"The Language of War" How Words Influence Thinking

In this thought-provoking episode of How to Talk to Humans, we explore the powerful role language plays in shaping how we think, communicate, and understand conflict.

Focusing on the “language of war,” this discussion reveals how specific words and phrases can influence perception, frame narratives, and impact the way people respond to situations. From everyday conversations to global events, the language we use carries more weight than we often realize.

This episode breaks down how communication choices can either escalate or clarify a message, offering insight into how to become more aware, intentional, and effective when speaking with others.

If you’re interested in communication skills, psychology of language, and how words influence behavior, this episode provides valuable tools for understanding and improving the way you connect with people.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:00

Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrial, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned for 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Hi, I'm Larry Wilson. Thanks again for joining me for another episode of How to Talk to Humans. And today's podcast could not be more relevant about talking to humans. As many of you know, I'm notoriously apolitical. It's not that I have anything against politics, I just really don't understand them. And I think they're a distraction. I don't mean to denigrate anyone's interest in politics. If you're really excited about that, great. But in my life experience, I see that as a tendency to agitate people and maybe make their lives less harmonious. I have no desire to feel that way. But I was gonna talk about something that skirts right on the edge of politics here. I hope you will forgive me for entering this murky territory. Uh I only bring this up because at this point in time here in 2026, spring of 2026, we're in the midst of uh international warfare. And I I immediately remembered something from my childhood, where the very famous poster uh that some child had created that said war is uh not healthy for children and other living things. Of course, this still continues to be true. Um that's not really what I want to debate here. What I found so interesting, and you may start to realize a pattern here with me, when things take place like a war, like the Academy Awards, like uh music video, like the internet, like AI, all kinds of things that bubble up through the culture, I'm always interested in how they impact our communication skills. Because, as you know, I've said here before, the air is thick with semiotic information, information that's not spoken, that's coming at us all the time. Whether we perceive it or not, well it's really up to us. But it is coming at us like it's coming out of a fire hose. There's so much information. Now, if you attune yourself to it, if you sensitize yourself to it, then you can start to see it. You can go, oh, that's what Larry was talking about, this thing of this and whatever. And so with the war that's going on now, and by the time you hear this, I don't know if the war will be ended, I don't know if it'll be escalated, um, I don't know what will be taking place. But what was fascinating to me was listening to all the various different people, and and I mean, you know, a famous people, people involved in media and the military and government and politics, all that sort of thing. The different ways they spoke about what was taking place. I realize it's hard to detach yourself sometimes. If you're worried about uh nuclear annihilation, then maybe you're uh too stressed to be able to step back and look at it uh in the way I'm describing here, which is sort of a 30,000-foot view. It's very detached, very stiff. But if you are uh worried about nuclear annihilation, I would recommend taking the afternoon off and watching the classic film Doctor Strange Love. It will either make you feel better or make you feel worse. I don't know. I think it's a very, it's a brilliant film. I think it's funny, and it really captures the zeitgeist of the early 60s when a lot of people really, first time I think they were really concerned about uh nuclear war. And uh Stanley Kubrick uh you know directed this masterpiece. And of course, the genius of it is it's a very serious subject that they treat as farce. And so it makes it funny because it's not the way you're supposed to handle something serious like that. But uh if you are able to step back and uh see things from a more detached point of view, there's some very important and valuable lessons to be learned about communication. Um we see people on the news, on uh social media, um, on the internet, on you know, Instagram, all sorts of things, different people talking about these things, and the world is changing very, very rapidly. When I was growing up, uh network television news was where most people got their news. And of course, that's ancient history now. Might as well be speaking about the Peloponnesian Wars. That's ancient history. Now people are getting it from uh YouTube, from TikTok, from uh Instagram, their social media. So they're it's coming in a completely different way. And that may be what brought it to my attention so sharply. Because in Wilson Method, I frequently refer to the three Ds. Now, before I go any further, I have different things that I bring up about Wilson Method. The three D's I thought was a useful mnemonic device, you know, like seeing things in 3D. It's easy to remember. There's no greater importance attached to it than that. That's all. But the 3Ds that I have in mind are determine, define, and deploy. I want you to determine your goal in every communication before you attempt to communicate. Then I want you to define the means of transmission