Making Good Talk

7/30/2019 Making Good Talk

1/182

MAKING G O O D TALK


2/182


3/182

AUSTIN J. APP, PH.D.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, LA SALLE

COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY

MILWAUKEE


4/182

Copyright, 1950, The Bruce Publishing Company

Made in the United States of America

(Second Printing1950)


5/182

To MY FATHER AND MOTHER


6/182


7/182

Preface

THIS book is based on the assumption that, since

conversation is life's most habitual and significant avocation,any, even a slight, improvement in it is of incalculable social,

economic, and moral value. Its thesis is not that everyone

can become a brilliant conversationalist, but that everyone

can get better and better in this matter of talking and

should.

The book sprang first of all from an index file into which

for perhaps twenty years I slipped any items on conversation

that came to my notice. By and by, when a kindly editor

suggested that I submit some human interest article, I

thought it was about time to rifle my file, and among tenta-

tive topics I proposed "How to Improve One's Conversa-

tion." Father Clement J. Lambert, S.M., editor of theMarianist, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, declared his

preference for this, limiting me to 2500 words. It appeared

as "This Matter of Talking," in February, 1949. But it

barely introduced the subject, so that it seemed absolutely

necessary to add "Improving One's Conversation" in the

March issue, and "Background for Conversation" in the

May issue. Furthermore, the whole subject overflowed into

a long article, entitled, "How to Improve Conversation

According to Dean Swift," published in Magnificat , Man-

chester, N. H., April, 1948.

vii


8/182

viii Preface

At this time it became painfully evident to me that thetopic would never subside peacefully until it had been givenadequate scope in a book. You now have before you the book.In it, only the article, "Background for Conversation," was,

at least in part, retained in its original form. But even atthis point a feeling of inadequacy haunts me. I feel now asif every chapter should be a book, and every page a chapter.Every statement would seem to need another example. Thetruth is that conversation is so rich, varied, and inexhaustiblethat no book can completely capture it and teach it. But Ido like to hope that no one will read these eleven chaptersof MAKING GOOD TALK without being a livelier and moresignificant conversationalist for it.

In writing the book I owe more than I can specify to themany authors who down the ages and in our own time havewritten about or commented on conversation. At one time

or another I have probably seen or read most of their dis-cussions, and assimilated much of what I read. Often it hasbecome too much a part of me to be able to place. But whereI could recall the source and wording, quotations and refer-ences in the text are the grateful as well as informativeacknowledgment. Since the book is more or less informal,exact references were given only where some special pur-pose was to be served.

To these general acknowledgments must be added a spe-cial one to Father Clement J. Lambert, editor of the Mari-anist Magazine, for eliciting my first articles on the topic.

A. J. APP,PH.D.Philadelphia, Pa. June 15, 1949


9/182

Contents

PREFACE vii

CHAPTER I Improving Our Talking Life 1

II The Mechanics

and Rhetoric of Conversation 12

III The Voice and Diction of Conversation 33IV The Background for Good Conversation 45V Special Gifts, Devices, and Techniques 61

VI Personality Adjustment for Conversation 80

VII The Do's and Don't's

of Agreeable Conversation 95

VIII When and How to Talk of One's Self 106

IX The Weather and the Words in Passing 120

X Gossip, Shoptalk, and Small Talk 130

XI Politics, Art, Religion 142

XII Conclusion 159

INDEX 165


10/182


11/182

MAKING GOOD TALK


12/182

CHAPTER I

Improving Our Talking Life

OUR manner of talking is so important a matter,not merely for getting along in this life but also for reachingthe next, that the most flaming of the Apostles, St. Paul, fierytrail blazer to salvation, declared, "Your manner of speakingmust always be gracious, with an edge of liveliness, readyto give each questioner the right answer."

1I should like

especially to call attention to his requiring "an edge ofliveliness" in a good Christian's conversation! It pleases meto interpret this to mean that a fellow who never lifts a coinfrom his mother's purse, but who uses up fifteen and then-sto tell how he talked the "cop" out of a traffic ticket, has amighty slim chance of wriggling through that biblical "eyeof a needle" that is the gate of heaven!

Quite probably the Holy Office would consider my inter-pretation of St. Paul's "edge of liveliness" in conversationtoo rigorous and too demoralizing for the millions oftalkers whose conversation rattles along on less than fourcylinders and on gritty oil. The Holy Office always has to beready and fit to watch that no Pauline enthusiast will readtoo much into such provocative dicta as that "Wives must besubmissive to their husbands," and that all talk should have

1 Col. 4:6, as translated by R. A. Knox, The New Testament(New York:Sheed & Ward, 1945), p. 435. In the following pages, New Testament references

will usually be to the familiar, older Douay-Rheims version.


13/182

2 Making Good Talk

"an edge of liveliness" or otherwise, presumably, subside

into pinochle!

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the most fiery of the

Apostles told his Colossians, one, to be gracious in conversation,

two, to be lively, and three, to be ready and well informed. It isalso well to stress that he lays down these requirements, not

primarily to get on well in this world, but to become the sort

of Christian who deserves heaven in the next. St. Paul's

prescription for talking brings to mind that of the man about

whom the world's greatest biography was written, the man

whom I tend to regard as a great Protestant saint, Samuel

Johnson. Boswell reports:

Talking of conversation, he said, "There must, in the first place,be knowledge, there must be materials; in the second place, theremust be a command of words; in the third place, there must beimagination, to place things in such views as they are not

commonly seen in; and in the fourth place, there must bepresence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcomeby failures" (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. H. V. Abbott, LakeLibrary Edition, 1923, p. 456).

Here St. Paul's "ready to give . . . the right answer" becomes

Johnson's first two points: knowledge and command of words;

St. Paul's "edge of liveliness" becomes imagination and presence

of mind. The great lexicographer, who has been accused of

frequently mistaking conversation for a verbal prize contest,

failed to mention the point which St. Paul calls graciousness.

But another great English word-marshaler, Jonathan Swift,

follows St. Paul in putting this first. In his "Hints towards an

Essay on Conversation," he declares, "And surely one of thebest rules of conversation is, never to say anything which any

of the company can reasonably wish we had left unsaid." In

his "Letter to a


14/182


3

Very Young Lady on Her Marriage," he again stresses that

"civility and good will . . . with the addition of somedegree of sense, can make conversation or any amusement

agreeable."

But so as not to have anyone imagine that it is only the men

who lay down rules for conversation, and possibly that, while

seeming to encourage it, they slyly want to hedge it so about

with their rules that the sex which is said to talk as naturally

as champagne bubbles might have its talk methodized into a

mere fizz, I quote the dean of women essayists, Miss Agnes

Repplier. In her essay, "The Luxury of Conversation," she

insists, "People equipped with reason, sentiment, and a

vocabulary should have something to talk about." This strongly

underwrites Johnson's insistence on knowledge, command ofwords, and imagination. However, in "A Question of

Politeness," she would appear to make St. Paul's graciousness

the keystone of good talk. She says, "For to be civilized is to be

incapable of giving unnecessary offense."

Elsewhere in the essay, she links good conversation, as St.

Paul does, to our spiritual life. She says:

. . . the perpetual surrender which politeness dictates cuts downto a reasonable figure the sum total of selfishness. To listenwhen we are bored, to talk when we are listless . . . thesethings brace the sinews of our souls. . . . They discipline us forthe good of the community.

There it is! Talking graciously and with "an edge of liveliness"

braces the sinews of our souls and "discipline[s] us for the

good of the community." That is why all of us, for the good of

our own souls and for the good of our fellow men, who are

our brothers in Christ, must ever try to become


15/182

4 Making Good Talk

more ready talkers, more gracious talkers. We must keepwhetting "the edge of liveliness" of our conversation!

The truth about this matter of talking is that, far moreeven than our eyes, our conversation is the reflection and

expression of our souls, the mark of our personality. Theconversation of any group of us together or, if you will,of Catholics or of Quakers or of Americans, when they aretogether, is the truest index of their culture. Just as trulyas the Bible says that by theirfruityou shall know them,can one say that by theirwords one can know them. Ourwords it is that strike others as sweet or sour, that move themto want more of us, or less.

The more one thinks about it the more one comes to feelthat talk is life's visible spark and circuit, the magnetism thatholds the human race together. Even deaf-mutes cannot livetogether without their sign talking. It is so important to

human beings that, as theirbodies cannot live without foodand drink, theirspirit likewise seems to wither without talk.That is why, next to outright mayhem and execution, theworst punishment governments know to inflict on humanbeings is solitary confinement. In retreat houses, thehardest mortification spiritual directors impose is silence.Those who have gone through the experience know thatduring a three-day self-imposed silence the very world seemsto stop and ideas turn upside down. The keenest joy aftersuch a retreat is not the prospect of a good dinner, but theanticipation of a good talk.

