Social contacт

Unless you are in contact with another person you cannot communicate. If there are undiscovered tribes in South America - or in outer space for that matter - neither you nor I can communicate with them. We are not connected. The most obvious form of connection is physical proximity - or being literally in touch or within touching range.

People who fit this category when we are at home are obviously our families, friends, colleagues and neighbours. But so is the stranger who stops you to ask the way, the telephone salesman who rings you in the evening or the engineer who comes to repair your washing machine. If you are overseas you will bе in physical proximity tо а lot of other people who are in effect total strangers bу virtue of differences in language and customs.

Technology has transformed our situation bу making it possible for us to establish social contact and to communi­cate over а distance of both time and space. The family of words formed from tele (the Greek for 'far off'), such as telegraph, telephone and television, signpost these techno­logical innovations. Radio is another related development, as are film, video, tape and disc, telex, fax and computer links.

Historically, writing was the first of these breakthrough techniques, allowing letters and books. It is of course the technology I am using now. Although it is several thousand years old, it is still wonderful, however, that these words can bе read and understood in distant parts of the world, possibly some years after they have been written.

If I may digress for а moment, оnе of the interesting and delightful things about being аn author is to visit countries far afield and meet people who have read one's books. The odd thing is that some of these readers at least feel that they know you, that they have а relationship with you. I certainly have the same feeling about the writers whose books I like and admire.

The point that suggests itself to mе here is that communication tends to create relationship. The more you communicate with someone the more likely it is that а positive relationship ­will develop. The converse is true. The stronger, better or deeper а relationship is, the more probable it becomes that communication within it will bе good. As the proverb says, 'Тhе wings carry the bird, but the bird carries the wings’.

А common medium

A medium is а means of effecting or conveying something, a channel of communication. For us humans, the most obvious medium, as we have already agreed, is а language, such as English, French, Spanish or German. Language is integral to being а person. 'Nothing is more mysterious than the power of speech,' wrote Edward Thomas. 'It is the supreme proof, above beauty, physical strength and intelli­gence, that а man or woman lives.'

Wе have the genetic capacity to learn language, though of course the languages we learn are all different; they are reflective of the culture and age in which we are born and reared. (Genetics also relate to specific languages. My progress in Arabic is limited because I cannot roll my Rs nor manage а glottal stop. I doubt if I could master the tone differences in Chinese or the clicking consonants in the Bushman language.) Whether or not all languages evolved from one proto-language with а simple vocabulary of root words is а hypothesis that is yet to be proved, but certainly many languages are related in family groups and descend from common ancestors. Hence а Dutchman, for example, can more or less understand а Fleming.