Power

Certain words in our language operate upon us subliminally in such intractably binding ways as to render their rhetorical effect difficult to modify. "Power" is one of those words. As a result, for example, to call someone "powerless" is patently less of a winner in debate than calling them "clueless" or "aimless."

To declare that someone has "lost his powers" may work somewhat better as a modifier, perhaps because the words "lost" and "loss" have an unusual amount of semio-affective punch in their own [tip:right=Even so, superheroes who have "lost" their powers often tend to get them back again later in the story.]. "Strong" and "strength" are other good examples of this kind of [tip: word=A "strong power" impacts us subliminally as something nearly unbeatable.].

In any case, whatever other words we might drape it with – e.g., "good use of," "abuse of" – on a subliminal level, the word "power" usually retains an unusual amount of resistance against anything altering it’s essential impact, and consequently--on a cognitive level--it’s meaning.

Let's analyze why.

The p sound is another "lip" sound. Semio-affectively, lip sounds can generally be considered "pleasure" sounds. (The sound of the letters "m" and "b" also fall into this category.) To best understand how this works, try uttering a sound with or without other letters attached, on your own. While doing so, focus on how this makes your [tip:lips=and to a certain extent the rest of you] feel – doing this a few times ought to give you the general idea.

Directionally, the p sound pushes outward, conveying not just pleasure but a potential sense of control. The incipient body sense here associates to something outwardly- or actively-oriented as compared, for example, with the more inward directionality (as one's breath is forced back into the mouth) of the naked b [tip:sound.=Words like "boo" and "buy"/"bye"/"by" all share a slingshot effect due to the juxtaposition of that "b" sound with the outward pull of the subsequent vowel sounds.]

Side note: A general assumption regarding language here is that the basic bio-affective, "tactile" building blocks of sound tend, according to conventional standards of sophisticated academic [tip:thought=whose inherent snobberies are, in the most neutral and nonjudgmental sense, themselves essentially self-protective in nature],  to be too simple and crude to be of any real analytic significance. All of our current language -- indeed, every word, including those I am writing and you are reading right now, are somehow part of our persistently self-reinforcing, protective web of culturally-evolved values. As such, we can expect that, to some degree, at least at first, for all our attempts to verbally speak (and/or think) our  way "out" or "beyond" these traditional language-based, protection-centered values to be neutralized by practically whatever words or phrases we use to do so. This is because all of our language structures have historically grown up under similar conditions: the recurrent scarcity of natural resources, and thus the impending threat of famine, war, etc.

Given all this, however, some phrases, words, sounds, and associative linguistic constellations would predictably be, only seemingly paradoxically, both more resistant to modification and change of meaning and affect, but also more particularly more predictably useful to an effective in the vocabularies of "reactionary" speakers during eras of social and cultural decline. 

Back to the analysis of "p"-"ow"-"er:" "ow" is a sound which, particularly when clearly and seriously intoned – we can easily infer a figurative if not a literal exclamation point here – is readily associated with "pain" and, subsequently, anything do in response to that [tip:pain.=I'm pretty sure this association is more or less universal, though I would welcome knowing of any clear exceptions to this assumption.]

By placing the "p" in front of the "ow,"  we are ameliorating that pain via the pleasurable lip sound, and simultaneously pushing it outward, which gives us a sense of [tip:control=Again, to experience these and other such effects for yourself,  simply go ahead and experiment with them on your own. In this case, make the "flat p" sound, followed by the "ow."]. This ameliorative process is augmented by adding the guttural "er" sound that, semio-affectively, also carries a sense of potential threat.

To sum all this up, the word "power" is made up of a bundle of complex effects that variously reinforce and mitigate certain "bio-affective" impacts.

Within the context of an evolving, socially- progressive language, however, a word that works semio-affectively like the word power does – no matter what context we use it in, if only because it contains the pain-associated "ow" sound within it– would tend to "drag us back," at least momentarily, into a "reactionary" [tip:sensibility=mood], whether we were aware of its subliminal effects or [tip:not.=Though, arguably, awareness of its subliminal workings in this way could provide some modification of it's standard influence upon us.]

This analysis of the way saying or hearing the word "power" affects us presents a good example, not of mind over matter, but, as contextualized from a progressive perspective relative to any stressed-out or otherwise closed-off social milieu, quite the opposite: (recalcitrant) body over [tip:mind=mob rule, mass hysteria, herd instinct, etc.]. It also presents a good example of the more general tenet of our broader "bioenergetic" language theory, which holds that the more immediately soothing and protective the effects of our "ameliorative" linguistic [tip:devices=The various tactile effects of sounding out letters and syllables.], the more they are almost always belied by tacit assumptions of inevitable physical and/or emotional [tip:pain.=Given this, it's not all that difficult to connect our attraction to the use of the word "power" to the continued economic prosperity of any professional for whom the continuous flow of a wounded and abused clientele has become essential.]