Change Reality By Changing Language

Introducing new metaphors into the conversation may be the best way to change realities, either one’s own or those of others. Howard Gardner, the noted educational theorist who introduced the concept of multiple intelligences, has argued that the process of changing minds is that of changing “mental representations." If the language one utilizes is capable of changing one’s reality, then the introduction and appropriation of new language, new symbols, and new metaphors into the conversation may result in a change of perception by the other. This understanding of the role of language is derived from the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who explored the power of language to organize and articulate ideas. Gardner describes it such: “Later Wittgensteins saw language as creating the cognitive worlds in which we are enmeshed."

Some may dismiss this as simply another manifestation of "the power of positive thinking." But even that movement had its merits, when not overly saddled with the crass, popular versions of it. If language is not merely an articulation of ideas or things but is actually the means by which we organize those ideas or things, then we can choose by our actual words at least a bit what our reality will be. Maybe that's what God did when he spoke the world into existence.

[See Howard Gardner, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004). ]