Katie's Monologue: Interpersonal Communication

Katie's monologue about their relationship at the end of the movie further reinforces the fact that language, or interpersonal communication, is abstract. The definition of interpersonal communication is the exchange of information between two or more people, however, the qualitative definition is that the process of information exchange is a complex one with many dimensions and consist of more than one process in of itself. The true meaning of the sender's message is much more dependent on the delivery of the message, the body language involved, the emotions attached, non verbal cues that aids the message, the perceived perceptions of the meaning of the message, the conflict at hand, the relationship to the receiver, and the communication
climate than the actual content or literally meaning of the message. Ultimately, this means that it is more important to consider how you say something than what you say because the receiver can have a different understanding of your message than what you intended. For instance, when Katie mentions that she wants to go to Chow Fun's instead of the originally planned restaurant to tell the kids about their divorce, she is implying that she does not want to have a divorce. To an outside listener of her message, they would assume that she only primarily want to go to a different restaurant to discuss their marriage conflict when in fact Chow Fun's is a place they both previously agreed that they could not talk about their divorce at that place. Chow Fun's therefore becomes a symbolic metaphor for her desire to stay together with Ben. This example suggests that there is a deeper meaning within the literal words of a dialect.