“Do you love words? Not just speaking them… But the actual words themselves? Do you delight in certain words? Think others are ugly? Do you believe that words have the power to wound, move — even to heal?” J. Engle, The New York Times

ESL Voices Lesson Plan for this post with Answer Key

Excerpt: The Sacred Spell of Words By Jeremy Engle, The New York Times

“In The Sacred Spell of Words, N. Scott Momaday, an author, poet and playwright, writes:

“Words are powerful. As a writer, my experience tells me that nothing is more powerful. Language, after all, is made of words.

Words are conceptual symbols; they have denotative and connotative properties. The word ‘power’ denotes force, physical strength, resistance. But it connotes something more subtle: persuasion, suggestion, inspiration, security.

Consider the words of Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”:

Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

We might be hard pressed to find words more charged with power to incite, to inflame, to affect violence and destruction. But there are, of course, other expressions of power in words.They can be especially personal. They can touch our sensibilities in different and individual ways, perhaps because they have different associations for us. The word ‘Holocaust’ frightens me because survivors of the Nazi death camps have told me of their suffering. Notwithstanding, the word is intrinsically powerful and disturbing.

The word ‘child’ delights me; the word ‘love’ confounds me; the word ‘God’ mystifies me. I have lived my life under the spell of words; they have empowered my mind…It may be that the essential power of language is realized by word-of-mouth expression. The oral tradition is inestimably older than writing, and it requires that we take words more seriously. One must not waste words. He must speak responsibly, he must listen carefully, and he must remember what is said.”