Verbal diarrhea, also known as motor mouth talking has bothered me for years. It’s become more prevalent since I last noted it here in 2015.
Now it is not only more prevalent, but actually even speedier. I have to protest. TV news and interviews, especially as the younger crowd start taking their places in them, are becoming more garbled by the day. |
But how about the young newscasters of today? The mouth opens. A torrent of rapid-fire words issue from it. No breath is needed apparently. No pause that could be related to writing and a comma.. I’ve taken to closed captioning on the screen to help make sense of it. But even that doesn’t always help.
Ray Hull is a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Wichita State University in Kansas and he has done considerable research in the area of human neuroscience and speech.
His major concern is that of elementary school teachers. He has measured their speech at 180 words per minute. About 20 years ago he measured them at 145 words.
Hull says the human brain is best able to comprehend speech at around 124 to 130 wpm. Children’s central nervous systems are not designed to cope with the new speed of speech. Texting, emojis and tweets all contribute to the speed that brains must try to keep up with.
Readers and writers are the safe-guarders of language. It doesn’t really matter which language; they are the folks who keep watchful, beady eyes on the one they’re most familiar with.
They’re the ones who get blood pressure raises when dictionaries decide which new words to include in language. The old ones were perfectly adequate, thank you, but no, new ones, especially those in everyday use, no matter what quality, are included.
Perhaps, when you read aloud, speak to others, your clarity and speech speed becomes even more important. Let’s practise slowing down, breathing when we talk. This can be your personal service to keeping a language intact.
Cavemen grunted. We’ve got many more words to play with. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use (and 47,156 obsolete words).
Just remember to space them out when you use them.