Adults have acquired so much experience, much of which is so unique to yourself, that it can be hard to speak the same language, even if linguistically and phonetically we are literally speaking the same language.
And one of the biggest barriers to our mutual understanding is abstract concepts.
For example, consider the sentence “Found it!”. You know what this means. It means that whatever “It” is, has been found. You know that found is the result of finding. Your brain figures this out in a fraction of a fraction of a second.
But when my wife and I were reading a book to our 2 year old son, this became a tricky concept to explain to him. We couldn’t show him the definition in a dictionary. We couldn’t explain to him what “It” was, nor how “found” is the past tense of “find”. The only way we could explain it to him was to literally show him.
First we took mummy’s glasses off and mimicked looking for her glasses. After a few seconds I pulled them from under the pillow and exclaimed “Found it!”. Then we took my phone out and hid it somewhere. We then mimicked looking for it before picking it up and exclaiming again “Found it!”.
Now my son will exclaim “Found it!” when he finds a toy he was looking for. But at the moment, the meaning of this phrase is represented by the sensory experiences he associated with it. That is to say, the things he’s seen and heard when he’s heard that phrase being used. The meaning of “Found it!” to him is literally a picture in his mind of someone holding their hand up with an object they were just looking for and shouting those words.
Eventually, he will experience those words being used in different contexts. He’ll overhear me saying “Found it!” when I find something on the internet, or when looking for my keys, or when looking for something in the fridge. So he will eventually learn that this phrase can be used in a practically unlimited number of contexts.
He’ll eventually hear the word “Found” being used with different words. He’ll hear mummy and daddy say “I found your missing socks” or “I found a new restaurant today” or “I found out who our new neighbour is”. Eventually he’ll start to combine it with more and more words.
It surprised me to realise that a concept as simple as “found” is actually abstract. The meaning always seemed so obvious to me. But that’s because I learnt that word decades ago in my childhood, and I now have enough life experiences to have a pretty sophisticated bank of reference points in my mind to interpret that word.
The definition of abstract is “existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence” (https://www.lexico.com/definition/abstract). A good analogy is a helium balloon. A balloon starts right down here on the ground, but over time rises up above the clouds. To start understanding an idea, you need to ground it to the physical world, like we did for my son by showing him our actions in the physical world. Through more experiences in the physical world, he learns more contexts in which he can use this idea, and this idea rises higher and higher in his mind. Eventually, just like the helium balloon, it rises so high his mind can use it without having to refer to the concrete world.
Any word, or concept, such as “Found it!” needs a reference point to make sense of it. Our ears hear the word, and our eyes pick up visual cues from the speaker’s facial movements, and those sensory signals are then sent to the brain. The brain then looks for patterns that match the incoming patterns to determine what it means. For me, I am very comfortable with such an abstract concept because thanks to my life experiences, I now have a well refined pattern that floats high up in the clouds so can be used to interpret that word in a whole range of contexts. But for my son, when he first heard that word, he had no reference point, he was starting from down on the ground.
And when it comes to helping people understand new ideas, the key is to find a reference point that already exists in their mind.
For example, the Japanese word “Sagashita” means “Found”. You can read the English characters “Sagashita” because you have these reference points in your mind, which were probably stored there when you first learnt the alphabet as a child at school. You also have the abstract concept of “Found” in your mind, so there’s another reference point to help you understand this Japanese word.
But what if that reference point doesn’t exist in their mind?
For example, for those of you who don’t speak Japanese this will make no sense: 風船を探した. You have no reference point in your mind for interpreting these visual patterns that are hitting your eyes.
This problem is common when we’re speaking a different language, but it’s not just limited to speaking a different language. Maybe you’re explaining black holes to a child, or trying to persuade a frugal customer to buy insurance, or trying to teach a beginner driver the procedure for driving around roundabouts. They have no reference points for interpreting your ideas in the way you want them to be interpreted. So, what do you do then?
The only thing you can do is stop speaking to their mind, and instead speak to their senses. Literally show them. Because when the senses have experienced it, the mind can understand it.
