Friday, February 19, 2016

The meaning of meaning


As it so happens very often, that you are misunderstood for what you have said. Note that for any communication, there are 2 people involved viz. the sender and the receiver. If you are the sender, you have to make your message as simple as possible so that the other party gets what you are saying. While if you are the receiver you have to reflect upon the message, till it becomes crystal clear to you. Use reflection i.e repeat the message to the sender (your own version) and see if he/she agrees to it. This is the science of messaging. A one way channel does not work. Communication is many sided and hence a group has to be involved. But the more the people in the group, the more the chances that the meaning won’t be conveyed. So you risk that but at the same time help spreading the message to many people.

The meaning behind any message is the intention it conveys. For example, say you said ‘HTML5 is portable’ There are 2 parts to this : HTML5 and portability. Your receiver should clearly know that HTML5 is a programming language or a standard being used prevalently on the Web. The more he/she knows about it, the more meaning can be ascribed to the message. The second part is portability – mind you, it’s not to be confused with potability – which is how much a liquid or say water is drinkable.Portability on the other hand means the ability for the language to work on different platforms – be it Windows, Linux or Android. Thus HTML5 is portable, simply means that, here is a language for you that can be made to work seamlessly on many platforms. See how the message meaning becomes clear now.

Thus meaning is what is behind it, what is inside it or what is deep down the sender’s intention.

So don’t mistake water for a liquid or say that all liquid is water. The meaning of water is only found out when you taste it.

Tasteless, right.

And so the messages keep on a comin’

Regards,


Guru30

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