Language and your Psyche during COVID-19
Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD.
Distinguished online guests, I welcome you to this online seminar on Language and your psyche during COVID-19. Let me assure you that this presentation will be more educational than academic. By that I mean I will spare you academic jargon and details and be as explicit as necessary for all my audience to follow.
First off, we need to understand the terms captured in this title then synthesise them to achieve the purpose of this lecture. WHAT IS LANGUAGE AND WHAT ARE ITS FUNCTIONS?
Language, most fundamentally, is a means through which human beings communicate through the deployment of arbitrary vocal symbols, that is, sounds. Language is one of the means of communication. This implies that there are other ways of communicating aside the use of language. Language, as a means of communication, is human specific. In other words, of all creatures, only human beings communicate through the use of language. We have read about animals that were brought up like humans and eventually could utter some words, it was realised that at 7, such animals could still not put words together to generate meaningful utterances like a 2 year old human child would do. This, of course, points to the fact that language is a means of communication which is peculiar to humans. So primarily, LANGUAGE IS USED TO COMMUNICATE. This primary function of language which is communication has overridden other sensitive functions of this human phenomenon called language.
Amongst other functions, language is a career of worldview. Aside its communicative use, language is the crayon with which a people’s world is coloured. It is the mirror through which a society of people view and review their existence. A person who does not speak a language cannot share in the worldview of the people who speak the language. As an aside, many Nigerian parents are bothered that their children are not as cultured as they want them to be forgetting that such children are not being raised in the language which carries the desired culture they want to see their children exhibit. A Yoruba mother, for instance, frowns on her child who says “Mum, you must be kidding.” but raises such a child with a language that does not frown on such and may not even consider it as being rude. Language therefore is a reflection of a people and you cannot sift a language completely from the culture it carries. Another important function of language is that it imprints strongly on our psyche. This leads us to the second question: What is psyche?
Psyche is the human soul, mind or spirit. The elements of the human mind, including the conscious and unconscious, can be described as the psyche. Psyche can be likened to a person’s emotional state of mind. Just as we can as adults still watch some films relating to witchcraft or horror which will make us unable to sleep at night, so do the things we read colour our reasoning and affect our emotion and perception. Unfortunately, most of the times, unlike watching a film, we do not know that what we read determines our emotional state and we do not even remember to relate our emotional troubles to what we have read especially during unrest.
In relation to COVID-19, it is important for us to be deliberate about what we read and listen to in order to avoid a constant trouble for our mind. Everyone at this time needs emotional intelligence. For the purpose of this lecture, Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of your emotions and guide your mind safely in order to keep your sanity. This is the only time I see an advantage in being an illiterate as not reading at all keeps one saner than being prone to what I call the three F’s of the media: fake news, false news and fabrications. As you shall read in my column in BusinessDay on Friday, this is an age when the media now stand for much more than the dissemination of news. Some write to enjoy traffic on their websites and do not mind what their fake or unfounded news does to your psyche. To keep your sanity at this time therefore, you have to be emotionally intelligent by:
- Reading only from trusted sources. It is amazing now that many Nigerians report and rely on broadcasts shared on their social media than they do on news reported on national and international televisions and reputable newspapers. When you ask an average person for the source of their information lately, it is hardly a known newspaper but a blog with a story by one person who must write something to be paid. So here he goes: A whole family contracts the virus! You are immediately troubled after reading a fabricated story and you begin to fear for your family and almost get yourself dead before death comes. At this time, you cannot afford to always trust unknown authors and news outlet. Read the established newspapers either in the hardcopy or on their websites and listen to news on national and international television stations. These known outlets are usually more interested in giving report than spreading panic.
- To keep a sane mind, you must understand that your first duty when you read a piece of news is to verify and not to believe. For instance, throughout Friday, I read a number of posts reporting that a case of COVID-19 had been found in Ajeromi Ifelodun Local Government; one of the three local governments yet to record cases in Lagos State. This threw many people in the environ into panic. By the evening of the same day, no case was reported from the area by the NCDC. This is to say that one’s first task as a reader is to question and verify every piece of news before believing such in order to keep your sanity.
- For your wellness at this time, you must develop the mindset that news is a report of happenings and not necessarily a revelation of what will or must happen to you. At this time, pieces of news are meant to inform us and help us know what to do and how to do them. We therefore should develop our emotional intelligence to resist sad reports as revelations to us in order not to get into panic. With caution and prayer, we shall overcome this and live happily and freely again.
Thank you for your rapt attention.
Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD.
