Speech and Man [antikvár]

Preface This book was written to serve, not as a major text for a skills course in speech, but as its pleasant companion. We have long felt that the students in our courses were seeking something more than we were giving them. We knew they wanted to feel comfortable and effective when facing their listeners, but even when we managed to help them become so, they still seemed to want more. In exploring the matter it became clear that when we touched on the deeper purposes served by our speaking, which this book seeks to make clear, our students responded with the excited interest that all instructors hope to arouse. Deep down, all of us know that speech is the most important single achievement of the human race, the most powerful magic that man has invented. It is the open sesame to self-fulfillment, the basic bond that unites us one to another. We talk so much, so casually, so often that we tend at times to forget the power we possess through speech. Yet it is this very sense of possessing a tremendously powerful tool without knowing quite how to use it that brings students, often reluctantly, to enroll in our courses. We have designed this book for them. Moreover, that speech education which rests in the liberal arts tradition and hopes to prepare the oncoming generation to act with wisdom in the precarious years ahead must stir the student to feel the role of speech in life and to sense the power of words, both for good