because they're all different. And third is deploy, I want you then to deploy the tools that you're learning in Wilson method, depending on what the actual means of transmission is. I want to address that second D, define, because that's what came to me so clearly, that what stood out so sharply in all this talk of war recently. And I realized, oh, none of these people, well, clearly none of them have trained with me, and some of them, I guess, were good communicators. I'm not sure. Some of them were very, very poor communicators. And I would attribute that to they had not defined what the means of communication was. And the reason I want you to define that, are you speaking to a person face to face? Are you writing an email? Is it on Zoom? Is it a old school hard copy written communication? Is it uh, you know, on a telephone call with no picture? All these things are different. You can't think there's a one-size-fits-all technique of communicating. If you do, you wind up in this problem that I see abounding now just in coverage of the war. Because I see people who are not thinking about who they're speaking to, or they clearly have not thought what is my one primary goal in this communication. They haven't thought about that. And sometimes there are people who I think are very bright, but they come off as not bright. And that's because the simplest way I can say is I frequently say in my training, do not bring your barbecued ribs to the vegan picnic. I know they're the greatest barbecued ribs in the world. They aren't going to be a hit at the vegan picnic. Now, I don't know how to make it any clearer than that. If you are not aware of who you're trying to communicate with, more than likely it's going to be a colossal failure. You might get lucky, you might catch lightning in a jug, might turn out okay, but more than likely it won't be. It won't connect. I don't know how to put it any simpler. What I was amazed at in some of the coverage, I would hear military people being interviewed about something. And if you look at this with this jaundiced eye that I'm encouraging you to try, you don't have to do it all the time. I just mean as an experiment. You'll be amazed when you see, oh, the military people are speaking a military language, they're not in any way listening to the people who are interviewing them, what they're really trying to find out, whatever that may be. The political people are speaking in a political language. And someone may be asking them a question that would be better suited for the military people. They're answering strictly in a political language. I can't say this often enough. Communication is human, and anytime we stray from that, our communication breaks down. You may not be aware it's breaking down. You may think, yeah, I told them everything they need to know. But if you did not connect with them first, so that you could convey your message successfully and create an authentic bond with them, then you may find it's as if you didn't say anything. You just made duck noises. And and it could be astonishing to you. I went out and told them everything. Maybe you thought you did, but what I just referred to actually are another principle of Wilson Method, the three C's connect, convey, create. I won't go into it. I've talked on other episodes of the podcast about those specific three C's. It was fascinating to me. I'd see someone else on the media who would be talking about, uh, they'd be someone who maybe was um had a ethical or philosophical point of view. And that's the language they were using. But they weren't listening to the person interviewing them, and so they never connected. And it was fascinating to me. If you go and listen to these things again, or listen to them as they're coming up in real time, if you're thinking consciously about the things I'm talking about here, I know you'll see it. I'll see if I can give you uh an example without making this into some uh political fist fight because I really have no interest in that. Uh I'll leave that to other people who like fighting. I don't really have any interest in that. But the military people sometimes did not understand that the people they were being presented to in whatever form it was, maybe it was a radio interview, maybe it's a radio interview of the specific kind of audience. They were not thinking about that. And so they made their comments highly technical. And I I'm assuming, because of the certainty that uh some of these military people are saw, I'm assuming that they really are experts and know exactly what they're talking about. But I could not understand what they were saying, they were using military speak. I'm not gonna try to mimic it here because I don't want to be disrespectful. I'm sure I would get it wrong. But you know, uh there's a tendency to combine words, uh central command becomes centcom, uh things like that. And there's nothing wrong with that, except if your audience is not one of you, and you're trying to reach out to them and connect and convey information, then you can't use your jargon. You and you also can't address things. Now, uh, I'm just saying this uh focused on the military people, I was saying. You can't address things saying, oh, uh, we had a drone that had the 6,500 engine that could do eight kilometers that blob. We don't know what that means. Now, if you want to explain it to us, great. You know, give it your best. But they were speaking their language, because this is what they do all the time, and it never occurred to them that they were bringing their barbecued ribs to the vegan picnic. I hope you'll join me again next week for another episode of How to Talk to Humans. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. That, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at Wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Human.