Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

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Keep Speaking:

Differentiating Between Talking And Speaking

Partrick Ridge, Mount Veeder Appellation, Napa Valley, California, USA

October 20, 2025


"It doesn't always have to be like this ... all we need to do is make sure we keep talking."
... Stephen Hawking
"It doesn't always have to be like this ... all we need to do is make sure we keep speaking."
... Laurence Platt
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
... Professor Albert Einstein
This essay, Keep Speaking: Differentiating Between Talking And Speaking, is the companion piece to
  1. Linguistic Acts
  2. Breakfast With The Master VIII II: Keep Talking
in that order.

It is also the twenty third entry in The Laurence Platt Dictionary: The Laurence Platt Dictionary is the companion piece to A Certain Quality Of Communication.

I am indebted to Fernando Flores who contributed material for this conversation.


For the most part, we deploy the participles "talking" and "speaking" interchangeably. Yet there are critical differences between the two. I've been inquiring into how we can best deploy the differences accurately ie with rigor, starting with the way the dictionary defines them (you could say the dictionary defines distinctions). But as we know ie as we've come to realize, writers of dictionary definitions may not take a transformed language into account when they are writing them. So I came up with a transformed definition of "speaking" which does take it into account (you could say that's me distinguishing a definition).

From the Cambridge International Dictionary, here's the entry for "talking" (I have no quarrel with this definition: it works well as a definition of "talking" in the ordinary course of life, as well as in the extraordinary course of life, and it also works as a counterpoint to the extraordinary deployment of "speaking"):

<quote>
Definition
talking

present participle
from the verb talk
to say words aloud
<unquote>

Also from the Cambridge International Dictionary, here's the definition of "speaking" (I have no quarrel with this definition in the ordinary  course of life, yet in the extraordinary course of life, it doesn't bring forth what speaking is really capable of (if you will) - it simply doesn't deliver the possibility  of speaking):

<quote>
Definition
speaking

noun
the act or skill of giving a speech at a public event
<unquote>

The quarrel I have with this definition of "speaking" is twofold. One, the Cambridge International Dictionary defines "speaking" only as a noun, yet even in a most colloquial deployment, it can be a verb. Two, this deployment of "speaking" doesn't work as a counterpoint to the ordinary deployment of "talking"):

Here then, from The Laurence Platt Dictionary, is an extraordinary  look (an entirely fresh, new reconsideration actually) of what "speaking" could really be, given one, my writing these conversations for transformation, and two, my recreating Werner's extraordinary listening for conversations for transformation:

<quote>
Definition
speaking

present participle
from the verb speak
to deploy language as action  ("I assert ...", "I aver ...", "I forgive ...", "I love ...", "I promise ...", "I thank ..." etc) ie as linguistic acts
<unquote>

The essential difference is that "talking" is talking about, reporting on, in which presence of Self is not required, and nothing new is generated. Contrast that with "speaking" in which Self is present, new possibilities are generated as linguistic acts, and the very act of speaking brings forth who we really are.


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