The code for effective communication🗣️

Chances are, you know who you want to talk to. You know how old they are, their occupation, what they care about, etc.

 

How useful is this information, really? 

 

For those of us in the business of convincing people and changing beliefs, knowing our audience is not enough. We need to understand how they communicate and assimilate ideas. Their code—words, symbols and concepts.
To paraphrase Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a someone in a language they understand, that goes to their head. If you talk to them in their language, that goes to their heart.”

Understanding and learning the code

 

In a way, the meaning of many words is subjective (polysemic). People understand words through the lens of their own unique experiences, or the context of the word. And that defines how they use them.

 

Linguist David Banman wrote a fascinating post on how vocabulary on Twitter varied based on the geography of the users, their age, and their gender. Like the usage of slang terms between men and women.

Contrastingly, the more formal “Brother” has an equal distribution among genders.

 

With so many possibilities, learning your audience’s code may not seem easy.

 

However, If the study based on how people speak on Twitter is any indication, you don’t need to talk to people. You only have to listen to them talk. Do that by having a presence in places, online and offline, where your audience congregates.

 

Applying the code

 

For audiences whose code you have learnt, apply it by using it in your messaging and finding someone to bear your message with authenticity. (We don’t want to stumble into “Fellow Kids” territory).

 

If you are having trouble finding a unique, identifiable code for your audience, you can still use language in a more persuasive context:

 

Take the phrase “Help yourself”:

 

It could mean “Take responsibility for yourself”. It could also mean “Feel free to take whatever’s on the table”

 

On the flipside, for the phrase “Help yourself by scheduling a consultation with a licensed medical practitioner”,  the meaning attached to “Help” is very specific. 

 

It’s clear that the more solid the context we provide for the words we use, the more effective they are. 

 

See you next time,

Mukundan