Relationships as Conversations

It seems to me that you can (and perhaps should) think of most relationships as a conversation.  This may seem a little more obvious when you consider inter-cultural relationships.  For example, in Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father Richard Rodriguez writes “that friend of mine at Oxford loses patience whenever I describe my face as mestizo.  Look at my face.  What do you see?  An Indian, he says.”  Clearly this relationship is a conversation; a conversation about what is an Indian.  (the friend from Oxford is looking for his Native American heritage.)  But any relationship can be seen as a conversation.  In volume 30, number 1 of the “Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal” for example Melissa Hensley writes that she no longer refers to herself as a consumer because she “does not want to be defined by the goods or services she uses”.  In other words, Melissa is aware that there is a conversation going on between her and the wider society; a conversation in which people are constantly defining and redefining themselves and others.

Wittgenstein’s Language Theory

We have known that we can think of our human relationships in this way at least since Wittgenstein pointed out that words by themselves have no meaning and only acquire meaning in what he called “language games”.  Words, then gain their meaning from the way they are used.  And since the way they are used changes all the time, meaning itself is flexible.  Put another way, according to Wittgenstein, language can have no meaning unless it is used by people to describe their world and themselves. 

Applying Wittgenstein to Everyday Life

But then Wittgenstein was a philosopher of language.  So his emphasis was (quite understandably) on language.  We, however, can look at the same proposition in a slightly different way.  If language depends on how we use it, then any relationship between people is a conversation.  A conversation in which people are constantly defining and redefining themselves and their world.

Listening

If we think of our relationships this way—be these relationships professional or personal–  we immediately see that one of the most important things we need to do in our relationship is listen to what the other person is saying.  (And what they’re not saying.)  Let me give (a possibly trivial) personal example of what I mean.  I am a political junkie.  I have been glued to the TV and radio and Internet throughout this (almost two-year) election.  My husband gave me a little MP3 radio (with headphones) for my birthday.  What do you think he was saying?  Should I listen?

Understanding

But there’s another reason to think of your human relationships as a series of conversations.  Because if you do that, you will constantly be asking yourself: what do they (really) mean?  What do they want?  What does this mean to them?  It will, in short, encourage you to listen to what people are saying and how they are saying it.  And paying more attention to your fellow human beings can perhaps help us understand people.

We are, after all, what we say we are.