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The power of language: How words shape people, culture

Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Policeman with body-worn videocamera (body-cam)

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

dice marked with letters of the alphabet

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Map showing frequency of the use of the Spanish pronoun 'vos' as opposed to 'tú' in Latin America

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky in his office

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

The power of language: we translate our thoughts into words, but words also affect the way we think

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University

Disclosure statement

Guillaume Thierry has received funding from the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council, and the Arts Council of Wales.

Bangor University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Have you ever worried in your student years or later in life that time may be starting to run out to achieve your goals? If so, would it be easier conveying this feeling to others if there was a word meaning just that? In German, there is. That feeling of panic associated with one’s opportunities appearing to run out is called Torschlusspanik .

German has a rich collection of such terms, made up of often two, three or more words connected to form a superword or compound word. Compound words are particularly powerful because they are (much) more than the sum of their parts. Torschlusspanik, for instance, is literally made of “gate”-“closing”-“panic”.

If you get to the train station a little late and see your train’s doors still open, you may have experienced a concrete form of Torschlusspanik, prompted by the characteristic beeps as the train doors are about to close. But this compound word of German is associated with more than the literal meaning. It evokes something more abstract, referring to the feeling that life is progressively shutting the door of opportunities as time goes by.

English too has many compound words. Some combine rather concrete words like “seahorse”, “butterfly”, or “turtleneck”. Others are more abstract, such as “backwards” or “whatsoever”. And of course in English too, compounds are superwords, as in German or French, since their meaning is often distinct from the meaning of its parts. A seahorse is not a horse, a butterfly is not a fly, turtles don’t wear turtlenecks, etc.

One remarkable feature of compound words is that they don’t translate well at all from one language to another, at least when it comes to translating their constituent parts literally. Who would have thought that a “carry-sheets” is a wallet – porte-feuille –, or that a “support-throat” is a bra – soutien-gorge – in French?

This begs the question of what happens when words don’t readily translate from one language to another. For instance, what happens when a native speaker of German tries to convey in English that they just had a spurt of Torschlusspanik? Naturally, they will resort to paraphrasing, that is, they will make up a narrative with examples to make their interlocutor understand what they are trying to say.

But then, this begs another, bigger question: Do people who have words that simply do not translate in another language have access to different concepts? Take the case of hiraeth for instance, a beautiful word of Welsh famous for being essentially untranslatable. Hiraeth is meant to convey the feeling associated with the bittersweet memory of missing something or someone, while being grateful of their existence.

Hiraeth is not nostalgia, it is not anguish, or frustration, or melancholy, or regret. And no, it is not homesickness, as Google translate may lead you to believe, since hiraeth also conveys the feeling one experiences when they ask someone to marry them and they are turned down, hardly a case of homesickness.

Different words, different minds?

The existence of a word in Welsh to convey this particular feeling poses a fundamental question on language–thought relationships. Asked in ancient Greece by philosophers such as Herodotus (450 BC), this question has resurfaced in the middle of the last century, under the impetus of Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf , and has become known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

Linguistic relativity is the idea that language, which most people agree originates in and expresses human thought, can feedback to thinking, influencing thought in return. So, could different words or different grammatical constructs “shape” thinking differently in speakers of different languages? Being quite intuitive, this idea has enjoyed quite of bit of success in popular culture, lately appearing in a rather provocative form in the science fiction movie Arrival.

Although the idea is intuitive for some, exaggerated claims have been made about the extent of vocabulary diversity in some languages. Exaggerations have enticed illustrious linguists to write satirical essays such as “ the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax ”, where Geoff Pullum denounces the fantasy about the number of words used by Eskimos to refer to snow. However, whatever the actual number of words for snow in Eskimo, Pullum’s pamphlet fails to address an important question: what do we actually know about Eskimos’ perception of snow?

No matter how vitriolic critics of the linguistic relativity hypothesis may be, experimental research seeking scientific evidence for the existence of differences between speakers of different languages has started accumulating at a steady pace. For instance, Panos Athanasopoulos at Lancaster University, has made striking observations that having particular words to distinguish colour categories goes hand-in-hand with appreciating colour contrasts . So, he points out, native speakers of Greek, who have distinct basic colour terms for light and dark blue ( ghalazio and ble respectively) tend to consider corresponding shades of blue as more dissimilar than native speaker of English, who use the same basic term “blue” to describe them.

But scholars including Steven Pinker at Harvard are unimpressed, arguing that such effects are trivial and uninteresting, because individuals engaged in experiments are likely to use language in their head when making judgements about colours – so their behaviour is superficially influenced by language, while everyone sees the world in the same way.

To progress in this debate , I believe we need to get closer to the human brain, by measuring perception more directly, preferably within the small fraction of time preceding mental access to language. This is now possible, thanks to neuroscientific methods and – incredibly – early results lean in favour of Sapir and Whorf’s intuition.

So, yes, like it or not, it may well be that having different words means having differently structured minds. But then, given that every mind on earth is unique and distinct, this is not really a game changer.

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Language and power.

Sik Hung Ng Sik Hung Ng Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China
and Fei Deng Fei Deng School of Foreign Studies, South China Agricultural University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.436
Published online: 22 August 2017

Five dynamic language–power relationships in communication have emerged from critical language studies, sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and the social psychology of language and communication. Two of them stem from preexisting powers behind language that it reveals and reflects, thereby transferring the extralinguistic powers to the communication context. Such powers exist at both the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, the power behind language is a speaker’s possession of a weapon, money, high social status, or other attractive personal qualities—by revealing them in convincing language, the speaker influences the hearer. At the macro level, the power behind language is the collective power (ethnolinguistic vitality) of the communities that speak the language. The dominance of English as a global language and international lingua franca, for example, has less to do with its linguistic quality and more to do with the ethnolinguistic vitality of English-speakers worldwide that it reflects. The other three language–power relationships refer to the powers of language that are based on a language’s communicative versatility and its broad range of cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions in meaning-making, social interaction, and language policies. Such language powers include, first, the power of language to maintain existing dominance in legal, sexist, racist, and ageist discourses that favor particular groups of language users over others. Another language power is its immense impact on national unity and discord. The third language power is its ability to create influence through single words (e.g., metaphors), oratories, conversations and narratives in political campaigns, emergence of leaders, terrorist narratives, and so forth.

power behind language
power of language
intergroup communication
World Englishes
oratorical power
conversational power
leader emergence
al-Qaeda narrative
social identity approach

Introduction

Language is for communication and power.

Language is a natural human system of conventionalized symbols that have understood meanings. Through it humans express and communicate their private thoughts and feelings as well as enact various social functions. The social functions include co-constructing social reality between and among individuals, performing and coordinating social actions such as conversing, arguing, cheating, and telling people what they should or should not do. Language is also a public marker of ethnolinguistic, national, or religious identity, so strong that people are willing to go to war for its defense, just as they would defend other markers of social identity, such as their national flag. These cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions make language a fundamental medium of human communication. Language is also a versatile communication medium, often and widely used in tandem with music, pictures, and actions to amplify its power. Silence, too, adds to the force of speech when it is used strategically to speak louder than words. The wide range of language functions and its versatility combine to make language powerful. Even so, this is only one part of what is in fact a dynamic relationship between language and power. The other part is that there is preexisting power behind language which it reveals and reflects, thereby transferring extralinguistic power to the communication context. It is thus important to delineate the language–power relationships and their implications for human communication.

This chapter provides a systematic account of the dynamic interrelationships between language and power, not comprehensively for lack of space, but sufficiently focused so as to align with the intergroup communication theme of the present volume. The term “intergroup communication” will be used herein to refer to an intergroup perspective on communication, which stresses intergroup processes underlying communication and is not restricted to any particular form of intergroup communication such as interethnic or intergender communication, important though they are. It echoes the pioneering attempts to develop an intergroup perspective on the social psychology of language and communication behavior made by pioneers drawn from communication, social psychology, and cognate fields (see Harwood et al., 2005 ). This intergroup perspective has fostered the development of intergroup communication as a discipline distinct from and complementing the discipline of interpersonal communication. One of its insights is that apparently interpersonal communication is in fact dynamically intergroup (Dragojevic & Giles, 2014 ). For this and other reasons, an intergroup perspective on language and communication behavior has proved surprisingly useful in revealing intergroup processes in health communication (Jones & Watson, 2012 ), media communication (Harwood & Roy, 2005 ), and communication in a variety of organizational contexts (Giles, 2012 ).

