Everyday Speech [antikvár]

PREFACE As you read this book you will find that I treat speech as a medium of exchange—exchange of thoughts, of feelings, of hopes, of desires, of commands. We direct our words to other people in the hope that they will understand us, like us, trust us, do something we want them to do for us or with us. The great function of language is, of course, to communicate. And we want results. This book will, I hope, help you to get those results. But I am hopeful even of more. What I am going to suggest now really calls for another book but I want, at least, to give it to you here in essence . . . Just the other night—after this book was finished—I was engaged in after-dinner talk with an extremely interesting young man: "Did you ever stop to think," I asked, "that the words you use actually transform you?" I thought I had come up with something startling. But not at all. The young man answered: "But, of coursel When I was in the army I had to change my language habits. If I hadn't, I'd have lost every friend I'd made. Overnight I found that I became a new person. Different. My whole attitude toward the fellows changed. My attitude toward myself changed too. And I didn't seem to have anything to do with it. It happened. New language—new me. Like thatl" I smiled. "And now you've changed again, haven't you? You're kind of back to normal again, aren't you?" "Well—er, yes," he conceded. "But I'll never be the same again, I guess." And he won't, of course. But there's more to it than that. When we think, we talk to our selves. And this is probably the most important talking that we do. Every time we tackle a problem, every time we make a decision, every time we attempt to predict something, we rely on our thoughts. And when we think—we talk to ourselves. We transform ourselves every time we think. In this book I say a lot about how to talk to someone else. Everything that I say can and should be applied to the kind of