STUDY BOOK The power of language and actions, the basis for

COACHING: El poder del lenguaje y las acciones

It is important to note, however, that we are not saying that everything that exists only exists in language. We are not denying the "existence" of a so-called "external reality", independent of language. But of such an "external reality", as external and independent of language, we cannot speak. Everything we speak of is, by definition, within the domain of language. Through language, we not only talk about things, but we alter the spontaneous course of events: we make certain things happen. It is enough to think of the infinite opportunities in which a person, a group, a country, changed direction and altered its history because someone said what they said. In the same way, we recognise that history (individual or collective) could have been so different from what it was if someone had kept quiet, if someone had not said what they said. Language, we argue, is not just a passive tool that allows us to describe how things are. Language is also active. Through it we participate in the process of constructing the world. In arguing that language is action, we are pointing out that language creates realities. We see this in many ways. By saying what we say, by saying it one way and not another, or by saying nothing at all, we open or close possibilities for ourselves and, often, for others. When we speak, we shape the future, our own and that of others. From what we said or were told, from what we kept silent, from what we heard or did not hear from others, our future reality is shaped in one way or another. But as well as intervening in the creation of the future, human beings shape our identity and the world we live in through language. How we operate in language is perhaps the most important factor in defining how we will be seen by others and by ourselves. We will soon discover how personal identity, our own and that of others, is a strictly linguistic phenomenon, a linguistic construct.

The same is true of the world we live in. Populated by entities, relations, actions and events, our world is constituted in language. Different worlds emerge according to the kind of linguistic distinctions we are able to make.

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