It is what has allowed us in the space of a few thousand years to travel from marginal nomadic existences to the moon. It is the means by which we get the useful material trapped in our heads into the minds of others. In today's business culture, effective communication skills are regarded as a sine qua non for success. But comparatively few people realize that language remains, at root, a tool. Indeed, language is as critical a prop for road warriors and global executives today as jawbones, flints, and wooden clubs were to our less-evolved ancestors eons ago.
Language is the bridge between material fact and mental abstraction.
But it's even more powerful than that. In fact, reality shows up in language before it shows up anywhere else. By the mid-1980s, Japanese car manufacturers had captured a big chunk of the American car market. Having taken their cue from American quality guru W. Edwards Deming, they developed systems of building cars of of superior quality. Indeed, it was reported at the time that the Japanese had fundamentally redefined and expanded the concept of quality.