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The Terrains of MindBody Pollution
The Usual Suspects of Mindlessness
Language Pollutants
Language is the greatest invention of human evolution and development: From grunts to words allowing us to convey meaning-making abstractions of our deepest cognitions and corresponding emotions. I propose language is a vital component in the ecology of consciousness. And just as nature’s ecology is polluted by toxins and trash, language is polluted by mindless speech patterns.
As it relates to language, its pollutants serve as disfluencies, discordances, over-informing, and vernaculars to fill gaps in the flow of thoughts and speech as well as affectations for inclusion in the latest sociocultural trends. The reason these lexical fillers are analogous to pollutants in nature’s ecology, is because they reduce the pristineness and clarity of our language.
Let’s expose the language pollutants and their effect on mindbody communication. The omnipresent filler, you know, is a disfluency (disruption of flow) as well as a discordance (confounding meaning). It fills the gap between the speed of thought and speech, while distorting the meaning of the verb, to know. Although the conversationalists do not take the discordance literality, “you know” is used as a meaningless filler. An act of mindlessness. Other candidates for the robotic lexicon are no problem, in…
