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The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation - part 2
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But, though you recognize such errors and avoid them, you will daily include among your morning prayers a renewed resolve never to embarrass others for making them. You will resolve to be careful not to "rub in" the error even indirectly. If, for example, someone said, "It's different than anything else," you will not acquiesce with, "Yes, it's different from anything else," putting just enough emphasis on the from to make the whole company conscious of your implied correction. You will, however, resolve to help others and promote correct conversation — whenever, and if, you can do so charitably and unobtrusively. When someone, for example, grossly misuses a word, so that sooner or later it may cause him to be held up to ridicule, you will seek a tactful way of setting him right. If, meaning bolshevik sympathizer he says bolshevik baiter, you might, after a sentence or two, say, "It's curious that bolshevik sympathizers so often are church baiters." This will tip him off to the correct usage without calling attention to his now past misuse.
A good conversationalist will make it a point to be correct in his pronunciations. One phase of pronunciation is its level of refinement and culture. This is largely a result of background and social strata. Further discussion of it will occur in the chapter on voice. But there is also the more obvious phase of pronouncing words correctly, according to the dictionary. This, too, is important, for a flagrant error can divert a whole conversation, and arouse pity or ridicule for the speaker. Once in class a student offered a most interesting comment on a topic, when toward the end he mispronounced EuropEan as European. This one blunder nullified his whole talk and stood out as the proverbial sore thumb. Sometimes a doubtful pronunciation will throw a good conversation into a verbal quibble. If, saying, "Data pointing to Shakespeare's Catholic background is piling up," you pronounce the first a of data as in hat, instead of as in gate, someone devoid of St. Paul's graciousness can be so disturbed by the faulty pronunciation as to ruin the whole conversation by questioning it. It is, therefore, a good avocation to keep up on the accepted pronunciations of words which are frequent stumbling blocks. It takes little time, and pays good conversational dividends, now and then to glance through lists of ''Words Often Mispronounced." Perhaps it is well to suggest here that, without disrespect to the dictionary, it remains as true of speech as of everything else: When in Rome do as the Romans do. In any locality or situation that speech, that turn of expression and pronunciation, is best which is most like that of everyone else, which calls least attention to itself. What, for example, is one to do with aunt} Conscious that the dictionary's preference is for aunt as in arm, you also realize that if "way out west in Kansas" you pronounced it that way, you would provoke a dubious whistle. In such a case, what will you do? The following story is told of an Irishman at a University of Pennsylvania public-speaking class: He went to the podium, shrugged his shoulders once or twice, and began with, "There ain't no place in dis here union for guys who don't want to follow rules." For the next five minutes he slashed the King's English.
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