Language in Thought and Action’: Tips for Effective Communication(Part 6)
How to Express Ideas with Substance?
This is the sixth part of ‘Language in Thought and Action’: Tips for Effective Communication. For more tips, please read my other articles.
To better illustrate this question, let’s first talk about what we call the “ladder of abstraction”.
Imagine a cow named “Ahua” standing before us. It continuously takes in food and oxygen, digests, and then excretes. It’s not a static “object” but a changing organism. Despite being unique, our nervous system automatically abstracts its similarities with other animals in terms of size, habits, etc., categorizing it as a “cow”. Following this logic, starting from Ahua, a series of abstract actions occur, eventually forming a ladder-like abstraction such as “Ahua → cow → livestock → farm assets → assets → wealth.” We figuratively call this the “ladder of abstraction,” and language is composed of such layers of abstraction.
With this concept in mind, we can analyze the issues where expression lacks substance and delve into their nature.
The first typical issue is when expression remains within the original abstract layer, circling in language. For example, someone asks, “What does ‘匪’ mean?” The explanation is “bandit.” Then, when asked, “What does ‘bandit’ mean?” the explanation is again “匪.” Unless the reader is very familiar with the words used in the definitions and can trace them back along the ladder, it’s as if nothing has been communicated.
The second typical issue is when expression ascends the ladder of abstraction, continuously pointing to higher abstract layers. People who speak like this often make their language seem vague and unrealistic, akin to the following dialogue:
“What does ‘read’ mean?”
“It’s a color.”
“What is color?”
“It’s a property of many things!”
“What is a property?”
Conversely, if we aim to express ideas with substance, we need to cultivate a habit of descending down the ladder of abstraction. This reduces the likelihood of language wandering aimlessly and makes our speech sound very “down-to-earth” to others. Therefore, when faced with the same question, we should develop a habit of answering like this:
“The next time you see many cars parked at an intersection, you can observe the colors of the traffic lights across from these cars, or you can also notice the color of the fire trucks.”
Building upon this, excellent conversation and writing require continuous transitions between higher and lower levels of abstraction. It’s about providing concrete explanations of things while appropriately summarizing and generalizing. If we can move smoothly and gracefully within the ladder of abstraction, then I believe our expressions will be both substantive and elegant.
