Articulation

“ When once the faculty of articulation was developed, which, though we cannot trace the process, was probably a very gradual growth, there is no reason to suppose that words developed in any other way then they do at present. ”

“ The look upon the face, the gestures of the arm, the attitude of the body, all speak the language of emotion as plainly to the eye as elocution proper does to the ear. This action will be prompted by the feelings, as the voice is; and it will be expressive or not, it will be appropriate or not, it will be graceful or not, according as you have natural or acquired ability. Natural ability will be much aided by a knowledge and practice of gesture as a language, and much may be acquired by any one with practice. ”

“ When we reflect, that from our infancy to the natural decline of our intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the exercise of language; [8] —by conversation, often desultory, where we range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where the mind enduringly broods on the subject;—or when we read, and attentively consider the thoughts of others:—these occupations contribute to augment our vocabulary, and fix the meaning of the words we employ. ”

“ They think, and quite rightly, that what is slowly written out in the inaccurate, halting system we call language, bears little relation to the arrow-swift movements of the thinking mind and feeling heart. ”

“ Having pointed out the importance of correct grammar and the right choice of language, I wish now to furnish you with some practical suggestions for the construction of sentences. Remember that a good thought often suffers from a weak and faulty expression of it.
Your sentences will certainly shape themselves after the structure of your own mind. If your thoughts are vivid and definite, so will be your language; if dreamy and hazy, so will your composition be obscure. Your speech, whether oral or written, can be but the expression of yourself; and what you are, that speech will be. ”

“ Spread on a canvas, with other paints around it, it represents, on the contrary, a feature in a picture and performs a spiritual function. Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of ‘consciousness’; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of [Pg 10] an objective ‘content.’ In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. ”

“ But in what Language do the impressions upon the nerves thus speak to us of an external world,—of the forms and qualities and actions of objects? How is it that by the aid of our nervous system we become acquainted not only with impressions but with things; that we learn not only the relation of objects to us, but to one another?
15. It has been shown at some length in the previous Books, that the mode in which Sensations are connected in our minds so as to convey to us the knowledge of Objects and their Relations, is by being contemplated with reference to Ideas. ”

“ For instance, while the influence is impressing my brain with the greatest force and rapidity, so that my pencil fairly flies over the paper to record the thoughts, I am conscious that, in many cases, the vehicle of the thought, i.e., the language, is very natural and familiar to me, as if, somehow, my personality as a writer was getting mixed up with the message. ”

“ All thought which rises to the plane of self-consciousness is communicated by means of a material, a pictorial, or a lingual symbol. The thought element and the symbol element are two sides of the same thing, namely, language. ”

“ As soon as the word is at hand, we instinctively feel, with something of a sigh of relief, that the concept is ours for the handling. Not until we own the symbol do we feel that we hold a key to the immediate knowledge or understanding of the concept. ”

“ The language of gesticulation and signs, by the movement of different parts of the body, is quite a study in this part of the world. The most singular gesticulation, and yet the most significant, is that by which a person begs a thing. ”

“ Now this dependence of the cognitive mind on its organ of language, discursive indeed, but yet almost always figurative—this close and intimate connection between man’s knowledge and his speech—is even the characteristic mark of human intelligence. ”

“ It has been well said concerning the custom of prefacing the art of speaking any tongue by a drilling in the parts of speech and their functions, that it is about as reasonable as prefacing the art of walking by a course of lessons on the bones, muscles, and nerves of the legs ”

“ For example, the amount and character of thinking done while we read determines the rate of utterance; the purpose or motive of the thought and its completeness or incompleteness are indicated by an upward or downward slide of the voice; the nervous tension expresses itself in a certain key; the physical and mental energy, in a certain power or volume of the voice; and the character of the emotion is reflected in the quality. ”

“ How, in fact, can, the development of the understanding be assisted by teaching them a mechanism which has no object or destination, when the thought already formed in the mind, by the help of signs which fix the ideas, restores not the mechanism of speech? ”

“ As soon as the word, which is a transmission-agent of the understanding, comes to be used as the expression-agent of an art, the waking consciousness ceases to express or to take in a thing integrally. ”

“ Language is sound articulated, circumscribed and organized for the purposes of expression. ”

“ In treating of the expression of the emotions, we are told that physical expression has two different functions—to replace a complete language, and "to defend the nerve-centres and other parts of the body against dangers of different kinds." ”

“ For all those who do not hold the view that words and thoughts originate from sources above and outside the nerve substance, the localization of the functions of speech in portions of the cortex follows as a necessary postulate of logic.... ”

“ His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously accompanied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compressed regularity and official splendour of a procession. ”

“ The expression, “I feel the table,” includes both the antecedent and the consequent. It does not mark the sensation alone; it marks the sensation, and, along with the sensation, its antecedent, namely, the organ, and its object in conjunction.
The phrase, sense of touch, or the word feeling, often synonymous, has the same complexity of meaning, which we have observed in the phrases, sense of hearing, sense of sight, and the rest of the senses. ”

