Words Are We: A Commentary on Why Language Matters in Clinical Practice

We rarely listen to ourselves, however, nordo we often consciously attend to the specificwords we use in professional conversation. Thisarticle emphasizes the power of the actual languageused by clinicians with one another, with patients,and with the public.We propose a conversation about language in clini-cal practice that has potential to connect old and newideas in the synthesis of something new. We agreewith Burbules that, “Language is fundamentally dia-logical. Our language is a fabric of new and old, inwhich each new use is entwined with previous uses.Our cliches, our slogans, our proverbs (and the webof connotations associated with each utterance) con-tain within them a history of agreements and dis-agreements in prior conversations.”