Use language as a technology to improve the quality of your thinking

This 5 rePhrases will make you smarter.

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

― E.M. Forster

It was Neil Postman’s book Technopoly (1992) that first alerted me to the idea that language is a technology for creating, organizing, and communicating thoughts.

And it is more than that.

Marshall McLuhan realized that we shape our technologies, and our technologies shape us back. That is, the technology of language not only helps us externalize our thoughts, but it also changes the way we internalize our perceptions. Thus, the purpose of language is more than a mere communication of messages. It is a technology for improving the quality of our thinking.

As a technology, language provides affordances (i.e., makes some things easier) and imposes constraints (i.e., makes some things impossible).

For example, once we become accustomed to thinking in words, it is (unconsciously) easier to think about those things for which we have words, and very difficult to think about things for which we don’t. That’s why English is constantly adding new words — to make it easier to think about “frenemies,” or “Cyber Monday,” or “crowdfunding.”

None of these words made any sense prior to the proliferation of broadband internet access. Each neologism was invented to communicate an experience that is more complex than can be reduced to a single word or phrase. But once the experience that the new word is intended to represent becomes common, the word serves as a placeholder for the shared experience.

Having the new word changes the way we make meaning of the experience, and how we think about it.

Once we use language to communicate our thoughts, we cannot help but have language change our perceptions.

That is, our brains invent the new word to change our language, but the change in the language also changes our brain. The architecture of our language is a powerful way of both empowering our thoughts, and channeling them. In the same way, the technology of a railroad is a powerful way for speeding the transport of heavy goods, but only to the destinations to which the rails have been laid. The limitation of any language is revealed by the necessity of new words — i.e., new destinations for our thoughts.

And language is more powerful than just vocabulary. It’s not just the words and the experiences they represent that is important, it’s also the way the language is structured, punctuation, plurality of meaning (or not) and rules of grammar and spelling.

Because language is a technology for improving the quality of our thinking, the structure of language influences the structure of thinking. For example, mathematics and computer programming are also “languages.” They are not spoken, but they have their own symbols, syntax, grammar, and communicative power.

Like spoken languages, mathematics and computer programming have the power to guide thoughts, not just through the symbols, but also through the rules that govern how those symbols, commands, operators are linked together. Just like Python is one of the languages of artificial intelligence, English is one of the languages of human intelligence.

Once the rules and norms of a language are established, the cultural expectations that are consistent with that language are also established. For example, in Japanese and German, spelling and pronunciation rules are standardized and decipherable according to a consistent grammar. Even though Germans are infamous for creating both run-on sentences (with the verb at the end) and long compound words, the mechanics that govern decoding these long, complicated sentences and words are reliable and consistent.

Is it any wonder that the Germans and the Japanese build better cars than the French? Where language is complicated but reliable, so is thinking, and so are the manufactured goods.

Perhaps the earliest symbolic language is cave paintings.

In a way, cave paintings are like the original internet — the homo sapiens’ “blogs” of pre-civilization. Except, instead of painting pornography, our ancient ancestors left instruction manuals teaching their peers how to hunt. James Gleick found a more recent example of non-verbal technology/language in African talking drums (Information, 2012). The point is that there are many more “languages” than those with alphabets, and they all do more than merely communicate knowledge and information.

Language changes the way we think.

Once you understand that language changes the quality of your thinking, it behooves you to improve your language, so you can improve your thinking.

Here are some examples of how to do that.

1. Use positive phrasing.

When a parent tells their child, “Don’t forget your homework!” what the child hears is “… forget your homework!”

It takes additional cognitive effort for the human brain to identify the negative “not” in the sentence. It takes even more effort for the brain to replace what not to do with some unstated advice about what they are supposed to do.

Far better to rephrase your admonition in the positive.

“Remember your homework!” is SO much easier for the child to interpret, and gives them explicit direction on what to do.

