July 31, 2006
Words
There’s a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve never been convinced. I’m not a graphic artist, but I wonder whether that saying can ever be pictured. And I wonder just how much its validity might depend on what the linguistic programming people call our “dominance.”
One way to find this out is to listen to certain words they use. Say someone asks your opinion. If they’re visually dominant, they might ask, “How do you see this?” If they prefer audio, they might ask, “How does this sound?” or “What do you think?” Or if they’re the kinesthetical, touchy-feely types, “How do you feel about this?” Once you find this pattern and start using their preference, the conversation usually gets to flowing easier. It’s sort of like asking a clammed-up three-year old whether they’ve ever been stung by a bee.
Some more skilled than I in this sort of study suggest that these dominances determine where people sit in church. They say that the kinesthetics sit up front, the visuals in the middle, and the audios in the rear. This also affects the passing of the Peace in the Liturgy.
When the bishop overseeing Lake Wobegon ordered his churches to use the Peace, it caused quite a stir in the local parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. You may remember that the folks around there are by nature just plain shy. They emphatically didn’t like this new practice one bit. So their ever-thoughtful pastor Father Emil said that since there was no getting around the bishop’s mandate, they simply had to do it, but they didn’t have to make eye contact.