Learn to Use the Hidden Power of Words

Writers know that a single word can shift a person’s mood entirely. Do “mother” and “mom” mean the same thing? Technically, yes, but do they mean the same to you?

Words work like spotlights in that they focus a listener’s attention. When someone says, “I’m not sad at all!” take that as a hint to approach the subject from the perspective of “sadness.” Should the speaker be unhappy right now? And if they were bursting with happiness, surely they’d have said so?

People are usually good at taking hints. Most of our language has evolved in this way. Just look at the huge body of literature from this past decade; if you combed through each sentence carefully, you’d see that certain words follow each other more often than others, so it’s quite easy to guess the wider context from just half a sentence.

That’s the kind of thing that artificial intelligence does.

When people “ask” ChatGPT anything, it first reduces the question to syllables, then it checks its database for words that usually follow those syllables. As far as computer algorithms go, this isn’t anything unheard of, but the resulting text is truly spooky. ChatGPT may not understand much about the world—but it certainly sounds like it does.

Since so much is encoded in our language, we require little else as proof of intelligence. Once someone sounds like they know something, it’s usually safe to assume they understand the topic. They must have the “knowledge,” or how else could they talk about it so intelligently?

What words mean

Even if we don’t pay attention to what someone is telling us, their vocabulary and their use of language alone can provide valuable insights. Beyond their level of knowledge or expertise in certain topics, we get a sneak peek into their personality, cultural background, communication style, and emotional state.

Using this to our advantage, little tweaks can affect how we sound to others. To sound more educated, we can pay attention to our grammar and use rich vocabulary. And people who are knowledgeable in a particular field tend to use precise terminology from within that field.

Certain language patterns and preferences can offer insight into an individual’s personality traits. For example, someone who frequently uses positive words, idioms, or phrases and emphasizes opportunities is probably more optimistic and open-minded in everyday life, whereas someone going through a rough patch is more likely to use critical or negative language.

What you see is what you get

In the car show Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson is asked to write a TV commercial for a car.

“It’s a pretty car, but what they’ve done is put the engine from a canal boat in it,” says the presenter before an advertising expert starts helping him: “Instead of saying that Volkswagen ruined the car by putting a diesel engine in it, you should really be saying, ‘They’ve taken diesel and made it more exciting.’”

Reframing is not only useful for advertising creatives; it can also help people be happier in life. They can look at a situation, however dire, and reframe it to shift their perspective. The events and the facts don’t change, but the meaning ascribed to them can. For example, what may have looked like a setback before can feel more like an opportunity. Or, as start-up founders often say, “If there’s nothing to earn, there will be something to learn.”

Language is not a one-way street. Even short suggestions, no more than a single word, can change a person’s mood. The psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Milton H. Erickson viewed hypnosis as a natural state of mind. Rather than believing in an artificially induced trance, he believed in the power of the unconscious and sought to tap into its resources for personal transformation and therapeutic change.

Erickson, who died in 1980, had developed unique techniques throughout his career. The Milton Model introduced “reframing” to help people deal with depression and a visualization technique to help them achieve their goals. Individuals are encouraged to create vivid mental imagery and engage the senses to imagine what success feels like. This mental rehearsal is designed to help someone focus on their desired goals, which, in turn, should make it more likely for their goals to come true.

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It’s a subconscious thing

We speak the way we drive. Experienced drivers don’t think much about each gear shift or when to turn on the windshield wipers. These specific tasks are all subconscious, automatic movements, and the car is more like an extension of the driver’s limbs.

Most of our communication is done subconsciously. With practice and experience, we choose our words automatically, relying on the well-established neural pathways that have been reinforced over time.

This allows us to focus on the message without paying attention to linguistic details, the same way we focus on taking the right exit on the motorway—without having to think about each small adjustment to the steering wheel along the way.

But language is also a complex undertaking that involves intricate coordination within the brain. It’s a remarkable process, really, one in which our subconscious finds a way to send its own signals out into the world, and sometimes our words can tell a different story than the one we thought we were telling. In these instances, those who can take a hint might hear the exact opposite of what we wanted to say.