Why would I speak to a topic?

anonymousYou don't need to understand it that way.

Granted.

anonymousHow do you think you arrived at your understanding of any word or phrase? You learned it by immersion in a dialect.

Not necessarily, but I accept that is how I had learned the English language initially. However, I have since invested a great deal of thinking about words, and thinking of expressions to the point that when I use words I have often assumed that the recipient is going to understand what I mean according to what the words mean - but I do find instead that the more common type of person will hear a meaning that they assume I would want to say without being sufficiently patient or generous enough to actually listen to and understand the words I am speaking - which I suppose you have probably experienced enough and can understand may be the cause of a great number of problems in general.

I find therefore, that if somebody is not of a comparative quality of speech, then they are easily led to assume that what I am saying is something that they imagine me to be saying, and they will verify this by saying that imagined thing with quite different words than the ones I had used. They listen more to their presumption of meaning based on the perceived context of speech than the meaning conveyed by the words themselves, hence how a person can say they "would of done things differently" and yet while saying those exact words, there is never any mistake about the fact that what they mean to say is that they "would have done things differently". I am sure they would have used the proper words to say it too, if only they had have known! I am suspecting that ultimately, in the case of an idiom who "speaks to a topic" when what they are actually doing is speaking to a person about a topic, then it probably is happening in exactly the same way: they have heard someone use language that way, they think it's a trendy way to speak, so they begin to speak that way without giving any further thought as to what it means.

This is a thing that happens, whether or not it is the thing that is happening in this case, and it is actually a problem in communication that I believe gives a valid reason why the proposition of a fluid approach to language is an erroneous one, and why it is important therefore that dictionaries assert their authority as the definition of (thereby "defining") a language rather than merely being reporters of their observations of a culture's use of the language.

anonymous If a locution is from outside your dialect, you will not be able to analyze it using your understanding of the words. It is all in what you are used to.

Ok, I can accept that premise, and I can accept that people may be accustomed to the accepting of the phrase for no other reason than that they have heard it used and have accepted that it conveys the meaning that they assume it conveys. There is no disagreement so far in this thread that indicates anybody is misunderstanding what is being meant by the idiom, only that I am asking how it can be that in the first place, someone has thought it makes sense to speak to a topic when the thing being spoken to is not the topic, but a hearer, and the topic itself is a thing begin spoken about.

anonymous I have tried to prove that the locution exists, is of long pedigree, and is current in scholarly discourse, and to suggest that "to" gets 38 pages in a dictionary because quite probably none of us knows all its subtleties.

You have said all that, and have shown that it has been used by a number of people for several hundreds of years, which is to say that it entered the language a long time ago and has been accepted as a reliable means of expression. I am willing to accept those facts and to accept the idea that if I had of heard of the expression sooner in life, maybe I too would of accepted its use without question (at least, I may of done so until the apparent nonsense of it would of come to my attention).

What those facts don't convey, however, is how someone could possibly have thought in the first place, that by speaking about a topic they should say instead that they are speaking to the topic. You have cooperated with me in exploring the idea that the meaning of the word "to" may be to blame, but without any contraindication that my own understanding of the word as having intrinsic and inalienable qualities of the word "toward", (and now I am seeing an element of completeness in "to" that "toward" does not contain), I cannot understand how the person has first decided to say that they are speaking to the topic instead of saying that they are speaking about the topic. In order for me to accept it as being valid language, it is the understanding of the person who originally decided that it made the best sense (the authentic author's view) that matters, not so much anyone who has assumed that the meaning they are hearing in it is all that matters without understanding the meaning of what the words are saying.

If you have found a particular entry in those 38 pages of the Oxford English Dictionary that you think does bear weight in the question, I would quite like to consider it; however, in light of the definitions I have found for the word "to", I do not yet see any indication that my understanding of the word is probably responsible for the discrepancy of understanding of its meaning in the given expression.

anonymous I suggest you abandon reason and accept this new item blindly

You must be joking!

anonymous as a borrowing into your passive vocabulary and find something more important to be bugged about,

a) I do not intend to make use of a thing that I understand to be invalid. (except by accident), b) I already have more important things to be bugged about, c) I cannot help being bugged by it as long as it is a thing that bugs me. (and you can see I am trying to find a solution for that).

anonymous, something that is actually wrong.

That's Tu Quoque at this stage, AFAIC.

anonymous(Truth be told, though, I myself find it annoying when people use it in whose mouths it does not belong just to try to sound impressive.)

I'm willing to consider the idea that my experience of the expression is inauthentic and therefore tainted. Would you say that the example I gave is one of those cases that bugs you? If so, would you happen to have an example for me to consider where the expression is more authentic, less offensive or more correct in your view? Please remember that I was not able to access the examples you had referred me to at the Oxford English Dictionary. Many thanks