Final Essay...?

The Power of Words in Oral Traditions
Words are ephemeral and insubstantial, not eternal and concrete. You cannot reach out and grasp a word. Like sunshine, it slips through fingers, untouchable only heating the palm but leaving no real trace of it. If you do manage to capture the sensation of a word in your mind its meaning streams from hands like rain, the harder you squeeze the faster it slips out. But, as with all things, especially man and word, it returns to nature, a mere sound. Or is it? "Oral peoples commonly and with all likelihood universally consider words to have magical potency[, this] is clearly tied in… with their sense of the word as necessarily spoken, sounded, and hence power driven" Ong comments (Ong 32). The sound drives, is driven by a power, a belief that it can movemakedestroyact in some manner to change something or someone.
In Harry Potter a few words of Latin defy the laws of physics, in Good Omens The Word told a story that never happened, by using a true name one can control or be controlled. A sphinx’ riddles can save a life or end it depending on the answer. Each of these examples is a story, a tradition that demonstrates the power that words have. This power is still in common usage in modern times. For Example, arguments give weight to each person’s words to convince or encourage the other side to surrender, speeches are meant to bind people to a cause, contracts are binding law.
But, really, this is oral and imaginative, we don’t need no stinking literature… which completely destroys the point of actually writing this essay… *shrugs*, oh, well. The point that I am trying to get to is that all words have power.
Words of Magic:
"Words [being] primarily oral, as events, and hence as necessarily powered" (Ong 32-33). J.K. Rowlings uses Latin for her magic words, Vainamoinen and Ilmorinen sing in Old Norse to gain immortality. Each word is an event, a happening, a force in and of nature. These examples lead me to the conclusion that it is not the language that gives the power so much as the inherent meaning behind the words. Words are sound set loose but the meaning and the intention of the words is where the strength and force come from. Djinni only need the words "I wish…" to make any dream come true once a person has rubbed their lamp.
Flyting is a Scottish tradition of a word battle consisting of insults. "Flyt" is Scot’s Gaelic for "quarrel" or "conflict." I suppose it is something like a battle of bloody knuckles where the first person to flinch looses or who gave the last or best insult wins. The point is to have more power over the judge and the enemy. This dueling of words much like the traditional weapons dueling is an exchange. First one will go followed by the other etc., etc., until someone dies or yields (which is why I have always found pistol duels exceedingly pointless)
Kotodama/Kototama:
The Japanese have a theory that they call Kotodama which is heavily involved with Aikido, a from of martial arts. From what I understand, each word has power and that once the word is spoken the power is released into the world to spread. Like a physical force, it affects every thing around it moving outward like bad gossip, or if you want to stick to orientalism, like ripples in a pond, reaching out and then bouncing back, again and again until there is no more power to the word spoken. The words drive the strength of the fighter or the fighter him/herself. Or the word is the strength of the warrior who is fighting. Basically the word drives the opponents strength/magic/will away from the fighter leaving the opponent open to an attack wither physical or other.

Okay, so, duh! Words move men and armies, so of course they have power. Say family and you get warm fuzzies, beloved and you turn into a sap. It’s just the way it goes. But words only have the power people give them. You can only be hurt by an insult if you believe it or it comes from someone important to you, but from a stranger… meh. Let them talk, after all it’s only words.
The words hold power, and every word of every story I tell is true and real according to this theory. No, words of power. The belief alone will kill you. The belief in the strength of the words that are spoken drives the speaker and the listener.
Names:
Rumplestiltskin’s name freed a girl from being forced to give up her first born child. "Names (one kind of [word])… [convey] power over things," giving the one who hols the name a power over the other (Ong 33). By knowing a name you have a certain influence to encourage or drive the person or thing with the name. One example is Adam’s naming of the animals in Genesis. By doing so he gained power over them and ruled them and nature until he and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And let’s not get started on the part about man naming a woman and gaining power and absolute control over her. That is just picking a fight.
I also have the theory that epithets were used not only to remember a person by but a way to avoid giving away their name (full or portions) and thus the entirety of who they are which gives control to any who may or may not have it i.e. the government in modern consideration.
We use names to make requests or orders. There are formulas in the form of words or strings of words to gain certain reactions such as "Please…?" or "Would you mind…?" Words hold more power over us than we like to think and humans put more stock in words than they think about.
The power of a sound, the strength of an intention, the magic of a word. Words are one of the most powerful forces on this earth. All words are insubstantial and carry the weight of ages. They are most powerful when first spoken but that power does not fade out as the sound itself fades. No, words stay with us. "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation," "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to dissolve the political bands," "Give me liberty or give me death" "I have a dream…"
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here… and that… shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln, Gettysburg Address 1863
Powerful words, whether written or spoken do not truly fade. They are captured in time, in space, by people like a dragonfly in amber. You can only look, no touching, lest you mar the trapped thing and the molten gold of history.