CHAPTER XIII TIME Argument of the Chapter.-Life is partly based on rhythms; and time is important in speaking and reading. Three main aspects of time are of interest to improvement of speech-rate, tone duration, and pause. Especially significant are quantity and phrasing. The effective use of time. produces rhythm, which is capable of the finest degree of development and has much to do with effective oral expression. Third in the elements of tone making and change for the sake of meaning is Time. Time is a matter of four ways of effecting the variety necessary to make sense and to stir feeling. These four kinds of change are Rate, Quantity, Rhythm, and Pause. TIME AND THE BODY Time and Rhythm Important in Total Bodily Actions.Rhythms play an important part in bodily activity. Obvious simple rhythms captivate primitive men completely; yet even the most sophisticated of us are susceptible to their charms; and no matter how deep we go into refinements and culture we never escape the power of a rhythmical tempo. As we progress in intellectual power-that is, in the ability to discriminate and make fine distinctions-we become less amenable to the gross rhythms of the body and seek more and more the rhythms that are less obvious and more closely related with our powers of reasoning. For primitive men. Time in speech is most gripping when metrical, when it is ast regular as scansion; drumbeats, dance movements, body swayings. Man civilized, however, while far from being superior to the chant, the beat of the tom-tom, and the dance, finds his best satisfaction in rhythms distinctly more elaborate and more subtle. IRREGULAR RHYTHM This change shows itself in the rhythms of speech. In general the total bodily-emotional-rhythms are very regular, unbroken, even monotonous; revealed in poetry, chants, ululations, battle cries, college yells. But speech for the most part tends to reduce emotionality and to strive after fine distinctions-intellectuality. To do this it gets away from regularity and becomes broken, irregular, varied. Accordingly, this general rule can be laid down: The more smooth, regular, and obviously rhythmical speech becomes the more it stirs up a total bodily attitude emotions-in hearers; while the more varied, broken, and unmetrical it is, within definable limits, the more it makes an appeal strongly intellectual. Conversation Employs a Broken Rate.-As a consequence conversation, being with civilized, educated people largely a matter of intellectual refinement, is normally irregular in time; it is broken, halting, and, under severe intellectual struggle for just the right word and for delicate shades of meaning, even jerky. Try to draw a fine distinction of any kind and observe how far from metrical your speech is. In our daily speech most of us are not vested with the ability to find just the word we want when we want it; consequently we get used to seeing and hearing one another search a bit for just the word or phrase. In time we come to understand that any man sincerely trying to state things as he sees them, usually has to indulge in a little of this hunting; and there come times when we know that the more sincere and believable he is, the more likely is he to stumble about, halting enough now and then to be sure to get just the word he wants. In fact, so used are we to a broken rate that when we hear a person talking like a metronome or a dripping eaves spout, we quickly suspect that either he has no ideas at all or else he has conned his speech by rotein which case he may be also idea-less. Good sense and deep feeling both require a broken rate. The Conversational Mode Is Varied in Time.-To apply our rule, then, that public address, oratory, interpretation, impersonation, and acting must be kept as close as possible to lively conversation, we must mean that these manners of speaking are to be given as much as possible with a broken unmetrical rate. Public address, especially when fully informal, must be thoroughly free from metrical effects. Oratory, being public address grown emotional, increases in obvious rhythm, till in its highest flights it approaches, and even becomes identical with, high and powerful poetry. In fact, stirring poetry is oratorical, and stirring oratory is poetic. Interpretation, impersonation, and acting are broken or regular in precise proportion to the balance of the appeal to total emotional reactions or to reactions specifically intellectual. The necessity for breaks in conversational rhythm is twofold: one, as suggested above, arising from the need of care in the choice of words and ideas; the other arising from so simple a thing as the need for taking breath. Idea-seeking breaks may be entirely formless, unrhythmical; but breathing is deeply founded upon a rhythm and so leads to a beatlike regularity. In common conversation the pauses for breath come at fairly regular intervals. Yet no sane and sensible person ever talks like a fire bell or a street car with a broken wheel. I. RATE Public Speaking Needs Slow Rate.-The ear is slower than the eye. Consequently the eye can read a book much more rapidly than the ear can apprehend the same matter read aloud. One reason plain reading is so poor in communicativeness is that it is almost always too fast: the ear does not grasp it. Fast speaking and reading seldom stir total reactions because they cannot use either an impressive quality or an effective force; both take duration of time. Nor can they make intellectual reactions, because they make no distinctions; and without distinctions there is no intellectuality. So in all speaking and reading before an audience go slowly; take your time; be deliberate. Take time to be dis tinct; be slow enough to get a good rich quality and a sufficient resonance, to employ such changes of force as are needed. This is one of the wisest precautions for people not used to standing before audiences. Four out of five ruin speaking and reading by being too everlastingly fast and unvaried in rate. Take Time to Be Distinct.-The making of vowels and consonants involves a widespread and intricate physical mechanism. Uttering sound at all with the voice engages intricate and complicated sets of muscles all the way from the pelvic arch to the ears. Jaw, lips, tongue, larynx, neck muscles, rib muscles, diaphragm and the muscles of the abdomen, are all involved; and any carelessness or hurry with any of them is likely to muffle or slight the sound. More than this, these muscle systems frequently work in a certain sequence, so that if the sequence is not preserved-breathing, opening the jaw, pressing with tongue, action of lips-there is indistinctness; it requires time to be distinct. II. THE DURATION OF A TONE The element of Rate brings us to a consideration of the unit of speech-the individual tone. In speech this means the individual syllable. How long should a syllable be? No absolute standard is possible. In determining how long a given syllable should be, the variants are three: (1) Quantity, (2) Accentuation, (3) General Attitude of the speaker. (1) Quantity-Vowels and consonants have different inherent duration; for effective speech these quantities must be observed. Most vowels call for a hold; all except a as in hat and a as in past; e as in met, i as in is, o as in cot, and u as in cut. The consonants normally prolonged are l, m, n, r, v, w, z, ng, and th as in then. The inherently long sounds are called continuant and the short ones are called stopped. Good conversation always reveals a nice discrimination in the relative values of the prolonged and quick sounds. In the following passage certain syllables cannot with any propriety be uttered rapidly, because they are combinations of both continuant vowels and consonants: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. While in the next passage every incentive is given to utter the syllables rapidly: Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, On the light fantastic toe. Quantity Influences Excellence of Poetry.-Poetry requires careful study of time; for in music, which poetry partly is, time is one of the most important elements. In reading the Psalms, for example, particularly in the King James version, much is added to the interpretation of their inner meaning by careful use of vowels. The vowel sounds in these bits of poetry are noticeably sonorous and rich; they represent typically long quantity. In the main they should be prolonged, especially in the open broad sounds, as in "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein." Otherwise the effect would be casual, commonplace, dull. The Psalms represent a deep lyric mood, which calls for deliberation and deep feeling. So with all other types of poetic utterance: there is always a tempo that not only fits the mood but is positively essential to making it interesting to the listener. One of the surest tests of the excellence of poetry is found in the use of quantity. Good poetry always has a fitness of quantities to the sense, or it is not good. Short sounds and a sentiment of solemnity and dignity do not make poetry; heavy, dragging sounds and rapid-fire thought spoil all poetic effects. Merely as a basis of literary criticism this principle is important. But as the basis for deciding |