How to improve and maintain articulation
The articulated man is a dangerous one. To give credit where it is due, physical prowess is certainly a determining factor on the issue of how formidable of a person you are. However, it is the case that with any civilised society, except for certain contexts i.e. sports, we tend to discourage the use of physical strength to get what we want. In fact, we have gone so far a to criminalise it, and for good reason. I should think that a society that uses physical strength as a metric for power would always be in constant strife. A dystopian apocolypse where the strong preys upon the weak, while everyone is fighting in a deadly battle royale to get to the top. A gruesome possibility that society is well aware of. A society akin to that would not stand for very long. And so, we have eventually evolved from the brandishing of the sword and the spear, to the utilisation of the word. This is such that ideas die, and we don’t. It is also the case that the pen is mightier than the sword. Words have the power to influence. They can tug at the heartstrings of the masses, and simultaneously inflame a fiery hatred in every fibre of our being. The ability to influence, to persuade, to convince is synonymous with power.
I do hope that the above is enough to convince you of the fact that mastering the word is of ineffable worth. And so this begs the question of how does one become a tongue dancer, a verbal virtuoso, a word wizard, boasting the most succint of vocabulary and the clearest of thought? When I am free, I often find myself listening to speeches made by the most erudite and the most articulated of men. It is my observation that their speeches are like music to the ears, where they are insanely effective at mobilising the English language in such a graceful and elegant manner to get their point across. The likes of Winston Churchill, or John F Kennedy seem to be otherworldly beings, especially when put you them next to the average man.
I do believe it to be the case that the average man’s ability to articulate has experienced a downward trend. Especially when you surveil how people back in the 20th century spoke, and compare it to today’s people, you would probably reach the same conclusion as I did. Now I do believe that this is not merely a result of decreased intelligence, but rather a result of the environment that they are ensconced in. Might it be the case that, we have exchanged our books for tablets, replaced our texts with videos, and neglected the comforting smell of books for the superficial embrace of the electronic device. Books have always and will be an essential pillar of articulation. If you remove it from the equation, the whole structure comes falling down. I do believe that people are reading less. When you venture out into the public space, you would often be met by the sight of people hunched over their phones typing away furiously. If only we attended the same amount of fervour to our books. But it is not the case that people are reading less, as the sole cause for this regrettable trend. I would also be inclined to include social media as well. Social media, acted as a hotbed for the birth of internet culture. It has given rise to phenomenons in the English language. Words such as lol (laugh out loud) or lmao (laugh my ass out). A typical sentence that sprouts out of the younger generation who are more prolific users of social media, are along the lines of “you are so cringe bruh, my guy has no rizz”. Could you imagine a 20th century gentleman speaking in such a manner, or really Winston Churchill uttering that? The answer is no. Social media has served to normalise such idiosyncratic and unorthodox ways of speaking, that leaves a much less elegant and hence less articulate impression on the listener.
And so in this age of unsophistry, how do we become sophisticated?
I do believe the key lies in the most commonplace and prosaic of objects: books. Books is probably one of the best inventions mankind has ever came up with. It constitutes as a repository of knowledge, the accumulated ideas of the writer that can then be transferred to you. But what I want to focus on is how through books do you become articulate. When you consume books, you run through the sentences within your own mind. Sooner or later, you will learn to pick up on how to phrase your sentences, when to use these words etc. Overtime, your brain will learn to identify patterns, it will learn to articulate in a manner as seen in the book that was read. If we were to use the metaphor of growing a plant, books would be that of fertile soil. A vital lynchpin in the whole articulation business. Therefore, books are essential, so much so that they should accompany you for the rest of your life. I believe it to be a tragedy when their book reading career halts immediately after they step out of the doors of the education instituitions. Whenever, I hear that someone dosen’t read books, my respect for them tanks, simply because books to the mind are what food is to every living creature: a source of sustenance. Heck even bottom feeders like coackroaches consume books.
The process of becoming articulate is an ever slow path, one that requires patience. We with our dangerously low attention span must learn to accept the fact that you will improve yourself, slowly but certainly, even if the results do not show as fast as you would like it to be.
I am inclined to believe that everyone is aware of how your muscles degenerate over time, if they are not called upon to be used. If you had the opportunity to gaze at the legs of a wheelchair bound person, you should be able to understand this well. You lose what you don’t use. This does apply to our ability to articulate. If we were to go back to our plant growing metaphor, the most fertile soil in the world would be of little use, without water. And this watering is not just merely a one off event, but a continuous phenomenon, that requires persistance and dedication. I previously made the mistake of neglecting my articulation, where I would go on for long periods of time without touching a book or writing my thoughts. It was only a few days before I experienced a tangible degredation in my articulation abilities. One cannot simply expect to stop reading for one year and then pick up from where he left off. One must practice their articulation every single day, as reliably as how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
So how does one go about that? I should think that everyone needs to incorporate within their daily routine, a time to read, write and speak. The reading aspect of things should be rather self explanatory. As for the writing, one should take time to pen down their thoughts every day which is very much akin to journaling. This was precisely the reason for which I embarked on this journey of blogging my thoughts, my lessons, and epiphanys that I encounter in my day to day life. You don’t neccessarily have to start a blog of your own, but allocating a certain amount of time articulating your thoughts out with a pen and paper will do wonders in terms of making more skilful of a thinker. I do think that the ability to write does not translate over to the ability to speak. And so, one must also practice speaking. A possible avenue one could explore would be that of inpromptu speaking, where you pull up a random prompt and make a speech out of it. While the notion of you speaking to yourself might come across as down right weird, not to mention the weird looks that you obtain from your fellow human beings, the benefits you will reap will be infinitely more rewarding.
The articulated mind is like a clean body of water. A shame it would be if we were to pollute it, yet this is precisely what the majority of people are doing to themselves. One of the phenomenons of modern society is how accessible and convenient self harm is. When we consume our social media content, especially content curated by Gen Zs, we are eroding our grasp of our languages. The articulate sentences that you have been developing in your brain, displaced by lower quality words. This does not merely apply to social media only. Just merely coming into contact with such ungraceful ways of speaking will do the damage just fine. The problem might insofar as to lie in the people will interact with on a daily basis, might it be your friends, your family, who are to put it mildly not the most erudite in the craft of articulation. I am not advocating for the cutting out of your dear friends and families from your social circle solely in the name of becoming more articulate. As of yet the only solution I can conceive of would be to remain cognisant of the negative impacts that their interactions can pose on you, and attempt to remind yourself to be articulate.
In a nutshell, an articulated mind is like that of a sharp knife, poised to cut through the world as he pleases.