The major theoretical foundation that has underpinned the intergroup perspective is social identity theory (Tajfel, 1982 ), which continues to service the field as a metatheory (Abrams & Hogg, 2004 ) alongside relatively more specialized theories such as ethnolinguistic identity theory (Harwood et al., 1994 ), communication accommodation theory (Palomares et al., 2016 ), and self-categorization theory applied to intergroup communication (Reid et al., 2005 ). Against this backdrop, this chapter will be less concerned with any particular social category of intergroup communication or variant of social identity theory, and more with developing a conceptual framework of looking at the language–power relationships and their implications for understanding intergroup communication. Readers interested in an intra- or interpersonal perspective may refer to the volume edited by Holtgraves ( 2014a ).

Conceptual Approaches to Power

Bertrand Russell, logician cum philosopher and social activist, published a relatively little-known book on power when World War II was looming large in Europe (Russell, 2004 ). In it he asserted the fundamental importance of the concept of power in the social sciences and likened its importance to the concept of energy in the physical sciences. But unlike physical energy, which can be defined in a formula (e.g., E=MC 2 ), social power has defied any such definition. This state of affairs is not unexpected because the very nature of (social) power is elusive. Foucault ( 1979 , p. 92) has put it this way: “Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” This view is not beyond criticism but it does highlight the elusiveness of power. Power is also a value-laden concept meaning different things to different people. To functional theorists and power-wielders, power is “power to,” a responsibility to unite people and do good for all. To conflict theorists and those who are dominated, power is “power over,” which corrupts and is a source of social conflict rather than integration (Lenski, 1966 ; Sassenberg et al., 2014 ). These entrenched views surface in management–labor negotiations and political debates between government and opposition. Management and government would try to frame the negotiation in terms of “power to,” whereas labor and opposition would try to frame the same in “power over” in a clash of power discourses. The two discourses also interchange when the same speakers reverse their power relations: While in opposition, politicians adhere to “power over” rhetorics, once in government, they talk “power to.” And vice versa.

The elusive and value-laden nature of power has led to a plurality of theoretical and conceptual approaches. Five approaches that are particularly pertinent to the language–power relationships will be discussed, and briefly so because of space limitation. One approach views power in terms of structural dominance in society by groups who own and/or control the economy, the government, and other social institutions. Another approach views power as the production of intended effects by overcoming resistance that arises from objective conflict of interests or from psychological reactance to being coerced, manipulated, or unfairly treated. A complementary approach, represented by Kurt Lewin’s field theory, takes the view that power is not the actual production of effects but the potential for doing this. It looks behind power to find out the sources or bases of this potential, which may stem from the power-wielders’ access to the means of punishment, reward, and information, as well as from their perceived expertise and legitimacy (Raven, 2008 ). A fourth approach views power in terms of the balance of control/dependence in the ongoing social exchange between two actors that takes place either in the absence or presence of third parties. It provides a structural account of power-balancing mechanisms in social networking (Emerson, 1962 ), and forms the basis for combining with symbolic interaction theory, which brings in subjective factors such as shared social cognition and affects for the analysis of power in interpersonal and intergroup negotiation (Stolte, 1987 ). The fifth, social identity approach digs behind the social exchange account, which has started from control/dependence as a given but has left it unexplained, to propose a three-process model of power emergence (Turner, 2005 ). According to this model, it is psychological group formation and associated group-based social identity that produce influence; influence then cumulates to form the basis of power, which in turn leads to the control of resources.

Common to the five approaches above is the recognition that power is dynamic in its usage and can transform from one form of power to another. Lukes ( 2005 ) has attempted to articulate three different forms or faces of power called “dimensions.” The first, behavioral dimension of power refers to decision-making power that is manifest in the open contest for dominance in situations of objective conflict of interests. Non-decision-making power, the second dimension, is power behind the scene. It involves the mobilization of organizational bias (e.g., agenda fixing) to keep conflict of interests from surfacing to become public issues and to deprive oppositions of a communication platform to raise their voices, thereby limiting the scope of decision-making to only “safe” issues that would not challenge the interests of the power-wielder. The third dimension is ideological and works by socializing people’s needs and values so that they want the wants and do the things wanted by the power-wielders, willingly as their own. Conflict of interests, opposition, and resistance would be absent from this form of power, not because they have been maneuvered out of the contest as in the case of non-decision-making power, but because the people who are subject to power are no longer aware of any conflict of interest in the power relationship, which may otherwise ferment opposition and resistance. Power in this form can be exercised without the application of coercion or reward, and without arousing perceived manipulation or conflict of interests.

Language–Power Relationships

As indicated in the chapter title, discussion will focus on the language–power relationships, and not on language alone or power alone, in intergroup communication. It draws from all the five approaches to power and can be grouped for discussion under the power behind language and the power of language. In the former, language is viewed as having no power of its own and yet can produce influence and control by revealing the power behind the speaker. Language also reflects the collective/historical power of the language community that uses it. In the case of modern English, its preeminent status as a global language and international lingua franca has shaped the communication between native and nonnative English speakers because of the power of the English-speaking world that it reflects, rather than because of its linguistic superiority. In both cases, language provides a widely used conventional means to transfer extralinguistic power to the communication context. Research on the power of language takes the view that language has power of its own. This power allows a language to maintain the power behind it, unite or divide a nation, and create influence.

In Figure 1 we have grouped the five language–power relationships into five boxes. Note that the boundary between any two boxes is not meant to be rigid but permeable. For example, by revealing the power behind a message (box 1), a message can create influence (box 5). As another example, language does not passively reflect the power of the language community that uses it (box 2), but also, through its spread to other language communities, generates power to maintain its preeminence among languages (box 3). This expansive process of language power can be seen in the rise of English to global language status. A similar expansive process also applies to a particular language style that first reflects the power of the language subcommunity who uses the style, and then, through its common acceptance and usage by other subcommunities in the country, maintains the power of the subcommunity concerned. A prime example of this type of expansive process is linguistic sexism, which reflects preexisting male dominance in society and then, through its common usage by both sexes, contributes to the maintenance of male dominance. Other examples are linguistic racism and the language style of the legal profession, each of which, like linguistic sexism and the preeminence of the English language worldwide, has considerable impact on individuals and society at large.

Space precludes a full discussion of all five language–power relationships. Instead, some of them will warrant only a brief mention, whereas others will be presented in greater detail. The complexity of the language–power relations and their cross-disciplinary ramifications will be evident in the multiple sets of interrelated literatures that we cite from. These include the social psychology of language and communication, critical language studies (Fairclough, 1989 ), sociolinguistics (Kachru, 1992 ), and conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974 ).

Figure 1. Power behind language and power of language.

Power Behind Language

Language reveals power.

When negotiating with police, a gang may issue the threatening message, “Meet our demands, or we will shoot the hostages!” The threatening message may succeed in coercing the police to submit; its power, however, is more apparent than real because it is based on the guns gangsters posses. The message merely reveals the power of a weapon in their possession. Apart from revealing power, the gangsters may also cheat. As long as the message comes across as credible and convincing enough to arouse overwhelming fear, it would allow them to get away with their demands without actually possessing any weapon. In this case, language is used to produce an intended effect despite resistance by deceptively revealing a nonexisting power base and planting it in the mind of the message recipient. The literature on linguistic deception illustrates the widespread deceptive use of language-reveals-power to produce intended effects despite resistance (Robinson, 1996 ).

Language Reflects Power

Ethnolinguistic vitality.

The language that a person uses reflects the language community’s power. A useful way to think about a language community’s linguistic power is through the ethnolinguistic vitality model (Bourhis et al., 1981 ; Harwood et al., 1994 ). Language communities in a country vary in absolute size overall and, just as important, a relative numeric concentration in particular regions. Francophone Canadians, though fewer than Anglophone Canadians overall, are concentrated in Quebec to give them the power of numbers there. Similarly, ethnic minorities in mainland China have considerable power of numbers in those autonomous regions where they are concentrated, such as Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Collectively, these factors form the demographic base of the language community’s ethnolinguistic vitality, an index of the community’s relative linguistic dominance. Another base of ethnolinguistic vitality is institutional representations of the language community in government, legislatures, education, religion, the media, and so forth, which afford its members institutional leadership, influence, and control. Such institutional representation is often reinforced by a language policy that installs the language as the nation’s sole official language. The third base of ethnolinguistic vitality comprises sociohistorical and cultural status of the language community inside the nation and internationally. In short, the dominant language of a nation is one that comes from and reflects the high ethnolinguistic vitality of its language community.

