Language is influential. Language is manipulative.

Language is the main form of communication for the human population. It is the most prevalent way to convey messages, and communicate. However, for a means of communication with so much power, it has a lot of leeways. The beauty of the English language is that there are so many different meanings to a set of words, especially in poetry. Hence comes the idea of denotation and connotation. Although a word is just a word, it comes with baggage that impacts it’s meaning. There are so many different ways of talk that deal with various connotations, depending on the type of message the speaker would like to send.

Whenever there are such leeways, they can always be abused. Two of the seven sins of memory are bias and suggestibility, which deal with language. Especially in history, one has to judge the validity of a document, for its language may have extremely bias connotations. A persons viewpoint can always be expressed in their language, relating to the connotations of the words they use. Since history is completely based on the documents of other people’s writing, our knowledge of the truth is severely obstructed. The proof of this obstruction is the various documents for a single event. Although each person viewed the same event, their documentation could use language with extremely different connotations according to their person beliefs.

The other sin of memory that I mentioned is suggestibility, which are influenced memories. This relates to the power language has over us. If there is only one document of a certain event, we as humans accept this to be the truth. Therefore, our idea of the truth is affected by another person’s language, containing their bias connotations. The connotations of our language can turn a hero to a villain, a miracle to a tragedy, and a freedom fighter into a terrorist.  Even as depicted in Orwell’s 1984, language has a great influence over our community (hence they tried to control language in order to control the community). Connotations hold a great power that can severely affect our understanding of the truth.