Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Language helps to create reality. Often, humans will label their experiences. For instance, the word
“success” has different interpretations depending on your perceptions. Success to you might be a certain
type of car or a certain amount of income. However, for someone else, success might be the freedom to
do what they love or to travel to exotic places. Success might mean something different based on your
background or your culture.
Another example might be the word “intimacy.” Intimacy to one person might be something similar
to love, but to another person, it might be the psychological connection that you feel to another person.
Words can impact a person’s reality of what they believe and feel.
If a child complains that they don’t feel loved, but the parents/guardians argue that they continuously
show affection by giving hugs and doing fun shared activities, who would you believe? The child might
say that they never heard their parents/guardians say the word love, and hence, they don’t feel love. So,
when we argue that words can create a person’s reality, that is what we mean. Specific words can make
a difference in how a person will receive the message. That is why certain rhetoricians and politicians
will spend hours looking for the right word to capture the true essence of a message. A personal trainer
might be careful to use the word “overweight” as opposed to “fat,” because it just sounds drastically
different. At Disney world, they call their employees “cast members” rather than workers, because it
gives a perception that each person has a part in helping to run the show. Even on a resume, you might
select words that set you apart from the other applicants. For instance, if you were a cook, you might say
“culinary artist.” It gives the impression that you weren’t just cooking food, you were making masterpieces
with food. Words matter, and how they are used will make a difference.
When we first fall in love with someone, we will use positive adjectives to describe that person. However,
if you have fallen out of love with that person, you might use negative or neutral words to describe
that same person. Words can reflect attitudes. Some people can label one experience as pleasant and
another person can have the opposite experience. This difference is because words reflect our attitudes
about things. If a person has positive emotions towards another, they might say that that person is funny,
mature, and thrifty. However, if the person has negative feelings or attitudes towards that same person,
they might describe them has childish, old, and cheap. These words can give a connotation about how
the person perceives them.
When we think of language, it can be pretty . For example, when we say something is
“interesting,” it can be positive or negative. That is what we mean when we say that language is abstract.
Language can be very specific. You can tell someone specific things to help them better understand what
you are trying to say by using specific and concrete examples. For instance, if you say, “You are a jerk!”,
the person who receives that message might get pretty angry and wonder why you said that statement. To
be clear, it might be better to say something like, “When you slammed that door in my face this morning,
it really upset me, and I didn’t think that behavior was appropriate.” The second statement is more
descriptive.
In 1941, linguist S.I. Hayakawa created what is called the (Figure 4.2). 3 The
abstraction ladder starts abstract at the top, while the bottom rung and is very concrete. In Figure 4.2,
we’ve shown how you can go from abstract ideas (e.g., information) through various levels of more
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