Let words do it!
There is perhaps nothing more subtle than language is, and nothing
has as many different uses. Generally language is known as a medium of
exchanging information or expressing ideas. Actually these do not reveal
the spicy side of this amazing tool.
People’s speech vanishes in the air; this is the common belief. But
speech can perform acts, and they are called speech acts.
Language is not a neutral entity. It is a thousand ways biased.
Language consists of more than words; it includes the various forms of
delivery of those words. All speech acts change, in some way, the
conditions that exist in the world.
Language which performs the action it reports. For example, “I do” in
the marriage ceremony and the use of performative verbs such as
“accept,” “apologize,” “congratulate,” and “promise.” These words denote
an action which is performed by using the verb in the first person
nothing more need be done to accomplish the action.
According to Buddhist literature, Lord Buddha offered the monkhood to
a person by calling him ‘ehi bhikku’. If we would consider broadly,
chanting ‘Pansil’ is a kind of oath that we take daily. The ardent
follower may refrain from engaging in malefic acts that he promised (or
agreed) not to breach.
 Meaning is not primarily what a word has; it is something a word
does. When it comes to social beliefs and rituals, what language
actually ‘cause’ becomes more prominent.
Anthropologist and linguists have long been interested in ritual and
ceremony for what they reveal about the religious, political, social and
aesthetic aspects of societies and cultures. As a symbolic and or a
performative action, rituals can be explored not only for their meanings
but also for the effects they have on the lives of their participants.
Even though a definition of a ritual is not quite clear; it is one of
the themes of the area of religion and culture that affects most of us.
Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally constructed are performatives
in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to
express, are fabrications manufactured and sustained through pre decided
signs and words and a mutual understanding of the participants of the
rituals meaning.
The basis of folk wisdom is a belief in the inherent power of words:
some utterances are taboo, others sacred.
Still more words are the province of magic, a culturally contextual
conceptual system within which spells, curses, and oaths are the primary
vehicles utilized by a practitioner seeking to affect the world around
him/her.
The term “spell” is an umbrella under which beneficent and maleficent
intentions separate into spells (those cast by someone with paranormal
capabilities), curses (often times cast by said practitioners, but also
in the province of “ordinary” people), and oaths (promises and verbal
insults).
As Bronislaw Malinowski, the renowned anthropologist observed,
culture’s magical language brought about the production of supernatural
effects in and for the members who heard them.
The words gain power if uttered in the context of action. Rituals
employ a number of verbal art forms, and Malinowski felt these words
were equivalent to actions.
If we look upon Sri Lankan mantra recitals and other related
chanting, it is interesting to observe that outside the context of
situation, they seem meaningless. Especially ‘Vas Kavi’ (a poem compiled
to curse) and ‘Seth kavi’ (a poem compiled to bless) seem to affect only
the relevant person and not on a mass.
Interestingly, the Russian word for epidemic means “something carried
on the air.” Speech acts are same. Just with a little help of vocal
cords and an ear drum.
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