An important finding of ethnolinguistic vitality research is that it is perceived vitality, and not so much its objective demographic-institutional-cultural strengths, that influences language behavior in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Interestingly, the visibility and salience of languages shown on public and commercial signs, referred to as the “linguistic landscape,” serve important informational and symbolic functions as a marker of their relative vitality, which in turn affects the use of in-group language in institutional settings (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006 ; Landry & Bourhis, 1997 ).

World Englishes and Lingua Franca English

Another field of research on the power behind and reflected in language is “World Englishes.” At the height of the British Empire English spread on the back of the Industrial Revolution and through large-scale migrations of Britons to the “New World,” which has since become the core of an “inner circle” of traditional native English-speaking nations now led by the United States (Kachru, 1992 ). The emergent wealth and power of these nations has maintained English despite the decline of the British Empire after World War II. In the post-War era, English has become internationalized with the support of an “outer circle” nations and, later, through its spread to “expanding circle” nations. Outer circle nations are made up mostly of former British colonies such as India, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In compliance with colonial language policies that institutionalized English as the new colonial national language, a sizeable proportion of the colonial populations has learned and continued using English over generations, thereby vastly increasing the number of English speakers over and above those in the inner circle nations. The expanding circle encompasses nations where English has played no historical government roles, but which are keen to appropriate English as the preeminent foreign language for local purposes such as national development, internationalization of higher education, and participation in globalization (e.g., China, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Israel, and continental Europe).

English is becoming a global language with official or special status in at least 75 countries (British Council, n.d. ). It is also the language choice in international organizations and companies, as well as academia, and is commonly used in trade, international mass media, and entertainment, and over the Internet as the main source of information. English native speakers can now follow the worldwide English language track to find jobs overseas without having to learn the local language and may instead enjoy a competitive language advantage where the job requires English proficiency. This situation is a far cry from the colonial era when similar advantages had to come under political patronage. Alongside English native speakers who work overseas benefitting from the preeminence of English over other languages, a new phenomenon of outsourcing international call centers away from the United Kingdom and the United States has emerged (Friginal, 2007 ). Callers can find the information or help they need from people stationed in remote places such as India or the Philippines where English has penetrated.

As English spreads worldwide, it has also become the major international lingua franca, serving some 800 million multilinguals in Asia alone, and numerous others elsewhere (Bolton, 2008 ). The practical importance of this phenomenon and its impact on English vocabulary, grammar, and accent have led to the emergence of a new field of research called “English as a lingua franca” (Brosch, 2015 ). The twin developments of World Englishes and lingua franca English raise interesting and important research questions. A vast area of research lies in waiting.

Several lines of research suggest themselves from an intergroup communication perspective. How communicatively effective are English native speakers who are international civil servants in organizations such as the UN and WTO, where they habitually speak as if they were addressing their fellow natives without accommodating to the international audience? Another line of research is lingua franca English communication between two English nonnative speakers. Their common use of English signals a joint willingness of linguistic accommodation, motivated more by communication efficiency of getting messages across and less by concerns of their respective ethnolinguistic identities. An intergroup communication perspective, however, would sensitize researchers to social identity processes and nonaccommodation behaviors underneath lingua franca communication. For example, two nationals from two different countries, X and Y, communicating with each other in English are accommodating on the language level; at the same time they may, according to communication accommodation theory, use their respective X English and Y English for asserting their ethnolinguistic distinctiveness whilst maintaining a surface appearance of accommodation. There are other possibilities. According to a survey of attitudes toward English accents, attachment to “standard” native speaker models remains strong among nonnative English speakers in many countries (Jenkins, 2009 ). This suggests that our hypothetical X and Y may, in addition to asserting their respective Englishes, try to outperform one another in speaking with overcorrect standard English accents, not so much because they want to assert their respective ethnolinguistic identities, but because they want to project a common in-group identity for positive social comparison—“We are all English-speakers but I am a better one than you!”

Many countries in the expanding circle nations are keen to appropriate English for local purposes, encouraging their students and especially their educational elites to learn English as a foreign language. A prime example is the Learn-English Movement in China. It has affected generations of students and teachers over the past 30 years and consumed a vast amount of resources. The results are mixed. Even more disturbing, discontents and backlashes have emerged from anti-English Chinese motivated to protect the vitality and cultural values of the Chinese language (Sun et al., 2016 ). The power behind and reflected in modern English has widespread and far-reaching consequences in need of more systematic research.

Power of Language

Language maintains existing dominance.

Language maintains and reproduces existing dominance in three different ways represented respectively by the ascent of English, linguistic sexism, and legal language style. For reasons already noted, English has become a global language, an international lingua franca, and an indispensable medium for nonnative English speaking countries to participate in the globalized world. Phillipson ( 2009 ) referred to this phenomenon as “linguistic imperialism.” It is ironic that as the spread of English has increased the extent of multilingualism of non-English-speaking nations, English native speakers in the inner circle of nations have largely remained English-only. This puts pressure on the rest of the world to accommodate them in English, the widespread use of which maintains its preeminence among languages.

A language evolves and changes to adapt to socially accepted word meanings, grammatical rules, accents, and other manners of speaking. What is acceptable or unacceptable reflects common usage and hence the numerical influence of users, but also the elites’ particular language preferences and communication styles. Research on linguistic sexism has shown, for example, a man-made language such as English (there are many others) is imbued with sexist words and grammatical rules that reflect historical male dominance in society. Its uncritical usage routinely by both sexes in daily life has in turn naturalized male dominance and associated sexist inequalities (Spender, 1998 ). Similar other examples are racist (Reisigl & Wodak, 2005 ) and ageist (Ryan et al., 1995 ) language styles.

Professional languages are made by and for particular professions such as the legal profession (Danet, 1980 ; Mertz et al., 2016 ; O’Barr, 1982 ). The legal language is used not only among members of the profession, but also with the general public, who may know each and every word in a legal document but are still unable to decipher its meaning. Through its language, the legal profession maintains its professional dominance with the complicity of the general public, who submits to the use of the language and accedes to the profession’s authority in interpreting its meanings in matters relating to their legal rights and obligations. Communication between lawyers and their “clients” is not only problematic, but the public’s continual dependence on the legal language contributes to the maintenance of the dominance of the profession.

Language Unites and Divides a Nation

A nation of many peoples who, despite their diverse cultural and ethnic background, all speak in the same tongue and write in the same script would reap the benefit of the unifying power of a common language. The power of the language to unite peoples would be stronger if it has become part of their common national identity and contributed to its vitality and psychological distinctiveness. Such power has often been seized upon by national leaders and intellectuals to unify their countries and serve other nationalistic purposes (Patten, 2006 ). In China, for example, Emperor Qin Shi Huang standardized the Chinese script ( hanzi ) as an important part of the reforms to unify the country after he had defeated the other states and brought the Warring States Period ( 475–221 bc ) to an end. A similar reform of language standardization was set in motion soon after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty ( ad 1644–1911 ), by simplifying some of the hanzi and promoting Putonghua as the national standard oral language. In the postcolonial part of the world, language is often used to service nationalism by restoring the official status of their indigenous language as the national language whilst retaining the colonial language or, in more radical cases of decolonization, relegating the latter to nonofficial status. Yet language is a two-edged sword: It can also divide a nation. The tension can be seen in competing claims to official-language status made by minority language communities, protest over maintenance of minority languages, language rights at schools and in courts of law, bilingual education, and outright language wars (Calvet, 1998 ; DeVotta, 2004 ).

Language Creates Influence

In this section we discuss the power of language to create influence through single words and more complex linguistic structures ranging from oratories and conversations to narratives/stories.

Power of Single Words

Learning a language empowers humans to master an elaborate system of conventions and the associations between words and their sounds on the one hand, and on the other hand, categories of objects and relations to which they refer. After mastering the referential meanings of words, a person can mentally access the objects and relations simply by hearing or reading the words. Apart from their referential meanings, words also have connotative meanings with their own social-cognitive consequences. Together, these social-cognitive functions underpin the power of single words that has been extensively studied in metaphors, which is a huge research area that crosses disciplinary boundaries and probes into the inner workings of the brain (Benedek et al., 2014 ; Landau et al., 2014 ; Marshal et al., 2007 ). The power of single words extends beyond metaphors. It can be seen in misleading words in leading questions (Loftus, 1975 ), concessive connectives that reverse expectations from real-world knowledge (Xiang & Kuperberg, 2014 ), verbs that attribute implicit causality to either verb subject or object (Hartshorne & Snedeker, 2013 ), “uncertainty terms” that hedge potentially face-threatening messages (Holtgraves, 2014b ), and abstract words that signal power (Wakslak et al., 2014 ).

