What Really Causes Poor Diction? (How To Maintain Good Diction)

This.

 

I can't imagine that genetics would determine diction, except in extreme circumstances (significant intellectual disability).

Even if you aren't born with a "natural" strength for verbal or written abilities, there aren't many excuses for you to have truly poor diction. You should be able to learn enough to make your communication at least passable, fairly fluent, and comprehensible to others.

However: I think there is something to be said for what you are exposed to in childhood. A baby who is frequently spoken and read to will have better outcomes than a child who is not. This is problematic for children who grow up below middle class.
(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/)

"Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental."

 

It's more than just words, its grammar, syntax, semantics etc.

fun fact of the day: in English the correct plural second person pronoun is "you" ... which can also be singular. I think most people probably know this, but if you don't you do now. "All of you" or "you guys", "you people", etc is superfluous and less correct.

I think English may have had a second person pronoun at some point, but not sure about that, or what the word was.

 

I like to believe EVERYONE knows that.
I think people just sometimes use "all of you" or "you guys/people" for clarity only.

I would also like to say that while I may make mistakes in English, my Croatian grammar and vocabulary are excellent.

 

Speaking of which, a friend of mine recently coined the term "Dickmanship", which as far as I know is a new word.

E.g. "His drunken behaviour at the party rose to an even higher level of dickmanship than she had previously thought possible."

 

http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/475302-what-really-causes-poor-vision-how-to-maintain-good-vision/

Maybe it has something to do with poor eyesight.

 

Well, maybe this thread has something to do with that other thread.

 

If it makes you feel better, if you hadn't mentioned otherwise, it would take me quite some time to notice that English was not your first language.

 

yeah. sort of like if you wanted to say in spanish that you speak spanish, a lot of people would say "yo hablo espanol," even though all they technically need to say is "hablo espanol." it doesn't mean they don't know how to speak their language; they're just adding an unnecessary but still grammatically correct word for extra clarity.

and that's still not a great example since "yo hablo espanol" and "hablo espanol" both mean exactly one thing. "you speak spanish" really could mean that you alone speak spanish or that all of you speak spanish, so if there's a way to eliminate that ambiguity that's just ideal.

 

Laziness should be number 1.

 

The word you is not ambiguous if for instance one is speaking to a group fo people. Speaking to a specific person the word "you" is singular and unambiguous. The ambiguity comes from people that don't understand the English grammar, which unfortunately it seems that far too many native English speakers do not.

Reading and writing improves language fluency. Facebook doesn't count, and is more likely than not deleterious in regard to the context of the aforementioned clause.

 

yeah, if there's enough context nothing's ambiguous. but if you just saw the sentence "you speak spanish" written with no context and nothing indicating who it's directed toward, then it really could have either meaning.

 

I can't comment on the Spanish thing, as I don't really understand Spanish or Spanish grammar. But usually sentences don't stand very well on their own (and sometimes paragraphs as well). For instance, when writing an essay, one must think about the intended audience, &c, and write in such a way that this is clear, or can be inferred.

However, ambiguity can be fun to play with, especially in creative writing: sometimes there can be multiple meanings and it can be interesting to write in such a way that it takes lot of analysis and comprehension to figure out some tricky situation, and what exactly really is going on. It can also be fun to leave little things that one has to guess at what they think really happened after analyzing the situation; somewhat like a mystery one could say.

I also sometimes like to leave what I will refer to as "easter eggs" in my writing, things that are not ever explicitly stated and there's no explicit way to read it that makes it completely clear; in this way it is up to the reader to interpret things in how he or she sees most fitting: in some cases there is one intended meaning or scenario, but just like in real life there are often things that leave one wondering, "what is really going on here?"

As an aside, the term "easter eggs", refer to a literary device, often involving foreshadowing, similes, and metaphorical rhetoric; easter eggs are brightly colored, but can be hard to find in "easter egg hunts" when they are well hidden and often require many clues and critical thinking to locate them. The term also refers to hidden features, or things of such nature in computer programs, or in video games (such as hidden rooms, or alternate plots).

An example of an easter egg in a computer program (in this case APT):

Code:

$ apt-get -h
...

Options:
  -h  This help text.
  -q  Loggable output - no progress indicator
  -qq No output except for errors
  -d  Download only - do NOT install or unpack archives
  -s  No-act. Perform ordering simulation
  -y  Assume Yes to all queries and do not prompt
  -f  Attempt to correct a system with broken dependencies in place
  -m  Attempt to continue if archives are unlocatable
  -u  Show a list of upgraded packages as well
  -b  Build the source package after fetching it
  -V  Show verbose version numbers
  -c=? Read this configuration file
  -o=? Set an arbitrary configuration option, eg -o dir::cache=/tmp
See the apt-get(8), sources.list(5) and apt.conf(5) manual
pages for more information and options.
                       This APT has Super Cow Powers.


$ apt-get moo
                 (__) 
                 (oo) 
           /------\/ 
          / |    ||   
         *  /\---/\ 
            ~~   ~~   
..."Have you mooed today?"...

 

So in other words...i am going to write a bunch of shit....and however you take it, is how I find out about you....lol

Been there.....

 

That reminded me of someone I once knew, and who I worked with once upon a time. He would say off the wall things to me, and i would ask him what do you mean....and he would reply...what do want it to mean, and I would say nothing...i want it to mean what you meant it to mean...and this went on and on....so that is what i meant by been there.....lol

and then if I guessed something...he would say, if the shoe fits.....and then I was ready to clobber him, too....LOL

 

I think you're talking about mind games. Similar to what I'm talking about about, but I was referring to this type of thing in a rhetorical situation. These types of things are in my short story "Death by Deprecation; ZERO DAY", which you've read; and I'm sure you picked up on a few of them, even if subconsciously

Good songwriters place things like this in their lyrics as well, and I do enjoy music, especially well written music with crafty lyrics.

 

Genetics is very real; however, not everything about us is determined by genetics. Gene expression is something that I'm not sure is fully understood but can be influenced by the environment.

Identical twins may look "just alike" and have the same genetic code but they will not have the same iris patterns or fingerprints (if you look close enough you can tell them apart). Very close but not quite the same person. Of course they develop and learn independently from each other and will have minds of their own; they may form completely different interests while still having some common personality traits.

 

So - of course natural predispositions, commitment to the prolonged learning of speaking/writing correctly as much as effectively, and most of all - in terms of diction and pronunciation - how/by whom you were taught to say something in any given language.

But, as a tenured student of classical vocie and choir, "diction is done with the tip of the tongue and the teeth" is a consonant and clarity exercise ive long sung at rising tempos to practice good diction. My partner who was signed briefly under a no name label as a speed rapper also find the practice pleasant/useful.

 

Listening to too many Michael McDonald tunes?