Does society need communication and literature students?

If everyone knows that the pen is mightier than the sword, why are masters of the pen still looked down upon?

The pen is a metaphor for words, whether verbal or written. Yet, communication and literature students – expert wielders of the pen – are still derided for having chosen a “soft choice” by detractors, who cannot see concrete and practical contributions from these fields to society.

But this is precisely why we should cheer, for it shows we have succeeded.

Unlike many fields, communication and literature work in indiscernible ways that many cannot see.

We do not build physical structures like the engineers.

But we do construction work all the same within you. Through meticulously-selected words, we seep into your minds and hearts, and then slowly chip away at your wall of beliefs, or add bricks upon this wall, and persuade you to act upon a particular cause.

Engineers construct structures; doctors construct health; businessmen construct engines of economic growth.

Communication and literature professionals construct what goes on in your mind and heart. The same mind and heart that give engineers the vision of a skyscraper, that drive doctors to save patients, that speak to the conscience of businessmen with one hand secretly dipped into company funds.

In other words, we construct you.

Stealth and invisibility are features of our work. But that does not mean we do not produce concrete or practical results for society.

With a stroke of the pens in our hands, we construct movement en masse – in feelings, thoughts and actions.

Brains will tick. Hearts will throb.

Emotions will stir. Pulses will stop.

People will sway. And then they will move – to the direction our weapons point.

Will society still need us?

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