By Adele Zhou
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“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

It’s one of the most popular sayings ever, and also one of the most absurd. Words can never hurt a person? Words can always hurt a person. There’s a reason that the law protects against slander and libel. Words are one reason that Sarah Palin didn’t rise to the vice presidency. She probably doesn’t go a day without hearing about “that one time you said you could see Russia from your backyard?” And who could forget Kanye’s emblazoned words in the history of the VMA’s: “I’mma, I’mma let you finish, but I just wanted to say…”

My response to that saying is, are you crazy? Words can make or break a person. Famous speeches can launch a nobody into eternal fame. Martin Luther King managed to propel an entire movement with the power of “I Have a Dream.” Just recently, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired for calling his interviewee a ‘bigot’ on a radio talk show. The fact of the matter is, while words have infinite earning potential for a person, they can also submerge a person into complete disarray.

In today’s society, with the overwhelming increase of media and social networking, where people are typing and texting at unheard-of speeds, words are experiencing a type of inflation. The average person can speak around 105 words per minute, but a majority of teenagers can reply to a text in less than a minute. With the rising of blogs right alongside online newspapers and the huge popularity of video chatting, it’s hard to think of a time in our lives when we’re not talking, typing, texting, or tweeting.

But what are we even saying? And the more important question is, how much are we thinking about it?

Let’s talk word inflation. The sentence “Well, you know, I just, uh, you know” comes up quite often around me, and it’s a perfect example of saying something but not really saying anything. In a speech class I took a few years ago, we were challenged to come up with a speech without inserting casual, unnecessary words. Many of my classmates had previously been in theatre productions at CHS, so it was safe to assume that this activity would be a cinch for them. Yet many of them stumbled awkwardly along in their sentences without their “you know’s” and “uh’s” and “like’s.” It is so incredibly difficult to make all of our words actually mean something instead of using filler words to quickly fill up the awkward silences when our heads aren’t working at the same speed our mouths are.

How about misunderstandings? It’s so easy to say something offensive these days, and usually a quick “no offense” serves as a hasty justification. But everyone knows “no offense” doesn’t really make the victim of the comment feel any better. There are many awkward moments I know I could have avoided had I thought for a second about what I was going to say. In the middle of class sometimes, people may blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Sometimes, it’s funny. Other times, it’s rude, and that’s when thinking about it first might have been the better option.

Language was meant for communication. But for some reason, so frequently our words manage to turn against us. Even though I don’t text, I’ve heard countless tragic stories of friends who have gotten an indecipherable text and are sitting there, wracking their brains to try to figure out what it means. Had the person on the other end just thought about it for a little while longer and phrased it a little clearer, the whole fiasco might have been avoided. Needless arguments can be averted if the two parties just take the time to think about what they say before firing off some kind of verbal bullet.

I’m not supporting another common saying, “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all,” because I don’t believe in that. Sometimes, the truth hurts, and that’s that, and you can’t protect people from the truth, because if their feet smell awful, or they have something in their teeth, or what they said in class was super embarrassing, sometimes it’s just better to let them have it. But sometimes a side comment or a criticism isn’t necessary, and sometimes always getting the last word won’t feel as good as a person thinks it will. Sometimes all it takes is thinking “Should I really say that?” to prevent an unfortunate situation. A word by itself is a very powerful thing; a phrase is better; a statement is strong; a speech can move millions; and a lifetime of words… well, just think about it.