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Good diction is now fiction
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 22, 2010
IF THERE is one thing that raises my hackles it is sloppy diction. "Ee-NUN-see-ate," my speech teacher would bellow when I was at school.If speech and diction are not part of the Australian school curriculum today, they should be. They are as important as reading, writing and arithmetic.You can have a brain like Bill Gates but if you cannot communicate your ideas verbally, how do you get your point across? I'm beginning to think verbal communication is becoming a dying art. Speaking clearly has been replaced by texting, sms-ing, emailing or grunting into one's iPhone.The other day I must have spent more than an hour trying to decipher some unintelligible phone messages. Some people simply do not speak clearly. It sounds as though they are not even moving their lips. They seem to mumble into their chests or jam all their words together.One of these messages was a long-awaited call from a woman at my bank. Or at least I think she was. Do you think she bothered to ee-NUN-see-ate her name so I could call her back? Did she clearly leave her telephone number? I played the message over and over and finally gave up.But it need not be like this. Some years ago I attended a speech and diction class at a drama school in New York. Our teacher, a Broadway actor of some note, made sure we learned Shakespeare's soliloquies backwards and forwards. "Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you trippingly on the tongue," we recited from Hamlet, our lips moving animatedly as we formed each syllable.And if we succeeded in untangling our tongues to get through: "Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags" we knew we were on the road to mastering good diction.By the end of our class we had come to love and appreciatethe English language and to enjoy all the varied sounds in Shakespeare's words. It opened up a whole new world to us. Words suddenly became interesting and important and we enjoyed communicating them to one another.So how can we encourage young people today to take pride in the way they speak?I am no expert, but when I taught seven- and eight-year-olds remedial reading I insisted they stand up when they read, assume good posture and ee-NUN-see-ate so all could understand. It got a lot of giggles but hopefully we now have a few more citizens who can make themselves understood.Barbara Worrall
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald