¶ … Language Affects People -- the Power of Language

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, despite the fact that visual images are powerful, and the modern era is a very visual place, given the predominance of television, movies, and the Internet in terms of how people receive information and communicate with one another, language is still one of the most powerful interpersonal mediums of communication in existence today.

There are over 6,800 known languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. ("Language Dictionary," 2006, yourdictionary.com) All languages, within their own frameworks, have words with imaginative associations that can affect the listener in profound ways. Although images may be powerful, words can create an image for the listener or the reader that is more evocative than a photograph or a painting. A picture of an apple may make the fruit merely seem flat and shiny, but only an evocative description such as a "crisp, crimson apple," by using alliteration, can suggest to another person what it feels like and sounds like when a hungry individual bites into the skin of a piece of fruit.

But words, because of their power, can also become dangerous implements. Consider the phrase "family values." Families are good things, this is a generally agreed upon principle within our culture, just as it is good to have a strong sense of values.

This phrase, in the mouths of certain politicians, has become a kind of loaded term, to refer to the superiority of a specific type of family and set of values. This shows how within a culture, certain simple words can take on more resonance than their dictionary meaning might suggest.

Likewise, adjectives like 'fat' might seem more hurtful and 'loaded' with power than they should, denoting criticism rather description than unlike fat's opposite of 'skinny' which might be interpreted in a more positive fashion, even though just like 'fat,' it is also merely a description. The weight, no pun intended, of certain words within particular cultural contexts, can be awe-inspiring. Words posses both beauty to communicate as well as the danger to harm.

Works Cited

Language Dictionary." (2006). yourdictionary.com. Retrieved 22 Sept 2006 at http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages.html