The Story of Babel.

All too often we, myself included, fail to realize the power of language in our daily personal interactions. Seemingly, if we stop to think about it at all, we tend to reserve a different style for certain situations versus others. The motives are varied: perhaps we believe that certain occasions, settings, circumstances require more conscious, formal and deliberate language, while others don’t need the precision or effort or . True enough I suppose.

Yet if you stop to listen to conversations, even our own, often words no longer mean what they once did: denotations, connotations, and the satellite of associated images no longer are as rich nor as nuanced. The end-game for casual substitution of one word for another with completely different sense would be a re-enactment of the myth of Babel.

With the fall of Babel, god left confusion: confusion that carries over in our marketing, sales and service language and CRM efforts. In the words of Willis Barnstone , “…God dispersed the word, gave us tongues and the solitude of difference, and also the impossible but pleasurable duty to repair our separation.” Translation necessarily must be a key component of our relationships and conversations. Translation is an important tool with which we can rebuild a new tower of Babel. Barnstone believes “it is an impossible task”; and, I believe it is one that clearly haunts our customer relationship efforts.

The challenge is when one word is substituted for another or mistranslated in the mind of either the speaker or listener. The slippery slope here would results with words in casual conversation having lost their precision; they no longer would retain the power of their meaning; and, eventually one word could be substituted for any other with impunity. The crime of being careless and imprecise eventually could bring about the demise of language. In all words would become the same.

Communication, as Lakoff & Johnson point out[1], “is based upon the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting.” When trying to build a loyalty relationship with your targeted and best, core customers, what metaphors does your organization use in its conversations with others: customer, business partners, suppliers, employees, investors, etc.? Two metaphorically structured concepts to think about are:

ARGUMENT IS WAR (think about that next time your group talks about its “campaign”).

Or,

THEORIES (AND ARGUMENTS) ARE BUILDINGS

Such mental frameworks do color our efforts to build customer relationship management and loyalty. There are a myriad of other examples about how language shapes our reality and relationship, such as: “orientational metaphors” such the special concepts “virtue is up; depravity is down” or Rational is up; Emotional is down”

In truth however, language is one of our most powerful tool in building relationships. We live according to the metaphors of our daily exchanges. The simple fact is “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”[2] Are we overlooking the power and value of crafting consciously the metaphors that shape our attitudes, demeanor and behavior? Our assumption is that looking at these questions squarely in the face might do more for our relationship and loyalty efforts than we previously have given credit.

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[1] Cf. Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff & Johnson.

[2] Ibid.