If one wants to acknowledge the real power of words, “Words” by Anita Saleem is a must read. An extraordinary work about the mechanism of the words and their powerful effects on the environment, ‘Words’ elaborates the variance between negative and positive thinking, and their consequences. This book also defines that how our destiny depended upon the words we speak.
Sectioned in seven chapters covering seven different topics, Author Anita Saleem has focused on the derivation and formations of words, concepts and aspects built around words and the outcomes and solutions for psychological circumstances related to words.
Saleem covers a basic viewpoint of words formation and goes on to illustrate the physical viewpoint of the origin of words and elucidates the relationship between thoughts, words and emotions.
Backing her arguments with studies, theories and facts, the author elaborates the power of words by providing some real life examples and visualization of different scenarios and their different outcomes.
Saleem has also provided some biblical perspectives and references from the New Roman Testament to reinforce the significance of words, terming them as a blessing by God and describing how the people who mocked the God and messenger suffered the consequences.
Towards the end, the author gives out some advice to readers over effective conversation and use of words and stresses upon screening words before their use, being clear and concise and selection of appropriate words to best suit the situation and keep one’s vocabulary up-to-date.
While the author has successfully discussed the subject with valid arguments and references to necessary material, facts, statistical figures and real-life examples across the topics and subtopics, one feature that remains amiss is the inclusion of religious references, other than the included Biblical ones, in Chapter 6 of the book.
Representing the views only from the Bible gives the reader little scent of discrimination which may lead to a loss of interest by the reader.
Keep things clear and comprehensible, the author effectively prevented the reader from getting lost in complicated psychological terms by providing plain-worded explanations of the terms used in the book.
A reader would feel a sense of repetition in the book contents as topics have been gone over more than once. While doing so might be a helpful reminder of the content read, it may also irk the reader for going over already-read content while going through new topics.
The reviewer is a faculty member in the Institute of Communication and Cultural Studies at UMT and the author of ‘Red Seeps’.