Our words are not just a tool to express our thoughts – they are required to help us form them. Without words, experience is a fog: moods pass through us unnamed, longings remain vague, and much of what we feel resists being known – to ourselves and the world. In this week’s episode of The Workshop podcast, Alain de Botton and John Armstrong reflect on the words that have shaped them – and explore the idea that our emotional lives are only as rich as the language we use to describe them. | | | About The Workshop Podcast Hosted by Alain De Botton and John Armstrong, The Workshop is our intimate, often funny, and always sincere podcast – exclusive to subscribers on The School of Life App. Together, we explore life’s most fundamental questions: | | | Each episode is a quiet journey into something we all feel, but rarely articulate – in love, death, work, and beyond – with important lessons to reflect on our inner lives. | | | | | How the Right Words Help Us Feel the Right Things Many of us believe we’re unrelatable – all the while, we’re simply missing the right words to express ourselves. This article explores how connection depends on language, and how a single word can convey a whole mood, memory or longing. | | | | | Wittgenstein on Language Wittgenstein believed that much of our conflict stems from not having the language to say how we feel. This video reminds us that when we struggle to be understood, the problem can often be linguistic before it’s personal. | | | “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein | | | | | We often assume others misunderstand us, when the real challenge is that we don’t yet have the words. This book offers practical help for expressing complex feelings more clearly, so we can speak more honestly and connect more deeply. | | | | | We need time to find the words we connect to the most, before we can confidently convey ourselves to others. This guided journal helps untangle vague emotions – giving us the inner language we need to feel seen in the world. | | | There are feelings we’ve had all our lives – subtle, complex moods – that we’ve never known how to explain. These cards introduce words from around the world that may not exist in our own language, helping us feel seen in new ways. | | | “Language is a mirror of civilisation – it reveals the feelings and experiences that people really pay attention to.” – Alain De Botton, Ep. 22: Favourite Words | | | |
