Many people have trouble with words. In fact, it is my belief that every human being has trouble with words despite the fact that words are so central in human functioning and seemingly essential in interpersonal relations of any kind. We might say that the (scientific) difference between animals and humans is that humans have speech, whereas animals don’t (while we might suggest that the existence of self, soul, or spirit might also differentiate us from animals.)
I had a conversation this morning with a man who speaks easily and freely, so much so that he sometimes stumbles and tumbles over his own words as he is desperately trying to communicate what he feels and thinks. Several times during this morning’s conversation, “Jim” (as I will call him) said, “I just don’t know how to say what I feel” or “I just don’t know how to say what I think” and then follow up with some kind of self-criticism because of his difficulty of finding the right words. Jim is by far not the only person who I see that has trouble with finding words for his thoughts or feelings. Many were the times when someone said, “I just don’t know what to say” when they heard of our daughter’s death a year ago. What could they say at such an event? No words would do justice to the feelings that people often had although the best words were always, “I am so sorry.” But there were people who said all kinds of things, people who said nothing, and people who just looked at us with faces full of feelings but no spoken words.
The matter of words is more than the phenomenon of not knowing what to say. There are many instances where words are insufficient to express one’s feelings or thoughts. The title of this blog, “wordiness, wordless, and word-ness” is a reflection of some of the problems with words, and they all have to do with inadequate communication:
- Wordiness: People have too many words and fail adequately communicate
- Wordlessness: people have too few words and fail to adequately communicate
- Wordness: people make up words but fail to adequately communicate
Wordiness
The “Jim” noted above had too many words for what he was feeling. He spoke over and over again about how he was feeling but he was having but was never satisfied with his words. So, he did what wordy people tend to do: he spoke more, he spoke louder, and he repeated himself. Jim’s situation was quite simple: his wife said that she wanted a divorce, and “it came as a complete surprise” although he admitted that he knew that “something was wrong” in the marriage for some time. I tried my best to help him say what he really felt but with only a modicum of success because he was so inclined to repeat himself over and over again, usually with intermittent statements of “I just don’t know how to communicate.” I tried, largely in vain, to help him feel the real emotion that he felt, which was simple sadness, but he was so inclined to rattle on, mostly about his wife and her alleged “problems” that I didn’t succeed in this endeavor. Of course, complaining and diagnosing his wife wouldn’t help him, but he didn’t know any other way to express his feelings. This is so often the case with wordy people: they don’t know when to stop talking, when to start thinking, and when to speak again when they have found words that adequately communicate their feelings. Wordy people rarely feel, then think, and then speak. Rather, they speak furiously because they depend on a flurry of words to communicate their feelings. Sadly, they often fail in this endeavor, which makes life even harder for them because they have done all that they know to do. Jim was largely covering the feeling of sadness with his wordiness. The more he said, the worse he felt and found himself in this downward cycle.
Wordy people tend to be extraverted but wordiness is not entirely in the realm of extraversion as we might expect. In fact, Jim is quite introverted by nature. You may know some introverted people who, when they have a kept audience, tend to rattle on about something. I recall a good introverted friend who, when we entered her house, would immediately meet us with a flurry of words, so much so that we were quite overwhelmed by the words, if not entirely by the content. Yes, extraverts can also dominate a conversation, but they tend to need a larger audience. Introverts dominate the conversation when they have you alone. I recall an incident with my younger daughter, who is by nature quite introverted, a time that Deb and I were taking her to some church event. Deb and I both remember how Jenny seemed to rattle on about one thing or another, then at one time said, “Listen to me; I’m just rattling on, aren’t I?” and then just as quickly went back to rattling. We enjoyed the moment.
Wordy people also tend to be feeling-based, which is a reference to the Jungian concept of how people make judgments. “Feeling-based” people “feel through” things, including their thoughts, emotions, and actions. Feeling-based people tend to have good intuition, especially if their intuition is not dominated by emotion. Often, however, feeling-based people have many more feelings than they have words for, so they can be found to say words over and over again with the hope of communicating the feeling they have. But wordiness is not only in the realm of feeling-based people. The individual I just noted who would typically greet me at her door was also thinking-based. Thinking-based people are always looking for someone to talk to about what they have read, experienced, or thought.
Whether introverted, extraverted, feeling-based, or thinking-based, wordy people tend to push into the conversation as many words as possible. I suspect they know that they have but little time before the audience will lose interest so they cram as many words as possible into the space where there should actually be fewer words.
Wordlessness
Wordless people have fewer words. Sometimes they have no words at all. There is a great place to say nothing. We would all do well to consider that there are important times to say nothing because there are times when nothing needs to be said. These are times when simple presence with a friend is important and simple quietude alone is important. There is certainly nothing wrong with being silent as Desiderata begins with “go placidly among the noise and haste of the world and remember what peace there may be in silence.” But let’s look a bit deeper into the wordlessness that troubles so many people.
