Fundamentals of Speech

Description

Some writers of our time are cynically defining history as a record of mistakes from which man has failed to profit, while others are simultaneously and seriously saying that most of the errors of history have arisen through failures of communication. This latter group ascribes our failures in part to our unwillingness to talk things out fully before we begin to shoot, but in large measure to the inability of language to pierce the culture barriers that separate nations and ideologies. Transportation and communication are making neighbors
today out of those who yesterday were strangers, and thus are giving new importance to using our language systems on common ground. As long as we can negotiate, and, therefore, of necessity communicate, with Russian and Chinese Communists, we can hold the hope of averting war. As long as we can communicate the values of freedom and democracy to neutrals, we can hope that they will become our allies. Whereas electronic devices and the development of radio, television, photography, and the numerous other devices and media of communication have opened up new channels and increased the speed of transmission of language and ideas, man still employs the age-old vehicle of words as a basis for conveying thought.