S. J. Tambiah's The Magical Power Of Words

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Linguists and psychologists all over the world have stressed the importance of language. As a main form of communication, language is the basis for many cultures, religions, etc. to build their foundation on. J.K. Rowling showed how important language is in one of her scenes from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Language is an art, and a magic of sorts. Leach (1966: 407) stated: “Ritual as one observes it in primitive communities is a complex of words and actions… it is not the case that words are one thing and the rite another. The uttering of the words itself is a ritual.” (Quoted by S. J. Tambiah in “The Magical Power of Words”) The words are what gave the power to the rituals. Without the words the actions would have been meaningless. Professor Flitwick tells the children that waving the wand in …show more content…
This means that it is significant what words are said as to which spell is cast. In class with Dr.Taylor we talked about the significance of words. One can look at so many different words we have in our language and find the eptimology of those words and how one can derive its meaning. For example the word “world” comes from the Old English word “werold.” This is from an Old German word, “weralt” which is the Germanic composition of two words: “wera” – man, and the Indo-European base “alth” which comes from the Latin word “altus”, meaning old. People in the olden days use to name their children according to what the meaning of the names were. The titles people are given to show respect, or power is one example of the power of words in the modern day. Another good example that we discussed was the language of law. Law is very specific and thorough because every word has a very distinct meaning and the changing of one word in a sentence can mean something totally different. Even in the bible words had power, as in the scripture Proverbs 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its

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