The literature on the power of single words has rarely been applied to intergroup communication, with the exception of research arising from the linguistic category model (e.g., Semin & Fiedler, 1991 ). The model distinguishes among descriptive action verbs (e.g., “hits”), interpretative action verbs (e.g., “hurts”) and state verbs (e.g., “hates”), which increase in abstraction in that order. Sentences made up of abstract verbs convey more information about the protagonist, imply greater temporal and cross-situational stability, and are more difficult to disconfirm. The use of abstract language to represent a particular behavior will attribute the behavior to the protagonist rather than the situation and the resulting image of the protagonist will persist despite disconfirming information, whereas the use of concrete language will attribute the same behavior more to the situation and the resulting image of the protagonist will be easier to change. According to the linguistic intergroup bias model (Maass, 1999 ), abstract language will be used to represent positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors, whereas concrete language will be used to represent negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. The combined effects of the differential use of abstract and concrete language would, first, lead to biased attribution (explanation) of behavior privileging the in-group over the out-group, and second, perpetuate the prejudiced intergroup stereotypes. More recent research has shown that linguistic intergroup bias varies with the power differential between groups—it is stronger in high and low power groups than in equal power groups (Rubini et al., 2007 ).

Oratorical Power

A charismatic speaker may, by the sheer force of oratory, buoy up people’s hopes, convert their hearts from hatred to forgiveness, or embolden them to take up arms for a cause. One may recall moving speeches (in English) such as Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote,” Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” Mahatma Gandhi’s “Quit India,” or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.” The speech may be delivered face-to-face to an audience, or broadcast over the media. The discussion below focuses on face-to-face oratories in political meetings.

Oratorical power may be measured in terms of money donated or pledged to the speaker’s cause, or, in a religious sermon, the number of converts made. Not much research has been reported on these topics. Another measurement approach is to count the frequency of online audience responses that a speech has generated, usually but not exclusively in the form of applause. Audience applause can be measured fairly objectively in terms of frequency, length, or loudness, and collected nonobtrusively from a public recording of the meeting. Audience applause affords researchers the opportunity to explore communicative and social psychological processes that underpin some aspects of the power of rhetorical formats. Note, however, that not all incidences of audience applause are valid measures of the power of rhetoric. A valid incidence should be one that is invited by the speaker and synchronized with the flow of the speech, occurring at the appropriate time and place as indicated by the rhetorical format. Thus, an uninvited incidence of applause would not count, nor is one that is invited but has occurred “out of place” (too soon or too late). Furthermore, not all valid incidences are theoretically informative to the same degree. An isolated applause from just a handful of the audience, though valid and in the right place, has relatively little theoretical import for understanding the power of rhetoric compared to one that is made by many acting in unison as a group. When the latter occurs, it would be a clear indication of the power of rhetorically formulated speech. Such positive audience response constitutes the most direct and immediate means by which an audience can display its collective support for the speaker, something which they would not otherwise show to a speech of less power. To influence and orchestrate hundreds and thousands of people in the audience to precisely coordinate their response to applaud (and cheer) together as a group at the right time and place is no mean feat. Such a feat also influences the wider society through broadcast on television and other news and social media. The combined effect could be enormous there and then, and its downstream influence far-reaching, crossing country boarders and inspiring generations to come.

To accomplish the feat, an orator has to excite the audience to applaud, build up the excitement to a crescendo, and simultaneously cue the audience to synchronize their outburst of stored-up applause with the ongoing speech. Rhetorical formats that aid the orator to accomplish the dual functions include contrast, list, puzzle solution, headline-punchline, position-taking, and pursuit (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986 ). To illustrate, we cite the contrast and list formats.

A contrast, or antithesis, is made up of binary schemata such as “too much” and “too little.” Heritage and Greatbatch ( 1986 , p. 123) reported the following example:

Governments will argue that resources are not available to help disabled people. The fact is that too much is spent on the munitions of war, and too little is spent on the munitions of peace [italics added]. As the audience is familiar with the binary schema of “too much” and “too little” they can habitually match the second half of the contrast against the first half. This decoding process reinforces message comprehension and helps them to correctly anticipate and applaud at the completion point of the contrast. In the example quoted above, the speaker micropaused for 0.2 seconds after the second word “spent,” at which point the audience began to applaud in anticipation of the completion point of the contrast, and applauded more excitedly upon hearing “. . . on the munitions of peace.” The applause continued and lasted for 9.2 long seconds.

A list is usually made up of a series of three parallel words, phrases or clauses. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is a fine example, as is Obama’s “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day , in this election , at this defining moment , change has come to America!” (italics added) The three parts in the list echo one another, step up the argument and its corresponding excitement in the audience as they move from one part to the next. The third part projects a completion point to cue the audience to get themselves ready to display their support via applause, cheers, and so forth. In a real conversation this juncture is called a “transition-relevance place,” at which point a conversational partner (hearer) may take up a turn to speak. A skilful orator will micropause at that juncture to create a conversational space for the audience to take up their turn in applauding and cheering as a group.

As illustrated by the two examples above, speaker and audience collaborate to transform an otherwise monological speech into a quasiconversation, turning a passive audience into an active supportive “conversational” partner who, by their synchronized responses, reduces the psychological separation from the speaker and emboldens the latter’s self-confidence. Through such enjoyable and emotional participation collectively, an audience made up of formerly unconnected individuals with no strong common group identity may henceforth begin to feel “we are all one.” According to social identity theory and related theories (van Zomeren et al., 2008 ), the emergent group identity, politicized in the process, will in turn provide a social psychological base for collective social action. This process of identity making in the audience is further strengthened by the speaker’s frequent use of “we” as a first person, plural personal pronoun.

Conversational Power

A conversation is a speech exchange system in which the length and order of speaking turns have not been preassigned but require coordination on an utterance-by-utterance basis between two or more individuals. It differs from other speech exchange systems in which speaking turns have been preassigned and/or monitored by a third party, for example, job interviews and debate contests. Turn-taking, because of its centrality to conversations and the important theoretical issues that it raises for social coordination and implicit conversational conventions, has been the subject of extensive research and theorizing (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990 ; Grice, 1975 ; Sacks et al., 1974 ). Success at turn-taking is a key part of the conversational process leading to influence. A person who cannot do this is in no position to influence others in and through conversations, which are probably the most common and ubiquitous form of human social interaction. Below we discuss studies of conversational power based on conversational turns and applied to leader emergence in group and intergroup settings. These studies, as they unfold, link conversation analysis with social identity theory and expectation states theory (Berger et al., 1974 ).

A conversational turn in hand allows the speaker to influence others in two important ways. First, through current-speaker-selects-next the speaker can influence who will speak next and, indirectly, increases the probability that he or she will regain the turn after the next. A common method for selecting the next speaker is through tag questions. The current speaker (A) may direct a tag question such as “Ya know?” or “Don’t you agree?” to a particular hearer (B), which carries the illocutionary force of selecting the addressee to be the next speaker and, simultaneously, restraining others from self-selecting. The A 1 B 1 sequence of exchange has been found to have a high probability of extending into A 1 B 1 A 2 in the next round of exchange, followed by its continuation in the form of A 1 B 1 A 2 B 2 . For example, in a six-member group, the A 1 B 1 →A 1 B 1 A 2 sequence of exchange has more than 50% chance of extending to the A 1 B 1 A 2 B 2 sequence, which is well above chance level, considering that there are four other hearers who could intrude at either the A 2 or B 2 slot of turn (Stasser & Taylor, 1991 ). Thus speakership not only offers the current speaker the power to select the next speaker twice, but also to indirectly regain a turn.

Second, a turn in hand provides the speaker with an opportunity to exercise topic control. He or she can exercise non-decision-making power by changing an unfavorable or embarrassing topic to a safer one, thereby silencing or preventing it from reaching the “floor.” Conversely, he or she can exercise decision-making power by continuing or raising a topic that is favorable to self. Or the speaker can move on to talk about an innocuous topic to ease tension in the group.

