Culture is also a language, because every individual culture has a different relationship to sub-text. Also, as Nietzsche has pointed out, the hardest differences to bridge are those where two elements seem most similar -- most probably because we mistake similarity for sameness. This, of course, relates to my personal experience as an English-speaker, with a different historical background from other English speakers.
That which suffers the most from differences in sub-text is irony. I'm sure if we could remove irony from communication, we would have a very mechanical, useful language, but much of the substance of communication would then go missing.
Irony is produced when there is a recognized difference between cultural and social expectations and what is said. Irony is therefore fundamentally social and is based on shared cultural understandings. It's never about the individual alone, or just about his or her desires or perceptions of the world.
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