Webster defines communication as being "the imparting or exchanging of information or news", and miscommunication as being "failure to communicate adequately."

Take a look at this classic comedy. You probably know it. It’s called Who’s on first? by Abbot and Costello.

Funny isn’t it? Actually, it is rather confusing at first, until "Who’s on the first" is repeated a couple of times both as question and as answer. Soon after we start finding it a funny case of miscommunication. We find it funny because we find it absurd. And we find it absurd because it makes perfect sense from each of the two persons point of view, while it is also obvious that it is a case of miscommunication.

Who is wrong? Each of them is correct from their respective point of view, and they both believe the other one does not get it. In the same time they both are wrong because we are laughing.

We regard miscommunication as something unfortunate, and when we detect it, we tend to look for who is wrong in someone else’s person. However, miscommunication is not at all rare. It is just that our expectations for what constitutes successful communication are rather low.

In the case of Abbot and Costello we quickly detect the problem because it happens at a very shallow level and because we are outsiders. But, when we are involved into the process, we do not detect it as fast.

Blaming someone else is most of the times not the best solution, because the end goal should be successful communication. What we speak makes perfect sense in the context of our thoughts, but we should remember that unfortunately we are the only ones that have full access to these thoughts. Thus, it is much healthier to consider the problem as being in the middle and just retry another form of expression.

Coming back to Abbot and Costello: Who is wrong? Who is wrong.