As a reminder as to how important every word we say to the people we serve the late Dr. DeJarnette made the statement that “Words kill more people than bullets”. Think of the millions of lives that have and are being lost because of the utterances of dictators, despots and duly elected governments throughout recent history alone. Think about the language of western medicine and look at the epidemic of death and suffering it is creating. Maybe even think about the effects that you are having on those people you contact and influence. Do you choose your words with care?
Many chiropractors dismiss any discussion on the correctness of chiropractic terminology as “mere semantics”. These people favour the more acceptable “medical equivalents” to express the specifics of their profession. They suppose that language doesn’t make a difference to our existence so lets not rock the boat with talk about subluxation, adjustment, wellness, dis-ease, analysis, Innate, Universal Intelligence. Why should we bother with such archaic terms, they say, when we can fit in with the terminology of another discipline that is far more acceptable and talk about fixations, manipulation, prevention, disease, diagnosis and homeostasis and then decline to even entertain discussion on the chiropractic lexicon.
It would appear that our language is a representation of reality and that it may go a long way towards creating our reality. Linguists tell us that language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that converts concepts into the mental equivalents of concretes. Every word we use (with the exception maybe of proper nouns) is a symbol that denotes a concept. Our concepts create our reality.
One of the greatest frustrations that chiropractors experience is that people don’t easily and effortlessly make the transition from the disease based allopathic paradigm to the chiropractic lifetime wellness mindset. It may well serve us to examine the words that we use and ponder on how they could create such an outcome.
Your words create your reality – so choose you words with care.
