Mx. Luna Corbden<p>English conflates the concepts of "hear" and "understand." Many conflicts get nowhere because we use the common phrasing, "You're not listening to me!" or "You didn't hear me!" when what we really mean is, "You didn't get me, I want you to make sense of what I'm saying."</p><p>The process of comprehending what someone has said is different than hearing their words. How many times have you said, "You're not listening!" and they were in fact "listening" but not getting it? How many times have you said, "No I HEARD you?" when you did not, in fact, understand?</p><p>English used to have a snappy word for this: heed. To heed was to both hear AND to understand. And it also meant "obey" which might be why it fell out of favor (which itself reflects an interesting point of cultural values shift). We DO in fact conflate "listen" to obedience, sometimes, especially towards children. But not as much as once was.</p><p>The fact that all words mean multiple things, and that English has some issues with which things are conflated, can really influence how we think and interact. It's worth trying to unpack that. Then I start thinking towards how we can change English to be better.</p><p><a href="https://defcon.social/tags/AbuseCulture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AbuseCulture</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/English" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>English</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/etymology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>etymology</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/psychology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>psychology</span></a> <a href="https://defcon.social/tags/epistemology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>epistemology</span></a></p>