Communicative Humility

Abstract This chapter is a very short conclusion that summarizes the main takeaways of the book; it also argues briefly for what is here called communicative humility. With a fuller understanding of the complexity of communication and the many ways that it can go wrong, and with an awareness of the harms associated with its failure, we have responsibilities—both as speakers and as hearers—to take more care to prevent communicative failure. This chapter also shows how one might practice communicative humility; it shows what one could do to prevent each of the three broad types of silencing identified in the book.