Mariella Gattini

The most effective way to communicate with each other is through language. In any language, and in all the languages you can master.

Language reflects the culture that it contains, so each language has its own way of expressing life and perceptions. Culture influences language, and language reinforces the culture it comes from.

And it is extraordinary because it’s the product of our intellect. In other words, the more we rely on language for our inter-human communications, the more intelligent we become, because intelligence relies on the exercise of our daily exchange of perceptions, which helps us confirm or challenge our own points of view. For that very reason, the more points of view we can amass in our brain, the richer is our understanding of the world.

There is nothing wrong in the usage of a language. We are not talking about grammar here. We are talking about the natural evolution of language, therefore, everything goes when it comes to its development.

It is as if you are writing a first draft every time you express yourself. You just let it loose and go for it. Idioms and slang, everything is permitted including clichés, because, again, all of those things are part of who people, of a particular culture, are: humans in a constant evolution.

Then the Grammar Army comes to put everything into its preconceived format of norms and rules, but there is a way to coexist between free speech and grammar; we only need to use our heads.

The use of a language is both an art and a science. Some take this art to a sophisticated extreme that requires the use of smoke and mirrors. Others take this science to the extreme of analyzing it word by word, as if its etymology was everything and the core of all things.

However, this usage is both art and science, so it has to be understood as a unity, if you want to dissect it, you are making a substantial mistake, because language is alive, so if you cut it in pieces, you kill it.

Sure you can cut it in pieces and analyze it, but the results are going to be bogus, I tell you, simply because an analysis from that perspective is false from its foundation. Language needs to be tackled on the field, where things are happening right this minute.

The artistic side of language reflects our ability to adapt and add elements that improve our communication skills, or leave out those that could be in detriment of our development. The science part of it is based on our biology, in other words, it has to do with the things we are made of, which today, in the era of DNA editing, can also be modified.

Now that you know where I’m coming from, I can finally tell you what I wanted to say since the first sentence. And it has to do with the purpose of language. We use it to get closer or to create boundaries.

We come closer when we find things we have in common; elements that help each of us participate in this collective creation that becomes something universal and fundamental for everyone to firmly stand upon so that we feel reassured and joyful around others.

We come apart when we create an environment of distrust, fear, and insecurity where each of us becomes suspicious, nobody trust anyone else, and finally we feel alone, sad, isolated, and, worse, impotent. When someone uses the technique of building boundaries, their purpose is to divide and conquer, a strategy used to gain or maintain power. Divide and conquer was first associated with Gaius Julius Caesar and his military strategy that allowed him to advance and take on new territories. When people are divided they are more vulnerable to any kind of absurdities, so they become easier to manipulate into thinking that they mean nothing in their culture and that there is nothing they can do about it. What comes next is way easier for the ones behind this manipulation, because they only need to present themselves as the heroes—we’ve come to save you from yourself. And zap! You are trapped in this corrosive rhetoric.

In this country there are creators and there are destroyers. The creators have imagination, and are constantly envisioning a world of bridges and tokens of communication where everybody is invited to participate, to add to and to enrich an entire culture so that its people go on with their lives with an open mind. However, we also have the destroyers, who do not have imagination, and do not know what to do other than deny basic precepts, whether because they don’t understand them or because they are not useful in their narrow-minded rhetoric. A rhetoric of power. Therefore, what people with no imagination, who refuse to use their own intellectual abilities for good, but have ambitions of power, do? Well, it’s simple really. They destroy everything that is in their way. For them, there is no value in language save for their fabricated propaganda of division and hatred.

Despite everything, the success of this country is in the product of its people’s imagination, people who know how bad things can be elsewhere. As Representative Jamie Raskin said very eloquently in the second presidential impeachment, this country was created, in the words of Thomas Paine, as an “asylum for humanity.” He also reminded us who we are, “We the people by the people for the people.” And referring to Voltaire’s words, he said: “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” words that summarize a well-thought and extremely well-worded case for a conviction. But republican senators would have none of it. Deny, deny, deny was their strategy. The boundary they’ve created is so high that not even they are going to be able to overcome it, if one day they find themselves in the need for understanding and compassion.

Finally, language reflects who we are as human beings, but it’s also able to suggest who we want to be. We are able to go forward, despite the fact that we are the only species in this world that knows we are going to die. And yet, we have people among us who want to accelerate the process by facilitating the work of extraneous agents who are in search of our own implosion. What would Voltaire say about that, I wonder. “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” Perhaps. Or, maybe, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

Isn’t language wonderful? I hope you enjoy it every time you open your mouth to speak, or every time you think something. And as the famous thinker Jane Lynch said, paraphrasing of course, if you have half as much fun as I have with it, well, obviously, I have twice as much fun as you, every time.