Conversation is more than just words

There is just so much more to conversation than just words. There is the full sentence structure with direct and indirect nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases, and clauses. There is intonation and selected emphasis on the different parts of the word or different words in the statement. There's inflection. There's emotion. There's context, inside the sentence, inside the conversation, between participants, with the environment and situation. There is body language both voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious. There is mindset and motivation. There is intent. There is perception and reception. There is conflict.

Conversation is more than just words despite how important vocabulary and connotation are. There is the delivery of the words. The choice to say them. There is what is said aloud and what is not said. There are drafts created, revised, discarded. There are the omissions and distractions. There is a human behind the words and with that comes our complexities, our dreams and hopes, our faults and failures, our history and backgrounds, our futures and plans, our ambitions, our fears, our personalities, ourselves. We stand behind our words, claiming them as they fall out of our mouths, are written by hand, or typed through machine. Words are a human construct and we construct humans from them. Words are power, intense and strong and carelessly tossed away without a second thought.

We rely on them to communicate ideas to each other because conversations are more than just words.