The Truth from Words – What Lies Behind Your Speech
By Amanda Wilson
The Truth from Words – What Lies Behind Your Speech – A speech indicates certain feelings even when common, simple words are used. That means it’s possible to read a person from their speech. For instance, when a person says something loudly, they constate its existence while freeing their mind from the dark thoughts’ weight. Naturally, you feel like screaming when you experience an awfully strong anger. That’s an internal wish to overcome and clear that anger. Basically, though you can use common, simple words, you eventually reveal your true feelings with your speech unconsciously. A few psycho-therapeutic secrets on how to read people from their speech are given below. They provide tips on how to curb feelings’ indicators from playing in favor of the speaker.
The symbolic nature of words
Words themselves do not have meaning. Meaning is derived from the context and intention. Words are basically symbols or labels that we use to communicate our perception of the world and how the world is construed. People that give names have power over those the names are applied to.
For instance, in the myth of Judaeo-Christian creation, God made Adam a powerful being on earth. That means Adam had power over animals and he could give them names. Labels are used to attach identities and they represent the place of an individual in the world. Whether the individual wants the identity or not it belongs to them even if it doesn’t feel authentic.
Generally, though words don’t have any meaning, humans have a magical power to use words and turn them into what they desire. Humans have created abstract connections between words and things that they describe using those words. For instance, “square” as a word is not actually square. “Yellow” as a word is not yellow. These words have abstract connections with the shape and color that they describe respectively.
Double asking does more than annoying
In the 1980’s, Grove came up with a therapeutic ‘clean language’ technique. That was after studying therapy transcripts and realizing how therapists changed the clients’ frame of reference via subtle rewording of their statements.
Therapists’ questions seek information regarding the metaphors that clients use and the symbols in them. They ask clients about the metaphor’s context now and here as well as in the future and in the past. Finally, therapists ask the clients “And that’s…like what?” to provide an opportunity for creating another metaphor which enables them to shift perception.
Grove found that clients experienced personal core patterns while making unexpected discoveries about their experiences and themselves when their descriptions were less contaminated. This enhanced clients’ awareness of a personal process, personal patterns’ observation and ability to derive insights and make connections.
Speech as a narrative therapy
Narrative therapy refers to a therapy method that separates an individual from their problem while encouraging them to depend on their skill sets to minimize challenges or problems in their daily lives. Basically, this therapy focuses on stories that have been constructed with an aim of communicating what has already happened to an individual. Narrative therapy pays close attention to how a story is told. It can be ‘thinly’, implying that it is told from a shallow or narrow viewpoint, possibly uncontextualized and self blaming, or ‘thickly, implying that it involves many connections and meanings that enlarge the narrator and the narrative.
Vocabulary is important in generally and it provides clues of the world view behind a story. It’s possible for a person to be caught in their culture’s mythology, which illustrates that the rape is the fault of the woman if she led the perpetrator on, the unemployment is a shame to a man. These are some of the many examples. The narrative is usually placed outside the person in the era of society and self relationship in this therapy. It’s mostly re-authored using cast-off parts of a story. For instance, times when a person has portrayed power and impacted on the environment. This encourages the individual to locate personhood equally in successes stories and failures stories.
The voice of spoken words convey feelings
Emphasis is a very important element of communication. Voice is usually used to emphasize something in a speech. However, sometimes a person emphasizes something in their speech unconsciously. When a speaker is angry for instance, they can raise their voice unconsciously. Nevertheless, a rising voice can convey different feelings or emotions including fear, nervousness, hysteria and excitement. Thus, both the context and the communicator should be considered carefully when analyzing a speech. Unless you understand the basic communication patterns of the speaker, you may not decipher their routine signals when making a speech.
Nevertheless, several studies have revealed that people are generally poor at masking their true feelings when making a speech. Feelings leak out regularly in different ways even when the speaker tries to mask them. However, many people don’t know how to decode those feelings from a speech.
Gaffes in a speech say more about the speaker
Mixed up consonants, slip of the tongue and other verbal blunders are not just simple mistakes in a speech. Some people use verbal slips like “um” and “uh” when talking about something they are not familiar with. Others use them when lying. That’s why slips are important to some professionals like detectives and interrogators. To such professionals, individuals use them as pauses or interruptions and they can tell whether a person is telling the truth or feeling anxious. However, some skilled liars speak smoothly and this makes catching them difficult.
Words are an important change agent whether viewed from a cognitive standpoint where they are used as effective thought tools or from an analytic point of view where speech itself is considered as a modulating and containing agent. We use words to do more than just talking about things. Words are part of the experience of something like recollection so that what we recall gets into the room by simply speaking about it. That’s why people reveal their feelings by unconsciously using labeled, common words. Generally, speech establishes a connection between the outer and the inner world. When a person puts something into words, they prepare themselves for this connection.
About the author:
Amanda Wilson is a college student with a passion for writing, a freelance writer at PaperWritten. Her targeting topics are youth with their issues and writing solutions. As an artistic nature, she finds inspiration in traveling around the country, reading books in order to develop some brand new theory and gaining any type experience thanks to curiosity.