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The Power of Language

167 statements
21 feature instances
32 referencing feature instances

The Power of Language	type	FeatureClass
The Power of Language	label	The Power of Language
The Power of Language	page	ThePowerOfLanguage
The Power of Language	comment	The Power of Language is a common theme focused on the concept of language itself and how it can be used. Language as a construct is an essential part of human culture. In primitive forms, it predates our species, and many other sentient creatures have been documented using verbal communication. This means that it's also probably the oldest medium of fiction, and almost all forms of fiction today rely on it. As such, in the same way Most Writers Are Writers, fiction is often extremely interested in language and its capabilities. Just how powerful are words? Answers to this question vary by universe and by story. In some, language is so unnecessary that none is used at all, at least not by background characters. In ours, you'll notice we have phrases like "they're all talk" and "actions speak louder than words", yet we also have many tropes based on the idea that you should Be Careful What You Say because words do have power, as well as the pervasive idea that Language Equals Thought. And certain settings take this idea much farther, resulting in tropes like Weapons-Grade Vocabulary or its magical counterpart, Words Can Break My Bones. Any one of these conclusions can be drawn by a work using this theme. It's quite common to find exploration of this theme in High Fantasy settings, where magic is often based on or at least invoked by language. It's also fairly common in Dystopian Fiction, where language can be used for public mind control and literacy is frequently banned. While this is most often a Central Theme running throughout a work, it can appear briefly as a Discussed Trope. Sister Trope to The Power of Creation, The Power of Acting, and In Defence Of Storytelling, as well as New Media Are Evil if books are what is portrayed as powerful. A common focus of Meta Fiction, especially in poetry. Frequently found in Speech-Centric Works. A favorite tool of the Cunning Linguist and The Philosopher, as well as the Manipulative Bastard prone to delivering Breaking Speeches and Hannibal Lectures. Related to the concept that "the pen is mightier than the sword", though not to the trope, which is about stabbing people with pens. Not to Be Confused With Word Power, an index of phrases used to activate/accentuate powers and attacks. See the Index of Prayer and Meditation, about communication with divine beings, See also Language Tropes, Dialogue, Narrator Tropes. Compare Formulaic Magic, where math and numbers have power.
The Power of Language	fetched	2024-04-08T21:18:00Z
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The Power of Language	processingUnknown	Verge: Stories
The Power of Language	processingUnknown	Motif
The Power of Language	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Power of Language / int_35bceb50	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_35bceb50	comment	This is one of Hamlet's many Central Themes. Language is Hamlet's weapon, used to pen incriminating plays and run punny rings around his enemies, and he is deeply interested in its power and limitations. He is famously verbose, with the greatest line count of any character in a Shakespeare play, yet frequently expresses frustration with his apparent ability to talk about the murder he has been told to avenge (to the audience, at least) but not to do anything about it.
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The Power of Language / int_35c6c0d2	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_35c6c0d2	comment	This idea is central to the Earthsea series. It starts out fairly simply, as a world with a Language of Truth that doubles as a Language of Magic reliant on the memorization of things' True Names, but as the story progresses, it questions the origins of this magic and reveals that words only have so much power—language-based magic is a relatively shallow, masculine form of magic, and there are deeper forms of magic and understanding that do not rely on the imperfect medium of speech.
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The Power of Language / int_468bebb0	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_468bebb0	comment	Terry Pratchett's Discworld series has the power of words, stories, and even literal books and letters as literal centers of supernatural influence on the disc.
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The Power of Language / int_5cd1aa89	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_5cd1aa89	comment	Nineteen Eighty-Four seeks to show how language can be used politically to deceive and manipulate people. "The Party" has mandated Newspeak be used as a way to further control the thoughts of the populace, and writing has been banned altogether. Winston's job involves going through old documents and periodicals and carefully replacing words to suit whatever new narrative is being constructed by the Party, and one of his first acts of rebellion is to hide a notebook he finds and begin recording his thoughts in it.
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The Power of Language / int_6ba3c140	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_6ba3c140	comment	Dear Evan Hansen: A major theme of the play is how Evan thinks he has nothing to offer the world, but his words end up making him the most powerful character in the show, for better or for worse. (This is played with from the very beginning, where Evan's letters to himself are joked about as a therapeutic tool and a sad kind of thing to have to do, and yet his one stray letter kicks off the whole plot and ends up changing thousands of lives.)
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The Power of Language / int_6fd4e61f	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_6fd4e61f	comment	Animal Farm: The pigs, especially Squealer, become skilled at reading and writing and use this power of literacy to exert control over the other animals on the farm. One of the most obvious ways is that the farm's laws are recorded in writing on the side of the barn: only the pigs can read them, so only the pigs can interpret them—or know when they have been subtly changed.
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The Power of Language / int_84ab054a	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_84ab054a	comment	Voices from Chernobyl: Many of the survivors interviewed claim they have difficulty putting their experiences into words at all, as though there were no language to capture what they had seen in the wake of a catastrophe the like of which had never occurred in history. One particularly philosophical subject expresses this explicitly:
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The Power of Language / int_8d210423	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_8d210423	comment	Typoman is all about words and language. The hero is literally made of the letters H.E.R.O. and traverses a landscape where many objects are constructed from the letters that describe them. Moving these letters around to create and altar physical space is a central gameplay mechanic, and the game's narrative revolves around the effect of words on reality—there are even Book Burnings and a literal "PROPAGANDA" machine piloted by a creature made from "LIE."
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The Power of Language / int_920bdb7c	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_920bdb7c	comment	Kill Six Billion Demons: Existence itself is a lie spoken into being by an omniscient, omnipresent narrator (YISUN) using language to convince Themselves that anything exists that is Not YISUN. 'Magic' in the setting is known as the Art of Lying to the Face of God (and is subdivided into the Black, White and Red arts) and involves using a combination of words and willpower to similarly convince reality that you - and not God - know how things work right at the moment and that's why, say, you are holding a fruit when a moment ago your hand was empty, or why that house is actually a rose bush. YISUN Themselves illustrate this in the Lie of the Iron Plum, by speaking an otherwise indestructible object into a regular plum.