“ We now arrive at some of the most senseless and absurd jargon, that ever affected sensibility reduced to language—if that may be called language, which inverts its purpose, and confounds, instead of assisting, the understanding. ”

“ They have, in pursuance of their Theory, mapped out the human scull into compartments, to each of which they have assigned a particular faculty or sentiment, and they profess to tell, with some degree of accuracy, the individual character by the peculiar formation of the head. ”

“ Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved, yet a clear judgment is not necessarily connected with them. ”

“ The expressive instinct has produced a large number of meaningful human attitudes, actions and sounds—silence, gesture, signalling, facial expression, singing, whistling, handclapping and other noises made by hands and feet. ”

“ As the inquiry proceeds, we are reminded of the obscurity or inaccuracy of language, in portraying the impressions upon and the functions, so to say, of the sentient organs even now the external object is, with us, in common parlance, a sensible object; sensation, besides its own sense, implies casual feelings from within; sight signifies both faculty and function ”

“ When we speak of the value of this sense as a part of our mental constitution, it is enough to say, that it is to it we are indirectly indebted for the use of verbal language,—that power so peculiarly distinctive of man, that, in the poetical phraseology of one celebrated country, it gave him his name as a divider of the voice, or, in other words, an utterer of articulate sounds. ”

“ What is requisite is that the word, whether by itself or with others, should adhere to the personality, to the spiritual situation, and be the actual expression of a soul. When joined to the soul a word, which materially is identical with countless other words uttered by other souls, and with the peculiar accents of the respective personalities, reveals its particular expression, is a particular word not to be ever compared with any of those countless ones materially identical with it. ”

“ This is a splendidly constructed sentence, and contains more information than many paragraphs made up of numerous sentences. It is because of the masterly arrangement of contrasts that so much is stated in so small a space.
How are the contrasts to be brought out? By means of inflection and emphasis. The single contrast requires that when both members are positive the first should be given the rising inflection and the second the falling; as,
The human mind is the brightest display of the power and skill of the Infinite mind with which we are acquainted. ”

“ Through the operation of our thought forces we have creative power. The spoken word is nothing more nor less than the outward expression of the workings of these interior forces. The spoken word is then, in a sense, the means whereby the thought forces are focused and directed along any particular line; and this concentration, this giving them direction, is necessary before any outward or material manifestation of their power can become evident. ”

“ In words which I have already used, the perceptive faculties, at any rate in childhood, grow through the interpretation which expression gives them, and in no other way, and the expressive faculties grow by interpreting perception, and in no other way. ”

“ It seems reasonable to me—upon the hypothesis that it is a person using another's mind or brain—that there must be more or less of that other's style or tone incorporated in the message, and that to the unseen personality, i.e., the power which impresses, the thought, the fact, or the philosophy, and not the style or tone, belongs. ”

“ It is a great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into the selfsame feeling and sensation. It is a lordly task. ”

“ The most important, because the most fundamental, principle to be borne in mind is that gesture should be made to enforce, not the superficial, or incidental, ideas appearing in a statement, but the ideas which lie behind the form of expression and are the real basis, or inhere in the fundamental purpose, of the speaker's discourse. ”

“ And those who have undergone his influence, and followed this difficult way, are like people who have passed through some initiation, a disciplina arcani, by submitting to which they become able constantly to distinguish in art, speech, feeling, manners, that which is organic, animated, expressive, from that which is only conventional, derivative, inexpressive. ”

“ The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is Art. ”

“ In these circumstances, it is evident that our hand is in our consciousness as a material object, separated from every essential relationship with us—with us as we are in the act of looking and comparing. ”

“ But does not the absence of the spoken word make it easier to give expression to the universal language of the heart? All motives and emotions must be made to appear on the surface. Even sounds must be silently, yet effectively, portrayed. ”

“ Though the analysis of a sentence into the words of which it is constituted is as imaginary as the analysis of a word into the letter-form sounds, it is generally done in order to get an analytical view of the meaning of a sentence—an imaginary division of it as into cases, verbs, etc. ”

“ But to understand something of what takes place in the making of poetry we must now substitute for our first diagram the slightly more complicated one which William James employs to represent, not those lower nerve-centres which "act from present sensational stimuli alone," but the hemispheres of the human brain which "act from considerations." [Footnote: Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 97, 98. Henry Holt.] Considerations are images constructed out of past experience, they are reproductions of what has been felt or witnessed. ”

“ As all bodily manifestations, including speech, form part of a person's behaviour, we may maintain that all possible psychological truths rest on behaviour as their only and absolutely sufficient basis. ”

“ Hence, even in the field of sensation, our minds exert a certain arbitrary choice. By our inclusions and omissions we trace the field's extent; by our emphasis we mark its foreground and its background ”

“ Does it not follow, then, that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our thoughts? “And by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously we train our minds to clarify our thought, since language is the expression of thought. ”