The art of effective speaking
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| The art of effective speaking, |
Excerpt
Nothing so truly distinguishes one person from another in point of culture as his manner of speaking. There is much truth in the statement that a man is known by the character of his speech.
This is perfectly natural when we reflect that speech is our most important means of communication and the chief instrumentality by which we become known to each other. “Guard well thy tongue,” said Thomas Carlyle, “for out of it are the issues of life.” It is primarily through speech that we give expression to our personality — interpreting speech in the broad sense, not only of words, but also of the accompanying action, posture, gesture, and facial expression. John Ruskin has put this effectively in the following paragraph:
A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages, may not be able to speak any but his own, and may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever words he pronounces, he pronounces rightly
. An ordinary clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports, yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person. So also the accent or turn of expression of a single sentence will at once mark a man a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing forever.
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