Many of us have a word that often escapes our memories. Funny enough, the word I used to forget the most was “articulate.” People would laugh when I told them that, but it was so difficult to yank that word out of my brain that I wrote it down on the inside flap of a little notebook I used to carry around all the time. When I think back to that now, it seems symbolic of a larger issue.
Though it was the one that bothered me most, that wasn’t the only word often omitted from my communication. In fact, though I’d always loved reading and writing, I never noticed how disrespectful of communication I was; more times than not, I was asking for “thingies” or “the thingy on the thingy,” or telling a story about “that guy in the movie with Uma Thurman, married to what’s her name with the long, red hair.”
But everyone I knew seemed to know what I was talking about. And most of them spoke the same way. We met at “that place near the subway,” and we ordered “that chicken dish with the peanuts.”
And then I moved out of America. And I started to notice that people ordered from menus with the exact name of the dish: “the Seriously Yummy Chicken” or the “Dynamite Vietnamese Spring Rolls.” At first I found this charmingly obedient, but then I realized these were not charmingly obedient people. These were independent thinkers, but they were articulate communicators. They might use the same language as Americans, but they wielded it better. While we do it right, Australians do it “properly.” While we ask “what,” they beg “pardon?” The subtleties become less subtle the more you think it over. So while this might mean a word for word recitation of a silly menu item name, it also means less crossed wires, and more nuanced and thoughtful debates. And when I started to think about this, I realized how lazy the language usage of my peers and I had become. We all spoke the same way, so it wasn’t an issue I’d been confronted with, but when I left my comfort zone, there it was—obvious and not a good look.
A few years into this realization, I saw how sweeping the effects of lazy language were—I’d always assumed my writing was spared: I knew the tools of craft and could create vivid scenes with spare language. But even there, improvements in clarity were remarkable; it no longer became merely about striking the right feeling, but making sure I was saying exactly what I meant to, and that others would receive it as intended—a major improvement at a stage when improvements come slowly and are hard-earned. I also thought more about the different ways in which individual characters articulate, which led to better development. In the arena of overstatement, vagaries are perhaps one of the most dangerous: “you never do the dishes,” will do more harm in argument than the more factual “you haven’t done the dishes in two weeks.” And if you notice the difference in how you communicate these complaints, you may also notice the difference in how you process them—I’ve found I can emotionally charge the truth so it feels worse than it really is. Put it straight in your mind and suddenly you seem to have gotten more riled up than necessary.
I am amazed and proud when my two-year old sites a “kookaburra” instead of a “birdie,” when she tells me what she ate for “morning tea” rather than for the vague “snack,” which could have been eaten at any time of the day. Will we ever perfect communication to the point where everyone understands exactly what we mean? Probably not, but articulation is certainly a useful, helpful tool—and goes a long way with a bit of effort.
Some books on the topic on my reading list:
It’s the Way You Say It: Becoming Articulate, Well-spoken, and Clear
Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.
The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics
An Old Favorite:
An Author Who Owns Articulation:
And Another:
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