Bales ( 1950 ) has studied leader emergence in groups made up of unacquainted individuals in situations where they have to bid or compete for speaking turns. Results show that individuals who talk the most have a much better chance of becoming leaders. Depending on the social orientations of their talk, they would be recognized as a task or relational leader. Subsequent research on leader emergence has shown that an even better behavioral predictor than volume of talk is the number of speaking turns. An obvious reason for this is that the volume of talk depends on the number of turns—it usually accumulates across turns, rather than being the result of a single extraordinary long turn of talk. Another reason is that more turns afford the speaker more opportunities to realize the powers of turns that have been explicated above. Group members who become leaders are the ones who can penetrate the complex, on-line conversational system to obtain a disproportionately large number of speaking turns by perfect timing at “transition-relevance places” to self-select as the next speaker or, paradoxical as it may seem, constructive interruptions (Ng et al., 1995 ).

More recent research has extended the experimental study of group leadership to intergroup contexts, where members belonging to two groups who hold opposing stances on a social or political issue interact within and also between groups. The results showed, first, that speaking turns remain important in leader emergence, but the intergroup context now generates social identity and self-categorization processes that selectively privilege particular forms of speech. What potential leaders say, and not only how many speaking turns they have gained, becomes crucial in conveying to group members that they are prototypical members of their group. Prototypical communication is enacted by adopting an accent, choosing code words, and speaking in a tone that characterize the in-group; above all, it is enacted through the content of utterances to represent or exemplify the in-group position. Such prototypical utterances that are directed successfully at the out-group correlate strongly with leader emergence (Reid & Ng, 2000 ). These out-group-directed prototypical utterances project an in-group identity that is psychologically distinctive from the out-group for in-group members to feel proud of and to rally together when debating with the out-group.

Building on these experimental results Reid and Ng ( 2003 ) developed a social identity theory of leadership to account for the emergence and maintenance of intergroup leadership, grounding it in case studies of the intergroup communication strategies that brought Ariel Sharon and John Howard to power in Israel and Australia, respectively. In a later development, the social identity account was fused with expectation states theory to explain how group processes collectively shape the behavior of in-group members to augment the prototypical communication behavior of the emergent leader (Reid & Ng, 2006 ). Specifically, when conversational influence gained through prototypical utterances culminates to form an incipient power hierarchy, group members develop expectations of who is and will be leading the group. Acting on these tacit expectations they collectively coordinate the behavior of each other to conform with the expectations by granting incipient leaders more speaking turns and supporting them with positive audience responses. In this way, group members collectively amplify the influence of incipient leaders and jointly propel them to leadership roles (see also Correll & Ridgeway, 2006 ). In short, the emergence of intergroup leaders is a joint process of what they do individually and what group members do collectively, enabled by speaking turns and mediated by social identity and expectation states processes. In a similar vein, Hogg ( 2014 ) has developed a social identity account of leadership in intergroup settings.

Narrative Power

Narratives and stories are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably. However, it is useful to distinguish a narrative from a story and from other related terms such as discourse and frames. A story is a sequence of related events in the past recounted for rhetorical or ideological purposes, whereas a narrative is a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories formed by incorporating new stories and relating them to others so as to provide an ongoing basis for interpreting events, envisioning an ideal future, and motivating and justifying collective actions (Halverson et al., 2011 ). The temporal dimension and sense of movement in a narrative also distinguish it from discourse and frames. According to Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle ( 2013 ), discourses are the raw material of communication that actors plot into a narrative, and frames are the acts of selecting and highlighting some events or issues to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and solution. Both discourse and frame lack the temporal and causal transformation of a narrative.

Pitching narratives at the suprastory level and stressing their temporal and transformational movements allows researchers to take a structurally more systemic and temporally more expansive view than traditional research on propaganda wars between nations, religions, or political systems (Halverson et al., 2011 ; Miskimmon et al., 2013 ). Schmid ( 2014 ) has provided an analysis of al-Qaeda’s “compelling narrative that authorizes its strategy, justifies its violent tactics, propagates its ideology and wins new recruits.” According to this analysis, the chief message of the narrative is “the West is at war with Islam,” a strategic communication that is fundamentally intergroup in both structure and content. The intergroup structure of al-Qaeda narrative includes the rhetorical constructions that there are a group grievance inflicted on Muslims by a Zionist–Christian alliance, a vision of the good society (under the Caliphate and sharia), and a path from grievance to the realization of the vision led by al-Qaeda in a violent jihad to eradicate Western influence in the Muslim world. The al-Qaeda narrative draws support not only from traditional Arab and Muslim cultural narratives interpreted to justify its unorthodox means (such as attacks against women and children), but also from pre-existing anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism propagated by some Arab governments, Soviet Cold War propaganda, anti-Western sermons by Muslim clerics, and the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. It is deeply embedded in culture and history, and has reached out to numerous Muslims who have emigrated to the West.

The intergroup content of al-Qaeda narrative was shown in a computer-aided content analysis of 18 representative transcripts of propaganda speeches released between 2006–2011 by al-Qaeda leaders, totaling over 66,000 words (Cohen et al., 2016 ). As part of the study, an “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization scheme was developed for mapping the content of the corpus, which revealed 19 IELEX rhetorical categories referring to either the out-group/enemy or the in-group/enemy victims. The out-group/enemy was represented by four categories such as “The enemy is extremely negative (bloodthirsty, vengeful, brainwashed, etc.)”; whereas the in-group/enemy victims were represented by more categories such as “we are entirely innocent/good/virtuous.” The content of polarized intergroup stereotypes, demonizing “them” and glorifying “us,” echoes other similar findings (Smith et al., 2008 ), as well as the general finding of intergroup stereotyping in social psychology (Yzerbyt, 2016 ).

The success of the al-Qaeda narrative has alarmed various international agencies, individual governments, think tanks, and religious groups to spend huge sums of money on developing counternarratives that are, according to Schmid ( 2014 ), largely feeble. The so-called “global war on terror” has failed in its effort to construct effective counternarratives although al-Qaeda’s finance, personnel, and infrastructure have been much weakened. Ironically, it has developed into a narrative of its own, not so much for countering external extremism, but for promoting and justifying internal nationalistic extremist policies and influencing national elections. This reactive coradicalization phenomenon is spreading (Mink, 2015 ; Pratt, 2015 ; Reicher & Haslam, 2016 ).

Discussion and Future Directions

This chapter provides a systematic framework for understanding five language–power relationships, namely, language reveals power, reflects power, maintains existing dominance, unites and divides a nation, and creates influence. The first two relationships are derived from the power behind language and the last three from the power of language. Collectively they provide a relatively comprehensible framework for understanding the relationships between language and power, and not simply for understanding language alone or power alone separated from one another. The language–power relationships are dynamically interrelated, one influencing the other, and each can draw from an array of the cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions of language. The framework is applicable to both interpersonal and intergroup contexts of communication, although for present purposes the latter has been highlighted. Among the substantive issues discussed in this chapter, English as a global language, oratorical and narrative power, and intergroup leadership stand out as particularly important for political and theoretical reasons.

In closing, we note some of the gaps that need to be filled and directions for further research. When discussing the powers of language to maintain and reflect existing dominance, we have omitted the countervailing power of language to resist or subvert existing dominance and, importantly, to create social change for the collective good. Furthermore, in this age of globalization and its discontents, English as a global language will increasingly be resented for its excessive unaccommodating power despite tangible lingua franca English benefits, and challenged by the expanding ethnolinguistic vitality of peoples who speak Arabic, Chinese, or Spanish. Internet communication is no longer predominantly in English, but is rapidly diversifying to become the modern Tower of Babel. And yet we have barely scratched the surface of these issues. Other glaring gaps include the omission of media discourse and recent developments in Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (Loring, 2016 ), as well as the lack of reference to languages other than English that may cast one or more of the language–power relationships in a different light.

One of the main themes of this chapter—that the diverse language–power relationships are dynamically interrelated—clearly points to the need for greater theoretical fertilization across cognate disciplines. Our discussion of the three powers of language (boxes 3–5 in Figure 1 ) clearly points in this direction, most notably in the case of the powers of language to create influence through single words, oratories, conversations, and narratives, but much more needs to be done. The social identity approach will continue to serve as a meta theory of intergroup communication. To the extent that intergroup communication takes place in an existing power relation and that the changes that it seeks are not simply a more positive or psychologically distinctive social identity but greater group power and a more powerful social identity, the social identity approach has to incorporate power in its application to intergroup communication.

