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

COACHING: El poder del lenguaje y las acciones

1. THE POWER OF LANGUAGE. The Linguistic Acts that Create Reality 1.1.

In the traditional conception, language describes reality. Our common sense assumes that language describes the state of affairs. This conception assumes that reality is already there long before language, and what language does is simply to describe it. By the second half of the 20th century, with the emergence of the philosophy of language, this changed. The philosophy of language argued that when we speak we not only describe an existing reality; we also act. Language is action. Linguistic acts refer to the acts we perform when we speak. This postulate makes it possible to say that there are five fundamental linguistic acts:

• Affirmations. • Statements. • Promises. • Petitions. • Offers.

1.2. Statements, Judgments and Declarations • Affirmations.

When the word must fit the world, when the world is the one that leads to the word, then we speak of affirmations. Statements belong to the linguistic group called descriptions, they describe things as we have observed them, not as they are, within the distinctions of the social and cultural environment. All human beings can see an event from a different place and describe it differently. Even biological factors can affect this, e.g. colour blindness. Due to the common observational capacity of human beings, it is possible to distinguish between true and false statements.

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