The Effects Of The Languag Language

Margaret Atwood once said "War is what happens when language fails." Atwood simply meant that if one fails to communicate effectively with each other, then that can lead to misunderstanding. It is a profound ideology that has been the topic of many continental focuses issues. Despite the fact that more than a fifth of the world’s population does speak the English language, as more and more people are migrating to new countries they are facing new problems with communication. Profoundly for those that do not speak the same language or even those who do speak the same language, but share a different culture. Then there are others who have been conquered by the English Language and have had their societies crush this domineering language. Again, despite that we have many different languages in the world, we as humans do not always possess an understanding for each other and our culture. We tend to ignore those that are very much different than us and push ourselves to view those that are weaker than us as insignificant.

“Language was not a mere string of words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning. (Ngugi WA Thiong’O, Decolonizing the Mind)” According to Thiong’O it is not the words that are said but, in the context at which they are being used in. A prime example being how we can say one thing, but our body language and underlying meaning behind our words can mean a lot of other things. We often say the words are the way we can tell a story, yet at the end of the day we know as an understanding that one can tell a story without the use of language. Even though we say that language is the center of the world, we often forget that we can communicate without using words. We often start misunderstanding without the use of language, but rather our underlying