The output of talk in the world is staggering. Even ourLord, who warned "that every idle word that men shallspeak, they shall render an account for it in the day ofjudgment" (Matt. 12:36, 37), talked and preached so muchthat, it is estimated, if all His words had been set down, all


16/182

6 Making Good Talk

ant. All the boys were too bashful to talk with the girls. And

even among the boys, the younger and possibly also the nicer

boys were usually too bashful to participate in the general talk

sessions. And the talk of the others, the older boys, was not only

painfully silly and repetitious but shockingly indecent. Peoplesimply will not bring themselves to believe this but it is

literally true and I fear the same is still true in most

nondenominational schools. I say this because when later many

of us were transferred to a parochial school, even the rascals

who were the most foulmouthed in the public school, directly

after being under the constant shadow of heaven and hell,

cleansed their speech.

But until I was so transferred, there had been no participating in

the school talk. Among indecent people, one either has to have

the personality to dominate the conversation along proper lines

or be soiled in the common brew or withdraw. At that age I

did not have the needed personality. When play stopped and talkbegan, I quietly withdrew and took refuge in books. There I

began to have my second contact with conversation, a

theoretical one. I began to notice that writers generally

complained about the dullness, silliness, and tactlessness of

much conversation, lamented that conversation was not what it

used to be in former times, and made remarks for its

improvement. They seemed to consider conversation as the

pleasure most adequate and worthy of man's exalted nature, and

were distressed because it was usually so poorly done. They all

seemed to echo Swift's words in his "Hints towards an Essay on

Conversation":

I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mereindignation, to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, sofitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in allmen's power, should be so much neglected and abused.


17/182


7

I reflected much upon their attitude. By and by, however,

I began to feel that these critics of conversation expectedtoo much from the human race. As I got into the latter yearsof college and into graduate school, I found conversation anincreasingly more satisfying pleasure. Nearly all of my school-mates seemed to be people with whom one could, singly orcollectively, have good talk. I began to suspect that whatwas irking the writers was that ordinary people talked aboutordinary things, whereas these pen wielders probablythirsted for nothing but conversazione about sonnets, land-scapes, and arias. I reflected that normal people cannot beexpected to talk about these things, that their talk is prob-ably all right and lively enough for their own tastes, that

writers, teachers, and clergymen simply should accept thefact that the people of "Our Town" will confine their talkto measles, groceries, matrimony, and children, and that theintellectuals should therefore either go back to their books,lectures, and sermons, or hobnob exclusively with oneanother.

Being a college teacher myself, I tended in my talking lifeto act accordingly. However, two observations slowly forcedthemselves upon me. One was that some of the greatestbores in the world can be found among the "intellectuals,"so that evidently it was not brains and learning alone thatmade the conversationalist. The other was that the conversa-

tion of the "intellectuals," even when lively, seems to be farmore about groceries and matrimony than about lyrics andexistentialism. While, it is true, the conversations that weremost memorable for me personally were those mostly aboutcultural and intellectual topics, the post-mortem of the nor-mally interesting conversations of cultured or educated per-sons tended to show that they were some 90 per cent about


18/182

8 Making Good Talk

the average interests of normal people, and only 10 per centabout so-called cultural topics.

Nevertheless, whatever topics certain people talked about,it made for lively and interesting conversation. This led me

to conclude that it is not so much the topic that makes forgood talk or the education of the speaker but the han-dling of the topic. It was the manner of talking about it possibly, as Johnson put it, the knack of placing "things insuch views as they are not commonly seen in," that resultedin an "edge of liveliness." This impression was strongly con-firmed by a stretch in army barracks. The talk of most sol-diers most of the time was, of course, too indecent for com-ment or participation. But not all. There were enough conver-sationally decent fellows there of all degrees of education andtalents to permit several observations. One was that boreswere not confined to any profession or trade or nationality.

Secondly, fellows with an "edge of liveliness" in their talkmight be white or black, Catholic or Hindoo, plumbers orprofessors. Again, one felt that it was not so much the topicsdiscussed as the manner and method that made the conver-sation either interesting or boring.

When anybody's method and manner clearly violated therecommendations set down in the subsequent chapters, itwas easy to see why they were dull or irritating. But amongpeople not obviously deficient, I could never conclusivelyput my finger on the precise factor that makes some peopleinteresting to talk with and others not. I followed up everyconceivable hypothesis. Now, if I have to commit myself, Isay one finds a stranger uninspiring, even though well man-nered, if he is narrow in his interests, if he has no enthusias-tic interest in anything, and if he brings no new slant orspecial data on the topic or topics discussed. Conversely, one


19/182

Improving Our Talking Life 9

finds a stranger interesting, one is stimulated by him to con-tinue the talk and the acquaintance, if he has a wide rangeof interests, if he has some particular enthusiasms, and if heseems to get underneath the surface of anything discussed.

The latter is precisely the hardest to analyze. It seems to bethe real secret. It is a sort of better grip on a subject thanmost have, a tendency to see it from more angles. It is mostcertainly the tendency to rise from the particular into theuniversal, to relate an instance to a law, a fact to a truth. Adull person will describe his aging father's ailments; an in-teresting one will go from his father's ailments to the prob-lems of old people in general. That tendency seems to me themost definite single factor between tiresome talkers andstimulating ones.

Generally it is the people with the higher native intelli-gence, in the army those with the highest army classification

scores, who have the keener and wider interests and thericher grip on their subjects. The level of intelligence tendsto produce a corresponding level of grasp and variety for alltopics of conversation. It is probably true that no satisfactoryconversational rapport or affinity is possible between peopleof widely separated intelligence levels. Genius and moronwould seem never to be conversationally compatible. A twohorsepower mind can probably never develop sufficient rangeand depth to stimulate a six horsepower one. Friendship be-tween people so divergent in talents is never likely to beconversationally stimulating enough to survive a commonand specialized interest.

But our Lord spoke of a talent range of one to five. Hence,even if groupings or friendships between extremes are avoid-able, groupings of people in adjacent talent ranges cannotwell be and ought not to be avoided. In such, while there


20/182

10 Making Good Talk

is certainly a divergence of talent, it is not so great that theright training in conversational method and manner, theproper cultivation of interests, cannot bridge the differencefor a happy talking life. Aside from sex, what seems to

draw people together more than anything else is their man-ner and range of conversation. And much which even inmarriage passes for incompatibility is really nothing butconversational disparity, often a correctable disparity. Con-versational compatibility is conditioned not merely by nativeintelligence but by many other things. It is a reflection ofone's training, character, interests, experiences all of whichcan be changed and improved, so that what once seemed tomany a dull personality can come to seem an interestingone to virtually everybody. Everyone has heard it said ofsomeone, "My, how he's improved. In high school he usedto be such a drip. Now he is one of the sparks of the party."

Whatever the change, it is certain that it is his manner oftalking that is making it evident.

In short, it seems true to say that conversation is the mostcomplete single expression of one's personality. It is themirror of a person's and a group's and a country's sum totalof decency, knowledge, and culture their explicit, com-posite character. Hence, it is the duty and the lifelong jobof everyone to keep raising its tone and liveliness in him-self and in his community. Within the boundaries of one'sintelligence, everyone can improve his conversation in sev-eral ways. He can improve it technically in grammar andrhetoric, diction and voice; in variety, richness, and liveli-ness; and, most importantly, in what St. Paul calls "gracious-ness," in Christian lovableness and good taste, so that whetherhe talks or listens, people are glad of it, and are better offfor his being there.


21/182

Improving Our Talking Life 11

To improve the reader in all these three ways, sometimesfacetiously, generally seriously, as the spirit and the mattermove, is the purpose of the following chapters. If you readthem with reasonable will and attention, you ought to be

laying a new foundation for a happier and richer talking lifethan you have ever enjoyed before. You ought in any caseto pick up at random a great many hints and guides thatwill at least here and there correct a fault or increase a vir-tue. And in conversation even the smallest improvement,extended over a long talking life, becomes a significant gain.Your circle of friends and acquaintances, too, without per-haps ever realizing it consciously, should come to think ofyou as an even more charming and likable person thanthey probably already think you are. Even your family shouldconsider it more than ever a treat when you relax and justtalk with them.


22/182

CHAPTER II

The Mechanics and Rhetoricof Conversation

LANGUAGE is the instrument of conversation.Grammar is the correct use of language; rhetoric the wiseand effective use of it; diction the choice and range of words.These are large and complicated subjects, which cannot betreated comprehensively in a chapter on conversation. For-tunately they do not need to be. Everybody who has hadsome schooling has had a good deal of training in the ele-ments of all three. What is needed here is their mobilizationfor good conversation.

The importance of these merely mechanical aspects of con-versation were impressed upon me very painfully at anearly age. When I was six, during a Sunday school class whichmany parents witnessed, the pastor, alluding to our Lord'sbeing lost in the temple, asked if anyone could tell about it.When none responded, I ventured to raise my hand un-certainly, and before I realized the full enormity of my pre-sumption, I was on my feet telling this incident. The pastorwarmly commended me, then, smilingly turning to the adultsin the back, added somewhat apologetically, as if in a post-script, "Of course, it was rather much a string ofand, and,and and then,but the story nevertheless."

This observation jolted me with an impact that, I like tothink, knocked the most common rhetorical fault of most

12


23/182


24/182

14 Making Good Talk

library or bookstore, you will leaf through a list of "CommonUsage Errors" appended to most college composition booksor rhetorics. In your own talk you will make it a point, in-formally as well as formally, to avoid these errors. You will

say, He's lying (not laying) down. It doesn't (not don't)matter. He is unlucky like me (not like I).

But, though you recognize such errors and avoid them,you will daily include among your morning prayers a re-newed resolve never to embarrass others for making them.You will resolve to be careful not to "rub in" the error evenindirectly. If, for example, someone said, "It's different thananything else," you will not acquiesce with, "Yes, it's differentfrom anything else," putting just enough emphasis on thefrom to make the whole company conscious of your impliedcorrection. You will, however, resolve to help others andpromote correct conversation whenever, and if, you can do

so charitably and unobtrusively. When someone, for exam-ple, grossly misuses a word, so that sooner or later it maycause him to be held up to ridicule, you will seek a tactfulway of setting him right. If, meaning bolshevik sympathizerhe says bolshevik baiter, you might, after a sentence or two,say, "It's curious that bolshevik sympathizers so often arechurch baiters." This will tip him off to the correct usagewithout calling attention to his now past misuse.

A good conversationalist will make it a point to be correctin his pronunciations. One phase of pronunciation is its levelof refinement and culture. This is largely a result of back-ground and social strata. Further discussion of it will occurin the chapter on voice. But there is also the more obviousphase of pronouncing words correctly, according to the dic-tionary. This, too, is important, for a flagrant error candivert a whole conversation, and arouse pity or ridicule for


25/182


26/182

16 Making Good Talk

fine message for an audience," but added sarcastically, "Your

language, however, well! It bordered on dees, does, and dem.

Hardly the way you normally talk. I'm afraid I can't exactly

approve." Whereupon the hulking Irishman rose and said,

Sir, it is true that I normally do not use the language ofmy previous speech. But I'm a union leader, boss of hundredsof men. If I got up in front of them and spoke high andmighty as you want me to, I'd be out tomorrow. I learned togo along with the boys years ago. They understand me . . .so I'm still top man (James R. Kelley, Catholic Digest, Jan.,195)-

I suppose true etiquette of speech, in the last analysis, and

the secret of success are "to go along with the boys," so that

they "understand." When everybody in a locality or a situation

talks a certain way, even the respected members present, then

it is not wrong, and may be wise, to do likewise. What one

says is a matter of principle; one may not swear just becauseeverybody else does. But how one talks is a matter of accepted

usage, not of principle, and that is the best manner which

is preferred and most easily understood by one's hearers.

For several years I tried heroically to pronounce aunt and

ask as the dictionary preferred. I have finally given up and,

retaining just a flavor of the a in arm, pronounce them almost

as if they rhymed with pant and flask. If high and low in a

locality say pungkin or punkin for pumpkin, it may be

advisable to pronounce it that way, too.

However, I would caution that when in doubt as to the

pol icy with regard to a particular word or expression, it is

best to stay on the side of the dictionary. This is especiallytrue for professional people priests, doctors, teachers. In

language as in morals, while the larger part of mankind

shrewdly tries to pull its leaders down to its own level, a


27/182

Mechanics and Rhetoric 17

smaller and better part hopes and expects that those placedhigher will maintain what is thought to be the true stand-ard. If there are such in any locality, who know and secretlyprefer the dictionary usage, it is well not to disappoint them,

"to let them down," as it were. However, when the dictionaryallows a choice, one should unhesitatingly use the secondchoice if it is more adapted to one's inclination or audience.

After you have made up your mind and know what is cor-rect or preferable in matters of pronunciation, and have be-come properly conscious of pronunciation, you must againand again caution yourself against making others self-con-scious about their pronunciation when in your presence.When others pronounce wrongfully or doubtfully, you willnot advert to it pointedly. You will not interrupt the con-versation, or cause embarrassment to a speaker by bringingup a point of pronunciation. You should, however, charita-

bly and tactfully, especially if the mispronunciation is soflagrant as to lead to embarrassment sooner or later, find away to tip the speaker off to the proper pronunciation. Ifsomeone said, "Wor-ces-ter seems to be an old town," youmight after a few sentences say, "The cesterin that old townthe natives refer to as Woostercomes from the old Romanword castra, meaning 'fort.' "In this way you will avoid thedeserved rebuke a lady tourist administered to a Californian.Pronouncing the J as in Joseph, she had spoken of visitingSan Jose. He corrected, saying, "Madam, it's San Hose*. InCalifornia we pronounce the j as h."After he had given hertime to recover from this correction, he asked when she visitedCalifornia. She replied pointedly, "Why, I was out there inHune and Huly."

An ever lurking pitfall in one's speech is that of manner-ism expressions. The wisest and the best people are not


28/182

18 Making Good Talk

exempt from this flaw. Mischievous students, keeping tab ona professor's use ofwell, counted thirty-seven of them in onelecture. One acquaintance, who has many interesting thingsto say, distracts me much if I have to listen to him long

because of his constant interjection of, "Don't you know."In Ibsen's play,Hedda Gabler}the otherwise cultured GeorgeTesman distractingly ends many of his sentences with Eh.Thousands of people mar their conversation by uncon-sciously interpolating you see oryou know into their sen-tences. Others interject unspellable sounds and grunts likeeh, ah, ugh. All such nervous, unconscious, pointless inter-jections are scarcely bearable blemishes in one's conversation.Similar to these is the overuse of some words. Some personstiresomely designate hundreds of things asfunny, when theymean odd or unusual or strange. Some keep calling innu-merable things terrible or awful. Some girls sprinkle their

conversation with lovely and cute more profusely than theirgrandmothers sprinkled the stew with salt. Perhaps the mostoverused expression now is O.K. For fear of getting caughtwith it in my next sentence, I would not dare to prohibit it.I do hint, however, that now and then replacing it with allrightwould be a relief. Repetitious pet expressions of anykind become either ludicrous or tiresome to hearers. Theyare also insidious. Unless one keeps a trusty watch againstthem, they slip into our talk the way bills get into ourmail. A most brilliant college senior partially ruined hisaddress to the assembly by an unthinking overuse of natu-rally. Worst of all, obnoxious though the habit may be, mostfriends too frequently will rather shun us than tell us. Heis lucky who can find a friend who can be persuaded to tellhim which barnacles of this type clutter his speech. And


29/182


30/182

20 Making Good Talk

If you want to be a pleasing and refined talker, you willproscribe profanity and obscenity altogether and absolutely,but you will also ration yourself against these other, morallyindifferent epithets. It is good to start by making a list of

those you remember using in the past month. Of these, youthen determine to eliminate the ugliest ones altogether, andconsciously set about using the others less frequently. Surely,talk sprinkled with expletives is unbecoming a really refinedand efficient person. One cannot imagine them in the speechof St. Thomas More or Joan of Arc. To overcome the habit,the best procedure, as with vice, of which Pope says that tobe hated it "needs but to be seen," is to become consciousof it. Avoidance should follow naturally.

Expletives bring to mind the use of slang. If I gauge sen-timent correctly, people who brazenly boom a profanity,turn pale if anyone hints that they have been guilty of slang.

Perhaps the surest way to ease one's mind about slang is torealize, first, that any sort of profanity or quasi profanity isworse than slang, artistically as well as morally, and, sec-ondly, that anything else which isn't offensive to one's motheris nothing to worry about. Technically speaking, slang is thecomparing of a good or indifferent thing to something uglyor unpleasant or bad. Calling a girl, whom God gave littlesparkle but the character not to drink or "pet," aflat tireis slang. Similarly, calling a student upon whom God be-stowed a slow, if perhaps willing, mind a dumbbell is slang.But calling an unnecessarily stubborn fellow a mule is notreally slang.

This distinction is very important. When J. Edgar Hoovercalled certain gangsters rats, he was not indulging in slangbut in figurative truthtelling. Calling one's mother-in-law aflat-iron or a teacher a battle-ax is slang because doing so is


31/182


32/182

22 Making Good Talk

to a just responsibility. In some college circles, a girl "de-termined" to win the man she loves, is called a war horse.Here an uncomplimentary comparison is used for a traitwhich is not morally wrong and is probably socially good. At

least Bernard Shaw thinks that girls, instead of waiting pa-tiently for someone to ask them, should make a determinedeffort themselves to find the man they want! To call a serious,hard-studying student a bookworm is no longer bad, sincelong use has virtually converted the word to the complimentit ought to be, but to call him a grindor, worse, a greasy grindis too sharply critical of a trait which is more virtue than vice.Hence it is truly slang, and ought to be avoided. Somewherein this happy land, chaperones are calledfire extinguisher^.I leave it to the reader to determine whether this is slangor poetry.

"Calling a frivolous girl a powder puff is all right. But

calling girls, God's creations, human beings with immortalsouls, by such names as him, rib, skirt, ortomato is slang,is language which St. Paul's Christian must avoid. One maynot figuratively apply to any human beings, merely in theircapacity as human beings, names which humiliate or belittlethem. Definitely, when one does not specifically play against acorrectable social and moral flaw, one should not apply anybut complimentary comparisons to human beings. Otherwiseone is guilty of slang in the true sense of the word.

Conversation should beautify the world, not make it evenuglier than it is. When a cadaver is called a stiff, life is madeuglier. That which housed a human soul and cannot helpits present condition may not be called an unedifying name.Generally, whatever is crude, any comparison that couldrightly offend the much-cited Victorian maiden, even whenotherwise apt or powerful, is slang in the objectionable


33/182


34/182

24 Making Good Talk

or coarse, it may be a most effective device for giving ourtalk the "edge of liveliness" St. Paul wants. It may be thebest way to put things in a new light. Poetry, for example,consists of clothing an idea or ideal in an apt and warm

comparison which our sense can realize more quickly thanthe ideal literally expressed. Our Lord in this manner com-pares a sinner to a lost sheep; Tennyson compares dying tocrossing the bar; Holmes compares an old man to the lastleafupon the tree. You can easily see that the linguisticdevice in this and calling an unpopular girl a wallfloweror an unrelenting scholar a bookworm is identical. Thedifference lies in the spirit behind the expression, the gra-ciousness which motivates it, and the good taste and beautywhich envelop it.

It must, therefore, be stated emphatically that man's high-est linguistic device for making ideas lively and beautiful,

constituting the power of literature, must also characterizeall superior conversation. A good talker will not avoid suchfigurativeness; he will seek it, he will try to create it. WhenGoldsmith told Johnson that if he wrote a fable of fishes,the mighty lexicographer would make his goldfish talk likewhales, he eloquently soared into this poetic method. Butso too does the fellow who speaks of a whale of a laugh.

It is also to be noted that in ordinary conversation suchsuggestive expressions need not and should not be quite asethereal or flowery as in poetry. Conversation is colloquialand may have a tang of earth. In ordinary talk, for example,speaking of milk as ambrosia, unless in jest, would be toodainty. While again, calling it as college people often do,cow juice ormoo juice is unacceptable because it degrades awholesome food, yet calling it arrested ice cream orcoffeebleacherwould be enlivening and picturesque.


35/182


The tendency and ability to invent and use various com-parisons and suggestions in place of the literal name ofthings is the mark of every really superior conversationalist,just as it is the stock-in-trade of every true writer. However,

the successful use of this device is so much a matter of highimaginative talent that not many can be helped to shine init, but everybody can learn to appreciate and encourage it.Just as good poetry is quoted by millions who do not writeit, so a conversationalist may well use the apt figures he hasheard or learned elsewhere, if only he is careful not to droolthem into a groove. Those who cannot invent original ex-pressions of this sort may be consoled to realize that theycan be acceptable, if not brilliant, talkers, without them.

But there are several rhetorical matters without which onecannot achieve St. Paul's requisite edge of liveliness. A goodconversationalist must get away from over-co-ordination and

overgeneralization. At the beginning of this chapter I relatedhow my pastor regretted my continuous boyish use ofandthen in telling a story. That was over-co-ordination. It is thetendency of all children and all untrained or unthinkingpeople. They tend to string together all of their ideas, heavy-weight and featherweight alike, in simple and in compoundsentences. They should, of course, put only their heavy-weight ideas into main clauses (simple or compound sen-tences), while their featherweight ideas should be in phrasesor in the subordinate clause of a complex sentence. Insteadof saying, "After I had finally parked the car, I started look-ing for the hardware store," they say, "I parked the car, andthen I looked for the hardware store." The constant use ofandorsobetween main clauses, one of which should reallybe reduced to a clause beginning with afterorbecause orwhen, is the besetting vice of eight out of ten who read this


36/182

26 Making Good Talk

book and nine out of ten who won't read it. It is impossible tobe an acceptable conversationalist until one has trainedoneself to lie in wait for every second andand so betweensentences and has killed it. Compound sentences, that is,

and-but-so clauses, are not grammatically wrong, but in abouthalf the frequency of the ordinary talker they are wrongrhetorically and false logically.

Actually, the worst feature of the overuse ofandand sois not the poor rhetoric but the flabby, chatterbox logic. Itbetrays the talker as someone who among ideas does notrecognize the difference between a colonel and a recruit. Itis this lack of discrimination among ideas that as much asany other one thing makes for boresomeness in talking. Whena woman says, "It was Saturday and I wanted to go to con-fession. So at three o'clock I took the car and drove to church.But the confessor did not come until four, so it was almost

five before I got home," she can have the face of an angeland the voice of Galli-Curci, but she will still be boring.The minimum subordination necessary to keep those ideasfrom being boring is, "Since it was Saturday, I wanted togo to confession. At three o'clock I took the car and droveto church. But the confessor did not come until four, so thatit was almost five before I got home."

A still better rendering would be, "Since it was Saturday,when I wanted to go to confession, I took the car at threeand drove to church. The confessor, however, did not comeuntil four, so that it was almost five before I got home."This rendering is correct, rhetorically. However, a really su-perior talker would go a step further in reducing some ofthe ideas. She would instinctively calculate which is the mostimportant idea she wished to convey. If it is to explain to hermother-in-law why her husband's dinner was late Saturday,


37/182


she would subordinate everything around that point. Shewould then say, "Last Saturday, wanting to go to confession,I drove to church at three, but because the confessor did notcome until four, it was almost five before I got home." Now

we have a sentence in which the ideas, "I went to churchand came home late" stand out sharply because all the otherideas are reduced to phrases, such as "wanting to go," "LastSaturday," and to subordinate clauses, such as "because theconfessor was."

Such subordination is the rhetorical requirement for su-perior conversation. If you have that, even if you have littleelse, you will seldom be boring. If you do not avoid at leastthe most flagrant co-ordination stringing all ideas togetherwith andand so you cannot have St. Paul's edge of liveli-ness, no matter what your knowledge or topic or voice. Asthe shortest cut to improvement, simply make up your mind

not to use andorso noticeably often. Secondly, keep askingyourself which is your most important idea. Then strive toput the lesser ones into phrases and subordinate clauses. Itwould be highly advantageous if you got yourself a collegecomposition book and reviewed the sections on co-ordinationand subordination.1

Probing still deeper, the actual reason for too frequentuse ofands is lack of good prose rhythm. Fundamentally thisis said to reflect a person's sincerity, depth of feeling, andclear thinking. Perhaps if a person have much of these, hedoes not need to worry about rhetoric or prose rhythm: itwill be given unto him, or has already been given to him.The power of a sincere, intense personality, such as Lincoln's

1 Virtually any recognized college rhetoric textbook will do. It happens thatI have found the following most helpful in classes: Easley S. Jones, Practical

English Composition, 3 ed. (D. Appleton-Century, 1941), pp. 159-195.


38/182


39/182


not think of the speaker's rhetoric as being good, or of hishaving good prose rhythm, but they would tend to commenton his having such an interesting and lively personality!

While this proper rhetorical discrimination of ideas is very

important, it is unfortunately no short cut. It requires con-siderable and continuous mental effort and self-discipline.A mere resolve is not enough. Fortunately there is anothertechnique for giving life and personality to conversation,also necessary, but somewhat easier to acquire. It is thetechnique of being as specific as the circumstances warrant,of using a word which can best call up a definite picture. Areally good talker will never say bird when he can saybobolink; house, when he can say bungalow; many when hecan sayfifty-nine; tall when he can say six feet, two. It isn'tworms which catch the fish but a worm. The quickest andsurest way to reasonably interesting speech is to replace the

vague with the definite, the general with the specific, when-ever possible. Edgar, in Shakespeare's King Lear does notmerely tell his blind father that the beach is far below, hespecifies items which indicate the drop. He says the croius(not vaguely birds but specifically crows) that wing the mid-way air look like beetles (not merely like insects but likebeetles), and "The fishermen that walk upon the beach ap-pear like mice."

That is the way to talk. A poor talker talks about a per-sonal or special topic in general terms; a good conversa-tionalist talks about a general topic in specific terms. Goodtalkers, for example, will talk about foot trouble in generaland then cite many specific instances from all over them-selves, their friends, the newspapers to establish their view-points. Garrulous, tiresome talkers will talk about their ownor their relative's special foot trouble in general terms and


40/182

30 Making Good Talk

then from the one case conclude with a platitude, as forexample, that foot trouble is indeed an expensive ailment.The motto for good conversation is: Keep the topic general,the reasons and proofs and examples specific.

No generalizer can be a good conversationalist. A personwho habitually talks in such terms as, "They live in a verylarge house," "That's a very expensive restaurant," "Moth-er's back yard is full of flowers," is a generalizer. He will notbe very interesting, and if he talks much he will be flat ortiresome. But if he says, "They live in a nine-room, three-story house," "The cheapest dinner in Holway's restaurantis $3.00," "Mother's back yard has fifteen varieties of flowers,from asters to snapdragons," he is a specifier. He then talkslike one who has been there, like one who knows. He there-fore talks like one with authority. We learn something fromhim. He is interesting. People noticed and said of our Lord

that He talked as one with authority. That wasn't only be-cause Jesus was God. Even God in talking to man has tofollow the principles of rhetoric to be interesting, and Jesusdid. When He wanted to convince people that a kindlyProvidence sees everything, He cites the "lilies of the field"as growing without toiling or spinning. Another time, de-claring that "any sound tree will bear good fruit," He asksspecifically, "Can grapes be plucked from briers, or figsfrom thistles?" Again, urging His hearers to "lay up treasurefor yourselves in heaven," He does not generalize heaven asa safe and secure place but as one "where there is no mothor rust to consume it" (Matt. 6 and 7).

A general sentence such as "Mother's back yard is full offlowers" is suitable only as a topic sentence, as embracingspecific examples which preceded or better which will follow.It ought to have at least three examples or proofs or de-


41/182


scriptions of these flowers in detail. Shakespeare, in the KingLearcitation given above, opens his enumeration of crows,samphire gatherer, and the fishermen with the generalizedor topical sentence, "How fearful and dizzy 'tis to cast one's

eye so low!" Jesus, too, in His discussion of Providence be-gins with a fairly generalized statement, "do not be solicitousfor your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, whatyou shall put on." One should fix in one's mind that general-ized statements are justifiable only as the caps or binders ofclusters of statements proving or explaining them. As suchtopic sentences, they are good and necessary. But withoutsuch a cluster, a generalized statement is a loose lead todullness. They are the mark of the windbag and the bore.You should make a conscious effort to count things and tomeasure them in your speech. Resolve, for example, neverto sayfew if you can say three, neveranimal if you can say

cat, neverwentif you can say ran, neverentertained if youcan sayyodled. This resolve will prove a marvelous tonic toyour whole conversational personality. You will begin tocount and measure things. Your vocabulary will increasemagically, and will take on life and color and realism. Youwill begin to learn the names of trees, birds, and flowers, oftools and machines, in short, of everything in more typesand classes. When you attend a rally or a play, you will auto-matically estimate by rows and seats how many people arethere. Then when you talk about it you will not say lamelythat a "lot of people" were there, but you will say that youcalculated 850. In this way, assuming that you ever keep

with you that common sense without which nothing is avirtue, you will become an increasingly more interestingconversationalist. You will also be a more interesting per-son mainly because you will be a more interested one.


42/182


43/182

C HA PT ER I I I

The Voice and Diction of Conversation

THE people who in conversation make me feel mostdesperate, who make me want to cry "fire" in order to getout of the conversation or to get pep into it, are the well-meaning souls who talk too slowly, who stop, look, and listenbefore every word. They talk as slowly and deliberatelyabout having gone out and bought a loaf of bread as onewould if one had at midnight stealthily placed a homemadeatom bomb under Fort Knox. A runner-up to these is theperson who talks to a roomful of people as if she weretalking a baby to sleep, and then, just as one has given uptrying to listen, suddenly appeals to one for confirmation ofsome point, asking directly, "Don't you agree with me, Mr.Smith?"

A few fundamentals of voice and tone, of time, pitch, andforce must be observed by anyone who wants to be anacceptable conversationalist.

Not essential for liveliness, but important for being re-spected is acquiring what for lack of a better word might becalled a cultivated level of voice, diction, and pronunciation.This is a delicate, a touchy subject. Nevertheless a few help-ful hints should be in place. Literature and history aboundwith illustrations of the importance of an agreeable levelof pronunciation. In this chapter, though diction alsomeans choice of words, we shall use it to mean the art or

33


44/182

34 Making Good Talk

manner of speaking, the tone and vocal expression. One

recalls that it was his manner of speaking, his diction, which

revealed Peter to the bystanders at the trial as a follower of

Christ. According to the Missal account of Palm Sunday,

"the bystanders came up and said to Peter, 'Surely thou alsoart one of them, for even thy speech betrays thee.' "

Usually the historical examples have reference to the often

embarrassing factor of brogue oraccent in speech, of speech

peculiarities reflecting nationality or locality. Peter's speech

was recognized as Galilean. The classical case of that sort is

the word shibboleth. In Judges of the Old Testament, the

Gileadites, trying to detect fleeing Ephraimites, made them

pronounce that word. But every Ephraimite pronounced the

"sh" as an "s," saying sibboleth, whereupon the Gileadites

"took him and killed him in the very passage of the Jordan.

And there fell at that time of Ephraim two and forty thou-

sand" (Judg. 12:6). That was in the "good old days"! Now,except perhaps behind the Iron Curtain, an accent is not

likely to lead to such serious damage.

This is fortunate, for while everyone should of course

try to conform his pronunciation to the national standard,

the accidents of birth and background do not enable every-

one to do so. A Bostonian in Chicago certainly should tone

his Bostonian down and try to sound more like a refined

Chicagoan, but try as he might he would not be likely to

succeed entirely. In general, given a different background in

youth, perfect conformity to the national standard can hardly

be achieved. Nor need this be of too much concern, since

some little differences and pecularities exist in the best of

speakers. The scholar, Albert C. Baugh, in his History of the

English Language, writes, "There is no such thing as uni-

formity in language. Not only does the speech of one com-


45/182


46/182


47/182

Voice and Diction 37

The caution not to drop syllables requires the counter-caution not to spell out every syllable. This leads to a sortof prissy diction, a particularly painful fault. Persons whohave suddenly reformed their speech habits are especially

liable to this form of overdoing careful pronunciation. Thepoint to remember is that only the accented syllables shouldget the full rich vowel value, and only the important wordsin a sentence should get any force or time. The others, whilethey should not be slurred or dropped, may very well bespoken rapidly and inconspicuously. Even the unimportantwords should be spoken rapidly and unemphatically, withlittle value on the vowels. In, "What do you want for din-ner?" only the words "What" and "dinner" are significant.Therefore, "do you want" must be spoken unemphatically,that is, rather quickly, without any lingering value on thevowels.

This injunction really embodies one of the most impor-tant demands of good conversation and good public speaking.It is that the significant word in a phrase and sentence mustbe pronounced emphatically, with force and time and pitchchange, and all the others should be pronounced as ifgrouped around that word. In a good talker, one not onlyhears the meaning of the sentence, but also feels its signifi-cance. If every word is pronounced with almost the samecare and tempo, the hearer loses the significance in the pro-cession of monotonous words. If one furthermore pronouncesevery syllable with as much care and force as the next, thenone becomes insufferable. It is the technique to use if youwant to be rid of an unwelcome suitor or the bill collector,for no hearer can suffer this precision monotony very long.

