Babel fish

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams says: "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." Those who are acquainted with me , know how pedantic I can be about use of language, However, I am also a playwright and I know how little actual language contributes to human discourse. When I write dialogue I am only giving vague hints and signals to an actor about what a particular group of words mean. In effect, the words I set down are irrelevant and the actor needs to understand the character and context of the speaker to begin to get anywhere near what I intend as a writer. Vocal modulation becomes more important than the actual words themselves. And so it is with the everyday world. Language, in the form of words and sentences, is less important than understanding the person saying them and their context. Perhaps we would communicate in greater depth and more usefully if we concentrated, not on the words someone is using, so much as the way they are saying them.