People express their emotion, views, opinions, and so forth with their friends, parents, and others. Expressing at least in some cases removes the complexity of the world in human recognition. It emphasises some parts of the world, which are included in the expression, and others are not. It is key for the receiver how to perceive the expression whether they also think of the unexpressed parts to what extent.

Communication can tell another more than what one supposed to tell if another has more knowledge or imagination in it. When one talks about a certain thing, another could interpret the meaning different from what one had intended.

One of the important propositions in thinking about communication is the “notion of holistic proto-language” — the alarm calls of vervet monkeys, according to Alison Wray, “should be compared with complete messages rather than with individual words in human language”, and “holistic” means “no internal structure” and “never combined with any other vocalization to form a multi-component message”(1). Voice changes based on the sentiment that speaker feels(2).

Experience, or what people sensed in their life, fulfils words. It is often said that as people get older people get sympathetic. That is presumably because of the accumulation of experience in their life. Even if they watch a part of a film they can see their closer experience in it or can feel that situation more realistically.

People come to have the ability to use language. It is a matter of how people use their ability to distinguish. It is to tell the difference. Adding words in a publication is to limit the context in general, however using abstract words sometimes opens up the context.

When it comes to languages such as English, they tend to precisely specify the objects that it refers to and a sentence can be divided into further smaller parts.

Letters such as A of alphabet have generality(3). The letter A “of the Phoenician alphabet” “plausibly” comes from “a head of ox”, later it became generalised to “represent” the widest reach of the sound(4). This generality makes possible that different persons communicate via letters. At the standpoint of using the medium, it is possible to communicate, however in more profound sense, what persons interpret from them can differ.

The information also tries to be borderless by translation. The threshold became lower but previously it was chosen by those who engage in translation and who speak different languages by which information cross border.

To write a larger volume of texts takes time, compared with the short text of 200 words, for instance. A long text, which is a book of 200 pages, is presumably written by an author who was at their desk for many hours to write a book, before publishing as a book it in addition goes through the publishing company and its editor. In contrast, a shorter text can be written without careful consideration and it may be spent just a few minutes to be published, or it may be written by spending a few hours during which the author spent their time in choosing the words carefully. By having the Internet available, barriers to send/receive a writing became removed.

Being unable to use metaphor makes expression poor. And where they cannot make their expression in long length, they would have to shorten their expression though they may be aware that it could be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Nuance of an expression is delicate. Manipulate it to spread in a negative way or it was spread by accident in a negative way happens. In the age where rapid spread of information is possible by for example social media, the spread of the sort described above is instantly possible.

If words they encounter are difficult to understand, they don’t try to care about the order of words unless they are intellectual or enthusiastic. The use of words, how it is constructed sometimes are looked with attention unconsciously or consciously.

In typical cases, most people cannot endure the moment that one talks to another person, but the latter in conversation doesn’t respond to them. The conversation from another triggers one to respond to. In case of writing, this binding is weaker as it can be remote or distant.

There is a variety of aspects which arise from speech and expression, it includes historical revisionism. In the pandemic started worldwide around 2020, a negative phenomenon of information called infodemic took place, and the years around then more particularly in US context, how to deal with conspiracy was in dispute as well. Dating back further, in 2016, the word post-truth was in trend, and Oxford Dictionaries recognised it “as its 2016 international word of the year”(5).

As regards the privacy of persons, there are magazines which publish the photos or articles on the private life of those who are well known to the public. Apart from the misconducts, and the similar sort of wrongdoings, revealing the private aspect of persons even if their professions are publicly visible ones undermine the privacy of those targeted people.

With regard to the ethics of persons, even if one put in emphasis one’s freedom, how to speak and present needs to be taken into consideration with one’s ethics. If works supposed to be presented is likely to have inflammatory aspect, whether it will really work for the public good needs to be discussed in advance.

Verbal attack on dignity of others by expression causes a conflict among peoples. Enemy of dignity is, as literally means, perceived by recipient as what they express offends their dignity. When receiver of the expression felt their dignity is offended, unless they are convinced by the explanation of expressor that it is not intended so, it has the risk of dividing groups of people, and it would be better for the expressor to think about what kind of public benefit it has. In other cases, for example, media often publish the information which is not favourable to authorities. However, it endeavours to have the public benefits in it and it is perceived often as an opponent of argument.

By expression, people can damage the dignity. As a supplementary framework, offending dignity is judged as negative as people of different contexts collide. In this sense, despots should not oppress the citizens as it offends the dignity. Racial discrimination that causes unfair judgement on certain groups of people is not tolerable.

Footnotes

(1) Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body, first Harvard University Press paperback ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), p.109. Steven Mithen mentioned the concept of holistic proto-language by Alison Wray.

(2) This sentence is written by being influenced by p.102 of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1993).

(3) Henri Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902-1903 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016). Particularly p.38.

(4) Henri Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902-1903 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2016). Particularly p.38.

(5) ”Post-truth’ declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries’, BBC, published 16 November 2016, accessed May 15, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37995600. The original text is bold, which is removed in this writing.