Many people have suffered in school because of their lack of words. Most of the men I see in my office have suffered because they were not “word people.” Their lack of words may have been a genuine dyslexia but more often than not they were not “auditory learners,” which is learning based on words shown in reading, writing, and speaking. There are even people who were good at reading and speaking but couldn’t seem to put two words together on paper or people who could read and write but were terrified of speaking in class. School does no service to people who are not word-based. I didn’t like reading until well into college but I was good at writing and speaking, so I got along pretty well. Furthermore, my “learning style” is predominantly “auditory” (word-based). Equally good, but substantially different, are people whose learning styles are kinesthetic or visual. These would be the musicians, artists, and athletes in school who “go to school for their friends and activities” but abhor the reading and writing that dominates school. School was good for me because I am primarily word-based but I see kids in my office all the time who are good with art, music, sports, dance, and social life but hate reading. Oops, school is reading (and writing and speaking).
Wordless people might also be introverted or thinking-based. These folks work diligently to find the right words so often that they have large gaps in what they say in a conversation. This gap-ness is not the sole domain of introverts and thinkers, but it is most common among them. My brother used to look at his wife, who was both introverted and thinking, and say, “I’m sorry, my dear, I didn’t hear what you said” when she had not actually “said” anything. She would say, “Oh, that’s right. You can’t read my mind.” This looking at someone intently, perhaps with mouth agape, arms swinging in the air, or grimacing is a time of wordlessness that usually fails to communicate. I recall many instances when someone has looked at me when we are in a conversation, opened his mouth as if to say something but not with any words, then came closer to me and was right in my face, yet without any words. Such a person is attempting furiously to communicate without using words. Rarely do they succeed in that endeavor. “There is a time to keep silent, and there is a time to speak” as Solomon said in the Jewish Scriptures’ book of Ecclesiastes.
Wordness
What I call “wordness” is the creating of words for the purpose of communicating something that standard dictionary-based words are insufficient. We have many words that are added to Webster every year, like “texting” a few years ago. While every language adds words to the usable vocabulary every year, there are also times when people create words that will never be a part of Webster, much less common use. I recently read an article that was based on Buber’s I and Thou book and the concept under the concepts of I and Thou. This author talked about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her discussion of Buber’s concept of I and Thou. (For what it’s worth, Buber’s simple, yet profound suggestion is that we need to understand how we relate to one another, and the way we need to do that is understand how we think and feel followed by understanding how other people think and feel. This theologian found it necessary to talk about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her dissertation. Yet I found it difficult to understand what she was talking about and sometimes found myself wondering if what she was saying was even important. Perhaps other readers have been fascinated by her use of these created words. Readers of theology, and somewhat in psychology, will be more familiar with these hyphenated words, like God-ness, Satan-ness, sin-ness, and creation-ness words.
Created words are not the sole property of theologians. Note that I used the word “gap-ness” above. I created this word. Many people will create words that have even less meaning than the likes of “I-ness” and “Thou-ness.” These are times when people may actually use some vocalism, like a grunt in an attempt to communicate. Or they may find some combination of words that seems to make no sense at all, something like babies do when they are trying to communicate their feelings but don’t yet have a vocabulary. Similarly, adults can yell, scream, grunt, murmur, or cry when they want to say something but can’t find the words to adequately communicate their feelings. While wordiness can be irritating or boring, and wordlessness can be frustrating, wordness can be awkward at the best and dangerous at the worst. Many physical fights have come about due to the wordness that has miscommunicated.
The danger that can come about due to wordiness, wordlessness, or wordness sometimes leads to undue cursing. Cursing has always been a part of this culture, and seemingly of every culture, the increase in the frequency of cursing, now beginning as early as age 5 or 6, seems to be a symptom of people increasingly unable to communicate themselves adequately. We know, for instance, that while speech is largely a “left-brain” phenomenon, cursing is a right-brain phenomenon, the right side of the brain being the housing for emotion as well as much of what we perceive in our five senses. Cursing can be conceived as wordness and created words. It is interesting that the “f word” can be almost any part of speech.
What’s it all about: wordiness, wordlessness, and wordness?
It’s about insecurity, namely feeling inadequate in expressing what I want to communicate. Thus, people talk too much, talk too little, or make up words in attempts to communicate. But what are they trying to communicate? Feelings. Deb and I finally published our most recent work, I Want to Tell You How I Feel, which should be back from the publisher in a week as well as being available for download soon. In this book we first admit that we will “never successfully communicate our feelings” while proposing that we can improve in communication if we realize that it is impossible to communicate perfectly. Nevertheless, this task of feeling something, trying to communicate it, and finding some modicum of success is something that few people master. I encourage you to continue to work at it.
