Zombie-words: is your Speech Undead?
Friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn and a warm welcome to those of you who are new to this newsletter.
Hope you enjoy this week’s edition!
See you next Sunday,
Florian
Zombie-words: is your Speech Undead?
I love words.
My relationship with them took a new turn since I started writing weekly. Choosing the appropriate ones is no trivial affair. Every word is your best attempt to get close to the essence of what you want to convey. They are the vessels of your ideas.
Picking the right words when I write increased my sensitivity to the ones I lean on when I talk. I’ve developed a mild aversion to those that are used so much that they have lost their meaning: zombie-words.
“Awesome”, “literally”, “unique”, “unbelievable”, “totally”, “genius” are all limping around our vocabulary in search of their original purpose. When I’m speaking, I’m guilty of letting them feast on the flesh of my own sentences.
Perhaps you think a few dead words are not a big deal. But if language is a vessel for our thoughts, do you want to let an army of undead sink what you want to say?
The more a word is repeated, the weaker the connection becomes in your brain with its assigned meaning. It’s called semantic satiation. Try it. Repeat “flower” out loud ten times and watch its meaning disintegrate before your eyes. This is how we turn perfectly healthy words like “amazing” or “literally” into zombie-words. And it helps to explain why we tune out when we hear them. We no longer see the vivid image of the flower, we only hear background noise.
It is possible then that the level of attention we give to each other is directly correlated with the number of zombie-words we use.
So how do we deal with this? Here’s my three-step guide to deal with zombie-words.
Spot them. Zombie-words thrive in conversations where your mind is wandering. Let your guard down and they’ll be at the gates, furiously clawing. When you start thinking about what to cook for dinner in the midst of a conversation, beware. You’re about to let in “literally” and “totally” as you nod along, anxious to start chopping onions for that Beef Bourguignon. Time to apply some meditation fundamentals: breathe in and bring your attention back to the person you’re talking to. Being present is your first line of defense against zombie-words.
Stop them. Zombie-words love uninterrupted talking. Their supreme leader, the voracious “like”, blossoms when you paraphrase yourself to death. Resist the urge to fill the air, get comfortable with pausing. Thoughts need oxygen to emerge, don’t cede to the temptation of littering the soil of your speech with half-dead creatures.
Substitute them. It’s easy to pick up zombie-words. They’re always lumbering around on the surface of your speech. Sure, “amazing” or ”unique” could do the job but they’re lousy builders of meaning. You’ll end up with a shack. Look for the artisans instead, the “staggering” and “distinctive” who live in the depths of your inner thesaurus. You might have to take a bit more of a detour but it’s worth it. Specific words will build palaces for your thoughts.
I’m sorry if you start seeing zombies everywhere after reading this. I definitely feel like Rick Grimes during one of his refueling trips to the drug store in the Walking Dead. But that’s ok, I’ve got my ammo ready.
Weekly Wisdom
📖 The War of Art: I just finished this short book which is a must-read for anyone who’s going through the struggle of doing creative work. Steven Pressfield offers a guide to survive the assault of procrastination, fear of rejection and rationalization.
🎨 Visualizing ideas: I’m a fan of Jack Butcher’s talent for turning abstract concepts into elegant visuals. This week, he gave us a brilliant visual interpretation of one of my favorite ideas.
📺 The Taste-Skill Gap: When you are practicing a new skill or craft, your perception of what good looks like vastly exceeds your abilities.The challenge is to accept you’re not going to close that gap anytime soon but to keep at it nonetheless.
Lateral Thought
“Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless. That is because they are intrinsically systems problems—undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it.”
Donella Meadows