The tongue is the most powerful organ of our body.
Not only because it has 17 muscles, but for all the things that it can do.
With your tongue you can make them fall in love,
you can convince,
you can humiliate,
you can heal
and even bring somebody down.
Once, when my son was 5,pp
he got mad at me because I told him off.
It was Father's Day and he said:
"You know what? Happy NOTHING's Day."
(Laughter)
He tore me up.
He was tall as my knee and he brought me down,
like David to Goliath.
Just with his tongue.
On the other hand, a friend of mine
used to sell rings and earrings in the bars of Palermo.
He is of those "smart talkers" who can make easy compliments.
He'd go from one table to another
and girls tried the rings, and maybe one of them would say:
"How do I look with this earrings?"
And he'd look at her and say:
"You're something else."
(Laughter)
Truth is maybe the rings and the earrings weren't so nice
but what was worth there were my friend's words.
I mean, language has a really strong persuasive power.
However, sometimes it seems like we make all we can to take away that strength.
Some time ago
I used to dictate writing courses for professionals.
And the biggest mistake that I noticed
was the use of the language in autopilot.
What is this?
It is when somebody starts to specialize
in a certain field and starts to use
some kind of vocabulary, like an almost personal language.
And when they communicate with somebody
who is not that much into the subject, they fail.
I remember once I had an allergy and I went to the doctor
and they tell me:
"I'm going to prescribe you a cream,
you will apply it on the pruritic area."
"What is the pruritic area?"
"The place that itches!"
Well, he should have said that from the beginning.
That is communication.
I don't want to know where the people who didn't ask applied the cream.
So, when the doctor speaks as a doctor, a lawyer speaks as a lawyer,
the computer technician speaks as a computer technician,
and they try to communicate with each other, they can't.
They need some kind of translator to help them understand each other.
It's very important to try to adapt the message,
to make the language fit so the other understands me.
And this capacity language has of adapting and transforming
is one of the secrets of its strength.
Think that we speak Spanish,
which actually derives from spoken Latin, right?
Roman Empire disseminates all its power,
distributes that spoken Latin they used to trade,
and also to dominate I guess, and to legislate,
and in the 3rd century, Romans' Wi-Fi failed,
the Empire falls, the roads are blocked,
but that daily used Latin remains and in each isolated province
people start to speak Latin in a particular way.
As they didn't need to communicate,
or they couldn't, with the other provinces, in each place Latin derives
in a specific direction, mixed up with the conquered tongues.
That's how Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish are formed.
I mean, we speak a slang Latin.
A "fierita" Latin.
What happened?
It started to transform
like some kind of mutant virus through the ages
that spoken Latin changed from generation to generation,
adapting to the new needs
and we ended in this Spanish that keeps transforming,
because language transforms constantly.
I'll give you an example.
In my writing workshop,
sometimes I tell the participants:
"Be careful with this part of the text,
the "needle kind of jumps out" in that part of the text.
And now, people in their 20s look at me and say:
"What does "the needle jumps out" mean?"
(Laughter)
Unless they are retro and they like vinyls.
And if you update that and you say: "The CD jumps in that part."
That will last for some time now, but CDs are getting out of use.
I end up saying:
"Watch out, in that part the text kind of makes some noise."
That still works.
Or the expression "their Wi-Fi fails to connect",
it will be understood for some years until something else comes
and people don't know anymore what Wi-Fi is.
So this capacity of the language,
of being all the time adapting in order to shine,
or to call our attention,
to make us laugh,
to let us keep insulting each other as we always do,
to keep falling in love,
it's like the language sharpens all the time.
It gets renewed.
We live inside our language,
it's hard to see how much are we made of our language,
because we grew up inside a language and that language grows inside us.
And we can only see how much we are made of that language
with people that has some kind of neurological disease
like aphasia.
Aphasia is the loss of language.
When the aphasia is gradual,
we notice that the person's dictionary gets deleted little by little.
So, at first,
they want to say something but they don't remember the word,
"Pass me the..."
Later, they won't know what they want to say
because their inner dictionary is being deleted,
the internal language structures are being erased.
And that causes a gradual absence, they become absent.
They start to be like lost to themselves,
because they can't think themselves.
Language is a way we have to be in time.
For example, I know that today I am here,
yesterday I did some things, tomorrow I will do other things.
I can think myself
and language helps me to do that,
it's like a big GPS that guides me
through all my emotions and memories.
And you have your whole life inside you.
There is a verse at the end of a poem by Dylan Thomas that says:
"The ball I threw while playing in the park
has not yet reached the ground."
There is childhood floating there.
Or he hit it so hard and the ball stayed in a roof,
or he tries to say that,
that your childhood is still happening,
the child you were is still with you.
You are all your life put together,
your whole life is with you.
The little child, the teenager you were,
the one you are,
the one you want to be or you are afraid to be.
Accumulated time, that's what we are.
And the thing that let us sense that is the language.
Now.
Something really important
that I believe is the way we...
Well, let's see.
I'll tell you something.
Why do I know this?
I talk about aphasia.
It happened to my mom.
And her illness made me notice that language
is something you can't take for granted.
Language is a gift
that we have to make real, apply it, enjoy it, take care of it.
Excercise it.
And think that we are all the time crossed by speeches of others.
I mean, TV, education, family,
all the time they are trying to tell you
what you should think
and the only way to know what you do think is by saying it.
What would you say about that?
Because if you don't speak,
there's a risk that somebody will speak for you.
And to say your version of things, you don't have to be a writer.
You can do it talking to other people,
writing a journal that nobody will see.
You can write a blog, or have a twitter account, whatever.
The important thing is that it is yours.
All our brain energy can be there, in the tip of our tongue.
We can use the language as a weapon
or we can use it
like a hand that goes through the dark
to reach out to someone, to communicate.
Each of us has to discover
our own verbal power.
Nobody can do that for you.
Like a Jedi Master would say:
"May the force of language be with you".
Thank you very much.
(Applause)