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We’ve all had this difficulty at one time or another. We try to get our message across to our target audience and discover to our dismay that the two of us are at cross-purposes. One reason for what management gurus call ‘ineffective or poor communication’ may be found in the Esaias prophecy Jesus Christ cites while explaining to His disciples why He speaks to the multitude in parables. Esaias says, ‘By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive’. (Matthew XIII/14). On a mundane level, the Parable of the Sower and the Seed highlights all the hurdles to effective communication. When the experts say ‘Writing is not communicating, and reading is not understanding’ what they mean is that it takes two to tango and that the process is not so simple as is often made out. It is in this sense that seeing is not perceiving. You guessed it! My word for this week is ‘perceive’. Perceiving means ‘apprehending with the mind, observing and understanding’. It also means ‘noticing, or becoming aware of something through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing’. But ‘perceiving’ (becoming aware of) something is not just seeing it, but also interpreting or ‘viewing it in a particular way’. Examples: We perceived that the Telugu Desam’s criticism of the ruling combine was positive, stopping short of supporting the censure motion. Hari perceived a change in Madhu’s behaviour as the days passed: he wondered why his companion was keeping late hours and avoiding him at the office. The Left parties perceive the ruling combine’s volte-face on the presidential nominee as a challenge to the entire Opposition. The transitive verb, ‘perceive’, comes from the Middle English ‘perceiven’, which is related to the Old French ‘perceivre’/’percoivre’ via the Latin ‘percipere’. The Latin stem is ‘cipere’/’cept‘=capere’ (take, hold, seize, receive) and takes the prefix ‘per’ (through, all over). ‘Conceive’ and ‘deceive’ have the same root. So have ‘capacious’ (roomy) and ‘capable’. ‘Take in’ is a simple rendering of ‘perceive’. To take in something is to observe, or note something with the eyes, to understand/absorb what one hears/reads. Examples: Hari took in every detail of her appearance. He took in the ghastly scene without moving a muscle. Don’t sit gaping, but take in what I am saying! From ‘perceive’ we get a number of related words – perception, perceptible, perceptive and percipient, to mention a few. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary lists both ‘perceptive’ and ‘percipient’ as formal expressions conveying almost the same meanings: ‘noticing or understanding things quickly or clearly’, ‘insightful’. Examples: Ananda Ranga Pillai was a percipient/perceptive critic of men and matters in French India. His diaries show him as a percipient/perceptive (insightful) writer. ‘Perception’ is the ability to see, hear or understand. Example: Powers of perception cannot be improved by reading but by experience of the world, which is itself ‘a volume larger than all the libraries in it’. ‘Perception’ also refers to (1) the quality of understanding (discernment) and (2) the way of seeing/understanding: interpretation. Examples: The Minister showed great perception by resigning on the issue and contesting the election as an independent. His perception was that the people never trusted turncoats. ‘Perceptible’ movements/sounds are movements/sounds that can be observed with the senses. A secondary meaning of ‘perceptible’ is ‘great enough to be noticed or observed’. We speak of a perceptible change in the room temperature or a perceptible improvement in the condition of the patient. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary has this to say on ‘perceive’ and ‘discern’. ‘To perceive a thing is to apprehend it as presented to the senses or the intellect. To discern it is to mark differences, to see it as distinguished from others around it. ‘We may perceive two persons afar off without being able to discern whether they are men or women. Hence "discerning" is often used as an act of the senses or the mind involving close, discriminating, analytical attention’. By the way, I have not forgotten my promise regarding ‘detest’ and ‘execrate’. Published on 15th June 2002 Readers' response/inputs can be e-mailed to mhdevan@chennaionline.com.
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