ECO-WORDS. The Ecology of Conversation

What happens when we talk and listen in everyday life? Can we say with certainty that we are aware of the processes taking place? Probably not nearly as much as we are willing to admit. There are a few erroneous assumptions about communication that we can correct together. The process of signification is a creative act always open to alternative paths: “the question is my mirror, and the answer is my portrait”. Moreover, while we are speaking, sometimes we are reproducing invisible loyalties to concepts, values, and beliefs that we hear in childhood. We embraced them at an age when it was not yet allowed to say no, to be free, to have an opinion of our own. Every time we repeat these words, we are also accepting the values and beliefs they entail, but the voice whispering them in our minds is not the adult voice of today, but always and once again the voice of the child of yesterday. “We are the words we speak and the words we hear”. When we communicate, it’s as if we were exchanging Lego bricks with our interlocutor, which we then use to build a house, i.e. to represent our identity.