Whenever I was in High School I read Stephen King’s The Stand and there was this part in it where Randall Flagg was talking about all these different things he’d done in his life. One of the things he mentioned was being able to incite a riot by just giving a speech. When I read that I thought about how powerful words can be if you just arrange them in the correct order.
Every clean sheet of paper has the potential for greatness. Every time anybody starts writing something, be it a novel, an essay, a blog, etc., it has the potential to be the greatest thing ever written. That blank page could contain the greatest screenplay ever conceived if that right combination stays in place. But as words are chosen and punctuation gets in place things start to go downhill. The balance begins to tip to one side or the other between “greatest thing ever” to “same old nonsense.” But we’re all using the same words over and over again, you and I.
By just using the right combination of words you can structure an effective argument to win anybody over, that is, if your philosophy is correct.
Well, the power of words is the backdrop to Lexicon by Max Barry. The gist of it is that there is this organization that teaches a select group of people, that have a mental predisposition to not be influenced over the affects of language, to use certain elements of speech effectively. And we’re talking on a magical level here. Kind of like how a hypnotist can lull someone into a suggestive state but with Jedi-like precision. We’re talking word pepper spray and syntax laden rocket launchers.
These people have certain groups of specialty and within these groups there taught how to categorize other people and figure out what to say and how to say it to make them do what they want.
But it’s not all spoken language what we’re talking about.
The bulk of the book deals with this one particular word that is so powerful it decimated this small town. It’s lingering affects remained so powerful that no one else could even go near where it was unleashed, effectively leaving this town in a state of quarantine. So there’s this organization over here that wants to obtain this word and get to the person that unleashed it. You’ve also got this girl over here that’s immune to the word, is being tracked down, but wants to be left alone so she can live her life away from these word wizards.
I really hate to compare it to Harry Potter but it does have a strong element of Potter involved in it. There’s this outsider plucked out of obscurity and put into a school to learn how to manipulate things with words, then that person is thrust into a battle against this formidable force that seems unstoppable, this person then have to trot around on the outskirts while figuring out what they’re going to do to survive.
That being said, it’s still a clever examination of the power of words and how other groups use data collection to influence people. It looks at how we readily give out information over Facebook, Amazon, and surveys to allow other companies to better equip themselves to influence us. It shows how media can spin the truth to make the masses act a certain way. And it deals with how the subtle differences in words and how we phrase them make all the difference in communication.
