical listener or to be with someone who is very silent and still listening. Both ways of listening can be deeply connected or just performing connection. When I felt unsettled in being with a quiet listener who was not obvious (to me) in their physical appreciation of my words, I didn’t know if I could feel strong in what I was saying. What I needed as a bounce back was my environment saying yes, you are good and allowed to say these things and we will still accept you. And that, of course, is the problem. Who holds the power in this moment?

Many of us are raised with this way of becoming visible to ourselves, and it’s particularly strong in those of us raised with some access to the protection and numbing of dominance culture but not full access, such as those raised to be white ciswomen. It’s the perfect race/gender set up: racially there is the privilege of whiteness which says that when I communicate, I am entitled to a response. Gender-wise, there is the need for patriarchy to stay in control and keep white ciswomen in their place - we are entitled to expect a response and the response determines whether or not we are entitled to feel safe and secure. I am entitled to speak and your response tells me if I matter. It’s still all about entitlement, about power, about transaction. It’s not about being grounded within our own lives and then more deeply and authentically connected to other life. 

Similarly, many of us are raised knowing that part of communication is proving to others what we have experienced and know so that we can stay safe. We are not raised to expect listening and understanding from those around us who are not-kin but to instead assume the responsibility is on us to find a way to be heard, on their terms and so that they are comfortable. Many of us are raised with this way of becoming visible to others, particularly those raised within violence or raised to expect violence. It’s one of the expectations, one of the everywhere-present strategies of white supremacy: Native folks, Black folks, people of color, immigrants of color, refugees of color are not entitled, says white supremacy, to communicate the truth of your life on your own terms, or to expect not-kin to believe in that truth or to expect to feel safe if not-kin doesn’t understand or agree. Instead, your job is to prove and convince white folks of your life and, until you have proven or convinced whiteness, to be unsure of the safety of the attention. If the proving was successful, it is fickle and will change based on a shift in the breeze. It’s still all about entitlement (or lack of), about power and transaction. It’s not about communication as a form of safety and connection, as a form of self-expression, but communication as a strategy for survival.

When you take both examples listed above, they have more in common with each other than they are different. Both are about language as transaction, where it is the responsibility of the speaker to build safety or connection or belonging by working to make sure that we are understood. Is it any wonder that so many of us turn to gaslighting? Isn’t gaslighting a manipulation of what is being said and understood so that the gaslighter has the power of being right which means validated which means safe?

I have been saying this more and more in bodywork sessions and when I work with groups: let my words be like sonar. Whether they are right or wrong doesn’t matter as much as what they spark alive in you. Let’s work with what comes alive in you rather than with coming together in agreement around my words. If what they spark is curiosity, then awesome! Ask questions and be with wonder. If what they spark is a fuck you, then also awesome! Let’s be with anger and push. What does the sonar pulse of how my life is forming itself into words impact how your life is listening to itself and the world around you? What happens as a result? And what, in this moment, is true between us?

Let’s be like bats and whales, swiftlets and dolphins: speak or sign or shrug our words as vibrational waves, watching as they move away from our own bodies, pushing out to meet another life. What happens when the waves meet that life? What is different or the same from what we expected? What comes alive in them and then, as a result, what comes alive in us?

*Speaking means any form of language - verbal, signed, written.  And what I am writing here is not exactly the same across different forms of speaking. The fact of power and communication carries with it similar undertones, similar transactional complexity and, at the same time, the differences matter. I am aware that I am writing this as a hearing person.

* Remember that linguistics is a European-derived academic discipline that is still a mostly white field. These, therefore, are conversations and arguments in white Euro-defined ways of understanding that then, through dominance culture, get pushed on others. All kinds of cultural and spiritual communities have other ways of talking about language.

*In northern Minnesota, there have been some powerful Ojibwe-German/Scandinavian cultural sharing conversations about cultural similarities including in speaking/listening styles which makes me curious about the relationship between the evolution of communication styles and climate/land experience. I am guessing that if, in order to survive, you have to stay in small enclosed spaces with lots of people for a fairly long period of time, you are going to develop different forms of communication than if your people have, for generation after generation, largely been able to be in the expanse of outside space. And the fact of these conversations does not minimize the fact and impact of colonization. 

….If you liked this piece, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee.