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The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation - part 4
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An ever lurking pitfall in one's speech is that of mannerism expressions. The wisest and the best people are not exempt from this flaw. Mischievous students, keeping tab on a professor's use of well, counted thirty-seven of them in one lecture. One acquaintance, who has many interesting things to 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 George Tesman distractingly ends many of his sentences with Eh. Thousands of people mar their conversation by unconsciously interpolating you see or you know into their sentences. Others interject
un-spell-able sounds and grunts like eh, ah, ugh. All such nervous, unconscious, pointless interjections are scarcely bearable blemishes in one's conversation. Similar to these is the overuse of some words. Some persons tiresomely designate hundreds of things as funny, when they mean odd or unusual or strange. Some keep calling innumerable things terrible or awful. Some girls sprinkle their conversation with lovely and cute more profusely than their grandmothers sprinkled the stew with salt. Perhaps the most overused expression now is O.K. For fear of getting caught with it in my next sentence, I would not dare to prohibit it. I do hint, however, that now and then replacing it with all right would be a relief. Repetitious pet expressions of any kind become either ludicrous or tiresome to hearers. They are also insidious. Unless one keeps a trusty watch against them, they slip into our talk the way bills get into our mail. A most brilliant college senior partially ruined his address to the assembly by an unthinking overuse of naturally. Worst of all, obnoxious though the habit may be, most friends too frequently will rather shun us than tell us. He is lucky who can find a friend who can be persuaded to tell him which barnacles of this type clutter his speech. And everyone should from time to time subject himself to a sharp self-check.
Still worse than overworking certain words and phrases is the peppering of our talk with epithets and expletives. One time, confined with three others in a hospital ward, engaged chiefly upon pinochle, one fellow used the expletive Jimminy so often that I simply could not stand it any longer. I begged him to please alternate with flagstone or pumpernickel for variety. Over and above the ethics involved in profanity, it is well to remark that any frequent use of epithets and expletives is an artistic blemish on our conversation. The person who keeps saying gee is conversationally not much better than the one who keeps saying damn or hell. Someone, incidentally, has listed at least eleven euphemisms for damn, such as drat, dang, darn, and another fourteen for damned, such as dashed, deuced, blasted, and confounded. Other profanity has similar euphemisms. There seems to be a curious reflex in human nature that insists on popping out expletives. The uncouth will pop them coarse, the civilized will emit shadows thereof. Since this tendency is so deeply rooted, it would be unwise to rule out all expletives. Who knows, but for the relieving expletive, a capillary would burst instead 1 Consequently, we merely rule out altogether all profane and sinful expletives, and place a rigorous curtailment on all others. An occasional dad-burn, lawdy, gee-whillikins, crickey, begorrah, or bejabers will not cripple anyone's speech, or, in the right setting, offend or tire any normal listener. However, a frequent use of these epithets and any of their hundred brethren is a conversational blemish no gracious, lively, ready, Pauline Christian may permit himself.
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