Frequently I find myself engaging with the subject of inside jokes, inside references, and the jargon that belongs to communities that share a given interest and a specialized terminology used to discuss areas of common interest. Part of what makes belonging to larger communities so appealing to us as people is the fact that less has to be explained to people who already share a perspective, a worldview, and the language used to express it. When people talk to outsiders and wish to communicate with those who do not share their perspective or their language, it can be difficult to effectively reach others where they are. Once we possess insider knowledge and language, it is difficult to avoid using that language, even though it may often be viewed negatively by those who do not understand what is being referred to and may resent being on the outside. Moreover, even others who are aware of our insider language but may be hostile to the perspective of the group may resent reading or hearing language that irritates us because it comes from a place that is alien to us and that we may be hostile to.

When we speak or write, to whom do we aim our words? Genuine communication requires that a speaker or writer who sends a message comes to terms with the reader or hearer of that message, and that both understand what is being said. This is by no means a straightforward process. The process of coming to terms with a potential audience can be hindered by any number of factors. We may use language that is unfamiliar to others. We may have research interests that others simply cannot fathom or understand because it requires a background of reading or education that they lack. Others may be unable to read what is written because text is too small, as can be the case with power point slides (as was the case with some older members of my own location congregation when I used a split sermon yesterday, as I write this, at church). We may conceive of having a potential general audience that is fragmented among various interests or communities that we are a part of, where people will show an interest in those aspects that they share in common with me, but in the absence of feedback from most of the people that we are communicating with, it can be difficult to know what might need to be better explained, what context would allow the message to be better understood, and what language needs to be more clearly defined because the audience does not know what I am talking about.

There is a great temptation for us as writers and speakers to desire to communicate mainly with those who understand us. As it can be hard to avoid being aware of the knowledge that we possess about a given field of study, it is relaxing and enjoyable to communicate with others who understand us because we can speak or write in a language that we know well and are very comfortable with and do not have to explain ourselves. That said, if we desire to reach a wider audience beyond those who understand us, we have work to do in explaining ourselves to outsiders in ways that they may understand but that may not come naturally or easily to us. We may have to familiarize ourselves with the language and culture of other people if we wish to make ourselves understood in their own idioms and in their own language. Doing so requires a lot of effort, and we will seldom make such effort unless it is important for us to communicate with a particular audience and to let them know through our use of their own words and expressions that we both know and care about their perspective and their approach, in a world where many people do not know and do not care how others see the world, which often comes off as being hateful and arrogant, and leads to hostility between those who see the world in different ways.

I am by no means a perfect exemplar of an easy method of communication that breaks down the intense barriers that exist between different communities within the present world in which I speak and write, despite my best efforts to be so. There are some communities that I know well, that I am a part of, and with whom I can communicate easily and fluently and naturally. Such people are often the intended audiences of what I write and say, at least in part, as I write and speak for a variety of intended audiences depending on the nature of what is being written or said. There are other communities that I am not a part of but which I am familiar with as a result of having undertaken some study to know something about them and the way that they describe their intellectual world. Sometimes these communities are ones that I would like to get along with as a friendly outsider with shared areas of interest and shared lines of communication, and at times these communities are ones which I may be hostile to or may feel it necessary to defend myself against, but feel it necessary to know them as actual or potential enemies. Still other communities may read and appreciate works that I do not know of or think of and that I never intended as audiences for my works, and which I am generally pleased to be able to communicate with, so long as their reading of my texts is a positive one.

There is often a great gulf that exists between a writer and an audience that does not exist when we communicate with others face to face. If we are talking with someone face to face, we can see their expressions and our own tone and body language is evident to them. They can understand if we are friendly to them, and we can see by their expressions what needs to be explained better, and where we might need to add additional context, or where we are repeating ourselves too much so that the audience has become bored and is drifting off to sleep or has become inattentive because we are not giving them enough information or stimulation. In writing, there is no such feedback mechanism. The writer writes a text and sends it off to cyberspace, where it may be read by anyone or no one, some of whom may understand it and agree with it, understand it disagree with it, think they understand it and respond to it in some visceral way but do not actually understand it, or any combination of these. Those who read it may not feel comfortable seeking to interact with a writer, even one who (such as myself) has comment sections on his blogs and even includes an e-mail address on the blog for people to send correspondence to if they so choose. This gulf intensifies the distance that exists between a writer who does not know exactly who may read his work and how they will interact with it and the reader who feels the writer to be a strange and alien species too remote to interact with. And yet if we are to communicate at all, we must find a way to bridge this gulf somehow.