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AIQS
News
70
WORDS SHAPE MINDS
Dear all,
Let me introduce myself,
I am a philologist. That’s the most important thing
you need to know about me. As you may know, the
word philology comes from the combination in Greek
of “philos” meaning “love or affection” and “logos”
meaning “word”, so a philologist is someone who loves
words and keeps paying attention to how they affect
people when they communicate to each other.
In English we say that the eyes are the windows to
the soul, in Catalan and Spanish it’s the whole face
the one which mirrors the soul, which by the way it is
another Greek belief. But I disagree. In my opinion it is
the words you utter which really talk about your mind,
your brain and your thoughts which at the end, in my
opinion, show your “soul”. It is a fascinating automatic
process the human being possesses which has been
gifted to us and only to us speaking people. Remember
speech is the basic skill which differentiates us from
animals.
We have to select the word among thousands of them or
more, connect words to each other, be careful to attach
the correct tone and intonation as well as other many
features, and utter it expecting to convey the meaning
wished, a question, a compliment, a death sentence, a
love declaration or an insult, all in a tenth of a second.
Almost a miracle. But the way we process all this
information and we have the final result is the key to
show us the “soul” of the people.
Through your words I can see (with the eye of my mind)
if you are a gentle or aggressive person, if you are
cultivated or illiterate, if you are sensitive or cruel.
Therefore the expression, “read between the lines”. See
what you cannot see.