Language has the capacity to flow from person to person, generation to generation and even time to time. However, language does not just store waves of information. Language, when done right, can invoke not only emotional, but physical responses from an audience. Toni Morrison, in her 1993 Nobel Lecture, speaks to this power. She addresses how language is not only thrust into the arms of a younger generation, but how it has been used overtime for construction as well as corruption. It is with these examples of her piece that it becomes ever clear as to how language, and its facets in written and spoken word, must be presented. Language has to be executed in a way that attracts the audience. The most persuasive pieces, whether for war, politics or patriotism, are found in the author's ability to connect with their audience. The author has to make the audience feel the words before them, not just hear or read them. This is the aspect that separates heart pounding, inspirational speeches that persuade the masses from dreary classroom reads. An author's utilization of words, for education and even interest based purposes, is most effective when catered to the curiosity and understanding of their audience, specifically when appealing to the human condition.
In Morrison's piece, the human condition appears in the forms of patriotism and conformity. She uses majority of her piece to comment on society, and how spoken word with the help of these forms, is often utilized to corrupt and manipulate. She focuses on the power these words have and the way they present false depictions of a healthy, together country that is governed by a paternal power. She writes: "There will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied." (3). Here she is directly speaking to how politicians, the faces of a country, use words and the addressed forms of humanism to manipulate the masses.
