The mere thought of it stops us in our tracks. A few days later the woman was heard to ask: “Am I still a mother?” Her babies were killed that day in the domestic terrorist bombing of that building. All the manipulative speechwriters in the world cannot raise language to the level of one simple question posed in April 1995. A young woman left her two children in a daycare center in a federal building in Oklahoma City. The Gettysburg Address was written on the back of envelopes as Lincoln rode by train toward the battlefield. His Second Inaugural Address is concise enough to be inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial.īoth speeches are so luminous and heartfelt that they bring one to tears.Įloquence in its purest form may show up unexpectedly, spontaneously, among real people. On the other hand, his speeches were short, simple and eloquent. Abraham Lincoln was a man of many words, a humorous chatterer - his enemies called him a buffoon. Microsoft collates them to send out to the world. Still, many Americans may feel that the most eloquent phrases come from simple thought. The twentieth century brought in thousands of original words from world wars, legal and medical terms, new inventions, gangster slang and “gangsta rap”, hard-boiled detective fiction, automobile lore, air and space travel, sports talk, corporate nomenclature, computerese, international translations, and generational code words. Look at how non-European English colonies develop unique vernaculars and sub-languages.Īustralians, for instance, publish whole dictionaries of colorful words and phrases to aid other English speakers in understanding every-day “Aussie” conversation. According to legendary noir novelist Raymond Chandler, the language has now been “roughed up.” There, all-powerful official “Academies of the Language” jealously protected the purity of their native tongues from outside influences. This openness was not allowed in most other European countries. We who write in English would have a harder time being eloquent were it not for some illuminating facts. As a UC Riverside graduate student assessed her famous teacher’s Spanish writings: “Professor, your prose is poetry, and your poetry is prose!”Įnglish began as one of the less-lyrical Germanic languages. Based on Latin - the language of Rome - the Romance languages lend themselves to elegant expression. Some languages foster eloquence simply because they feature words with pleasing and consistent endings. Grating noises surround us, bereft of the essential moral and ethical refinements. We miss them now, as we recoil from today’s vicious hammering. They emphasized that eloquence must contain an element of morals and ethics.Ĭharismatic public figures of mid-twentieth century - known as FDR, JFK, and MLK - had the gift of uplifting eloquence. Socrates called it “trickery.” Petrarch argued that eloquence and rhetoric could be used to bring language and the art of persuasion to life.Renaissance humanists put Petrarch’s theory to work on a political level. Cortés Inlandia Literary JourneysĬicero saw eloquence as purely an art form. Éloquence - an Old French word meaning artistry in speech or writing, derived from the Latin eliquotia (speak out).īy Laurel V.
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