The beauty of words
Apart from the social dimension, a more personal example of the value of words is in song or writing: a word, as I have shown, is uniquely able to convey someone's deepest emotions, giving us as a society the ability to connect to people, empathize and sympathize, despite likely never meeting the original writer of a word. I value this because it allows a more pleased mind at the point at which someone knows they are not alone in a feeling, or learns about, or now empathizes with, the struggles of someone they could never meet, which creates a secondary reason from which we can achieve societal change. However, while I argue that words, through multiple routes, give the ability to resist oppressors, reform and radically improve society, as well as create new concepts such as society, others may offer the argument that only through words can you get oppression. While I can point to speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the march in Washington D.C. as showing language’s value in fighting oppression, it would be easy to point to hate speech and radicalizing propaganda and say that language’s beauty is irreparably tarnished by its ability to oppress in the first place. In fairness, I would have to concede that language does allow harm and an ideology of hate to spread much faster. However, I think this argument is weak because it fails to consider, firstly, I would rather a life in a civilization, where the average person is probably living to some extent free, to the life of a hunter, who is living at nature ’ s whim, something words can uniquely overcome. However, I would also say that even if society arrives either way, then it is intuitive to think that we are revolted by oppression because it is uncommon and unacceptable, and that the positive developments and beauty language brings, such as the ability to collaborate and cure diseases, are loved for the widespread improvements in living quality they allow us. Therefore, words outweigh the potential for hatred taught through language, because more people are positively affected, and are each affected to a greater extent. Therefore, I firmly believe that words are beautiful, as they facilitate access to more variety, more depth, and more significance of knowledge. Furthermore, words in their more physical and sonic sense carry with them unique aesthetic beauty as seen in calligraphy, something seen everywhere from European, to Arabic, to Chinese cultures, showing how people have always been drawn to the often complex, layered shapes of language. However, with these shapes and sounds that make a word, comes a cultural heritage bringing further beauty. For example, the etymology of ‘ heritage ’ carries beauty because with every use, it represents the history of the English language: it is from Old French ‘ Iritage/eritage/heritage ’ , from ‘ heriter ’ , from Late Latin ‘hereditare’, which is ultimately from Latin ‘heres’, showing how through empires and trade, an Italian city has shaped the most spoken language in the world. This affects the average person as, even if they don’t real ize it, they, like the young child I mentioned, subconsciously learn. This is beautiful because culture is innately important, as it is something uniquely human. Words are also valuable as they constantly remind and preserve us of this valuable commodity of history, which is beautiful as we are pleased by the ability to transcend our human limitations, and connect to not just people around the world, but also to our ancestors. Alternatively, words convey a cultural heritage in their physical manifestations, even in a digital world. This is because at their creation, writing systems and words are influenced by the materials available. For example, many southeast Asian writing systems, as in languages such as Telugu and Odia, have a very curly script, as they were originally meant to be scratched into palm leaves, which would break if exposed to straight lines too much, whereas Norse runes are famous for straight lines carved into rock.
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