Blog 9

Language is of huge importance in our daily lives. Language is used to express ideas, feelings. It is described in the book as being very powerful and I find this to be very true. The book mentions a situation where you are walking past a group of people and you think you hear your name. Our names are very important to us and so if we hear them spoken, we are going to want to respond to that in some way. Verbal language can easily be misheard and therefore misunderstood and can cause problems. There are many instances in my daily life where I hear someone wrong and I am appalled by what they say and then I confront them and they didn't really say what I thought. When you aren't sure if you heard something right, you should always ask to be sure that you have the correct information. Words are a major part of language. The words we use describe things, explain situations, and just help us to get a point across. Every word has a different meaning and some words even have more than one meaning. This can make learning a language difficult for many people. Words in some languages have different meanings then the same words in other languages. It is important to realize this especially when you are traveling in other countries. I like how the book talks about how there are gender differences in how language is used. The book talks about language causing stereotypes to become worse. If people watch the language they are using, some of theses stereotypes could be not so harmful to the different genders. The language that we use that is sexist or racist can be so harmful to others and we may not even realize it. This is the main reason why we need to watch the language we use. We need to be considerate of other people.

**Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't watch your language and you hurt someone's feelings because of it?