CHAPTER 8
Verbal Messages:
Exchanging Ideas
Through Language
A language is a part of a culture, and a culture is a part of a language; the two are
intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the
significance of either language or culture.
DOUGLAS BROWN
We look around us, and are awed by the variety of several thousand languages and
dialects, expressing a multiplicity of world views, literatures, and ways of life.
DAVID CRYSTAL
Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent,
communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in
short, the essential human connection.
ASHLEY MONTAGU AND FLOYD MATSON
A
s is the case with many everyday activities, we seldom pause to appreciate the
significance and power of language for human existence and survival. Schultz
and Lavenda call attention to the importance of language in our lives when they
write,“All people use language to encode their experiences, to structure their under-
standing of the world and of themselves, and engage one another interactively.”^1
Language gives meaning to humans by allowing them to symbolize their feelings and
the world around them. That ability permits you to transmit to others your beliefs,
values, attitudes, worldviews, emotions, aspects of identity, and myriad other personal
features. In addition, as Newman writes,“Language can also pack an enormous emo-
tional wallop. Words can make us happy, sad, disgusted, or angry, or even incite us to
violence. Racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious slurs can be particularly volatile.”^2 A very
specific example of the power of words occurred when the French foreign minister
urged the international community to no longer refer to the terrorist group ISIS as
an Islamic state. His argument was simple: Those two words grant credibility to ISIS
as both Islamic and a state. The foreign minister’s point was that ISIS is neither.
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