In some elocution courses, a student is required to under-line all the significant words in a poem or article before


48/182


49/182


may sound tired. A person who indulges in conversation hasno right to let his fatigue settle in his voice. A Christiandetermination to be agreeable can usually put enough lifeinto the voice to make it acceptable.

Since nature abhors monotony, a conversationalist shouldconsciously try to increase the variety of his tones, the rangeand flexibility of his pitch. Quintilian said, "The art of varyingthe tones of the voice not only affords pleasure and relief tothe hearer, but, by the alternation of exercise, relieves thespeaker." A good speaker, some speech books say, varies hispitch in ordinary speech as much as the notes within theregular stave of musical notation. This range is not so muchrecognized as felt and enjoyed. As in other matters ofspeech, a person who has range of pitch is more likely to becredited with a pleasing personality than with any specialspeech virtue. You might ask a close friend to note your

inflection particularly and rate it for possible monotony.Certainly you should keep tab on it yourself, to see if yourvoice seems to travel up and down some seven notes, or con-fines itself to a range of merely three or four. A mechanicalhelp is to play a linguaphone record of some good actor orspeaker, and to recite it along in the same pitch. You mightalso try to keep in pitch with the speakers and announcerson your radio. Half the job is becoming conscious of one'sneed for pitch variation, the other half, trying to vary it onthe right phrases. With the proper tempo and good inflec-tion, one is dictionally well on the way to being a pleasingconversationalist.

In connection with tempo, one has to touch upon thewhole matter of rate of speech. It seems to me many fine peo-ple are somewhat tiresome because they talk too slowly, toodeliberately. They seem to fear that they might make a


50/182

40 Making Good Talk

slip of the tongue or discharge the wrong word. Or perhapsthey are too fearful of sounding like a chatterbox. Naturally,the opposite fault is talking too rapidly. But of the two ex-tremes, I would rather suffer ten who talk too fast than one

who seems to labor uphill like an ox.In nearly every gathering of more than four people I seem

to notice one who talks too sententiously, too slowly. Thebasic fault is usually that of tempo of speaking every phraseas if it were as important as every other phrase. But, in addi-tion, it is also the fault of simply talking too few words aminute. Someone has estimated that in Shakespeare's timethe actor spoke his lines at approximately the rate of 160words a minute. It seems to me that anyone who in ordinaryconversation does not reach 150 words a minute will betiresome to most hearers. Naturally, rate should vary withtopic and circumstances. Difficult, serious, solemn matter

needs a slower rate. Nevertheless one can safely say thatmost people could talk somewhat more rapidly most of thetime. If only they learn to stress the important words, thenthe others can properly be spoken rapidly. This does notdecrease understanding, it facilitates it. In reading, it hasbeen discovered that if one does not read rapidly enough,about 300 words a minute on the average, one's mind wan-ders, so that one remembers less than in more concentrated,rapid reading. In conversation, something similar happens.As soon as a person, holding the floor for a few minutes,talks too slowly, his listeners' eyes and minds start wander-ing. A good conversationalist talks as fast as the topics and thecircumstances seem to permit.

Few people talk too fast. Since it is assumed that a certainmental alertness goes with speed, people are less hesitantabout checking one who does so. Naturally, if ever so checked


51/182


52/182

42 Making Good Talk

society in the same room with someone who sits there a-a-ah-

ing his words 1

Another voice matter which everybody notices except theone speaking is force or loudness, and the lack of it.

The discomfort the human race endures from people whotalk so low that one must strain to hear them is extensive.It is as much a sin in a conversationalist as in a publicspeaker. An elocution book says, "Every effort to understandthe word detracts from the thought." Loudness, of course,is relative. It has to be adjusted to the group and the place.Too much or too little is equally bad. A good conversation-alist, truly considerate of his hearers, will talk just loudenough for everyone in his circle to hear easily, and foreveryone outside it not to be forced to hear him.

If in a general conversation of more than six persons, oneperson starts talking so low that only the two next to him

can hear, he can quickly ruin the general conversation, andforce it to disintegrate into twosomes and threesomes. A gen-eral unified conversation of many participants is talk at itsmost cultivated and stimulating level. This should be everyhostess's aim and guest's hope. As long as it is on this level,one for all people in the room, you should be especiallycareful to talk loud enough for everyone in the room orcircle to hear easily. You should not be the one who causesit to dissolve into smaller groups. This is true, too, at a dinnertable. While the conversation embraces the whole table, aperson should take care to have his voice reach everyone.On the other hand, once the talk has broken into several

sectors, then he must moderate his voice so as to reach onlythe reduced circle. It should not impose itself on those out-side it. Properly, it is the privilege of the host or hostess, by


53/182


an elevated voice, to draw several circles together again into

a larger one.

The boorishness of a loud voice out of place is a by-

word. The whole world mocks, and fears, a person who in

restaurants, lobbies, or trains, on ship, sidewalk, or jobtalks to his crony or his set with such force that he seems

to be addressing everyone in the place. The person who does

not adjust his voice to his circle is a boor.

Many other things could be said about the voice in good

conversation. It is a truism that the voice can be more beau-

tiful than an organ. While a rich beautiful voice is in part

a natural gift, endowing its possessor with a great conversa-

tional advantage, it is true, too, that every voice, even the

humblest, can be improved. The hints in this chapter will,

if heeded, make any voice seem more beautiful. As a final

hint, a most practical one, we say: "This above all," try ever

and always to let your voice mirror your meaning andfeelings honestly and sincerely. If you do this, and if your

thoughts are worthy, and your feelings noble, you cannot

go wrong with your voice.

If you are really sorry that Mary was sick, then your voice

in saying it should have quite different and richer overtones

than when you say, "I am sorry you missed the bus yester-

day."A famous preacher was asked what he said to mothers

about their babies that made each think he paid it a special

compliment. He answered, "I look at the baby admiringly

and then exclaim, 'Well, this is a baby.' " It was the emotion

in his voice and the tempo of his words that were the com-

pliment. A person who cannot get any emotional "umph"

into his voice when a topic that ought to stir the feelings

is broached is not a good conversationalist, and very probably


54/182

44 Making Good Talk

he is not a very sympathetic, charitable, or neighborly personcither. He had better get into a spiritual retreat and workfor those humane traits and for that charity without whichSt. Paul tells us our words are as tinkling cymbals and

sounding brass.A good conversationalist puts into his voice not merely

what he means, but what and how much he feels. His voicenever just rattles words, but always reflects the significanceand the emotional impact. If one tries to do that it reallyamounts to little more than being truly thoughtful andsincere then the voice will of its own nature become moreand more agreeable and effective. Nature seldom gives aharsh voice to a truly kind and sympathetic person. Evenan aged voice, coming from a truly kind and sympatheticperson, can be pleasant. Though Shakespeare speaks of anold man's "big manly voice, turning again toward childish

treble," piping and whistling, old people who are more con-cerned with pleasing others than themselves, who are selflessand sincere, seldom have voices one is not glad to hear.

In voice and diction, as in many other things, nature tendsto supply or to supplement what one intelligently needs andtries to use. If a person thinks clearly and honestly, feelssincerely and justly, and then tries to convey this to hisfellow men for their good and their amusement, he willhardly talk too low or too loud, drawl monotonously orrattle disconnectedly. If he prizes both his ideas and hisfellow men, nature will help him with enough voice anddiction to bring his ideas and his neighbors together forcefully and pleasantly.


55/182

CHAPTER IV

The Background for Good Conversation1

JOHN LOCKE, the English philosopher, said,"Before a man can speak on any subject it is necessaryto be acquainted with it." We recall that Samuel Johnsonsaid that for conversation "There must, in the first place,be knowledge, there must be materials." One cannot getout of a sack what isn't in it. Since conversation is thecommunicating of facts, ideas, and feelings, one must havethem to talk them. The most devastating charge that canbe brought against anyone is, "He doesn't know what he istalking about." Rhetoric, diction, voice are important, of

course, but one must never forget that they are importantnot as ends but as tools. They are not the goods, they aremerely the express that delivers them.

If the express is streamlined, if we exercise good judg-ment in starting and stopping and braking, we can avoidbeing boresome or disagreeable. But only a cultivatedpersonality, only one who really "has something to say,"can become an interesting and worth-while conversationalist.Bruce Barton wrote, "My observation is that, generallyspeaking, poverty of speech is the outward evidence ofpoverty of mind." Someone in the Saturday Evening Post

i This chapter on background is rewritten directly from the author's article,

"Background for Conversation" in the Marianist, May, 1948. Many sentencesand paragraphs are identical with it.

45


56/182

46 Making Good Talk

wrote, "The underlying trouble with conversation is lackof curiosity."

