Words

"...we are not a race of clairvoyants, and therefore, when others speak to you, their thoughts must be encoded into a message, using a commonly agreed-upon symbology, words. Words must have agreed-upon meanings, and establishing these meanings becomes a problem of sizeable proportions. The message must then be placed in a channel, such as soundwaves in the air, and transmitted to you, the receiver. You then decode the message into words, analyze their meanings, understand what has been said, and comprehend what is meant by it. Along the way, the message is vulnerable to enemies such as noise, body language, expectation, degree of attention, and other distractions, which tend to cloud, rob, or distort meaning. Additionally, our diverse backgrounds and life experiences tend to give each of us different interpretations of words themselves." (p. 3)

Shuman, Bruce A., Carole J. McCollough, and Joseph J. Mika. Foundations and Issues in Library and Information Science. Englewood, Colo: Libraries Unlimited, 1992.