The Power of Language

The Power of Language Language is to power as words are to books, with one comes the other. The use of language correctly and fluently gives the speaker power over others; this brings about a moral obligation to use the power given correctly, as well as an opportunity to help others in many different ways. Malcolm X’s autobiographical essay, “Coming to and Awareness of Language”, William Lutz’s “Doublespeak”, and Gloria Naylor’s “Meanings of a Word” are all on the subject of language and power and how that power can be used. They all talk about context, all use personal examples, all are trying to teach or inform, and all only use their own personal learning. They differ in their approaches to writing and the audiences they are trying to reach. All three of the writers talk about how language gives one power and how that power can be used. Malcolm X talks about how he needed to learn to use language because he was trying to reach men in power (X 22). He knew that for him to gain any sort of sway or compulsion over these men in power that he would have to get an education; he describes this process as “slow” and “painstaking”, also saying that he duplicated the first page of the dictionary and it took him an entire day accomplish this small task (X 23).
Gloria Naylor states that the use of the N-word by African-Americans was a way for them to take a word used to degrade them and turn it into something of a compliment or a group term for people who had broken the social norm (Naylor 127). She tells the reader how her family used the word to either commend a man for being successful in something or using it as a term to identify those who “overstepped the bounds of decency” (Naylor 127).
William Lutz asserts that doublespeak is a way to get around the meaning of a word, or a way to confuse someone (176-181). Lutz provides four distinct types of doublespeak: euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook or bureaucratese, and inflated language (176-178). He also says that