To be a really good conversationalist, one must be an in-teresting person. But an interesting person can only be one

who is interested in many things. The hero of a novelwho found his wife becoming more and more dull re-marked, "It was a long time before I realized that shehad no intellectual curiosity." Curiosity is not a profoundsense, but it is a kind of self-starter toward knowledge,learning, and wisdom. I cannot help feeling that a personwho is not interested in learning more and more aboutmany things, or at least about some thing, resemblesa mere vegetation, a mushroom, and that a person whois intellectually alert, who knows what is going on, whoprobes into things, who is ever in quest of better knowl-edge, acts very much in the image of the God who made

him. It was this God, our Lord Jesus, who told the sternParable of the Talents.

In this parable our Lord reminds us that it is our dutyto employ our capacities fully be they large or small.In this parable, the master gave one servant five talents,another two, a third one. The fellow with only two talentsused these just as energetically as the one with five, andthough he, of course, never achieved more than two fifthsas much as the first, the master said to him exactly as tothe first, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Butthe third, backward with his one talent, had buried italtogether, and the master called him a "wicked andslothful servant," and ordered him "cast out into theexterior darkness" (Matt. 25).

Surely this parable should mean that since the Lordhas given us mind and memory, which are the ware-


57/182


58/182


59/182

Background for Good Conversation 49

The first symptom of a good conversationalist is that heknows a lot about his own vocation. He knows not onlyits skill, but also its history and lore. In Dallas, Texas,on the direct route to Little Rock, I asked a gasoline vendor

the distance to the latter place. He did not know. Offer-ing to look it up, he was overheard by another attendant,who said, "It's 340 miles. You'll be going through Tex-arkana, halfway between. There you will be farther fromEl Paso than from Chicago." He knew not only the priceof gasoline at his station, but also his geography. A goodconversationalist can always be depended upon to knowa lot of assorted facts about his job, his place of work, andhis associates.

Avocations are excellent suppliers of conversational mate-rial. A plumber who is a gardener on the side is moreinteresting than one who knows only pipes and wrenches.

Every avocation enlarges one's vocabulary, widens one'scircle of friends, and enriches one's personality. The founderof the Catholic University physics department, the lateDr. Daniel W. Shea, had made birds his avocation. I re-member how surprised and thrilled I was during a tripthrough New England to come upon him in his summerhome in Maine, observing and writing about birds. Itmade him much more interesting for me than any restrictedphysicist, no matter how atomic, could have been! Asalesman who sings in a quartette, and a bookkeeper whoplays the choir organ are, all other things being equal,more interesting to talk with than those who don't havesuch avocations.

One of the most interesting men I remember was agoateed cotton dealer in San Francisco. When I first noticedhim at a Holy Name meeting, I did not guess that I should


60/182


61/182


62/182


63/182


thinking. The talk value of travel is too well known toneed emphasis. Even newlyweds customarily realize that tostart off their union with things to talk about they oughtto spend what is left after the wedding ceremony on a

honeymoon trip! The only trouble with travel is that itis expensive. Nevertheless, wise persons will so managethings that they get in some traveling. At a pack a day,denying oneself cigarettes, saves enough for a trip toEurope every ten years. In my own case, when most of myfriends bought a car, I went to Europe for three months,and waited two more years for the car. So far I still thinkI chose the wiser part. Travel, especially foreign travel, isa conversational gold mine and one ought to do it youngenough to draw interest from it during a long life.

But more important than traveling is the habit of exactobservation, the tendency to select significant details and

to mark them. Sir Walter Scott once rode a hundred milesto note exactly what kinds and how many flowers andshrubs surrounded a cave he wanted to describe in a novel.The eye for news in the journalist is the eye for thepicturesque, the exceptional, the different in the conversa-tionalist. It isn't the mass of flowers that make for con-versation but the rare one or unusually large one, orthe artistic arrangement of the mass. People do not goto a circus to see calves but a two-headed calf. Whetherone likes it or not, that is how God made human nature and a good conversationalist must recognize it. He mustgo about observing the news-worthy things. After all, everytalk is a sort of newspaper in miniature. If he reportsmerely the sensational but worthless, he is a police gazette;if he reports the unusual and helpful, he is a good news


64/182

54 Making Good Talk

magazine. If in reporting the exceptional and helpful healso adds interpretation and thought, he is a literary maga-zine, he is in fact live literature.

All this means that a good conversationalist must see

what is going on, must note what is out of the ordinary,and must try to relate it to common problems. Anythingnew and better is especially good conversational grist. Anew way to prepare spinach, to polish a car, to attachstorm windows, to get roses to grow these are the ob-server's quarry and the talker's prizes. Similarly anythingantique or odd, an ancient log house, a curiously twistedtree, a singularly beautiful altar, a rare old book are theconversational catches of the good observer. A good talkerdoes not look at everything; he sees what has news value,what is interesting and worth while, and he remembers it.

The habit of exact observation is the best imaginable

machine for increasing your vocabulary along with yourknowledge. If you have the nose for news, you note thethings you do not know. You then ask their name and use.The ease with which one can in this way learn thingswas brought home to me during my first trip abroad, inSpain, where among other things I wished to learn Spanish.Walking into a market to buy a vegetable I could name,I asked the attendant the name of all the others on herstand. In an astonishingly short time I had learned thenames of innumerable objects in this way. I even realizedin dismay that I now could name some vegetables inSpanish which I had sometimes seen here in the UnitedStates but never learned to name. Every time we note astrange thing and get its name we have added anotherbrick to our conversational structure.

But experience and observation, while best in them


65/182


66/182

56 Making Good Talk

economics, psychology, and philosophy. I am not a scientist,

but even one general book about scientific progress and

science personalities, DeKruif s Microbe Hunters, has given

me a hundred conversational supports. Nor should one

rationalize that because one may not have time to finisha book one had better not start it. Nonfiction reading

may well be done in parts and starts. The greatest readers

are those who not only choose their books but also of many

books choose only such portions as give them most for their

time or solve their p articular problem.

It is for emotional adjustment that one must read litera-

ture proper poetry, drama, and fiction. To describe their

full value is beyond the scope here. Their true function

is to give us wisdom, balance, emotional perspective and

calm. They give us vicarious experience, they make us

sympathize with the other fellow, and they help us to see

ourselves as others see us. As philosophic books shouldgive us peace of mind, as religious books should give us

peace of soul, so poems, novels, plays should give us peace

of heart. Since the soul never fully rests, as St. Augustine

wrote, until it rests in God, this triple peace of mind,

of soul, of heart cannot in this "vale of tears" be fully

realized. But even the smallest progress toward such peace

is an enormous gain for ourselves and for those with whom

we associate. That poetry, drama, and fiction further peace

of heart is the feeling of the collective wisdom of the human

race, which I wish the reader would here accept on my

word. Peace of heart cannot be weighed and measured, nor

can it be whistled on or whistled off. It is a development.

Nor, while one can trust to some effect, can one say pre-

cisely how much any one good novel does affect it.

But the recognized great books do have some easily


67/182


observable conversational values. They are themselves worthtalking about and are often talked about. Furthermore theyare regular warehouses of lively facts and incidents. Whoreads Sinclair Lewis' Arrow smith or Cronin's Citadel can

talk of doctors and medicine as he could not before. Whoreads Keys of the Kingdom can talk better about mission-aries. Who reads Norris' novels, the Octopus and The Pit,can talk of wheat and commodity speculations.

For every problem there are books, and for every themethere are novels and plays. Sometimes I think that theinformation we get from the novels is by far the best partof our knowledge. It seems to endure best and catch theheart of the matter better. I do not remember how manybooks and articles I have read about Switzerland, but whenthat name comes to mind what comes along with it is thevast panorama of Scott's Anne of Geierstein, read in high

school. Sometimes I think that gave me the essence ofSwitzerland even better than my tour of that beautiful landin 1931. Oh, I hope I can convince everybody who wantsto be an interesting and worth-while conversationalist thathe must have worth-while facts, feelings, and ideas andthat books, including especially good literature, are thereadiest and greatest sources for these things.

But it would be false not to insist that after gettingwhatever information, whether from observation, experi-ence, or books you must think it through, must make ityour own before it will sound truly convincing in con-versation. You must integrate what you see and read withyour own personality before it is a finished conversationalproduct. The person who mulls about his experiences andobservations with an eternal why and wherefore, who looksfor the causes of things, who tries to see their interrela-


68/182

58 Making Good Talktions, is giving himself the finest conversational background of

all. Thomas Aquinas spent months puzzling about the definition

he had read of God and became the great doctor of the

Church. Thinking things through for ourselves gives us what is

called originality. It helps us "to place things," as Johnsonsaid, "in such views as they are not commonly seen in."

