Do You Have the Wrong Model of How Language Works?

"The meanings of words are not in the words, they are in us." S. I. Hayakawa, 1939

Here are a pair of diagrams, the first indicating a common misconception about (spoken) language, and the other showing what is really happening.

The Container Metaphor (or as Hugh Mackay called it in his excellent 1994 work "Why Don't People Listen", the Injection Myth) is a mistaken notion of how language and meaning are related, which imagines meaning as actually being contained in words, and thus being passed from sender to receiver, like little meaning parcels.

People who believe the container metaphor also believe that if they express an idea clearly, then the only reason their receiver would misunderstand is because they weren't listening, weren't paying attention or were being deliberately obtuse. But in fact meaning does not travel between people in little word-shaped boxes... The real situation can be represented something like this:

Meaning is in us, individually, and is rebuilt in a communicative act by each participant based on their own experience. To the extent that it is important that your receiver have the same understanding as you, then it is your responsibility to assure that that has occurred, both through attention to the clarity and cohesion of your message, but more importantly by getting and actively listening to feedback to establish if the ideas you wished to convey are indeed those that the receiver has reconstructed.

Note that just asking "Do you understand?" is not enough! The receiver might very well understand (i.e. have reconstructed a coherent meaning), but they might understand something different from that which you intended! Ask, get feedback, listen... And understand that meaning is not conveyed, it is evoked and reconstructed. There is a lot of room in that process for mismatch. Good communicators are aware of this, and function in a such a way as to minimise the risk.