You need an open mind

These days I am helping Norwegian criminal police with interpretation, during their work on a case of serious crime. And during the evenings I work on another form of interpretation: analyzing my conversations with children. No wonder my friends policemen and I often discuss communication. And when we talk about communication, I relate our talks to my conversations with children, and they relate them to interrogations with criminals and victims. It is incredible how many issues are the same.

Since our choices of words depend on the communication context, the purpose and the function of the conversation (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), these two forms of interpretation: trying to make meaning out of conversations with children, and transfer of meaning to another language, will have to be different.

If I need to understand a sentence before I am able to transfer it to another language, it means that such transfer can never be completely neutral and independent of me. My voice and body language, as well as my cultural understanding will color the interpretations.

Listening seems to be a good way of learning how to improve own forms of communication. We asked a victim of war: What does it take to tell about humiliation one has been exposed to, even if shame is unbearable? He, an old man, told us that people of course are different, but for him it takes time to establish confidence in an empathic, kind person who wants to listen without prejudice. Like young children, he also seems to be highly sensitive to facial expressions, body language, eye contact and tone of voice. In the relation with the one who listens, he would look for respect, care and interest that could motivate him to share his terrible experience. To be able to tell, he would have to be confident that the person who listens is open-minded and will try to understand.

Bruner wrote that “open-mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture” (Bruner, 1990, p.30). Only when we are open-minded we can truly listen with empathy, see each person’s uniqueness and learn from each other.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
Bruner, J. S. (1990) Acts of meaning, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.