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We can’t form effective goals, plans, or even conversations without them.
The language we use, in our speech and in our thoughts, is central to who we are as human beings. It is the primary tool we use to perceive, understand, and interact with the world around us. Which means our relationship to that language is the foundation upon which our entire lives are built. Do we fully understand our own words and do they truly represent the meaning we are trying to convey?
Language is the symbolic encoding of meaning. It takes an existing phenomenon, such as the energy we can feel emitted from a flame, and gives it a name. Heat. It does the same for the source, fire. For the biproduct, energy. For the concept of it spreading away from the source, emitting. For our ability to perceive it through our senses, feel. These symbolic representations, these words, then become our tools to recognize and understand the world around us and to communicate with others about it.
The mechanical aspects such as spelling, grammatical use, the sophistication of our vocabulary are important because they affect the accuracy and clarity of our attempts to communicate our meaning. But mechanical correctness does not guarantee accuracy or truth.
We can say something completely false and entirely misrepresentative of our intended meaning with…