As someone who’s had a passion for language since I was a child, I’ve always enjoyed the nuances of language and how different people use it in different ways. While the subjectivity of language may at times be a source of miscommunication and even frustration in our personal and professional relationships, it’s also reflective of the plurality of expression, the variances in thought patterns, and the differences between cultures.

We’ve all experienced communication breakdown at some point, whether we’re traveling overseas or sitting in our hometown. I taught English to non-native speakers for about two years, first for a month on a Spanish island in the Mediterranean, then for a year in the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, and finally for around 13 months in Oman on the Arab Peninsula. The opportunities I’ve had to meet and connect with people whose language I didn’t speak and who didn’t speak mine were not only tremendously enjoyable, but also enlightening as to how humans manage to communicate across the barriers of language and culture, and how much subjectivity and context really matter when it comes to communication.

Empathy is usually used to refer to our capacity to share in another’s emotions, but empathy also has a less emotive, more language-oriented application. In a similar manner that pidgin languages are developed so that groups that don’t have a common language can communicate through simplified speech, many of us will subconsciously adopt the languages traits of our audience so that we can better communicate. The purpose of this isn’t necessarily to convey general meanings. Sometimes, we do things like adopting accents or phrases or even senses of humor to establish a contextual connection that makes others more receptive to what we’re saying.

Recently, my editor Maarit called me out on using the phrase “hit the beach” when writing for a client in land-locked Denver. Having grown up in California, the phrase came naturally to me, but from a subjective standpoint, a clear removal from the client’s personal context would have made the writing less accessible to the audience.

Similarly, I once taught a lesson on weather vocabulary to a group of adults in Oman, one of the hottest and driest countries in the world. When a student asked what the word “storm” meant, I said, without thinking too much, that a storm was “very bad weather.” Seeing their confusion, I elaborated by describing “heavy rain and wind,” to which the students responded with enthusiasm that a storm was excellent weather.

Moments like these teach us that context is always vital when expressing ourselves, and in order to communicate a message clearly, it’s important to consider where your audience is coming from, geographically and mentally.

As a content writer, I’m constantly asked to put myself in someone else’s shoes and express their message to their audience. In doing so, I’m required to mentally engage with a new set of contextual subtleties that serve to better inform the way that I write. Something as subtle as changing the spelling of color to colour or using culturally appropriate analogies is like the copywriting version of adopting foreign language traits so that others can better identify with our message.

From Adolf Hitler to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama, powerful rhetoricians have and always will hold the power to sway the world’s events. A rhetorician’s true skill, however, is not in his or her capacity to assert a belief, but in the intuitive understanding of how to convey a belief to a particular audience. Words can serve to clarify or obfuscate meaning, to bridge differences or dismantle systems, and politics and poetry alike teach us the allure of euphemism and the strength of brevity.

While our work doesn’t (yet) entail writing the President’s speeches, it does often mean representing someone’s dream. Varied as they may be, most businesses share a common belief that their work helps to make the world a better place, whether by filling the need for a service, providing a helpful product, or connecting people with a source of enjoyment. And without the right context embedded in your language, your message could be totally lost.

In short, language is a subjective medium, and context is everything. Consider yours before you put pen to paper.

Elizabeth Proctor is a writer and traveler who loves fishing, chess, camels, and the X-Files.