Thinking Out Loud

"The first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example." - Thomas Morell

Language is a powerful filter on our individual experience. Its part of the culture we're born into and is difficult to change. It channels our thoughts in particular directions, making it easy to think in some ways it difficult to think and others.

Our language makes fine distinctions in some areas and not in others, depending on what's important in the culture. For example, we have dozens of words for a hamburger and a multitude of different names for cars.

The world is as rich and varied as we choose to make it, and the language we inherit plays a crucial part in directing our attention to some parts of it and not others.

Our thoughts are not determined by language. While we can and do think in words, our thoughts are also a mixture of mental pictures, sounds and feelings. Knowing a language is knowing how to translate these into words.

The question we want to explore here is, what happens to our thoughts as we clothe them in language, and how faithfully are they preserved when our listeners undress them?

Language, of course, has its own ambiguities. For example, the newspaper article headed: "Census Gives Facts On Men Broken Down By Age, Sex and Occupation." Leaving these sorts of examples aside, words have different meanings to different people, because no two people have had the same experiences.

Words are anchors for sense experience, but the experience is not the reality, and the word is not the experience. Language is thus two moves from reality. To argue about the real meaning of a word is like arguing that one menu tastes better than the other because you prefer the food that is printed on it.

People who learn another language, nearly all report, a radical change in the way they think about the world.

Remember no matter what you think you are, you are always more than that!

David Martin

PS - for a one on one exploration of what NLP can do for you in your pursuit of excellence, send an email to "info at answerconcepts.com". Include your phone number and the best time to call.