Our main form of communication is through verbal words. The meaning of these words, however, is subject to interpretation based on the context and experience of the person receiving the information. In fact, miscommunication is really the result of misinterpretation. Effective communication only takes place when both the listener and speaker find shared meaning.

I want to tell you a simplified version of a parable published in 1979 by Michael Reddy. It was crafted to explore something known as the Conduit Metaphor.

Imagine a huge area of land shaped like a wagon wheel. Each pie shaped sector of the wheel is an environment separated by the spokes and the circumference of the wheel. These environments have some commonalities: water, trees, small plants, rocks, however they are not all exactly the same. Some are more rocky, some have more trees, one has a lake. In each sector is one person who must survive their own special environment. While each person knows of the existence of the people in the other environments they cannot see or hear or touch or in any way directly experience the other environment..they can't go through the walls. 

The only way they can communicate is indirectly - without ever seeing or talking to each other - by leaving notes and sketches at the hub where their lands meet.

Imagine one of the occupants invents a rake which she uses to clear leaves in her woods. She shares her invention with the others by sketching her design a number of times and leaving a copy each for the others.

They take her design but they adapt it to better suit their own particular environment. Perhaps the person with the lake adds a hook, instead of a rake head, for fishing? Perhaps the person with the swamp develops a hoe, really good for slicing cleanly through the roots of marshy plants? Perhaps another makes a rock pick useful for cultivating rocky ground? 

All of the occupants draw sketches of what they have made, and share them with the others. The original inventor is mystified - she assumes they have not understood. She knows their designs would have little use where she lives. 

Likewise, the other occupants could never begin to understand the value of the other’s designs. They are unaware of their own roles in using their personal experiences and contexts to make the tools that are right for them. They would assume the other occupants had simply got it wrong - the sender was at fault. 

So what does this parable mean for us and why does it apply to the world we live in?

In simple terms, each environment - each sector - is our mind. Only we can experience our own mind, others cannot come in to see what we are seeing. The only way that we can communicate about our environment is through symbols of language: words.

Humans have gotten very good at these symbols and we've developed these complex systems of language,  and we often take these words for granted as second nature. In fact, in English, we often frame verbal communication as a simple process of transferring words in the same way we would transfer items; pack them up in a box, deliver them to a person, and that person opens the box and takes them out, unchanged and whole.  This is sometimes known as the ‘conduit metaphor’. But this assumption that our words are whole unalterable objects, that take no work to explore and unpack, is false. The meaning of our words are context-specific, person specific - meaning is influenced by the listener’s existing knowledge, experience and bias. 

Our parable shows us that it takes work to construct meaning when interpreting communications and that they are always subjective and dependent on prior experiences. Effective communication therefore takes work and both the listener and speaker have a shared responsibility for finding shared meaning. 

We can also learn that when miscommunication arises, we tend to blame the sender or receiver. But in truth, what we should do is sometimes question the process of interpretation.