September Blog Post - Language

Growing up, I always believed that actions spoke louder than words. Well, that was until I read a sentence in the book, Communication: A Critical Cultural Introduction, written by John T. Warren and Deanna L. Fasset. The book states, “Words are more than “just words.” Words build, sustain, and challenge power and privilege. Words act” (pg. 89). In class, we discussed how powerful language can be and how the use of it can be interpreted differently. How language is used is so important because when speaking to someone of the same culture or different can be misunderstood easily.

The book gave a great example of how powerful language can be and how it can be interpreted differently. It says,

“The person next to you asks you to stop talking. This may or may not cause you to stop your behavior; you might ignore him/her and finish your conversation. But let’s imagine the teacher asks you the same thing – to stop talking during the lecture; this request might be more important, of greater value or consequence, than your peer’s request” (pg. 89).

I thought this statement was great because not only does it show how important it is used but also by who uses it. In this case, we see that if an individual, who doesn’t have high authority, uses this kind of language, than no one will listen to him/her. But if an individual, who does have high authority, uses it, than people will obviously listen to them more.This brings me to my case that i wanted to talk about.

After everything that has been going on around the United States, I thought it was only fair that I used an image that would speak to most of us. The language shown here is obviously very powerful, but it hasn’t been powerful enough because of tragedies like the Dallas riot. In this past year we have seen so much hate between African-Americans and the law enforcement, it hasn't changed. We all come from different back grounds, but we are all people and all lives matter. If you are white, Hispanic, African-American, Asian, Arabian, etc. We all matter. But we dont see that or listen to it until someone who has the power to do something about it speaks up. Granted not every situation is like that, but a majority of the ones that are, have the chance to be fixed by the language we speak. If we speak up, we can overpower anything and anyone because, words are actions and actions are done because of the words we have spoken.

 .