Language is not how you communicate – it’s what you hope to communicate. It’s what you hope to bring to life. Writing is not language, but that which, in its organization, its structure, its appearance, aims to bring language to life. It’s what you are hoping others understand from what you are writing.
If we return to the unicorn analogy, language would be how you understand the unicorn – what it’s “supposed” to look or be like. Language exists completely in the what-if, in the virtual. It’s the interpretation.
So much of language is built on hope – every communication is really the communication of a hope, a wish, a risk.