[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflections #47

[Dr. Hall]

From:  L. Michael Hall

Oct. 19, 2008

Meta Reflection #47

                        

 

       THE ART OF LIVING IN LANGUAGE

 

 

We live in language.   As a species of life we have no full fledge
instincts, but only "instinctoids" (Abraham Maslow).  Our instinct is to
learn and create mental models in our heads ("maps" Alfred Korzybski) is
what makes us "a semantic class of life."  Not knowing what anything "is,"
or means, or what leads to what (causation), we have to learn.  We have to
discover.  We have to formulate, conclude, and construct a model of reality.
We have to create meaning and we do so at multiple levels.

 

So we live in language as a chief inner context in our minds which then
governs what we see, what we perceive, what we feel, what we expect, etc.
With the words that we accept, absorb, and invent we live inside them so
that they govern what we are prepared to see.  If we say that something is
"terrible," horrible," "awful" so it becomes to us. 

"Criticism is horrible; I hate it.  I'm just not able to handle it when
people don't like me.  I always fall apart."

 

How's that for a toxic thought?  A toxic instruction?  A pathology-creating
hypnotic induction?  And that's just one of many, many, many that we all
face everyday of our lives.  Want more?  Here's a sick list of thoughts full
of semantic toxicity:

"Over the hill."  "I'm having a senior moment."  "I think I'm cursed when it
comes to money; nothing ever goes right for me."  "It's his fault, if he had
not made me feel insignificant and worthless, I wouldn't have given up so
easily."  "I'm alcoholic."  "Change is hard and painful."

 

By language we create our categories of reality and by an unthinking
acceptance and use of words, we experience and feel things that undermine
our effectiveness and leash our potentials.  I often tell the story of
Wendell Johnson (People in Quandries, 1946) and his chapter, "The Indians
Have No Word for it" (Chapter 17).  As a speech pathologist and stutterer
himself, Dr. Johnson studied two Native American Indian cultures (Bannock
and Shoshone Indians) and could not find anyone who stuttered.  And it so
happened that their languages had no word for "stuttering."  That idea, that
category, that experience is not punctuated by their language, so the
experience of "stuttering" didn't exist for them.  At first they didn't
understand what he was referring to.  To even communicate what he was
referring to, his associate, John Snidecor, had to demonstrate stuttering.
So when a child spoke in a non-fluent way, no one noticed.  It didn't exist.


"Speech defects were simply not recognized.  The Indian children were not
criticized or evaluated on the basis of their speech, no comments were made
about it, no issue was made of it.  In their semantic environments there
appeared to be no speech anxieties or tensions for the Indian children to
interiorize, to adopt as their own.  This, together with the absence of a
word for stuttering in the Indians' language, constitutes the only basis on
which I can at this time suggest an explanation for the fact there were no
stutterers among these Indians." (p. 443)

 

Later when Johnson found children from those groups who had been adopted by
white families he found those who did stutter.  In the new English language,
the category of stuttering did exist and so those kids raised in that
culture learned to punctuate it as something that as reality and then
learned to fear it as something dreadful.  They then began to live in the
language of stuttering.

 

For better and worse, we all live in a world of language.  When we say a
word, we call a world into being.  It's a creator power.  Genesis describes
the beginning occurring when God spoke the world into being, "And God said,
'Let there be light,' and there was light," yet we also share in that same
creative power.  As we use language, so we create our reality and then
operate within it semantically.  In our languaging, our meanings are
created.

 

Without language, we would live life moment-by-moment without any awareness
of ourselves or life itself.  We would lack "... narrative, evaluation,
comparison, and contemplation.  We would not know who we are, where we are
going, or whether or not we have gotten there-the very issues..." that make
life human and meaningful for us (Jay Efran, Michael Lukens, Robert Lukens,
Language, Structure, and Change, 1990).

"Without language, there is only 'now'-life unfolding moment by moment
without self-consciousness or meaning.  With the advent of language, an
observing 'self' is created and experience is evaluated.  Those evaluations
continuously and recursively modify what is being experienced, leading to
the self-referential quagmire that generates business for psychotherapists."
(p. 33-34)

 

So given that we live in language to this extent, then what is the art of
living in language?  How can we live with language and in language so that
it supports us and enhances our life?

 

Obviously the art begins with awareness of language.  First we need to
become mindful of our words and mindful of what we are doing with our words.
What are you doing with your words?  And, what are your words doing for you?
This is the neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic facet of language.  Language
does things to us!  Language gets into our eyes so that we see the world in
terms of our words and concepts.  Language induces us into states.  Language
gets encoded in our body, in muscle memory.  Now you know why Meta-Coaches
and Neuro-Semanticists are always asking,

"Do you hear what you're saying?"

"As you hear yourself say that and use those words, what are you aware of?"

"Hearing yourself say that, how will you start to clean up your language and
frame things in ways that support you?"

 

Once you recognize that you live your life in language and always will, the
next step is to quality control your language so that you can choose
life-enhancing and empowering ways to speak and encode things. 

"What cognitive distortions have you found in your language today?"

"How empowering is that term, concept, understanding, or belief?

"How is your language?"

"What are some of your best formulas that unleash your potentials?"

 

There's more- and that's the subject of the next Meta Reflection.

 

 

 

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L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

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