Careful with words

Words are very powerful. As per Wikipedia “a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning)”.

Recently I read somewhere that researchers in a University in the US found out something interesting. The power of the word “together”. When a leader tries to increase the belonging of an employee in the group, using the word “together” helps a lot. When he/she explains a goal or a project, if he/she can manage to use the word “together” appropriately, that would increase the bonding of people and motivate them to work in the team, each one would get a feeling that he/she is not alone and there will always be somebody to assist.

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world” – Robin Williams.

However, excessive use or repetition of a word may not do good as well. One of my friends has a problem with the word “like”’. He uses that word quite often. “I wanted to come early today ‘like’, but then it started ’like’ pouring ….”- If I had asked him why he was late that day, this would be his reply with many more ‘like’s embedded within other meaningful words. 

Once I pointed out this excessive usage of his much liked word to him, which irritated me. He had a hearty laugh before replying “I am aware of this problem, I tried hard ‘like’ to correct this, but then ‘like’ this is the end result of I stopped saying ‘as if’ repeatedly similar to like. If I ‘like’ try to stop this some other word would come in place of like”! I had to like him and his reply! You never know, he might end up in using a different, harsher four letter word. Any day ‘like’ is a better word. No harm.

I had a habit of telling something honestly more often than not! Many a times my sentence would start with “honestly speaking…”.  One of my honest friends advised me “If you start your words with the qualifier “honestly” in more occasions than required then people will doubt your honesty in occasions when you don’t start your conversation that way”! I tried to start a bit less honest from that day onwards!!

Sometimes one gets nicknames because of excessive use of the same word repeatedly. I had two teachers, English teacher – “London Joseph” and Physics teacher – “Too Simple Sridharan”. 

Joseph did not have an option but to narrate about some things about his London days whenever he had to explain some poem or other. All poems were obviously in English and most of them were written by English writers referring to huge gardens or bridges, where are such things in India, he had to refer things in London which he had seen!  At least there would be one or two instances in each class where he had to start “when I was in London” – he became “London Joseph” among students. 

Sridharan had a much complex problem, any theory whether it was simple or complex, while explaining them to us he had a habit of telling “this is too simple to understand”, probably for him! 

If I look back, there was no way they could have been told about this habit. None of us would have dared to point out these habits to them. There was no provision to provide feedback in anonymous way, I am not sure whether such formal process exists even now in education sector, students giving feedback to teachers.

Words play an important role while we communicate with others. Be cautious when you use them whether it is in your mother tongue or somebody else’s.  Try to choose them appropriately, especially when you want to strike a chord with the listeners. Only a few people are good in doing that.