Tower and Town, April 2022 (view the full edition)The Power Of WordsWords can do anything. They can bring comfort to an old friend, bring joy in the form of good news. They can bring sadness and anger in the form of bad news. Words have power. Words are power. Words can change someone's mindset. They can alter someone's belief. A simple choice of words can make all the difference. Say you have something very meaningful to say, but it comes out in the wrong tone. It's all gone. The average man speaks about 3000 words a day, and the average woman speaks about 5000 words a day, according to a study by The Guardian newspaper. This makes one thing clear. We cannot escape them. They are always around us. Imagine if on one summer day every type of speaking suddenly stopped. The world would very quickly fall into chaos. Airplanes will fall out of the sky. Medical operations would go very wrong. Construction projects would suddenly fail. Basically, the world would be doomed. The world functions with words and therefore we need words. And if the world functions with words, they become something extremely powerful. Words can change the views of entire countries and make governments topple like dominoes. The power of well-chosen words is undeniable. Educating, informing, and influence are just some things they can do. Words can evoke rich images of inner and outer emotions through different ways of communication. Words power can be expressed emotionally through poems, stories and speeches to name just a few. Words express our feelings and emotions. Words influence us so much they can make us feel happy, sad and can and will change lives. Words have the power to change the lives of millions: people who take a stand speak for others and fight for what they want. Words have the power to provoke action, calm negative emotions and can inspire change. Simply, they can do anything. Anything at all. An example of a time where words changed the world was the rise of Adolf Hitler. His government rose to control not just but Germany 40% of Europe. We know that Hitler was not a good man - he was a terrible man. But, he did manage to increase the membership of the Nazi party from 60 members to 8.5 million. Yes, he used a lot of brute force, but the main way he grew his party was from his speeches. One thing you can say is he was earnest and passionate in his views, and even more so in his speeches. One of his most famous speeches, which he gave at the Reichstag, contained extremely radical views that many people would be astounded by. However, he delivered this speech with such passion and force that the audience felt that they were almost obliged to believe and support him, and that seeing as he spoke with that much passion that he seemed to be right. He convinced others to commit atrocious acts of violence. He activated peoples' fear with the words out of his mouth. He made people believe that they were fighting for hope and to make Germany a better place to live. But, in fact, they were fighting for nothing. They were fighting from Hitler's words. He made people believe that war was the way out of misery. He once said: "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed". Frankly, he understood the power of words, and it was his biggest weapon. Eighty five million deaths in World War 2. Eighty five million, caused by the words of one man. Another speech that changed the world was Nelson Mandela's "I am prepared to die" speech. It was delivered on the 20th of April 1964. He made the speech at the Rivonia Trial in South Africa. It was there that ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system (a system where policies were upheld that segregated black people from white people). Instead of testifying, Mandela made this speech. It lasted for four hours, and, for all those hours, the court was completely spellbound. The speeches mainly focused on the struggle that black people had during apartheid; and it contained some attempts at exposing hidden strategies for domination. With all the evidence in hand, it is only too clear how powerful words are, and in turn, they must be used with the utmost amount of care. MS |