The Power of Language

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The Power of “I”

Manipulation and coercion, vagueness and ambivalence, verbal runoff, how to use conscious language.

Language. It’s the preferred method of communication in our culture – the fuel we use to empower our desires, and to direct and align our energy. Language has immense power , and its impact depends entirely on how we wield it.

Because words are so often used automatically and unconsciously, we have learned to treat them lightly. In daily conversation , we speak the majority of our words from habit, convenience and social obligation rather than from clear intent.

If we realized the potential that language has to create and transform our lives, we would pay a great deal more attention to our utterances. We’d be as determined to get our language “in shape” as we are to master and hone our bodies.

Whether or not we realize it, we are constantly using language to evolve our ideas and beliefs into concrete reality. By becoming more aware of the impact and power of language, we can make more conscious, insightful choices about how we express ourselves and how we interpret others (see “ 5 Skills for Authentic Communication ” for strategies to deepen your connections). Consider, for example . . .

“I” is a super-charged word. When you say, “I am,” the words that follow speak volumes – to yourself and others – about how you define yourself.

“I have, I choose, I love, I enjoy, I can, I will” are also words of strong intent. When we feel powerful, we naturally employ these kinds of “I” statements. When we feel less powerful or fear that our power will create conflict , we tend to water down our words, either by avoiding “I,” by saying “I don’t know” or “I am not sure,” or by following “I” with other ambivalent, unclear statements.

“I think I can,” for example, doesn’t have much power compared with “I know I can” or “I can” or “I will.” Neither does “I guess so” – a red flag to your listener that even if you agree to something, your heart will not be in it. “I can’t” is a strong statement of victimization, implying that circumstances outside of your control are running things, and you have no power to change them.

Another common phrase – “I want” – tends to distance us from the things we yearn for rather than bringing them closer. “Want” means “to desire without having.” So, by establishing ourselves in a state of “want,” we set ourselves up to forever pine for something we accept as out of reach. (Learn how to observe – and calm – the endless tide of want by reading “ The Wanting Mind “.)

Substituting “I have” for “I want” is a good way of projecting ourselves mentally into the realm of having and can also make us aware of all the unconscious reasons why we do not yet have the thing we are wanting. Practice using “I have” or “I choose” instead of “I want” and see what kinds of reactions you observe in yourself.

So much of the way we present our ideas has to do with what we expect in return. If we are afraid our idea or request will be rejected, we may use language that is confusing and indirect. In this way, we have a chance of “snaring” someone into agreeing they don’t quite understand.

For example, rather than saying “I would like some help organizing my studio on Saturday – would you be willing to help me?” we might say, “What are you doing on Saturday?” After finding out our listener isn’t busy, we might sigh, “I just feel so overwhelmed by my life these days. I have so much to do and not time to do it, and I am just sick of struggling to do everything by myself.”

Eager to stop this flow of despair, our friends may “offer” to help, yet some part of them may be resentful that they were not presented a clear request and the opportunity to make a straightforward choice.

Using language to manipulate is costly in terms of energy. Using direct and honest language frees up that energy to be more playful and present with those you love . Practice asking for what you need in a more direct manner. You may be surprised at the level of fun and enthusiasm that returns to your relationships . (Learn more at “ Speaking Your Truth “.)

When we utter committed and direct statements, we know we will be expected to follow through on them. So we sometimes devise very subtle ways of sending messages about whether we are really willing to do what we say, or whether our listener can expect us to bail out of our agreements.

“I’ll try” is a perfect example. If I tell someone “I’ll try,” I may be subtly sending the message that I have given myself a choice about completion, or that it won’t be my fault if I don’t get it done. Essentially, this phrase tells your listener that you are giving yourself permission to fail. It may also be a covert way of guilt-tripping your listener into accepting a less-than-wholehearted commitment or an eventual refusal.

“I’ll try” can also be designed to let someone know you have the power to either withhold your consent of “graciously” bestow it. “I’ll try” may come out when we are looking for recognition that we consent to share our precious energy and time , and that our effort is worthy of appreciation. It may also signal that we are overwhelmed but still willing to make room for the request.

On the other hand, in some cases “I’ll try” is fair warning that a person will not try. So how can we tell what someone means when they say “I’ll try” or “I guess” (or that mother of all ambivalencies: “whatever”)? Words and phrases mean different things to different people. Depending on our own filters and circumstances, we may hear any of these words as eager, open, resentful or downright hostile, and in fact their intent can vary enormously from speaker to speaker.

When in doubt, your best option is to ask for clarification. You can also try the “ active listening method ,” in which you play back to the speaker what you’ve interpreted from her communication, even if that understanding is vague: “So what I hear you saying is that you may not make it on Monday.” Whether she corrects or confirms your impression, you have a better idea of where she stands.

If you find yourself speaking with vague and general language, take a moment to ask yourself how you can get your message across simply, directly and with conviction. If you are afraid of offending someone or appearing hard or challenging, you may be unconsciously diffusing your words to be more acceptable to others. Do some soul-searching to assess whether your need to me accepted is overriding your ability to own your ideas and assert your own power.

Generally, the more words you use to say something, the less power those words have. Feel the difference between a 12-word sentence and a five-word sentence. Practice using as few words as possible to get your message across. People who ramble, or who just like to hear themselves speak, get boring very quickly. If you find yourself in a conversational lull or realize you have nothing to say, graciously accept the silence, simply listening to it and to whatever comes next.

As you become more comfortable with silence, more comfortable being powerful and more conscious of your word choices , your language will reflect your increased conviction and commitment. When you no longer waste words by using them as “filler,” the words you do speak will have more power behind them . Be willing to speak your desired outcomes and state what is true to you. You will quickly discover what a powerful and transformative ally language can be.

According to Robert Tennyson Stevens, founder of Mastery Systems and the creator of a personal-development method called Conscious Languaging, our choice of language can either hamper or enhance our ability to create the experiences of our choosing.

“Language is our fundamental software,” explains Stevens. “It is the operating system that supports our thoughts and actions.”

Because our beliefs and behaviors are heavily influenced by our personal language “programs,” suggests Stevens, by consciously monitoring and choosing our language, we can effectively reprogram our lives. By “upgrading” our language choices, Stevens asserts, we can upgrade our attitudes, belief systems and life patterns.

So how does one perform such an upgrade? For those who desire guidance and coaching, Stevens offers a series of workshops and audiotapes that teach the principles of Conscious Languaging. For starters, Stevens advocates consistently adjusting one’s vocabulary and mindset in several key ways:

Remember that speaking is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Where your words lead , your mind and body will follow, so speak and think only that which you choose to have come into reality – now and continuously.

Keep your language first-person personal. Talk from your own experience and don’t say “you” when you really mean “I.”

Speak about the present moment whenever possible. Rather than recount stories about what happened before and how you felt then, focus on and say what you are experiencing now.

Be specific and direct. Don’t pollute your language by talking in circles, using conditionals (would, could, so that), taking on vague modifiers (sort of, in a way), or saying things you don’t really mean.

Speak powerfully and positively. Forgo the language limitation (I can’t, I don’t, I won’t, I want, I need) for the language of empowerment and choice (I can, I am, I will, I choose, I have, I love, I create, I enjoy).

Whenever you say the words “I am,” the words that follow are a declaration and are experienced by your subconscious self as a direct order. Statements like “I am broke,” “I’m confused” or “I’m so fat” only tend to reinforce those states. Instead, directly express how you feel about your current reality (sad, scared, hopeless), and then declare what you choose be and do instead.

This article has been updated. It originally was published on December 1, 2005.

Enrich your life by exploring our Insight department , where we offer articles featuring wisdom and introspection to enhance your well-being.

Cat Thompson is an emotional fitness expert. Learn more at www.emotionaltechnologies.com.

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Language is power: How our words reflect and affect our world

How our words reflect and affect our world. Language is a powerful tool. Discover some of the history behind that power.

This post was originally published in 2017. Many things have changed since then, as global power dynamics have evolved—but the influence of language endures.

How often do you stop to think about the ways in which words affect the world around you? Probably not very often. It’s easy to take language for granted. We see, hear and speak it constantly. We use it to communicate, to understand and to think. It’s the very basis of the complex society in which we live. And yet this immense importance often goes unnoticed, letting language blend into the background precisely as a result of its ubiquity.

