Sometime ago, I clipped “The Space In Between: the miracle of language extends from playpen to pulpit” in Woman’s Day Magazine by Unitarian Minister Vanessa Rush Southern. I, too, believe in the miracle of language. One of my major resources for teaching writing was Richard Lederer’s The Miracle of Language.
Southern, the mother, explains how she and her husband taught their daughter, beginning at age six months, sign language. She says, “No one in the family is deaf, but children have the incredible ability to sign months before they can speak and these signals came in handy for us.” Before their daughter was a year old, she would tap her tiny fingertips together twice to ask for more.
Southern, the minister, adds, “As a preacher, I’ve experienced another miracle. Sometimes in the space between what I say from the pulpit and what is heard in the pews, something gets added that only one person can hear. In the same sermon, one woman finds an invitation to work toward reconciliation. While a man, struggling with rage, takes away something that can help him dismantle anger.”
Lederer writes in his introduction, “We celebrate language as the most glorious of all human inventions, incomparably the finest of our achievements…Because I write and you read, we can both extend ourselves beyond the creatures we each were before I began writing and you began reading. If you are a genuine linguaphile, an authentic logolept and a certifiable verbivore, you are in for a lifetime of joy…”
And yet, there is a dark side to language. Southern concludes, “Lately, I fear that we’ve forgotten the gifts inherent in language. We’ve begun to use words as tools to salt wounds and to diminish others rather than leaning on them to bridge gaps.”
As with most substances, tangible and intangible, language can be abused, not only with vulgarities and profanities, but also with deliberate cruelness. Don’t believe the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Words can and do hurt, especially when spewed with vindictiveness and lies. It’s the same when someone constantly defends a mean comment with the phrase “just kidding.” Rarely, it is. And people who hide behind anonymity to spew hatred must be crying out for help for themselves.
Tit for tat never solved any problem; it usually escalates the difficulty. There are times when we the listener should just turn a deaf ear and not spread the lie, when we the reader close a book and refrain from recommending it.
And so I cringe whenever I hear someone defend what he or she says with the quip, “It’s just words.”
Sorry, it’s not just words. All words, even the most benign carry double meanings - both the literal dictionary definition and the connotative meaning where we, the listener or the reader, bring our own experiences to the word. What innocent word may seem harmless to me may carry years of abuse for someone else.
When we stop caring if our words offend or abase, then we diminish the whole human race. Look at the studies. When we choose to use words to belittle another, we hurt ourselves even more. Perpetual anger gnaws away from within, damaging us not only mentally and spiritually, but physically as well. Righteous indignation in protection of others has its place in society. Anger, without selfless motive, merely destroys from within.
And If you doubt that abusing language, perpetuating lies, spreading maliciousness anonymously through the Internet harms, consider this. Two of the most sought out self-help areas these days are about finding happiness and extending kindness, two conditions of the heart that will allude us forever if we try to acquire them at the expense of others.
One of the miracles of language is that it is reflective. Jesus said, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:11.
Words are as powerful as any power tool; likewise, people who use them should do so with the same proper caution as they wield their work tools. True problem solvers select their utterances carefully and always keep in mind the listener or reader. Then we see the miracle of language at work.
2021
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