For over a year I dated a woman who had a horrible time with this habit. As she struggled to define our relationship and her role in it, she often resorted to saying what she didn’t want. For example, I remember this exchange while we were seated next to one another on the airplane, flying to or from some exotic European city.

Me: “Will you look that up when we land?”
Her: “I’m not your secretary!”
Me: “OK, I get it. Next time I’m going on an international business trip, I’ll invite a secretary instead of you.”

She could have said, “I’d rather you looked that up yourself. When you give me errands to do, it feels like you’re treating me as a subordinate to you. I’d rather we had a relationship in which we each take care of our own errands.”

That kind of direct, self-aware communication is probably very rare, but maybe you can see how it creates a positive vision of the type of relationship she wants. The problem with her langauge was that it didn’t communicate what she was working towards, only what she was working against.

Sure enough, when I had an opportunity to go to China to lead a workshop on reorganizing knowledge for sustainability, I invited a different woman who had a better understanding of what role she wanted to play on our international adventure. At the time, she wasn’t concerned about establishing a hierarchy between us. For example, hen the participants at this prestigious workshop in China asked my new companions, “What do you do?” she replied, “I’m here with Tom.”

She didn’t cloud the issue with what she wasn’t doing. She understood what she was doing.

When it came time, she delighted in the challenge of going to Starbucks in Beijing and getting eight different coffee orders right — despite not being able to communicate a single word in Chinese. (It turns out, they didn’t know English, either. But the whole workshop table got the coffees they wanted, anyway, because this new woman is cheerful and resourceful).

My new travel date wasn’t a secretary, either. The difference was that she was willing to accept an invitation to a closer relationship based on what she does do, rather than a more distant relationship based on what she does not.

My relationship with “not” woman, despite some terrific chemistry, didn’t survive the negativity.

Your relationships probably won’t, either, because the human brain responds to positive statements much. much better than to negative.

2. Avoid making “If…” statements.

Many people will use a logical operand like “If” as an ultimatum, rather than a contingent possibility. For example, they might say “If you’re going to be a jerk about it, then I’m going to take my ball and go home!”

The problem with this is that the brain doesn’t understand the difference between imagination and reality. Once you’ve made a statement like “If you’re going to be a jerk about it… ” your brain has forgotten all about the “If…” part at the beginning of the sentence. As a consequence, what should really be a question about the future turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are two remedies.

The first is to replace the “If…” statements with “When… ,” as in, “When you’re a jerk about it, I will take my ball and go home.”

“When” is more like a promise, and less like an ultimatum. It avoids the trap of a false either/or dilemma.

“When…” is a commitment, whereas “If…” is a manipulation.

Maybe “When…” won’t work for you like it does for me. Either way, there is a second, more powerful way to overcome the “If… “ distortion.

Add “ … or …”

In computer programming, the classic logical contingency is “IF… THEN… ELSE… .” The ELSE is critical because it tells the computer what to do when the “IF… ” condition is false.

In normal, conversational English, adding “ELSE” sounds kind of awkward, but adding an “… or …” statement sounds better, and breaks out of the ultimatum-turned-self-fulfilling-prophecy trap.

For example. it is much more constructive when to rephrase the IF ultimatum as, “IF you’re going to be a jerk about it, THEN I will take my ball and go home — OR we could both play by the rules and have a wonderful time together.”

See how ending with the phrases after the “or” is a more positive, co-creative suggestion likely to lead to a closer, funner relationship?

3. Know the difference between thinking and feeling.

It comes up in conversation a lot. Someone will say, “I feel like we could have done that job a little differently.”

Except, that’s not a feeling. It’s a thought.

Feelings are things like glad, mad, sad, and afraid. I didn’t realize this myself until I read Jim McCarthy’s Software for Your Head (2002). McCarthy spent years at Microsoft working with engineers and realized that many of the programmers were so disconnected from their emotions that he invented protocols like the “glad, mad, sad, afraid” multiple-choice response to help them identify and describe their emotional state.