Perhaps when the last word is said, the greatest con-

versationalist is the one who comes nearest to the truth of

things. And the truth comes from hard, honest, fearless

thinking. Johnson's conversations, in the last analysis, live on,

not because of their word order, but because of the originality

of their thought. Asked about the proper training for children,

Johnson remarked that a gentle bringing-up is better than a hardy

and rugged one. Someone has rightly commented,

Here, at a moment's notice, are ideas of infantile hygiene

being thrown off, that go far beyond the purview of theeighteenth century. It was ninety-two years after this conversationthat Herbert Spencer was to rediscover, and state at considerablelength, the doctrine that Johnson here condenses into two or threesentences and in the England of 1861, Spencer was consideredalmost impossibly advanced (Esme Wingfield-Stratford, GoodTalk[London: Lovat Dickson, 1936], p. 223).

If Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann are still re-

membered and quoted, it is not so much for their language as

for their profound, noble, and advanced ideas. Wingfield-

Stratford says,

Imagine any modern countryman of his capable of uttering such

a sentiment as: "National hatred is something peculiar. You willalways find it strongest and most violent where there


69/182


is the lowest degree of culture." Even to the modern readerhis talk is a mine of instruction (ibid.,p. 167).

Let us go further and imagine the average Englishman orAmerican saying today what Goethe said in 1830. How

many of them said during the late war, "How could Iwrite songs of hate without hating"? The Sermon on theMount lives because it is the truest, the most advanced, themost final set of ideas ever spoken.

The greatest conversation is that which produces thegreatest, the truest ideas, which help mankind see a bitless darkly through life's dark glass. It is the thinker whoproduces such ideas. A student who, being told that board-ing school and army life are the same in principle, pondersthis contention until he sees that there is one radicaldifference. In the army, he notes, if one breaks a rule onegoes to the guardhouse, but in boarding school if one does so

the worst punishment is the invitation to leave. If he thenconcludes that therefore they are in principle the exactopposites, the enforced and the voluntary, he is growinginto a Johnsonian conversational stature. If he thinks thingsthrough like that on many subjects, he is bound to talkoften and to be thought a significant conversationalist.

As Johnson said of the great orator and proponent of recon-ciliation with the Colonies, "Burke's talk is the ebullitionof his mind; he does not talk from a desire of distinction,but because his mind is full" (Boswell's Life of Johnson,op. cit., p. 456). Of course, as the Parable of the Talentssuggests, not everyone can get as much into his mind asBurke or Johnson or Goethe. Not everyone has the talentsto become a brilliant conversationalist. Nevertheless, eachwithin his own capacity can greatly improve his conversa-tion and become more interesting company, if he will make


70/182

60 Making Good Talk

a real effort to play and to work at a variety of things, toobserve carefully, to read intelligently and widely, and tothink about it all to the full extent of the talents Godgave him. It is a moral as well as a social duty to use one's

talents in this respect to the utmost. And the rewards willbe a richer personality, a fuller life, and more joy in, andfor, one's fellow man.


71/182

CHAPTER V

Special Gifts, Devices, and Techniques

THE best all-around recipe for becoming a good con-versationalist is simply learning much, experiencing much,thinking deeply and wisely. But just as all these need voiceand rhetoric to express them acceptably, so a really superiorconversationalist has certain other resources and talents athis disposal. These are needed to lift a conversationalist fromgood to superior, to promote him from a "B" to an "A."

Of all, the one I most fear and envy is the gift of mimicry.I envy it because I possess none of it. I cannot even imitateAmos or Andy. I keenly regret that no one at home everencouraged me to try it. And the reason why we were notencouraged is probably the very same reason that causes meto fear it. Mimicry is the easiest and surest way to be funny;but it is also the quickest way to hurt and belittle. Mimick-ing a Yiddish accent or a Pennsylvania Dutch accent is ir-resistibly funny, but it may not be so funny to the person orpeoples mimicked. Mimicking, like cartooning, feeds uponpeculiarities and magnifies them. Peculiarities are seldomthings their possessors are proud of. A bald head is funnyto the other fellow, but not to the owner. The play Cyranode Bergerac is constructed around the fun the funmakershad with Cyrano's long nose and his sensitivenes on that

point.

A gifted mimic's temptations to cause laughter at the ex-

61


72/182

62 Making Good Talk

pense of the other are besett ing. If he is not an absolutely

kindly, generous person he is sure to abuse his power.

Nevertheless the gift of mimicry is one of the most valuable

assets a conversationalist can have. Its power is not confined

to belittling; it can also be used to imply a compliment.One may, for example, mimic someone who talks very dra-

matically and so in effect compliment him. One may mimic

a person who, longing for it yet fearing it, declines the third

cocktail the mimicking will produce laughter but not hurt-

ful laughter. A light touch of mimicry is nearly always suit-

able in quoting anyone or in reproducing the various speak-

ers of an anecdote. Mimicry, after all, is a phase of acting

and acting is one of the greatest of human arts. If I were a

parent I would, with due warning against misuse, encourage

my children to acquire the art. I advise anyone who has

even an ounce of talent for it to improve himself in it.

Allied to mimicry is raillery, or teasing. While sarcasmand serious irony may be said not to belong to conversa-

tion at all, raillery, teasing, "kidding" are indispensable

parts of good conversation. The whole world remembers

Goldsmith's saying to Johnson that if he tried to make

fishes talk his goldfish would talk like whales. Though

this clinched the point against Johnson, there was an

implied compliment in it. "Raillery," says Jonathan Swift,

"is the finest part of conversation." Then he goes on to

complain that raillery is not merely "repartee, or being

smart." He explains:

It now passes for raillery to run a man down in discourse,to put him out of countenance, and make him ridiculous;sometime to expose the defects of his person or understand-ing; on all which occasions, he is obliged not to be angry, toavoid the imputation of not being able to take a jest. It is


73/182

Gifts, Devices, and Techniques 63

admirable to observe one who is dexterous at this art, singlingout a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and thencarrying all before him.

Who has not observed this sort of thing! Among refined

grownups there may be little of it. But in schools andfactories, the amount of conversational bullying is vast.

Not until the last judgment wil l there be an estimateof the enormous amount of pang and agony, mostly silent,that is piled up on the world by careless, unkind teasing,teasing against the ones who are precisely least able tomeet it. I beg you with all earnestness not to offend onthis score. As a preliminary precaution, you ought to makeit a cast-iron rule not to tease any person whom you in anyway dislike or who may imagine himself to be disliked. Ifyou really like a person, then any teasing is likely to endwith the edge taken off if not by the words, then by the

tone. But if deep in your heart you do not like a person,then almost any teasing is likely to end with the edgeimbedded either by the words, or the tone. In any circleyou should direct your shafts at those who most certainlyknow that you like them. You should side with those withwhom friendship needs further cementing against those whoare known, as Shakespeare would say, to be grappled toour souls "with hoops of steel." If a husband and wifeget along well and are thought to get along well, thenthey may well direct some of the teasing against each other.They should very rarely gang up together against another unless he is known to all to be their best mutual friend,such as the best man at the wedding, or the like. As ateacher, I sometimes tease the students collectively and in-dividually. But I make it a point never to tease a classif I have just had difficulty with it about grades, or any


74/182

64 Making Good Talk

individual student whom I cannot bring myself deep downin my heart to like much, or with whom, even thoughI like him, there has been any sort of friction over grades,assignment, or behavior. This, I believe, is a rule one should

apply to all raillery.One should absolutely never tease except from a kindly

and friendly heart. And the correct technique of teasingis that underneath the discomfiture we seem to be adminis-tering, there be a sort of implied compliment. Swift forall time laid down the correct technique of the matter.Properly executed, raillery is "to say something that atfirst appears a reproach or reflection, but by some turn ofwit, unexpected and surprising, ends always in a compli-ment." Once the King met Dr. Johnson and reproachedhim for not having written anything lately. As the greatlexicographer struggled to bear up against the reproach,

the King said that he should not mind his having writtennothing lately, if he had not formerly written so well. Thisin general ought to be the spirit of raillery. You say, "Iam so sorry you were wearing your new hat the otherday as you strolled through the square." Then as thewearer and others begin to think that perhaps you did notlike her hat, you add, "It made it absolutely impossible forme to get a glimpse of your eyes." You say, "I am not onfriendly terms with my mother just now. Yesterday, nomatter

Making Good Talk

Documents

Transcript of Making Good Talk