Communication seems simple, so we keep it simple, but that is where it gets complicated. Percival Everett explains this better than I would with his quote in Erasure, “It’s incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean something, but the meaning need not and does not confine itself to that intention. Those sounds, strung as they are in their peculiar and particular order, never change, but do nothing but change. Even if grammatical recognitions are crude, meaning is present. Even if the words are utterly confusing, there is meaning”.
With miscommunication, mispronunciations, double entendre, accents, and tones, language is so complex that figuring out what other people mean is quite frankly, astonishing. Whatever you say, there is meaning, but because of the complexity of communication, even when what you state may seem simple, it may be a lot more complicated than you would think.
In Christina Yi’s blog post “Miscommunication in “I Am Not Sidney Poitier”, Yi delved into the miscommunication in Percival Everett’s “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” between the characters, Not Sidney Poitier and Betty. Betty only stated three words, “I did not”. Not Sidney was unable to distinguish if Betty was saying not, an auxiliary verb, or “Not”, in reference to Not Sidney’s name (Everett 11). If Betty was using the auxiliary verb, Betty was disagreeing with Not Sidney, but if she was referencing Not Sidney’s name, she was agreeing with him. Betty believed that her simple three-word sentence was showing what she meant, but it could’ve meant one of two things to Sidney. This seemingly simple conversation to Betty was intended to resolve a miscommunication, but it was never settled, became complicated and led to even more miscommunication.
Math is also a language and when it gets too simple, there are complications as well. P, a simple math concept, but because of simplicity, the value of P almost became 3.2 by law. In one point in time, Indiana almost passed a law stating that the value of P was 3.2. We know the real value of P is an irrational number going along the lines of 3.14…, but Edward Goodman claimed in 1897 that he found the real rational value of P by “squaring the circle”. However, by “squaring the circle” it would still give an irrational number. Goodman oversimplified the values in his equation and because of this yielded a false rational value. An example from Goodman’s bill, as shown below, indicates that his proof is certainly not correct since the 7 is a number rounded down from the value obtained from the Pythagorean theorem. Goodman thought he would become famous and tried passing his bill in Indiana and it even passed Indiana’s House of Representatives due to their ignorance, but it was not able to pass Indiana’s Senate because a professor taught them the basics of mathematics beforehand. As a result, Goodman was ridiculed by the Senate and many mathematicians. [1]
Goodman and Betty both believed that what they said meant what they thought it meant. To Not Sidney, it meant Betty was either agreeing with him or disagreeing with him. To mathematicians, it meant Goodman was stupid. Betty and Goodman were both too simple in with what they did and caused unintended reactions. Percival Everett understood that a sentence can always mean something else to another. Even when you think what you are saying is simple and crystal clear, someone can see it differently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_BillEverett Percival. Erasure. UPNE. 2001.