Language and power

The scope of Don't Believe a Word is impressive. It pauses to consider what modes of communication can tell us about the working of the brain, its role in communal violence in India

This morning, a couple stood outside my window, arguing. “What does that mean?” the woman kept saying. “What does that even mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” the man kept responding. “Listen to what I am saying. You know what I’m saying.”

“What does that mean?” she said, and finally, with dangerous composure: “I’m so glad we had this conversation.”

It’s astonishing that humans are expected to make our way in the world with language alone. “To speak is an incomparable act / of faith,” the poet Craig Morgan Teicher has written. “What proof do we have / that when I say mouse, you