Speech Personality and Social Change

T HE function of speech is to facilitate the meeting of ideas and purposes as related to facts and reality. It connects and relates idea with idea, idea with feeling, fact with fact, and reality with ideal. When fulfilling its essentially integrative functions it disconnects and sifts out the erroneous and false, the illusory and unreal, the deceitful and artificial. A corporate part of this process is an increased warmth in the human relations. Security and confidence take the place of fear and anxiety; good fellowship and affection take the place of anger and hostility; respect, mutual support, co-operation, and unity take the place of envy, jealousy, withdrawal, and disruption. Speakers who are social integrators must be themselves integrated. Consistently to connect with another mind is an active co-operating process, to which the interplay of listening and overt speech is fundamental. To listen to what the other person has to share, to evaluate it, and to incorporate it form the basis for integrative speech behavior. To connect with another mind through speech requires a two-way concentration. The chief absorption is in the idea and the larger goal; a secondary reference is to the other mind and its responses. The central problem in any speech performance always springs from the same basethe speaker or actor has difficulty in out of himself and getting into his part, in meaning what he is trying to say. Any hang-over of infantilism, any residue of childhood egocentricity, any other habitual selfreference may come out in the speech at some point to mar human relations, to divert the speaker's focus from his speech content, to interfere with the meeting of minds, and, almost inevitably, to frustrate the person himself. Involved in the speaking which marks every enterprise which breaks down, every family which disintegrates, every industrial group that strikes, and every war are the persons who have not grown up emotionally. Contributing to every one of these breakdowns has been unmeasured poor speech-speech reflecting the symptoms of immaturity. Integration in the democratic process requires functioning with the critical and the evaluational powers efficiently operating. A monkey can be trained to start and stop a car

Personality · Personality changes · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia