It is a miracle that language works at all. The whole thing is so implausible. For example, if you and I were involved in conversation, there would be not two people involved, but six.

            There would be the me I think I am as well as the you you think you are. There would be the me you think I am and the you I think you are. And there would be intruding into the conversation from time to time the real me and the real you.

            When you say something to me, which of the three of you is speaking? It could be any of the three, but most probably it is the you you think you are. To whom is your comment directed? Again, it could be any of the three of me, but most probably it is directed to the me you think I am. I, as listener, however, hear the comment coming from the you I think you are, and the me that hears it is the me I think I am. Is it possible that we never really know who is speaking or  who will receive the message?

            In a recent exchange of letters, a lady swung the bat in the language game. She identified for us the mask – the you – of the other writer. She accused him of “harvest(ing) all the riches of the dictionary for a one-minute discourse,” and she concluded for us  (“We are meant to infer…”) that his mask reads “Intelligentsia.” An umpire ruling on that swing would raise the hackles of at least one of the writers as well as the crowds in the bleachers. As Steinbeck so aptly said, “The critic has no choice but to make over the subject of his criticism into something the size and shape of himself,” and one of the rewards of the language game is to understand the implications of that observation.

Emerson advised that “Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.” His first statement might be questioned since we know that in a conversation with ourselves, all of us employ ingenious means to rationalize our thoughts and actions. Our attempts to keep conversation going, however, - which we must – involve this “hypocrisy” that Emerson mentions.

            Since the use of language is a social activity, we must develop a feel for conversation. We must have an awareness of the ever changing roles (masks, if you will) of the six people involved in a conversation between two.

            Emerson would prefer a man “who exercises not my ingenuity but me.” He would prefer that we somehow rid ourselves of the images we have of ourselves and others and allow the real me to deal with the real you – not as a sometime thing, but always – “with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.”

            That sounds great! It’s an ideal we must strive for. But like all true ideals, it will be forever out of reach. And perhaps desirably so, for it would rob us of that particularly human frailty that makes the language game possible.

            We can take heart, however. In most of our day-to-day activities, all this confusion of images will be tolerated; all the circuits of communication will be completed so long as what is said and what is heard are consistent with the general images we have of one another.

Only when two people are drawn close together by whatever interest is there a need for a specific image – or a chemical reaction.

                        Bill Reynolds

Question :

If you are in a conversation with someone how many people are involved ? Use the content of this essay to reach your conclusion.