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The Power of Language / int_9b1c2acd	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_9b1c2acd	comment	Fahrenheit 451: The government has banned books and literacy so that it can keep the public complacent and misinformed via television. Language is thematically tied to thought throughout the book, as various individuals rebel by hiding or even memorizing books.
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The Power of Language / int_a5549ed0	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_a5549ed0	comment	The Bible: The creation narrative in the very beginning of Genesis describes God creating the world by speaking it to life, word by word, beginning with "Let there be light". (The variant narrative in the second chapter instead describes God "fashioning" creation, like an artisan, then delegates authority to Adam and Eve to name everything.) The Gospel of John similarly opens with "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God", emphasising the divine creative power of language and then connecting Jesus to it by declaring him its physical incarnation — "the Word made flesh". In most versions of the Jesus story, much is made of Jesus's ability to gain followers after they simply hear him talk. In a meta example, many people believe the Bible to be the word of God, and irrefutable because of that.
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The Power of Language / int_a6645d50	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_a6645d50	comment	In the world of The Madness Dossier, the horrific Anunnakku can use language to control human beings. They made us that way; weâ€™re supposed to be a Slave Race. The heroes of the setting, Project SANDMAN, can and do borrow some of that power to fight back. Human free will is sometimes collateral damage.
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The Power of Language / int_b617a2c0	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_b617a2c0	comment	"Mean": Following the album's theme, the bully's words are "knives and swords" to torment the narrator, and the song is her retaliation against the guy.
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The Power of Language / int_ba084d45	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_ba084d45	comment	The power of language/writing is a motif throughout Hamilton, closely tied to the concept of stories and who tells them. Alexander Hamilton's superpower is writing, and the play chronicles how he uses his persuasive words to help and harm himself throughout his life. The song "Hurricane" discusses this:
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The Power of Language / int_c2d16486	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_c2d16486	comment	The Division Bell is a Concept Album with this as the central theme. The album's tracks alternate between instrumentals and lyric songs, and most of the tracks with words explore the motif of speech vs silence—especially "Keep Talking", which features the voice of Stephen Hawking, who can only speak with the help of a computer:
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The Power of Language / int_d5bd2a20	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_d5bd2a20	comment	The Book of Mormon: Language is powerful when speaking on God's behalf. Nephi the son of Helaman is commended by God and told that for his faithfulness, "all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will." That is to say, Nephi can now command anything to happen—famines, plagues, casting down mountains, you name it—and the Earth will obey him as it would obey God. He uses it to stop a war, and to preach repentance without being killed. Moroni mentions that the Brother of Jared once commanded a mountain to move.
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The Power of Language / int_dd5e97c1	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_dd5e97c1	comment	A central theme throughout The Case Files of Jeweler Richard, although the anime touches on it a bit less. The novels even have long descriptions of the a sea of words a person can drown in when they're fluent in too many languages.
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The Power of Language / int_df870b3f	comment	Arrival: The central conflict of the film involves humans attempting to understand the Heptapods' language and establish communications with them. The two main characters, scientists on the front-line of the American effort, have differing opinions on whether language is a mere extension of thought or, as the Sapirâ€“Whorf hypothesis posits, thought itself is actually influenced by language. As it turns out the latter is proven true, to the point that learning the Heptapod language allows one to experience time itself in an entirely different manner. In a more mundane example, the Chinese attempts at communication failed because they used mahjong as a basis for their 'language' with the Heptapods, and since it is a zero-sum game the Heptapods' responses to the Chinese queries took on a more aggressive tone than the Heptapods intended.
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The Power of Language / int_e2ade9fb	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_e2ade9fb	comment	The creation narrative in the very beginning of Genesis describes God creating the world by speaking it to life, word by word, beginning with "Let there be light". (The variant narrative in the second chapter instead describes God "fashioning" creation, like an artisan, then delegates authority to Adam and Eve to name everything.)
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The Power of Language / int_e5456d6a	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_e5456d6a	comment	In a meta example, many people believe the Bible to be the word of God, and irrefutable because of that.
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The Power of Language / int_ed7f9b74	type	The Power of Language
The Power of Language / int_ed7f9b74	comment	The theme of "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado is this, as the attraction between the singer and the listener remains in limbo until the listener makes a move and speaks out about what they want.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Dialogue
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Language Tropes
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Metafiction Demanded This Index
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Motifs
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Philosophy Tropes
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Sorting Algorithm of Tropes
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	Stock Aesops
The Power of Language	processingCategory2	The Power of Index
Superman: Red Son (Comic Book) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Again (Breath of the Wild) (Fanfic) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Trolling the Toad (Fanfic) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Arrival / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Tombstone / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Animal Farm / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Earthsea / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
In Conquest Born / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Leaves of Grass / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Nineteen Eighty-Four / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
The Book of Mormon / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
The Case Files of Jeweler Richard / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
The Hobbit / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
The Talmud / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Voices from Chernobyl / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Weaveworld / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Mean (Music) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Speak Now (Music) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Blake Skye Private Eye (Podcast) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
SAYER (Podcast) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
The Madness Dossier (Tabletop Game) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Hamilton (Theatre) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language
Kill Six Billion Demons (Webcomic) / int_cb14cb28	type	The Power of Language

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