Of course, those of us who work in the field of translation have no choice but to pay attention. We make our living by thinking about language—not only in terms of its structure and style, but often also on a much deeper level. Translation is more than just changing words from one language to another . It requires an understanding not only of the literal meaning of each text, but also of its cultural context, its target audience and the intentions behind it. Because of this, translating often brings to light the many ways in which the language we use reflects the world in which we live, as well as its power to influence that world.

A reflection of history

Let’s begin with a broad example. In recent centuries, English has become what many call a “global language.” Some even go so far as to predict that it’s on its way to becoming the “universal language,” meaning that one day everyone across the world will use it to communicate. When it comes to translation, it’s easy to see the traces of these trends. More and more companies, publications and media outlets are making the effort to have their content translated from various other languages to English, knowing that this will allow them to reach a wider audience or clientele.

In other words, English has power: financial power, political power and cultural power . Across the world, people who speak it often enjoy greater opportunities and options than those who don’t. Companies who utilize it are able to expand internationally to an extent that might not otherwise be possible. While we could spend hours discussing the advantages and disadvantages of this reality, the fact is that right now English is arguably the most powerful language in the world.

But why? Why English, and not Spanish, or Swahili, or Cantonese? The answer also has to do with power. Language reflects culture , and in this case the power of English reflects the power of certain countries. Until relatively recently, the United Kingdom held the reins to the world’s largest empire , with colonies scattered across the globe. Their superior industrial capacity meant that they were able to conquer new territories and impose their own cultural norms, laws, religion… and language. As a result, English found its way into nearly every corner of the earth.

Map of the British Empire, helping to explain why the English language is spoken across the globe. Source: Library of Congress

The power of language in the age of globalization

Today, of course, the UK no longer disposes of a global empire. But one of its former colonies has arguably overtaken its one-time ruler as the new world leader. The United States may not be considered an empire by traditional terms, but its enormous political, economic and technological power has given it a similar level of influence .

Editor’s note: Since 2017, the cultural power of the United States has undergone significant changes, and today some people are speculating about the decline of the American “empire.”

It doesn’t take the physical conquest of territory or the intentional imposition of English to change linguistic habits. The forces of globalization, often skewed in favor of the United States, are indirectly influencing people around the world to learn English for their own personal gain.

The power of language shouldn't be underestimated. Discover some of the history behind that power and the ways that translation can shape it.

In other words, the former power of the United Kingdom and the current power of the United States have endowed English with a power of its own, which then reinforces the global influence of the countries where it’s spoken . Whether or not it will one day become truly universal is up for debate, but there’s no denying that it’s powerful.

Every word matters

So we know that language has power on a global scale… but what about the individual level? Every word that we read in a magazine article, on a website or in a company newsletter can affect our perceptions and influence our actions. Translators have a unique perspective not only on how language reflects larger societal trends, but also on its influence on individual people. In fact, this small-scale power is something that translators must consider on a daily basis—it’s an integral part of one of the greatest challenges that we face in our work.

Professional and effective translation requires the maintenance of a precarious balance between preserving original meaning and adapting texts to suit new audiences . As translators, we have a responsibility to understand what the writer wants to communicate; not only the literal meaning of their words, but also the intentions and assumptions behind them.

However, we also have a responsibility to the reader to provide them with a text that makes sense from their own frame of reference. We must consider the preexisting knowledge and beliefs of the target audience members, who speak a different language from the original writer and therefore exist in a different linguistic and cultural context. In order to create a successful translation, we must adapt the original text to fit this new context, often changing it drastically or even removing some parts altogether.

The translator’s role

This means that translators not only have enormous responsibility, but also an incredible amount of power . The choices we make when translating have a direct impact on how each text is understood, and therefore on how it influences each individual who reads it.

Language is just one of many lenses that refracts meaning on its way from the writer to the reader, and as translators it’s our job to direct and shape this refraction. In order to do it well, we must simultaneously apprehend, adapt, alter and anticipate the meaning and effects of our words.

So next time you read a sign, scribble a note or verbalize an idea, take a moment to reflect on everything those words represent, and remember: just as the power of translation should never be underestimated, neither should the power of language itself.

You may also like: How social movements and global events are changing language

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Environment

The power of language, here’s how nature metaphors can help process feelings about climate change..

Posted August 9, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

Metaphors are an integral and ancient part of human systems of communication.
Metaphors stimulate both cognitive and emotional centers of the human brain in unique ways.
Nature metaphors can help people absorb climate change information in a more emotionally connected way.

This post was written by Beth Mark, M.D., and the Climate Committee at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry .

Metaphors have a special place in language. They get into one’s feelings and associations faster and deeper than other linguistic forms. It is now known they even have unique neurobiology in the brain , traveling in different channels of cognitive and emotional processing. It turns out metaphor represents a biological property, a capacity of minds that allows one, possibly through mirror neurons, to soak up relationships between oneself and the outside world .

Consider the following example:

“He’s gonna blow!” This warning was sounded by a 7-year-old guest at a flag football birthday party. After a controversial call, all the kids scattered away from one of their peers as if they had only seconds to escape a smoking volcano.

Their classmate (the designated volcano) stood red-faced, flailing his arms and screaming his objections to the call. However, that warning, coded in the metaphor of a volcano, effectively communicated complex information to a group of first graders. There was no need for sophisticated words like “temperament” or “emotional dysregulation.” In just three words, the metaphor captured the feeling, conveyed the danger, and motivated everyone to take appropriate action.

After the game was over, a parent who had been observing from the sidelines asked their first-grade son about the moment. The son shrugged and then said matter-of-factly, “He gets really angry about stuff like that.”

Human children can mirror volcanos. Prehistoric hominids likely made these associations unconsciously, long before they had language to describe them. However, language has likely co-opted this cognitive process as cognition and language have co-evolved.

Humans take to metaphors like fish to water—pun intended.

Human thinking, attitudes, and behavior are so structured by metaphor that the average individual may use six of them per minute. Like the proverbial fish that does not recognize it is in water, most people don’t recognize what they think and say is continuously created and imbibed from the metaphorical environment in which they live. Within minutes, one can shift from using metaphor to convey feelings (at rock bottom or over the moon) to describing tasks at work (a thorny problem versus a walk in the park).

Metaphors are also frequently called upon to explain abstract and intangible concepts. Scientists use metaphors routinely to understand and communicate scientific phenomena—from the origins of the universe ( Big Bang theory —but not the TV show) to the science of climate change ( greenhouse effect ).

While metaphors can convey a snapshot of the science in scientific communication, they are not yet used as intentionally to relay and explore the feelings (ranging from anxiety to despair) that may be evoked by the information as they could be. This is a missed opportunity. Metaphors help people better identify and appreciate both others’ and their own overwhelming feelings, and they can also affect how people gather information to solve important social problems.

Consider, for example, climate change and the accelerating pace of global warming reported by the scientific community. If one allows oneself to fully step into the riptide of grim information and predictions about climate change’s effects, it can be hard not to panic. One might find oneself frantically trying to swim against this tide of data, looking for a way out of a whirlpool of worry.

Can metaphors help contain and provide emotional support as a person grapples psychologically with both the concept of climate change as well as its impacts? Can they help capture a facet of where human beings are at as a species on the planet at this time and better intuit the inevitable transitions to come? Can metaphors help connect people more deeply to their responses to this crisis? There is literature to suggest that they can.

The metaphor of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly

Think of the soft caterpillar spinning itself a chrysalis, encasing itself in a hard, protected case. That period of quiet encasement is a time of profound change. To become the butterfly, the caterpillar must literally destroy itself, dissolving in an act of self-annihilation into a liquid substance. Paradoxically, this destructive enzymatic dissolution is the same process that turns on the genetic messaging to rebuild, developing the chrysalis into a butterfly.

Here is one useful metaphor for the radical transformations necessary to confront the climate crisis. It is necessary for human beings to tolerate a state of disorganization, of terror, during the ongoing climate crisis—just as the caterpillar instinctively senses and allows the chrysalis to hold the state of disorganization, of self-dissolution so that it can transform into something better suited to its environment and future well-being.

Just as the caterpillar instinctually enters the chrysalis phase despite imminent risks, regardless of how radically different the future may be from the present it knows, humanity must similarly learn to tolerate dramatic personal and societal changes demanded by climate change to emerge stronger and better adapted to the natural world.

