The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation

LANGUAGE is the instrument of conversation. Grammar is the correct use of language; rhetoric the wise and effective use of it; diction the choice and range of words. These are large and complicated subjects, which cannot be treated comprehensively in a chapter on conversation. Fortunately they do not need to be. Everybody who has had some schooling has had a good deal of training in the elements of all three. What is needed here is their mobilization for good conversation.

The importance of these merely mechanical aspects of conversation were impressed upon me very painfully at an early age. When I was six, during a Sunday school class which many parents witnessed, the pastor, alluding to our Lord's being lost in the temple, asked if anyone could tell about it. When none responded, I ventured to raise my hand uncertainly, and before I realized the full enormity of my presumption, I was on my feet telling this incident. The pastor warmly commended me, then, smilingly turning to the adults in the back, added somewhat apologetically, as if in a postscript, "Of course, it was rather much a string of and, and, and and then, but the story nevertheless."