overlook (A side-note)

[Martin Taylor 2006.11.16.15.12]

[From Bill Powers (2006.11.16.0735 MST)]
By the way, I've seen British mysteries in which "overlook" is used as Americans would use "oversee." Overlook, American style, includes the meaning of "fail to see" or "miss", and "oversee" means "supervise, maintain observation or management" of something or someone.

Overlook is a very interesting word. It has several pairs of mutually contradictory meanings in the OED: to look carefully at something, and to look but not see it; to take care of (e.g.children) or to give the evil eye (i.e. to do the reverse); to survey from above, or to "look more than" (I admit that constrast is a bit of a stetch, but one might look up to something that "looks more than" it should). There are other meanings, too, such as to look over the top of a barrier.

The most important feedback loop in communication is the effect of the speaker's words on the speaker's own perceptions.

Those perceptions are, at least in conversation, largely the effects on the speaker's perception of the conversational partner's reactions. It's harder when the partner can't be seen directly, and the effects on the "speaker's" perception of the partner is mediated by a delayed e-mail response, and it's harder yet when the "speaker" speaks only through a written manuscript distributed to unknown future readers.

Because of the frequent difficulty of perceiving the effects on one's partner, the effects of the speaker's words on the speaker's own perceptions are usually augmented by the use of imagination loop(s) that incorporate imagined listeners/readers.

Even just in one's native tongue, reading what one has just written can reveal alternate meanings that are far from those that are intended.

That's the imagination loop in action!

Guess which meanings the reader will pick. Throw in language differences, and it's a wonder that such things as international journals can exist at all.

Oh, it's not really that bad. If it were, we wouldn't get into such problems when real misunderstandings do occur. We'd be expecting them and taking measures to avoid them by using our imagination loops more carefully.

Martin