The metaphor of the tidal pool

A tidal pool is a rare and unique place—both ocean and land—a place where conditions are constantly changing. As the tide goes out, the plants and animals living in the pool endure long periods exposed to sun and shore birds. As the tide comes in, crashing waves pound the pool, threatening to dislodge and destroy the tiny ecosystem.

The one constant in tidal pool living is that there are no real constants—there are times of calm and creature comforts interspersed with times of danger and challenge. To live in a tidal pool means vulnerability is the norm, and the instinct and ability to adapt to a changing environment are essential.

Human beings are currently living in a metaphorical tidal pool. Like a starfish clinging to rocks in a tidal pool, humans cling to their carbon-intensive lives with their comforts and pleasures, despite the ever more frequent crashes of disorientation and danger from natural disasters. The metaphor of the tidal pool viscerally captures the current existence consisting of waves of danger and vulnerability alongside periods of pleasure, comfort, and calm and illustrates how one might cope with this tumult.

Riding the Wave

The metaphor of “riding the wave,” a fundamental concept of Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, is a useful image to hold onto when trying to fully engage in the science and feelings about climate change.

Just as a surfer learns to read the natural motions and changes in a wave in order to stay balanced and move ahead, one can ride the wave of powerful surges of climate emotions, acknowledging them with interest and without judgment. Using this metaphor, one can imagine how to allow and let go of the strong feelings that come up when considering climate change, accepting one’s limited role in a huge natural system, and the constant ebb and flow of positive and negative states as one rides the current into the future.

Unfortunately, there are no “rules” about how to live with the feelings evoked in a time of climate change that are as established and agreed upon as the rules for flag football. Yet, just as those first graders instinctively and naturally looked to metaphor to capture the feelings, the dangers, and the action needed for the good of both individuals and the group, adults can rely similarly on metaphor.

Metaphor, a uniquely human way of thinking and feeling, is a more potent way to grasp the challenges faced during this time of changing climate and systems rather than solely dealing with this crisis in dry facts and abstractions.

Metaphors can be grounding, embodying, less intellectualized, and put our minds in closer touch with the natural world in need of repair. As in the example of “He’s gonna blow,” metaphors are a feature of human communication that can help us capture, process, and cope with a range of climate emotions, productively convey the dangers to others, and dive into meaningful actions as individuals and as communities.

Acharya S, Shukla S. Mirror neurons: Enigma of the metaphysical modular brain. J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2012 Jul;3(2):118-24. doi: 10.4103/0976-9668.101878. PMID: 23225972; PMCID: PMC3510904

Cerulo, K. A., Leschziner, V., & Shepherd, H. (2021). Rethinking culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology , 47 , 63-85.

Bowes, A., Katz, A. Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind. Mem Cogn 43, 953–963 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0508-4

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Political Science

The Power of Language

Updated 24 November 2023

Subject Political Science

Downloads 51

Category Government

When Politics Became Personal

When I first heard about political science, I thought studying the course makes people become politicians. Politics are activities associated with governance while a political subject is a people tied together with politics. I pictured myself sitting in Parliament. I have always known that politics is for politicians in leadership. I viewed politics as a game of having power over others. Just like Barnett and Duvall (2005) argues that political power is based on the constitution through discursive practices and systems of knowledge of social subjects, I believed politics is all about the laws and its enforcers. This essay shares my experiences and analysis of the events that convinced me that just like any other person, I am a political subject. The experiences changed my mind to agree that politics, either local or global influence everything and everyday life.

Growing Up in the Shadow of Crisis

As a Syrian child, I grew up knowing the problems of my country such as the refugee crisis and political instability. Even though I stayed my whole life in Paris, I was aware of the issues back at home. Today, I believe every person is a political subject and not just the politicians. Due to many negative events in Syria, the Muslim religion that was once known for peace suddenly turned into a perceived violent one. As early as the age of 10, I was aware of world politics and the events back in Syria was becoming a global issue.

Discovering the Power of People

I was naïve of these political experiences, but as I grew up, I began understanding my path towards becoming a political subject. I came to realize that the voices of the people must be heard. I borrow from Martin Luther King’s view that to raise a voice against the violence of the people in ghettos; one needs to speak to the chief purveyor of the injustices which is the government (King Jr. 1967, p. 2). Also, I believed that social change could be achieved through nonviolent means and that political ideologies that change the plight of the people could be enhanced non-violently.

Embracing Political Influence

I understand that political leaders exercise power on the citizens who are supposedly not political subjects. Political analysts are divided on whether power can be held to account or liberation from power relations can be possible or whether it even exists (Hay, 2002, p. 168). Over time, I am convinced that people can hold political power to account and access liberty in various aspects of their lives which are politically affected.

The Unheard Voices

Despite the attention that Syria gets, much attention has not been given to the people down there who are suffering the injustices. The democratic space in Syria is not helping the Syrian people. Syria experiences a regular show of election politics which is how the world observes self-proclaimed democratic governments today (Wolin, 1994, p. 43).

I believe in the power of language in becoming an important political subject. When you use a corrupted language, it overwhelms self-governing original thinking and hence helps a political determination (Orwell, 1968, p. 132). Language can be a powerful tool in politics due to the possible deceptive effect of political terms. Nonconcrete language masks dreadful and terrible concrete realities are hence becoming a political tool of justification of the unjustifiable. As a political subject, I need to understand these facts to ensure I apply honest language that reflects the realities of the Syrians.

Inspired by Community Organizing

I have lived in Paris witnessing community mobilizations that are impacting the lives of the people in the grassroots. The communities engage their political discourses by themselves. They do not alienate themselves by leaving politics to the political leaders alone. These observations have made me notice a gap that can be filled back in Syria. Despite the political realism being based on pessimism grounded on craziness and inevitable will to rule, a man is still a moral being with the purpose to hunt and ensure justice (Morgenthau, 1948, p. 79). I contend with Morgenthau’s thoughts and seek to provide that my political subjectivity will be purposed to follow justice. Various community organizations run by ordinary citizens were on the forefront to shape the political discourse of the city. The Paris experience has opened my eyes, and I feel like there is a mass amount of people in other towns doing the same.

Politics Affecting Our Lives

Also, to see such community organizations working in my town and growing up in a foreign land where I lived with different people of various cultures made me realize the need for justice for all. I used to fear racism which is a problem all over the world, and I saw the community organization protesting against it. However, I came to realize that politics affects our lifestyle be it economic or social.

Creating an Equal Society

Being a political subject, I seek a society that acknowledges the power of every individual in shaping our discourses, a community that appreciates women as equally as men. Just like Steinem fantasizes, we need a society where both men and women have equal powers including menstruation (Steinem, 1978, p. 3). In that way, no one will be above the other, and we will both work to shape our future.

Barnett, M. and Duvall, R., 2005. Power in international politics. International organization, 59(1), pp.39- 75.

Hay, C., 2002. Political analysis: a critical introduction. Macmillan International Higher Education.

King Jr, M.L., 1967. Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence. Speech, Riverside Church, New York, NY, April, 4.

Morgenthau, H.J., 1948. The twilight of international morality. Ethics, 58(2), pp.79-99.

Orwell, G., 1968. Politics and the English language. In The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell (pp. 127-140). Harcourt, Brace, Javanovich.

Steinem, G., 1978. If men could menstruate—. na.

Wolin, S.S., 1994. Fugitive democracy. Constellations, 1(1), pp.11-25.

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The power of language: we translate our thoughts into words, but words also affect the way we think

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Article contents

Introduction

Conceptual Approaches to Power

Language–Power Relationships

Power Behind Language

Language Reflects Power

World Englishes and Lingua Franca English

Power of Language

Language Unites and Divides a Nation

Language Creates Influence

Power of Single Words

Oratorical Power

Conversational Power

Narrative Power

Discussion and Future Directions

Further Reading

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Privacy Preference Center

Ready to scale your content marketing globally?

Environment

Humans take to metaphors like fish to water—pun intended.

The metaphor of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly

The metaphor of the tidal pool

Riding the Wave

The Power of Language

When Politics Became Personal

Growing Up in the Shadow of Crisis

Discovering the Power of People

Embracing Political Influence

The Unheard Voices

Inspired by Community Organizing

Politics Affecting Our Lives

Creating an Equal Society

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