The reason so many people have learned to use the word “feel” to describe thoughts is that they want to avoid criticism.

Only an asshole (like me) would argue with your feelings, right? I mean, no one can tell you how to feel, can they?

So, if you feel like the contractor should have finished fixing your roof last week… well, who is to criticize you? Just because you know nothing about roofing doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to your feelings, right?

When you phrase a thought as a feeling, you are telling yourself that your thinking can’t be wrong and you close yourself off to alternative perspectives.

On the other hand, expressing real feelings (like sadness, or fear) makes us vulnerable in a different way. We’ve all had the experience as children of being shamed for our legitimate emotional expression, and we understand that our emotions can be used to manipulate or exploit us. The advantage of mislabeling thoughts as feelings is that it helps us hide our real feelings. It obscures our emotional state from others, so we can avoid the risk of shame and manipulation.

Know the difference between thoughts and feelings, and have the courage to use both words correctly.

4. Adverbs are untrustworthy. Delete them.

When was the last time you ran into an acquaintance who ended the conversation with something like, “Oh yeah! We should totally, really get together for coffee!”

As a general rule, everything that comes after an adverb is a lie.

Notice the last sentence in the previous section? (It read: “… have the courage to use both words correctly.”)

I used an adverb.

But the problem is not the adverbs that end sentences. It’s the adverbs in the middle.

I had an experience with two friends, trying to drive from an ice bath at my apratmnet to a hot yoga class just two miles away. We were trying to navigate the road closures and detours that were the result of a half marathon race that winds through my city at this time every year — and we were doing a bad job of it.

One of my passengers called the yoga studio on the phone and ask whether we’d still be allowed to participate if we were late. She said, “Because we’ll be there in exactly about 10 minutes!”

Everything in the sentence that comes after the adverb has no credibility because when we believe in what we’re saying, we don’t need the false bravado of the adverb to strengthen our bluff.

When you catch yourself inserting adverbs in your sentence, try rewording it without the adverb, to see whether you still mean what you thought you were about to say. Chances are, you’ll feel uncomfortable without the adverb buffer between you and what you’re trying to say.

The adverb is a way of saying what you wish were true while signaling to your listener that you both know it’s not.

5. Explore possibilities, not predictions.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” — Yogi Berra

When we use the language of prediction, as in “There’s no way that he’s going to go for that!” we can’t help but become ego-invested in the outcome. Making a prediction means that we have an emotional stake in being either right or wrong about whatever it is we said and that our reputations might suffer if reality fails to conform to our prediction.

Predictions require us to rationalize after that fact about either: 1) How smart we are for being right (e.g., “I told you so!”), or 2) How it’s not really (notice the adverb) our fault we were wrong.

Those rationalizations are enormous creative energy suck holes.

Rephrase your language of prediction with the language of possibility. Instead of saying “… will …” ask “What if… ?”

By exploring possibilities with “What if… ?” language, you avoid the ego investment trap and stay in creative problem-solving and learning mode. As an added bonus, you prepare multiple pathways for success and can adapt to things that might otherwise surprise you!

Post-script

A few years ago, I bought the premium subscription to DuoLingo so I could teach myself a foreign language. The new language gave me a new way of thinking — i.e., a way of seeing and understanding my world that I didn’t have access to before.

Sometimes, the insight gained in learning a foreign language is through new word associations. For example, in Danish, the word for pain is “smert,” which appears in English as, “Ow! That smarts!”

From Dictionary.com

smart [ smahrt ]

verb (used without object)

- to be a source of sharp, local, and usually superficial pain, as a wound.

- to be the cause of a sharp, stinging pain, as an irritating application, a blow, etc.

Now that we know the same word (in English) that is used as an adjective to describe intelligence can also be used as a verb to describe a sharp pain, the obvious new question is:

What is our pain trying to teach us?