A little boy was once brought to the police precinct. He was found wandering around in the streets apparently lost. So a policeman asked for his name. The boy responded, “Demoñito” (little devil). Puzzled, the policeman continued asking, “Who is your father?” And the boy (or Demoñito) answered, “Satanás” (Satan).
“Your mother?”
“Bruja.” (witch)
“Where do you live?”
“Infierno (hell),” the little boy meekly replied.
The policeman was clearly puzzled by the response of the boy but he decided to ask around in the neighborhood until finally someone recognized the boy and pointed the policeman to the proper address of his house. While they were a still far off, the policeman can already hear shouting from the little boy’s parents. They were fighting. The mother shouted at her husband (the boy’s father), “Hoy, Satanás! Where is your son, the little devil (demoñito)?” And the father hollered back, “You witch (bruja)! I don’t know! I am going out, this house is Hell (infierno)!” Hearing all these, the policeman finally understood the boy’s answers.
Another story (this time a true story): A father along with his daughter would daily drop by the nearby bakery to buy fresh bread. And every time the baker would see the little girl he would smile and ask, “How is my little Miss America?” The little girl would giggle and laugh at such a compliment. Years later, when the little girl got older, she won the Miss USA title.
Words. They are powerful. They can change a life or ruin it.
The common view in analytic philosophy is that words are chiefly bearers of truth-values, they simply state facts, being "true" when they succeed and "false" when they fail in that role. But for John Langshaw Austin, the function as truth-value is but a small role that words play. They do not just represent how things are, they ask questions, give commands, make suggestions, give advice, tell jokes, make promises, even insult, persuade and intimidate. Austin turns his attention particularly to “performative utterances” or simply performatives. These words or sentences are not used to describe (hence, they have no truth-value) but when one utters one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances, it is not just to “say” something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action. He would further make three-fold distinction between different types of “speech act”: locutionary act (the act of saying something), illocutionary act (an act performed in saying something) and perlocutionary act (an act performed by saying something).
This last type (perlocutionary act) emphasizes the fact that the words we say affect others. They elicit response or reaction. We read many instances in the Bible when words have such powerful effects – when God created the world (“Let there be light . . .”) to when Jesus used words to heal, to forgive and to calm storms. As such, I cannot help but wonder on the tremendous gift that God has given mankind when he gave us the power of words. But as I reflect on man’s capacity for language, perhaps this is simply not a result of man’s rationality. Perhaps this gift was given because God trusts us to be responsible in using such power.
As I narrated in the stories above, words can have a positive or negative effect on lives depending on how we use them. But let us all be warned: negative words (when we use them to insult, hurt or discourage) have a more lasting effect than positive words. These negative words also have the tendency to be believed in more than the positive ones. It is true what they say, “A pen is mightier than a sword.” For a sword can only hurt or kill the body, but words have the potential to crush the soul. Such is the power of words.
One last story: There was an old teacher who asked his class one day to make a research in a certain poor neighborhood in the city. They were to interview 20 (one for each student) children and make a paper with their conclusion on the future prospect of each child. After a week, they submitted their report and all of them concluded that the children would have no future in society. Either they get killed early or live a life of crime and drugs. After class, the old teacher stayed behind the classroom and read each report in silence and reflection. Then he made a decision.
Some twenty years later, a new teacher found some old files which included the interviews made by the students. He decided to ask his class to follow up on the children in the report papers on their status now as grown-ups. After a week, they returned and told the teacher that all of the children became successful people (some were doctors, lawyers, even a politician). The teacher asked the students how such result came to be so opposite of the conclusions arrived at by former students years before. The students replied that when they asked each person why he/she became successful, all of the twenty interviewees started with the words. “Well, there was this old teacher who inspired me . . .”
Words. Words are powerful. They can inspire us to hope and to dream.
(Note: While browsing in the youtube.com, I came upon these clips (the other one is in spanish). They present a different approach from my article yet the message remains - words are powerful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&feature=share and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNLmrv7-6OY&feature=related )
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