The Words You Start With — Yun Chi-yeong on Warmer Conversation

There’s a Korean saying that words can become seeds. I took it as just a saying when I was young. It has come to mean more to me with time.

When I go through the day telling myself that nothing will work, I am less inclined to try a different approach. A more hopeful way to describe the same situation can sometimes leave more room to act.

That is one way I understand the link between a state of mind, the words that express it and what happens next.

Four Things Words Can Do

Yun Chi-yeong, who writes and teaches about speaking, gives words four kinds of power:

1. They can leave an impression.
2. They can prompt action.
3. They can support a purpose.
4. They can do damage.

The first concerns repetition. Yun tells a story about someone who spent a few minutes each day practising a different way of speaking to himself.

• He reminded himself that he could do difficult things and had abilities he had not yet used.

Repeating it, in the book’s telling, made it easier for him to begin a task with confidence.

The second is the connection with action. Saying something aloud can make a course of action feel more definite. Yun thinks the words we practise can help make some actions easier to start.

For his third example, he tells a story about Norman Vincent Peale, the American minister and author, and a young man who sought his advice.

• The young man wanted to know how he could get better at selling.

Peale gave him a card and told him to write down a few statements about the work.

• The statements reminded him to prepare, behave professionally, see the customer as a person and act on what he had prepared.

He was to carry the card and read it often. The story gives the repeated words credit for a change in his confidence.

The fourth power concerns the damage words can do. If you constantly tell yourself that a task is impossible or that you have no place doing it, those words can become part of how you approach the task.

What I Noticed When I Changed the First Words

The idea reminded me of a Korean song about things turning out as we speak them. In my own case, changing the first thought to “I could at least try” helped me attempt things I had been putting off.

I can see why Yun connects words with thought and action. The book also invokes John Galsworthy on what speech can reveal.

• The thought he takes from Galsworthy is that a person’s words can tell you something about what they are becoming.

Start with an Ordinary Greeting

Yun suggests greeting people more often. Much of a day consists of actions repeated without much deliberation. A greeting is small enough to change without having to remake the whole day.

Once that becomes a habit, the first moment of an ordinary encounter can feel a little different.

Having More Words for a Feeling

Yun also connects language with the ability to manage emotions. If you have words for finer differences between feelings, you have more ways to say what is happening.

He recalls Heidegger’s description of language as the “house of Being” to show how much can be at stake in the words available to a person.

Speaking to a Room

The second part of the book turns to speaking in public.

School and work can both put someone in front of a room. Presentation interviews were once a particularly familiar example in Korea. The occasions change, but the need to say something clear in front of other people keeps coming up.

Rehearsing a Talk from the Audience’s Seat

Experience can teach you what a room actually feels like. When you cannot get into the room in advance, Yun suggests mental rehearsal as one part of preparation.

Picture the talk from the audience’s side. What do they see when you come in? Can they follow the first point? Imagining the talk that way gives you something to look for when you practise it aloud.

Then actually rehearse. Familiarity with what you want to say can take some of the pressure off when it is time to begin.

What We Hear in Our Own Speech

The words we use make up a large part of how we go through a day. The book invites readers to listen to what they say routinely.

When a phrase makes the same situation feel closed every time, it can be worth trying a phrase that leaves you room to do something.

Some of the book’s explanations go further than the evidence warrants. The most accessible part is an experiment anyone can recognise: notice what you are saying to yourself and see whether changing it changes what you are prepared to try.

Book Information

Speaking Warmly Enough to Move Someone (Korean title, translated)

Author

Yun Chi-yeong

Publication date

23 September 2021

ISBN13

9788956393438

View the book on YES24

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