Speak Freely

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I love speech. I love dialect. I love word choice. I am so intrigued by people who spice up their language. Not spice up as in being crass, but spice up as in stylizing their language. I don't think language gets enough credit for its ability to characterize someone. Of course, there are the Paula Deens of the world who build their entire persona around their language (and pounds of butter, but that is another story). There are the stereotypical Bostonians who use the word wicked to describe everything. And there are the speech offenders who move down South and immediately pick up a Southern accent as though they were directly related to General Robert E. Lee. We all know an offender or two, and we have all had to suffer at one time or another through their attempt to assimilate to a culture that is not their own. It's painful.

Stereotypical speech and dialect is not what intrigues me most, although I do find some aspects of stereotypes entertaining and fascinating. What I love most is individualized speech. My grandmother had a very specific cadence I loved. Her conversations carried so much power just with her pauses and exclamations. For some reason I get really tickled when someone naturally starts to whisper to emphasize a point. Ironically, whispering gets attention.

Lately, I have been surrounded by word choices that stop me in my tracks. I am often around some folks who are notorious for using million dollar words. Whenever these folks pepper the conversation with superfluously large or obscure words I lose focus and I begin to wonder about the motivation. Are they trying to prove something? Are they doing a 365 day word challenge? Were they ingrained with wild vocab as a child so much that they are unaware of their word choices? My guess is that heavy talkers (my new label for folks who use Scrabble genius words) take me for a dim light because at the first drop of a large word I look puzzled. Sometimes I feel the urge to explain my bewilderment by asking their motivation for their word choice, but that would take the fun out of my assumptions.

The other day I was chatting with a woman who was trying to explain why she and her ex-husband decided on the erratic custody schedule they had for their children. The woman had a smooth and dreamy voice. She explained that their original idea for custody had good intentions for the children and was something very beautiful. I immediately fell in love with describing a theory or motivation as beautiful. How peaceful. This woman managed to describe an ugly custody battle as a work of art! Imagine the possibilities.

Later that evening I told John about the woman's use of beautiful. I confessed that I want to try to use beautiful to describe more than visual appearance. That confession made me realize that I may easily fall into the same category as the offenders who arrive in the South for a weekend and suddenly call everyone "Y'all!" I realized that I fall into the same speech category as Mitt Romney.

Do you have any favorite word choices? Dialects? Speech patterns?